I am a notoriously VIVID DREAMER. That is to say, I dream often and rarely sleep through the night. My dreams wake me up all the time, which can be ANNOYING and INTRUSIVE.
Sometimes they are fun, creative, and in color (I dream up orchids, jeweled caves, fantastic landscapes, etc.) … sometimes, NOT.
I have a touch of (not-professionally-diagnosed) PTSD from an extremely toxic relationship from oh, 20 years or so ago. Creates bad wakey-wakey dreams.
Any tips on how to handle this?
Dreams are unavoidable and probably necessary for good mental health, even though
they are sometimes disturbing.
I hope yours become more enjoyable, but I doubt there is any way to control dream content.
Get a professional diagnosis.
Dreams will happen. Enjoy them. Try to structure your dreams positively. I can wake up with a dream and go back into it. At that time I could modify it in a better direction. You might be successful by thinking positive thoughts and conjuring up a dream as you go to sleep.
The problem is not the dreaming, which is probably good for you, but the fact that you wake up during your dreams. Probably you would not remember your dreams much if at all if you were not waking up during them, and it is probably not the dreams as such that are waking you. You are aware of your dreams because you are waking during them, you are not waking because of your dreams.
You need to find out and, if possible, get treated for, whatever is causing you to wake up so frequently. A common cause of such waking is sleep apnea, but I dare say there might be other things that could cause it.
Your “wakey-wakey dreams” may well be the result of not getting in enough dreaming time in during sleep, because you keep waking up in the middle of your sleeping dreams. The brain seems to need a certain amount of dreaming time (although it is not well understood why) and if its dreams keep getting interrupted during the night, it will make up for it in the daytime. “Wakey-wakey dreams” are a common symptom of serious sleep apnea. (The badness of them, though, may have more to do with your past bad experiences, as you suggest.)
If you’re dreaming while you’re awake, you’re pretty much hallucinating. See a professional about it before you “wakey-wakey-dream” yourself into a car accident.
This is pretty much my advice too. Try to use “behavior modification” techniques. Reward yourself – simply by being happy about it! – when things go well, and “punish” yourself – simply by saying, “Darn! That wasn’t what I wanted!” when things don’t go well.
Try to “program” yourself, by creating associations in your mind.
In practical terms, you might experiment with background noise. I sleep with a “white noise generator” and it helps a lot. It drowns out background noise – street noise, neighborhood noise, airplanes, kids shouting, etc. – so I have an unchanging background. Outside noises can often make themselves known in dreams.
(My own snoring often comes in to my own dreams! Last night, I dreamed I was at an opera, with a really long-winded Soprano solo that just wouldn’t stop. It was my own snoring!)
Anecdote of possibly no use to anyone whatsoever:
When I started taking Protonix (generic pantoprazole) for my GERD, I didn’t even notice at first the effect it had on eliminating my dreams. It was when I first started coming off of it* or when I would miss a dose that I noticed having lurid, vivid, and amazingly detailed dreams.
It turns out, in my case at any rate, that Ebeneezer Scrooge was not too far off the mark to yell at Marley’s ghost, “A slight disorder of the stomach makes [the senses] cheat. 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!”
So, advice-wise, I’d say buy a pack of Prilosec or some other OTC acid-reflux med and see what happens. Consider talking to your doctor for a GERD evaluation if you find that it helps.
*I have since gone back on it.
What do you mean by “wakey-wakey dreams”?
I agree that the problem is waking up during the dreams. This is why you remember them.
I had very poor sleep for years. My doctor prescribed low dose Naltrexone, which makes me sleep more deeply. I used to wake up 10-15 times a night, now I might wake once or twice.
I have always had weird dreams, but now I don’t remember them. Once in a while I remember one, and it’s just as weird as always. Sleeping properly keeps me from remembering them.
A good doctor will check you for serious problems like sleep apnea, and work to find the right medicine to help you sleep. It will really make a difference.
The Wikipedia article on Lucid Dreaming says:
What is the relevance of this? Even granting you the dubious assumption that lucid dreaming treatment for nightmares is not quackery, Atomic Mama is clearly not complaining of nightmares. Many of the dreams she wakes from are positively “fun”. (Others are not, but that is par for the course of normal dreams.) Her problem is that she is waking up too often during her dreams (and so recalling a disproportionate number of them, although the recall is probably not a problem in itself), and as a consequence is not getting enough dreaming in while in bed, and so is experiencing unpleasant (and possibly dangerous) dream like states when awake (or partially awake).
I want to second this. I first interpreted this as "dreams that are so bad that you wake up in the middle of them and slowly realize that it’s just a dream (but they continue to bother you emotionally. Unlike in the movies where they smile and say “Ahhhh, it was only a dream.”) Even though you KNOW it’s not real, you are still F-ed up and walking around in the dark in a quiet house where other’s are sleeping doesn’t help; because you’re only options are to try to stay awake (and have a miserable next day) or go back to bed to face the demons.
Wow, now that I’ve typed that up, I’m concerned for myself. These don’t happen to me very often, for those that are worried about my sanity.
Anyway, others are apparently interpreting this as daytime hallucinations.
Prazosin has been found to be effective in the reduction of PTSD-related nightmares and sleep disturbances.
Dream (REM) sleep is not good sleep. You need level 4 sleep. If you are dreaming that much it essentially means you are not getting a good night’s sleep.
The most brilliant sleep med I was ever prescribed (off label) is actually an allergy pill–but not the type that makes you drowsy. It is not a psych med or a barbituate.
I forget what they used to call it but the generic name is Hydroxyzene. (sp)
Me? I love to dream. If I’m having a dreamy morning I’ll linger in bed. If it weren’t for dreams I’d have no life at all. 
You seriously think daydreaming is the same thing as a hallucination?
No, I never said that, but the OP also didn’t say anything about “daydreams”. There’s a difference between daydreams and hallucinations, ovbiously, but without a more mature description of the phenomenon the OP is experiencing while awake, it’s hard to say what she means. Since PTSD often comes with “psychotic” symptoms like visual or auditory hallucinations, someone who claims to suffer PTSD and also claims to have something she calls “wakey-wakey dreams” may be experiencing some serious symptoms that should be checked out by a doctor.
I recommend a good doctor and or a sleep lab., not a certain medication. As colonial said, long-term you need the dream phase of sleep. So while some meds. can short-time repress dream sleep, you’re likely to get long-term problems in exchange.
And you shouldn’t experiment around with meds. without consulting a doctor first, anyway, since it’s a recurring problem. (One sleep pill once in a blue moon is not the same as trying some med. because you have sleep problems almost every night).
In addition, you mention PTSD. This definitly needs a doctor, not just a pill.
Point of interest:
Do you feel that you have more aches and pains than the average person?