Feel free to move this if it should be somewhere else.
This morning around 3:30 I woke up for my usual potty break. I feel like fell asleep almost right away, but I also feel like from the time I fell back to sleep until the time I awoke at 5:45 I was having a dream with all sorts of frustrations. The entire extended family was staying in a hotel and I was trying to get everyone’s order for Culver’s. First I couldn’t find paper, then I couldn’t find a pen, then the pen stopped working, then after I found another pen the paper was wet so when I wrote on it, it ripped. Then someone couldn’t make up their mind, then my MIL ordered a baked potato with steel cut oats on it , then I lost the paper and had to start over but the only paper I could find was shiny paper that the pen wouldn’t write on so I was trying to write this long list on scrap of napkin. Then I realized that I had been trying to get this order together for about 5 hours and we were supposed to check out 3 hours ago. Then the dogs escaped the room and were running down a street and because they had no collars on I couldn’t grab them. It was exhausting! So what I wonder is, when we dream like that are we getting any real rest at all? Is dreaming disruptive to a good night’s sleep or doesn’t our body care?
When I have frantic, detailed dreams like that, where I’m struggling to accomplish things but nothing is going right, it’s usually because I’m either sick or getting sick- so it’s kind of a ‘fever dream’; or I have something on my mind that’s stressing me out or bothering me. Like, frantic work dreams if I’ve been crazy busy at work.
So, your dream may be not so much a cause of disturbed sleep as a symptom of something else going on in your life that’s disturbing your sleep pattern, or at least stressing you out while awake.
I call those anxiety dreams. When I remember one after waking up, I try to figure out what is causing me particular anxiety in my life, and try to either deal with it or come to terms with it emotionally. Usually just identifying it is enough to defuse its power to cause further dreams.
Ahhhh, anxiety dreams. When I use cannabis I do not dream, and I use cannabis every day. At least I do not remember dreams, and if a tree falls in the forest…
I’m coming up on my two week tolerance break, where I do not use any cannabis for two weeks, in an attempt to reset my tolerance. It’s a roller-coaster ride of intense dreams. I still remember some tolerance break dreams from years ago, they were that intense. I’m looking forward to it!
My understanding is sleep apnea can cause nightmares, because your body is flooding with adrenaline and they help shape the kinds of dreams you have. So in that regards constant nightmares could be a sign of disordered breathing while asleep.
When I have unsettling dreams, it’s usually my body and brain conspiring to wake me up because I have to use the bathroom or some other mundane reason. So, yeah, I’m not sleeping well when that happens.
From Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”:
“Why do you doubt your senses?”
“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
Interesting replies. I’m not sick nor do I feel like I’m getting sick. I have the usual every day stresses, there’s nothing huge going on right now. I don’t have sleep apnea. I wouldn’t call that dream a nightmare.
I guess I didn’t feel anymore tired when I woke up for the day than I usually do, so I must have gotten enough sleep. I think I remembered so many details of that dream because I felt like I was hovering between being asleep and being awake in those hours.
I dream a lot and remember many of my dreams when I wake up. But this dream seemed over the top!
My lay understanding is that most people dream quite a bit of the time they’re asleep. Supposedly a sleep cycle consists of deep sleep, REM sleep and light sleep. A “normal” night’s sleep might consist of, ahhh, 4-5 such cycles? Obviously this depends on sleep duration.
In my experience, when I remember a dream, it has occurred in the light sleep part of the final sleep cycle. (That is, the bit where you could wake up but don’t want to yet. Of course YMMV.) What you describe definitely sounds like an anxiety dream. Some sleep medications can affect dreaming.
Personally I don’t believe dreams are predictive; my sense is that the dreamer is rehearsing or fantasising about stuff. Nightmares seem inimical to the pleasure principle (why should we dream about unpleasant stuff?). Freud was stumped by this.
I was just thinking about how great and amazing my dreams have been in the last year; I actually look forward to seeing what tonight’s “movie” (starring me) will be. It’s probably because I retired a year ago, so a lot less stress. My dreams seem to be in one of three categories: leading a group or team to new experiences, traveling on an unexpected journey down interesting roads, or visiting haunts and workplaces from my life with friends and wondering why everything is changed; sometimes it’s a mixture of more than one. I wake up refreshed because it feels like I just read a great story and didn’t waste all that time just sleeping.
, then I lost the paper and had to start over but the only paper I could find was shiny paper that the pen wouldn’t write on so I was trying to write this long list on scrap of napkin. Then I realized that I had been trying to get this order together for about 5 hours and we were supposed to check out 3 hours ago. Then the dogs escaped the room and were running down a street and because they had no collars on I couldn’t grab them. It was exhausting! So what I wonder is, when we dream like that are we getting any real rest at all? Is dreaming disruptive to a good night’s sleep or doesn’t our body care?