I’ve had plenty of nightmares but they never seem to scare me. I’ve dreamed:
Peeling the flesh from my body (Like that scene in Poltergeist)
Zombie attack (Fell asleep watching Walking Dead. lol)
Attacked by my own dog.
Been chased by a serial killer.
All seemingly scary stuff. But it never scares me. I tend to find the dreams more interesting than scary.
Anyway, I’m posting this because I am currious how common this might be.
Anyone else immune to nightmares?
Same for me. I’m usually detached emotionally from that stuff. The one thing I do remember feeling is anger in dreams I guess… or frustration might be a better word.
For a few months I was able to lucid dream even to the point where I could control a lot of it. It hasn’t happened in a while. I also could wake up, then go back to sleep and resume a dream. I have no idea how because I can’t anymore.
If it doesn’t scare the person dreaming it, is it by definition still a nightmare?
I don’t usually have, or else don’t usually remember, dreams about things that are frightening. But, when I do wake up remembering such a dream, I’ve often noticed the same thing: I wasn’t frightened in the dream, even though when I woke up and thought about it the subject of the dream was something that seemed terrifying.
No. I’ve found the worst nightmares involve either reliving things that have happened, or, actually worse, dreaming about doing things to people—not things that I’ve done, but things that I’ve lived in fear of having done to me.
I have had the one about being chased by a killer, and they never manage to *kill me, but then those tend to be the ones where, after they catch up to me and I can’t run away anymore, there is a struggle, at the end of which “I do the thing” as referenced above.
*Now, I have died in dreams before, but never after a chase with a serial killer. The times I can remember most clearly are:
All three times, I had this sense of my consciousness slipping away, and then nothing. But I can at least confirm that just because you die in a dream, doesn’t mean you die in the real world.
Me. I regularly used to fall asleep to horror movies on cable because my horror dream was sitting at a table in a restaurant discussing getting back together with my physically abusive ex … blood guts n gore don’t bother me and I grew up in a haunted house.
Well, I also lived in an apartment that every night there I had one of several dreams that most people would consider nightmares. In one, I was back in my parent’s house, we had just gotten home from a cruise and somehow snakes had gotten into the luggage and were slithering around, and we had to catch all the cats and get out to somewhere safe [I have never been scared of snakes and owned a number of snakes and tarantulas in my past] and while up in my bedroom, there were slithery wet sounds that I knew [as one does in dreams] was a chopped up body in the attic crawlspace sort of oozily slithering towards the stairs up to come down and get us … the other main dream was wrapping up unpacking the kitchen in the apartment the dreams occurred in, and noticing red and black scrawls on the kitchen walls as I was trying to hang a spice rack, then being alone in the bedroom and waking up knowing something was watching me from the door - and there were sigils in red and black on the wall, with writing [i can’t read in dreams but i know it is writing of some sort] and a hooded figure in a black robe leaning in the doorway watching me, and my boyfriend was in the living room and couldn’t hear me screaming. He considered the apartment haunted by the way. He was coming home across the parking lot and expected me to be there because I was standing in the window wearing his hooded bathrobe watching him come home … while I was actually at my parents. Yikes.
But as I said, blood guts n gore or ghosts n demons don’t really bother me. My horror is going back to that abusive asshole.
Yeah, I actually kinda enjoy my “scary” dreams, like ones where I’m being chased in some kind of action movie scene, or exploring some weird mansion.
I haven’t had one in a while, but there is an unpleasant style of dream that I occasionally get, especially while ill. I’m trying to perform a simple task, like something on a computer, and simply cannot do it. This process goes on endlessly; it feels like my dream has looped thousands of times, trying and failing to do the same mundane (and sometimes nonsensical) thing. Sometimes I’ll wake and snap out of it for a bit, but the feeling is still there, and as soon as I fall asleep again I’m back in the loop. Ugh.
Immune? I wish. Some still scare me.
I’ve told part of the story here about my encounter with the violent parolee. I think I mentioned the creature’s reminder to me that it knew where my family lived, and would be released again someday. This was part of its promise to repay any testimony which returned it to its cage. Originally it was caged for attacking a family in their home.
