I hope there’s no meaning to nightmares - the only thing I remember from one I had last night was that I began getting my period every 2 weeks 
Oh, I don’t believe they’re predictive (and thank heavens–periods every 2 weeks would suck). I just think sometimes there’s a message there. I once read something that stuck with me: when trying to figure out dreams, start with the specific emotion (fear of loss of control, fear those around you have ulterior motives, anger at people who betrayed you, etc.) and go from there.
I’ve had two or three night terrors during the pandemic. Before this past year, I hadn’t had night terrors or sleep walking since my adolescence. We’re in strange times. Death is all around you - it always was, but we’re more aware of it than in the past.
Taking the glass half full view of it, embrace your nightmares. You’re alive, at least. Your brain is working even when you’re not aware of it. There will be a time when there’s just nothing and you’re rotting in a box.
I have a lot of anxiety dreams – it feels like most of my dreams are. Running out of time to complete some task, or unable to remember something crucial and having to ask passers by if they know what it is, or lost my ability to do something important but simple or…etc, etc. Not nightmares, anxiety dreams – shrug them off, I’m fine. I was talking about this to a friend a week or so ago – lots of anxiety dreams, but never nightmares. And of course, inevitably, that night I had a nightmare – the first in decades. Here it is, as well as I can remember it.
Mrs T and I are sitting on the first floor of a building overlooking a preserved railway – to be specific, a level crossing on a preserved railway. What we are watching is a group of volunteer railway workers messing with the level crossing gates – swapping them out and trying different styles of gate. After a while I get to thinking, sooner or later a train is going to go through the crossing – I hope they’re prepared for it. (Aside: Trep jr and his girlfriend were also drifting in and out of this dream).
And so eventually a train does go through the crossing, but everything is well organised and that passes off quietly. But then, without warning, two trains crash head-on at the crossing – throwing debris and mutilated bodies everywhere – including at us, so that it feels like we are under attack. Then another train crashes into the wreckage at high speed, then another, then another…There is (I know this will sound odd) a strange, dreamlike quality about what is happening, a feeling of unreality.
We’re desperately trying to escape from the building, but every route out is blocked – mostly by mangled train parts, but also by other things – one I remember was a pack of ferocious dogs. Somehow we manage to escape, and Mrs T and I are walking up a hill away from the carnage. We pass a group of people, one of whom is Terry Scott – he is talking to his associates but he is looking at us, and I hear him say to them: “See, I told you they would be fine in the game.”
So we have been trapped in some sort of game – hence the feeling of unreality. As Mrs T keeps walking, I go over to Scott and demand: “Get us out of the game”. He shrugs, does something [can’t remember], and the feeling of unreality changes. I then say to him: “I’m going to go to the police. But first I’m going to cut your nose off”. Which I do, almost completely severing his nose. And after a moment I notice that rather than pouring blood, his severed nose is spewing out tomato pulp. And with that I realize… I’m still trapped in the game.
At that point I chose to wake myself up (in real life, I mean) – I have that ability with all the anxiety dreams as well, and generally do so when I’ve had enough of them. A useful ability to have.
So – the first in twenty, thirty, whatever years. Careful what you boast about.
j
Notes: Terry Scott was an actor noted for playing bumbling, pompous but harmless parts. I had this dream on a brief vacation in Swanage, where there is indeed a preserved steam railway.
I rarely had nightmares until my doc started me on trazadone. I tend to sleep more tense than I used to with that drug and I do get some nightmares now. But I haven’t woken up screaming yet. Laughing my head off, yes. Hopefully, I never will. I’ll leave the screaming to my old roomie. She sounded like she was being murdered in her bed.
My dream last night: the mother of Clark Terry (jazz musician, I don’t know a lot about him) became well known in her unspecified city for being delusional, confrontational, and naked in public. I made friends with her; we started an affair and I was often naked myself, considering her a fun companion who was misunderstood. And cute, in an older woman way.
I don’t seem to have ‘classic’ nightmares any more, I think because I have learned the ability to ‘rewrite’ my dreams as I go. For example, the first time it happened I was so startled by my new ability that I woke up at the realization of what I’d done.
In the dream, I was being chased, by what I don’t know, but I was deathly afraid. I ran out onto one of those long, long piers and as I got close to the end I just knew the Whatever was closing on me and when I was trapped at the end of the pier it would get me and I would die.
And then I distinctly thought, nope, don’t want this.
So I rewound the dream, literally, I saw the action in reverse for a brief bit as I ran backwards on the pier, and then I started running forward again. But this time I knew I’d be okay if I got to the end of the pier because there was a boat tied to the end, and all I had to do was jump down into it and motor away. And I got to the end of the pier and looked down, and there was the boat waiting for me – And I was so surprised at how I’d changed my fate in the dream that I woke up.
I only remember about a half dozen of these ‘edited’ dreams (I think because I don’t get scared enough to wake up, since I ‘fix’ things), but in each case it’s the same: some overwhelming danger or dilemma, I ‘refuse’, the dream rewinds, and then I am saved by some circumstance that somehow I’d known to set up before hand. These aren’t all spectacular – one was a classic anxiety dream where I HAD to get into my locker at school or suffer some dire embarrassment or whatever, but I couldn’t remember the combination of the lock. In the ‘original’ version I was scrabbling away at lock frantically, trying random numbers and in my ‘rewritten’ version I just pulled a bolt cutter out of my purse (how it fit I don’t know) and snipped off the lock.
