I woke up in the middle of the night last night. On it’s own: not uncommon. I felt slightly odd, though, a little bit shaky, and it took me a second to realize it was because I was soaked in sweat. Literally. Once I realized that my sweatshirt was suddenly intolerable, because it was wet, not just damp. It was not particularly warm in my bedroom (and no, it wasn’t a case of excessive drooling or wetting the bed.)
I don’t know whether or not I actually had any sort of nightmare or anything (I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve remembered my dreams). All I know is that something other than temperature caused me to sweat buckets in the first few hours of sleep, and I’d like to know what’s up with that.
When I was a teenager I’d have terrible dreams where I would scream my lungs out. Once when I was alone and fell alseep I screamed so loud my neighbor from next door heard me and came over (she had a key to the house)
Funny thing is, if someone woke me up, I wouldn’t remember the dream but I’d be shaking and my heart racing and I was out of breath. But if they left me alone, I’d just stop eventually. I never once remembered anything about what I was dreaming or “IF” I was dreaming.
This used to happen to my ex-wife, just like you are describing it. She was in her early 30’s, 3 young kids, marriage not going so well. Not sure if it was physiological or mental due to anxiety.
I’ve woken like that a few times and I’m male and keep my bedroom too cold for most people - open windows.
I recall once waking up in the morning and going about things feeling unusually surly and aggressive. My manner was enough to make my housemates uncomfortable without any confrontation. It was while thinking that I could get away through the back laneway if the cops came, that I realised I was acting out some dream of the night before.
I once woke up with my lungs burning and gasping for air. I’d been dreaming that my house was filling up with poison gas and was holding my breath while asleep. I also woke myself up a lot when I was a kid talking to the people in my dreams. So I’m pretty sure they do.
About 30 years ago (I write dreams down), I dreamt I was looking into the crawl space under a house; I saw a skull on a ledge. I croaked, “Oh, God–get that thing out of here!” Then I woke up with my heart pounding.
I’ve also had some sad dreams that made me wake up crying.
Occassionally, I’ll have a nightmare that will cause me to scream myself awake.
Often I’ve had the opposite, though-physical symptoms inducing dreams. Like I woke up sick after dreaming that I had a horrible stomach ache.
Or the time I was dreaming I was being attacked by a mass of bees stinging me in the face-only to open my eyes and find my kitten poking me with her claws.
I’ve noticed that when that happens to me, the resulting pain in the dream A) feels exactly like real pain, subjectively, and B) feels much more painful than the pain feels when I’m awake.
Once I fell asleep with my leg pressed into the hard edge of my desk, and when it started hurting, I began dreaming that I was undergoing surgery and having my leg cut off without anesthetic. It hurt an astonishing amount, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the agony in my leg to go away. When I woke up, it was just a minor pain, perfectly manageable. Or my frequent migraines will cause me to dream that things inside my head are rupturing, or that I’ve been shot, or something.
On the other hand, I recently discovered that it works the other way around too: the sex dream I had the other night, the first I’ve had in years, was vastly more pleasurable than real sex.
Night sweats… I noticed when I take Benadryl to sleep, I get horrible night sweats and end up shivering in soaked sheets. Most OTC sleep aids are in fact generic Benadryl. Never saw a doctor about it, but if you’re taking the same thing, there’s an anecdotal data point for you.
I got them when I was thirteen, one of the joys of reaching puberty, I guess. I gather you’re older than that. You probably should talk to your doctor about it.
Since I’m not going through menopause and didn’t take any medications before going to bed, I can probably assume it was just a random panic-inducing dream. Maybe I ran a marathon in dreamland.
hmph - I strongly dislike the idea that my brain can independently cause my body to go all wonky, without any input from me. (Not that I didn’t realize it could happen; just that if I’m going to have a panic attack (for example), I’d prefer to at least be conscious through it.)
In my experience, dreams tied to physical effects are caused first by the physical effects, and then the dream trying to interpret the physical effect.
