Has anyone else experienced a really disturbing dreams?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(really disturbing dream*)

I’m talking about the type of dream where once you wake up, you wonder what the f*** is wrong with your brain for having conjured up such disturbing thoughts…

I had one of these last night.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a nightmare that woke me up at 4 am, afraid to get out of bed and afraid to fall back asleep. I felt like a child again.

I dreamt that I killed a little girl. It was a girl I didn’t know who was alone in a big house, and it was like I’d completely lost my mind, and I beat the girl to death. It wasn’t until afterward, that my logic/conscience came back to me and I’d realized what I had done and that I’d be caught and put in prison for the rest of my life because I hadn’t even tried to hide the evidence, and the story of the murder was all over the news. I remember the feeling like I didn’t even know myself or have control of myself, that I must be a complete psychopath for what I’d done, and this sickening feeling of permanence, that it couldn’t be undone. It was incredibly intense, and then I realized that I was dreaming and it wasn’t reality. But when I woke up I was really freaked out that I dreamt such a thing at all. And yes, it was all in first person.

Has anyone else had dreams like this? Or just dreams that were so disturbing that you didn’t even want to share them with anyone, because they might call the insane asylum? This is perhaps much more creepy considering I was sleeping with my 2 year old daughter next to me when this dream occurred :confused:

Usually with all the dreams I remember having, including nightmares, I can link the content to something that was in my conscious thoughts that day, ex. a news story. But with this, I seriously have NO idea where it came from, which bothers me even more. Ugh.

2

Used to have nuclear nightmares right after I left the U.S.A.F., where I would be looking out the large window in the living room in the Bremerton house I lived in at the time, and see a large flash come from the direction of Seattle, and wait for hell to sweep Puget Sound.

3

I applaud you for having the courage to post that. You are not the first I have heard share about things like this. I doubt it has any more meaning than possibly trying to relive the horror of an experience you may fear most in an attempt to comprehend it.

4

Just last night I had a sex dream which was so weird that I don’t even want to share the details- and I am a pretty unabashed dream-sharer. Suffice to say there was a stranger (from Craigslist!) involved, who then morphed into a relative. I definitely experienced a moment of “what the heck, brain?!” immediately upon waking.

It didn’t help that 5 minutes later the alarm went off and my fiance woke up in the mood. With our schedules, our “couple time” is rare and I hate to put him off, but there was no way anything was happening after that dream.

The really, really awkward thing is that there were some props used, and I actually woke up wondering if that would work in real life before remembering the eww parts of the dream.

5

I killed someone in a dream who was trying to kill everyone in the house all night. I finally decided I couldn’t fend them off forever and they had to die or my family would. I work out moral dilemmas in my dreams, so now you know what happens if you’re trying to kill my family. During the day I kept feeling there was a body really walled up in a certain spot for weeks.

6

Back when I was on anti-depressants I had frequent extremely vivid nightmares. Most of the truly disturbing ones I’ve mostly forgotten, but they used to leave me traumatized for half the day.

7

I had several nights of vivid, disjointed, almost psychotic nightmares while on the antibiotic Bactrim, bad enough that I would shoot awake every few hours with my heart pounding. Most of them immediately faded into a vague impression of gore and violence, but I do remember shooting my younger brother point-blank in the face during one of them, simply because I was holding a shotgun and felt like it.

I later erupted in hives and it turned out I’m allergic to Bactrim, but looking around online found a number of other people with similar sleep issues with that drug. I wouldn’t touch it again with a ten foot pole.

8

I had really disturbing and twisted dreams when I was on painkillers after surgery; vicodin, I believe. Even without the medication, I sometimes have vivid and disturbing dreams, and when I wake up I have to feel the pillow and assure myself I am back to reality. I do not think it is uncommon.

However, if I mention I had a disturbing dream to my wife, she says she does not remember any of her dreams in the morning, so she cannot relate.

9

I recall a dream I had once that still makes me wonder “Why would I imagine THIS?”

The world as we know it was over; for some reason, all the water in the world was going away. It had started some time before the dream begins, and was just getting worse; inevitably, the human race was doomed. I recall the image of looking out over fields and farms… the sky was brownish orange, the trees and grasses all dead, not a bird in the sky, and a haze of smoke.

People were gathered in long lines, horizon to horizon, standing in small family groups. Each group had their luggage near them; only a few small suitcases each, was the rule. No more than each person can carry on their own, including the children.

As we stood and waited, the Rescue Vehicle rolled slowly down the line, and people were slowly climbing aboard and taking their place inside. The Rescue Vehicle was huge, a massive creation, unlike any bus or anything in use today. The governments of the world had developed this last-chance technology, and we were all being picked up by these vehicles and being moved to a central location, probably underground, where the last survivors of humanity were gathering together to wait for a solution to the water problem.

As the Rescue Vehicle passed, families would be herded onboard by hazmat-suited officials. They would climb onto the platform, go up a series of staircases, and then enter an opening at the front/top of the vehicle and slide down inside; their suitcases were dumped into another opening close to the entry point.

I recall watching one family, having made it to the top, was having difficulty with their children, who were hesitant to climb inside. They spoke kindly to the little girl, telling her everything would be ok, and they’ll be right there with her. Sobbing but trustful, the girl followed her family into the machine…

Where a huge set of grinding gears immediately turned them into a pulp, from which the water was extracted. This was happening everywhere on the planet.

The sense of horrible desolation and terrible conclusion of this dream still kind of disturbs me.

10

I always have very vivid and bizarre dreams, so yeah, sometimes they are bad and disturbing. So bad and disturbing that I wouldn’t even share them with anyone. The dream you had, OP, sounds to me like your subconscious working out a real issue that you have in your life. Are you on the verge of a major decision and are afraid to make the wrong one or something like that?

11

I once dreamed I threw the little boy next door off of a cliff. To be honest, however, I wasn’t terribly fond of him while awake.

12

I’ve occasionally dreams where I’ve committed some serious crime and have this " feeling of permanence, that it couldn’t be undone" you’re mentioning. Although I don’t actually commit the crime in the dream. It basically starts when I’ve already committed it somehow.
Someone mentioned nuclear doom dreams. I had those. Weirdly enough, in this case, I’m always in the countryside. On the other hand, I’ve striking meteor doom dreams that always take place in Paris.