I mean could you die from psychosomatic shock or something. I know dying in a dream won’t necessarily kill you but I guess what I’m asking is could it?
I’ve died about 6-7 times in my dreams over the years. First time was about 5 and I was eaten by a T-rex. Watched too much Land of the Lost as a kid, I guess. I’ve been shot in the head - execution style, fallen off a building, eaten by a shark and I don’t remember the others. Now, I’m reasonably healthy, no heart problems, 32 years of age, and I’m not overweight.
I usually make an effort to wake myself up if I see I’m headed for a bad turn. Let’s say I get mortally wounded in a way that does not cause instantaneous death and I wake up, could the psychosomatic pain kill me? Am I safer if I let myself die in the dream and then wake up? I presume there would be less pain this way. Are there any cases of this happening? (The deaths by large beasties doesn’t really answer this question for me because they were relatively quick.)
If there were any cases of this, how would we know it?
Only if you say the Lord’s Prayer before going to sleep.
I’m not sure, but I imagine some cases would pop up. I don’t expect death to be instantaneous because we’re talking about death from system shock here. I imagine it would go something like this:
Mr A dies of a heart attack in his sleep. Upon examination, no cause for the heart attach can be found. Mrs. A says Mr. A was making noises like he was having a bad dream. Now the death wouldn’t really be explained, but I imagine someone would be curious enough to follow up on this.
Or Mr. A has a heart attack but Mrs. A responds quickly enough to get help and Mr. A lives. Upon examination, no cause for the heart attach can be found. Mr. A relates some story where he was shot in the heart or something in a dream just before waking up.
I am having trouble finding it now, but I remember reading a web site were a woman was recalling her lucid dreams. She said it the bull that if you died in dreams then you died in real life. She said that she had been shot and killed in a dream and then watched her funeral, and in another dream she had been burned alive and she her dead body. However, while this shows that death in dreams doesn’t always cause death in life; it may cause death sometimes IMHO.
I would think that it would be the same as killing yourself by holding your breath. You can’t do it, beacuse your brain won’t let you.
I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.
Peace,
mangeorge
the OP reminds me of the Matrix situation (which, if you ask me, seems quite viable)–if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life because your mind thinks you are dead, and the body cannot function without the mind. I always wondered if this applies in dreams because I hear so much about people waking up the split-second before they die in their dreams, and it seems to me that if your mind thinks you are dead, it would just shut down. However, some people say they can tell when they’re dreaming, which would eliminate that possibility for them, since they wouldn’t really “think” they are dead–I know that when I’m dreaming, though, it’s as totally convincing as if it were reality, and I am ALWAYS surprised when I wake up (maybe I’m just gullible…).
A heart attack, or myocardial infarction, occurs when an artery supplying blood to the heart becomes blocked. The heart attack itself is the cause of Mr. A’s death. Sudden stress (such as a fright or violent exertion) can contribute to the conditions that result in a heart attack, but this does not necessarily mean that dreaming of your death results in a heart attack. If a dream did contribute to the event, it could just as well be a dream about some unpleasant occurrence, such as a violent verbal argument with a relative.
Perhaps in this hypothetical situation, Mr. A was making noises as though he was having a heart attack. Who knows?
Just for the record, I believe the Warshawsky brothers may have lifted this concept from William Gibson’s novel “Count Zero”. In any event, the conscious mind does NOT directly control breathing and heart functions; this is the role of the autonomic nervous system. It is unlikely that any event registered in the consciousness could cause the autonomic system functions to shut down completely.
I know somebody who died in their sleep… hang on, I’ll ask them.
I have had a dream where I died. And well, I’m typing aren’t I?
Anyway, it was about two years ago and I had a dream that I was in the apartment that I lived in when I was at University. When I lived there I was really paranoid about fires. We lived above a Papa John’s and there were no fire escapes and the fire alarm was on smack (it went off whenever it felt like it). Anyway in the dream the apartment caught on fire, I tried to get out, but I started coughing and blacked out. The next thing,I was looking in the window watching the EMTs taking my body away, there were firemen everywhere and everything in the apartment was black and charred. I remeber thinking “wow, I’m dead”. I looked around for a while, but then I woke up. I was really freaked out for a few minutes. I laid there for a while thinking about it all and wondering wether I was really alive or not. Then my hubby rolled over and woke up.
Yup, I was Ok. Just a bit off for the rest of the day.
I think Rocket88 is onto something…
I had a dream once where I was at the bottom of the liftshaft about to be crushed to death by the lift. I woke up just in time for the large poster above my bed to lose it’s last piece of blu-tack (it was hanging by the usual four bits, just the one was still fixed) and flop on to my head. Quite freaky, as I recall.
The point is that, at least from my experience above, it seems you can perceive physical events while asleep and they become part of the ‘action’ in your dream.
So if you did have the start of a heart attack whilst asleep, your dream could possibly translate that into a suitably dangerous scenario. Thereby increasing your heart rate… it seems to be self-reinforcing - a mild heart attack could become quite severe given the stress of the dream environment.
Last night I had a dream, a normal dream that I’ve forgotten the gist of already, except for the ending. I dreamt that the Grim Reaper was there, sort of standing off to the side. Being an idiot I willing went over to him. His cloak enveloped me and I couldn’t move. My mind screamed “NO! I’ve got too much stuff to do before I die, like go confession for the first time in a decade.” Then, even though I seemed to be out of dream and back in bed, I still couldn’t seem to move. Then I woke up for real, gasping for breath.
So let this be a lesson: if the Grim Reaper appears in your dream, run like hell the other way. Why take any chances?
I would say the answer to the question is no. Perhaps you could have a dream frightening enough that it induced a heart attack or something, and perhaps that frightening dream could be about getting killed, but the dream-death as such would not be the cause.