So yeah, I still awake suddenly and panting, trying to determine if the crash of breaking windows was my dream or really happening. Then I look at the sleeping dogs around me and realize it was just the nightmare again, and try to go back to sleep.
Yeah, my nightmares aren’t scary. They’re frustrating. A lot of them involve having to go somewhere but not being able to get there. Like I have to get to a train, but the station is nothing but endless corridors and stairways leading to more corridors and stairways. I never get to the train.
I think as you get older, what scares you changes. When I was a kid, demonic monsters and giant slugs would do the trick. But now, at mid-life, I’ve raised kids. Demon spawn is not going to cut the mustard because I raised and cleaned up after two daughters and three boys, managed financial crises, and dealt with a bad marriage all while building a career. Satan Himself would get rolleyes from me if he were to blast into my living room right now, and I’d probably go willingly with Him to wherever after exchanging a few choice words. But I do still, from time to time, wake up deeply affected by what I just dreamed about. And I’m not going to talk about that.
While they scare me while having them, when I wake up I feel kind of exhilarated. The adrenaline of being in full panic mode and even killed is somewhat of a rush once you know you’re safe.
I’ve been shot, stabbed, crushed, blown up, etc. and when I wake up with me heart racing think “Whoa, that was really something!”
This. As a child, I had nightmares about a hairy monster that lived in my grandmother’s basement. That dream now would just make me laugh. My worst dreams now, the ones that make me worn out the next day, mainly concern emotional/social/work issues. Monsters I could deal with. I was eaten by a pterodactyl in a dream once and it just pissed me off. Same with the alien that ripped my face off. On the other hand, the dream where everyone I love just abandons me and leaves me crying helplessly is very disturbing and makes me feel like I haven’t slept for days.
I have been plagued by nightmares my whole life. They are about things like drowning or burning or being impaled. They are interesting only in an abstract sense.
Not immune in the sense of not being bothered by them( I think, though it might be hard to judge given the following ), but more or less immune in that I no longer really have bad ones. At some point in my twenties I became a lucid dreamer through not particular effort on my own and I no longer seem to get trapped in disturbing dream situations. If I drift in an alarming direction, I seem to be able to change it up enough so it never gets particularly upsetting.
I have no idea how I developed this ability. Though I suspect it might have something to do with my periodic insomnia and doing a more than normal/healthy amount of light vs. deep sleeping at that age.
I read before going to sleep and often what I’m reading is incorporated into my dream. I like mysteries for those times when I need “relaxing” reading, so I often dream in mystery type plots. I enjoy those! It’s like being in a live action form of my book. I could lucid dream as a kid when I had nightmares that did frighten me. I knew that if I fell from a height I’d wake up before I landed, so if I had a dream that seemed like it was making a turn into a nightmare – or was simply boring – I’d manipulate the “scenery” to include a tall building or a mountain and I’d jump.
The dreams I really like are the ones that are super realistic and something bad has happened. I wake up, and that “man, it was only a dream” feeling is the absolute best.
Exploding Head Syndrome? I occasionally have it [usually within a day or two of a migraine] I had a stalker for quite a while, and living rural was fairly twitchy about it any time I didn’t have house dogs to raise a ruckus if someone was actually around outside.
Exactly. One can ‘experience’ or ‘witness’ horrible oneiric acts without getting frightened whereas innocuous images may throw that poor person into panic. It is only the latter type of dreams that qualify as a nightmare. Unpleasant and scary stuff is relative and subjective.
99% of my dreams are about really mundane stuff (usually, things going wrong at work). Occasionally, I will dream about something scary. But when I wake up, my chief thought is usually, “That was weird. I wonder what brought that on?”
Some years ago, Something Really Bad happened to me. It was over a year before I re-lived it in a dream. I woke up, and experienced an intense feeling of . . .
annoyance at having done something so damn stereotypical.
I have terrible nightmares sometimes, but they’re not usually about being in danger. I do have dreams where I’m in danger (drowning, burning, being chased) and they’re unpleasant, but in the really terrible dreams, I’ve done something awful or something awful has happened that either was or might have been by fault and now I have to figure out what to do and face the guilt and consequences.