It’s great being a god, even if just in my dreams. 
Can anyone else change the plot of their dreams deliberately? Maybe you don’t do the rewind, maybe you just can somehow change your mindset from there being doom at the end of a pier to the boat being waiting for you.
I’ve not awakened screaming, but I’ve had some nightmares that left me awake for a while till I calmed down. By morning, I wouldn’t remember anything but the feelings of dread or panic or whatever.
Spousal unit once sat bolt upright in bed and said “My father’s dead!” He was really shaken, so it must have been a vivid dream. It’s 20 years later, and his dad is still alive at 91, but I remember that night…
To a limited extent I can do this as well; but more often, if a dream is starting to bother me, I’ll just wake myself up. Sometimes at that point I’ll go back to sleep having reset the dream whilst awake, so that it then follows a more acceptable course. Rescripted, as it were.
j
I knew I couldn’t be the only one. Great super power to have, isn’t it?
Okay, maybe not of the level of teleportation or time travel…
I’m a severe arachnophobe. Had a dream a few months ago that included a giant tarantula or something. Strangely, in the dream I wasn’t particularly panicked or scared. But when I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought - ‘Wow. That was a big spider. I actually don’t want to see one like that in real life’.
Then I started seeing shadows on the wall etc and didn’t sleep a wink for the rest of the night.
I do this as well. It’s a handy trick. As I’ve grown older, I sadly don’t remember my dreams as well though. Some of these dreams end up with great endings and that’s all I remember about them.
It’s called lucid dreaming, and about 50% of people have it. Some research indicates it’s a skill that can be developed.
Whether it’s an example of “simple” anxiety or not, I’m apparently never going to stop dreaming about classes where I haven’t studied or shown up for most sessions (or even been able to find out where they’re being held), and am about to get nailed on the final. I realize that the genesis of these dreams is an actual experience in freshman college biology where I goofed off and had to cram massively at the end (including an all-nighter prior to the final exam). I get it already. But my subconscious has to keep pounding away at it, dammit.
*the dream need to repeat college or med school indefinitely at my current age probably stems from the same source. I would welcome some dream variety, like being naked at the Chelsea Flower Show.
It’s rare I remember dreaming but I had one last night. And not to discount other stories from this thread but this one is amusing rather than terrifying.
Last night, I washed a bunch of clothes. I normally do two loads of wash and then combine them for one dryer session. I awoke in the night certain I’d forgotten to move the second washer load to join the first in the dryer and my work clothes for the week were sitting wet in the basement, rapidly becoming smelly. I leapt from bed and found … the wash was all done. The shirts were separated and folded and the socks & undies, though still in a jumbled heap, were clean and dry. It reminded me of those dreams that persisted for years of a forgotten exam or project due date from school mentioned upthread.
I read once that the dream of missing classes and walking in to find it’s the final is one of the most common anxiety dreams of anyone who’s gone to college. Don’t know it that’s true or not, but I sure had the dream a lot. Like your dream, mine was based in actual experience. When I was a sophomore, I had to have PT for a knee injury. It ran long one day, and I missed my psych class. When I walked in the next class session, the TA was handing out the final. Against university rules, he’d decided to give the final early and had announced it the day I missed.
When I became a teacher, those dreams morphed into ones where the bell was about to ring, and I couldn’t find my classroom. Once when I missed school for a doctor’s appointment in another state, there was a mix-up, and no sub showed up in my classroom for 3rd period. My students found my lesson plans and did the review activity on their own. Nobody left and everyone participated. I guess I didn’t need to have those anxiety dreams after all.
Strangely enough, I never had anxiety dreams about college (which I greatly enjoyed, though I was stressed). Instead, I had years of dreams that I couldn’t remember my locker number from high school or the locker number for my purse when working in a supermarket.
Now that you mention it, I recall that several of my nightmares involved taking an exam, and the teacher/proctor calls time on the whole shebang before I finish writing all the answers. Then after I wake up, I am relieved to realize I’ve long since graduated from college and I won’t fail that exam after all.
Me too, I’ve had nightmares where events get so hopeless and ridiculous that I start talking to myself, this is really f***ed up, it’s gotta be a dream, time to wake up! followed by me doing just that shortly thereafter. Now if I could only apply this same superpower to the real world …
I haven’t had this dream for awhile, thankfully.
I am descending into the basement of the house I grew up in, climbing towards the landing of the second floor of my grandparents’ home, or passing through rooms of an unfamiliar house. Somewhere ahead of me, behind a door, in a closet or just emanating from the floorboards is a huge, dark, unfathomably malevolent presence, radiating violence and dread which increases with every step I take in its direction.
Sometimes I pull back in time to avoid triggering the inevitable horror. On other occasions I am inexorably drawn onward…
So far, I have awakened in time.
One of the worst nightmares I ever had as a kid also sounds stupid when described in words: I dreamt that there was some sort of monster lurking beneath the grass in our home’s backyard (a big, visible lump in the grass) that would suddenly snap up and consume anyone who walked on the grass near it. Scared me out of my wits.