Since we have two threads devoted to dreams, why not a third? My question is about nightmares. You see, I’ve never had one. Ever. The closest I’ve come is those stress dreams in the other thread, and a couple of very short, disconcerting- call them “visions”- I have had just when I was drifting off. The funny thing is, I have lots of dreams that should be nightmares, but aren’t. I’ve had a bunch of dreams where I watched my friends die horribly, several in which I died (two were suicides), a few “falling” dreams where I actually hit the bottom before waking up (the UL is just that, folks), and several about the end of the world itself. All of these dreams should have been rather disturbing, but none ever had any feelings of fear or anxiety to go with them. I’d just wake up, and go “Oh. That was weird.” I refer these questions to the Teeming Millions. Does this happen to anyone else? Can any of you armchair psychiatrists tell me what this says about me? And finally… What are they like?
An infinite number of rednecks in an infinite number of pickup trucks shooting an infinite number of shotguns at an infinite number of road signs will eventually produce all the world’s great works of literature in Braille.
NTG, If I had dreams in which my family dies or friends commit suicide, I would call them nightmares.
But are you saying that those dreams don’t “feel” traumatic and you just experience them like any other dream, i.e you don’t try to scream or feel any sort of panic or terror?
I don’t have nightmares as often as I did when I was a child, but when I do have them, I usually wake up crying or screaming. Sometimes I’m being chased, sometimes I’m being held down. They vary.
When I was a teen, a recurring nightmare was of my father shooting me. As you may guess, I didn’t have a great relationship with him. But now that I’m almost 30 and have a good relationship with him, I don’t have the dreams anymore.
The silliest was when I was a child and I had a dream that the Three Stooges (cartoon version, mind you) were robbing our house. It seems like a benign dream, but I felt such terror. I guess that’s the opposite of your experience.
Al Gore in the Oval Office. Now that’s a real nightmare.
Sorry fer the drive-by, but to be honest I can’t remember ever having a dream that particularly disturbed me either. As you say, I’ve had plenty that probably should have been disturbing, but I mean, it’s only a dream, after all.
Dr. Watson
“To sleep, perchance to slaughter yer enemies in an apocalyptic conflagration and get away clean.”
Hollywood’s ideas of nightmares aren’t a good way to compare. None of my dreams ever have misty edges and echoey voices.
When I’ve had niughtmares, they haven’t been ‘wake up screaming’ types. But I do wake with a jolt, or with fear clutching my heart, or maybe just a bit disturbed by the content. I’d class all those kinds as nightmares.
I have a small fear of heights. Once I had a dream I was balancing on a girder on an unfinished high-rise building. Totally scared the shit outta me. Even after I woke I felt all shivery and weird. I can still remember exactly how I felt.
I seem to only have nightmares when there is something wrong in my waking world. Like a problem that I can’t solve or even deal with or a situation that is unacceptable and totally beyond my control.
Based (only) on my own experience, I would think your lack of nightmares says that you are a very well adjusted person. You don’t let things get to you.
Neuro,
Do you have feelings of tension or anxiety that you deal with (and therefore expel) while you are still dreaming (even if you are “dead” in the dream)?
(adequate wording escapes me) In other words, do you resolve fear and anxiety issues while still asleep, so that you don’t have to drag the ill feelings into your waking life?
If that made sense (and I think it did, to me, anyway), that is what happens in my dream head often. There have been and still are times that I wake with and carry bad feelings from the occasional nightmare, but often, I find I solve the issues before I wake, so it doesn’t get to me.
I’ve only had one dream that I could call a nightmare. There was a shotgun pointed at my head. It went off. I saw the flash, felt the heat, felt the shock…and then I woke up.
My first waking thought was, SHIT!
Then, when I realized that I was fine, the next thought was COOL!. It was like being able to be an actor in a Sam Peckinpah movie.
That was at least 15 years ago. My one and only nightmare. My dreams are usually funny…at least that’s the usual feeling that I’m left with upon waking up: bemused.
I’ve had nightmares that were so real I woke myself up crying. I used to have them a lot more often until I figured out that eating within an hour or two of going to bed was a bad idea.
I don’t know, Neuro. Maybe your lack of emotional response to these dreams means you’re really secure.
According to an ex-shrink of mine, you ONLY dream when there’s some anxiety-provoking internal conflict going on (whether you’re “owning up” to this conflict during your waking hours or not). Of course, if every internal conflict turned into a big scary anxiety-fest when you closed your eyes, you’d keep waking up and never get any sleep. So as a defense, according to this ex-shrink, the subconscious “cloaks” these conflicts in familiar imagery to make them palatable and not frightening so that you won’t have to take a Sominex.
A nightmare, then, would be a “failed dream”, in which the underlying anxieties come to the surface and scare the bejeezus out of you. However, even when a nightmare breaks through, the cloak-it-in-familiar-imagery mechanism is still running, so it can be difficult to tell what the “real” cause of your nightmares is just by looking at what happens in them. F’rinstance, my nightmares often involve mean old scary dogs attacking me. This does not mean I’m conflicted about the Doberman down the street; the “dogs” are just the familiar image that the underlying anxiety is clad with.
That being said, I used to have these recurring nightmares when I was a really little boy, wherein the headboards and footboards attached to my bedposts would walk around and talk in a voice similar to Charlie Brown’s teacher in the Peanuts cartoons (only with a meaner accent). They would chase me down and touch me, and their touch was painful. That was their weapon: pain by touch. And it was mega-scary to a 3-year-old boy like me. MUCH much later, I finally realized that the “bedposts” (one large headboard and one somewhat-smaller footboard) were actually my parents in disguise.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
I remember my dreams maybe once or twice a year. My wife, however, has nightmares ALL THE TIME. I’ve seen her have them, she kicks off the covers, flails her arms and screams in absolute terror. I wake her up and turn on the lights and console her. When she talks to me about them they go away for a while. She hasn’t had one for a few months now (that I’m aware of).
As a side note, she was sexually abused by her father, from the age of two on. Whoever doesn’t believe in repressed memories, I have news for you. They’re real. I’ve read several books on the subject of incest, sexual abuse and repressed memories. My wife is TEXTBOOK example. It’s almost like I can fortell my wife’s future.
Non trusting of anyone? Yep. We’ve been married for 18 years and I feel like she just started trusing me in the last couple of years.
Self destructive behaviour? yep
Promiscuity? yep
Addictive behaviour? yep
The list could go on.
Just like the books say, she now (age 36) thinks she remembers most incidents of her childhood. (more specifically, I should say she’s come to terms with…) Anyway, as I stated above, we have an agreement. As she remembers things, she agrees to talk to me about them. It’s happenend too many times to count. When she is open and says them out loud, then she doesn’t have nightmares. When she keeps them in, then she has nightmares.
Before you tell me to get her to a therapist, let me say… DUH! She’d sooner commit suicide than talk to a therapist. Meanwhile I continute to try to be supportive, and she’ll go to a therapist when she’s ready. I’m sure of that.
Whew, that was a lot longer than I expected. Sorry folks.