Every once in a while someone mentions to me that they had a “chasing dream.” By this I mean that the person dreaming was being chased and they were afraid and trying to run away.
I have never had this type of dream.
In a very small sample set, this type of dreams seems to be more prevalent in women than men. Help me find out if this is true.
LGBT, feel free to select whichever option you find more appropriate.
About the time I started entering puberty I started having dreams where my legs would get very heavy or paralyzed if I tries to run. Within a few years I found myself turning around and dealing with whatever was chasing me. I had dreams of winning these fights for a few years and then they just went away about the time I was entering adulthood.
This kind of led me to believe that dreams possibly play a part in conditioning us to deal with various things in life. We can safely practice a variety of scenarios while experiencing all the stresses that might actually go with it.
I swear up and down I leaned to dance while dreaming.I have the opposite type, where I’m the one chasing someone.
Never heard that one, do you catch them, what do you do with them when you do catch them?
It’s all about vertigo dreams these days.
I can’t speak for DCnDC, but the dreams in which I’m doing the chasing are usually nightmares, too. I’ll leave it at that.
I don’t recall any dreams in which I’ve been chased. Stalked by something, yes, but no open pursuit.
I never catch them.
I sometimes have these dreams if I am under a great deal of stress. It is always the same dream. I am in a house I have never been in before, and the house is completely empty of furniture except for a mirror(a decorative, antique mirror). I am being chased by something I never end up seeing, and I wake up with a scream in my throat.
Y’know, just because I happen to like it in the butt from another dude from time to time does not actually negate my maleness. On the other hand, I like girls too, so maybe that’s what’s protected me so far.
As to the actual question, dreams being dreams, I can’t put my finger on any right now, but I can’t completely rule it out. More common for me than the “flighting dream” is the “fighting dream”, in which I’m in some sort of fistfight for some reason, but it’s as if I’ve lost all muscle tone, or I’m having to punch through molasses. Not especially fun.
Is there anything specific about the type of chase dream? For instance, most people when referring to “chasing dreams” mean that they are being pursued by an unknown force. Sometimes they mean a single person, and they often reference a hallway. Nothing fancy.
My “chasing dreams” could be very frequent depending on your definition, because my dreams are full-scale action adventure flicks. So in a lot of dreams I am running away from pursuers, but that isn’t the whole dream and certainly couldn’t be reduced to “I was chased by some dudes”. For instance, I will get in a truck and speed to a safehouse. I run in the safehouse and bolt the door. They start banging on the door; they’re coming in from the kitchen. Shoot them as well you can as they grab at you and scramble for the back door. Run through the grass next to the ridge and look down to see the burning city below. Trip and fall. Hide in a hole for a while as you wait, breathless, for them to pass you by. Eat some beans while conversing with another survivor. Sneak out to try and get back to the truck. The highway is blocked with smoking wrecks on one side so you use the other side to get out of the city. Etcetera etcetera, with far more detail than what I’ve just described. Stuff like that, except every dream varies wildly. Chased by a T-rex in a theme park. Infiltrate a secret base a la Metal Gear and get found out. Travel via monster through a swamp and when I reach the glistening futurecity, get chased by a large robot. Crawl over floating tables and through ducts to escape the space/time witch. So on.
If I am running on foot, I often find that it is like running in molasses. My brain has trouble computing running and “catches” in the moment and repeats itself. Sometimes I grab onto nearby objects to haul myself forward, and the force of me trying to pull myself forward breaks the structures instead.
What people find more interesting about my dreams is that I frequently die. I’ve “experienced” dozens upon dozens of deaths ranging from bleeding to death to being eaten from the inside out - and sometimes my brain lets me stay “dead” for a while in an unthinking unfeeling blackness. Other times it just starts me over like a choose-your-own adventure novel where you picked the bad end.
Ah! Yes, the “punching through molasses” effect! I get that all the time. Very frustrating.
(Once, it didn’t work, and I flailed away mightily. Knocked my bed-side bookcase right over!)
(I’m a very dynamic sleeper. If I ever get a sweetums, we’d better have twin beds.)
I probably have them once a year or so. I used to have them more often when I was young. I got caught once, by an elephant, which wrapped its trunk around me and picked me up. When I got away there were rings of bruises around my whole torso. It was one of the few dreams I’ve had where the chaser wasn’t human (or a zombie).
Female. I have them, but they are vanishingly rare. Much more common are elevator dreams and airplane dreams.
Female, have them often.
They almost always involve being chased through some sort of maze-like structure – a typical example is a house with multiple hallways and doors, where if you go through a hallway there are 10 doors to choose from, and any of those doors opens on another hallway with multiple doors, etc. I always have the feeling that it should be easy for me to shake my pursuer (because what are the odds of them choosing the right doors and pathways to find me?) but they always find me.
I also have that “running through molasses” problem, where my legs just won’t work.
In my dreams, I’m not running through molasses, I’m flying through it. I have to stroke and kick like I’m swimming, but more slowly. And I keep getting higher and higher, out of control. I used to have this more frequently when I was a kid.
And what the hell is a “mermphrodite”?
Straight female & I have “chasing dreams” about once a month or so. The chasers are usually nebulous “bad guys” that I may or may not be able to see chasing me - sometimes I “just know”. I can usually run quite well - often doing a weird skip-step that propels me several yards at a time. I do run into the molasses deal if/when in hand-to-hand combat (not nearly as often as being chased).
In the chasing dreams, I’m often running down stairs - usually the kind in a commercial building where there’s a half-flight, a landing, then a half-flight at 90 degrees to the previous set of stairs. I can quickly & safely jump down a half-flight at once, then swing around using the handrails & jump again. (This is becoming one of my “lucid dream” triggers).
If it’s not a chasing dream - stairs become very weird. Usually I have to ascend/descend some sort of makeshift stairway or ladder - shelves on a wall or a scaffolding, for example. And don’t get me started on elevators - not only do they free-fall, but they tumble down the shaft as well!
Straight female and I have them, less often now than years ago. In addition to having terrifying dreams of someone chasing me and not being able to get away, I occasionally dream that I am trying to cross a street before the on-coming traffic hits me, but my legs won’t work. I usually end up on my belly, using just my hands to drag my useless lower half across a surface that has turned to thick mud (maybe it’s molasses!). Just writing about them makes me shudder. 
Straight Japanese female, 36, and twice I had a dream where I was dressed head-to-toe in black clothing, and I was stalking someone from afar. We were in a wooded area and I was watching them have a sooper-seekrit meeting with a third person. I was armed somehow (I never drew them), and I’m pretty sure my mission was to observe and then destroy.
Yes, I am Japanese and I had a ninja dream. 
I also once had a dream my friends and I were chasing after Frankenstein, to beat him up.
I’ve never had a dream where I’m the one being chased.
It’s complicated. 
If you’re one, you know who you are.