Like in the most recent one I can vividly remember, I’d had or somehow otherwise become responsible for a baby and put the baby and crib in a disused room in my house (which isn’t a thing in real life) and forgotten that she existed. The poor thing never cried or anything and when I remembered and found her, she was soiled and starving and weak. I had people over at my house and so, being the stellar human being that I am, I tried to hide what had happened and play it off and, rather than take her to a hospital to try to save her, I was trying to get her cleaned up and get her to eat. Only I didn’t have any baby stuff- no diapers or bottles or formula- so I was trying to figure out what to do, how this happened, and how not to let anyone know that the baby was near death from neglect.
Or I had another one not long ago where I was accused of beating a dog to death- one I was supposed to have been babysitting. In that one, I hadn’t actually done it, but nobody- family and friends included- believed me. I was about to go to trial and I was all over the media and I kept trying to find someone who would be on my side and believe that I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever do such a thing, but nobody did.
That’s kind of a frequent theme- I’ve harmed or killed a child or animal. I have a lot about former foster dogs where they didn’t get adopted- I just forgot about them and I haven’t seen them in six months because they were in the basement and I just never went down there. So when I do go down there, I find their starved and desiccated corpse. It’s always something that’s already happened that I can’t change, never a choice that I make in the dream. And it’s kind of… all the panic and the horror and the guilt and the grief and the shame and knowing that I will have to be completely alone in this because everyone else will rightly think that I’m a monster and having to reckon with the fact that nothing I do will fix it and even if I don’t get punished or if I can cover it up, I still will always have done it.
Just in case anyone wonders, this is not the kind of person I am in real life. I don’t have violent fantasies and I don’t hurt anyone. I’m not dangerous even if I guess a part of me is afraid I could be. That’s part of what makes these dreams so horrible- the idea that anywhere in my psyche is some part that would find me capable of something like killing a baby or neglecting a dog to death. That I could possibly even think it. I wake up still guilty.
I also have lots of milder versions of this, too- your standard stress dreams. Late and obstacles keep popping up. Trying to save someone and my feet are too heavy to pick up. Approaching a deadline and have done no work and have no idea what to do. Left work on lunch break and forgot until hours later that I was supposed to return. Driving and can’t stop. Driving and poised in front of a school with a massive truck and kids keep getting on to talk to me and if I move at all or take my eyes off one spot, the truck will plow into the school but I don’t want to scare the kids, so I just keep trying to chat and smile. Somehow aware through secret or supernatural means that somebody is going to shoot up my place of work/some other place at a specific time and have to get everyone to safety in time without telling them why.
So basically, my answer is… I am not immune to nightmares. The ones that are full of haunted-house imagery or where my life is in danger… meh. There’s sometimes a bit of an adrenaline rush, I guess, like I’m in a movie and now I get to hide from a bad guy or something, but I don’t wake up thinking about them. But there are worse things than that and my head is, apparently, full of them.
My latest nightmare is atypical not only for a bad dream but also for dreams in general, I think, because it occurred in the third-person point of view. That is to say, I was not there.
The captain of a schooner was complaining about the strange sounds he sometimes heard on his ship even in the absence of his first mate. He was talking to what seemed to be a paranormal investigating team consisting of a man and a woman. My field of vision followed the woman, where I could catch sight of both what she saw and herself. In the meantime the schooner had set sail (because the sounds only occurred during a journey) and while the skipper was checking the rigging (or something) he said he heard the mysterious sound again somewhere toward the stern on the exterior of the bulwark. When the woman cast a look over the ship’s side I noticed that the schooner had suddenly become a two-decker and the deck below appeared to be brightly lit. The sky was overcast and the waves looked higher and ampler. In a jiffy the woman lowered the dinghy into the water to check the exterior of the schooner. The events in the dream happened pretty fast (with no details) until the woman’s dinghy reached the ship’s rear and then everything began to occur in slow motion. It was the majestic image of the bow (not the rear anymore) of a WWII German battleship with numerous Nazi personnel on board, whose actions and attitudes I could meticulously watch: the officers were curiously relaxed and intent at the same time, and that’s when I woke up panting, my heart pounding hard (which doesn’t always happen even when I have a more ‘traditional’ nightmare).