Time dilated dreams leave me tired in the morning

I honestly don’t know how common this is, but I occasionally have dreams that cover days-weeks-years in what seems like real time. Usually I have to do something or find something in the dreams and I even sleep in the dreams, like I said it is like a full week of real time virtual reality.

This leaves me to wake up tired, exhausted, and mind fracked.

Anyone else ever have this happen? This is not drug assisted, and really annoying I assume it has to do with REM or something.

Yup, I regularly dream like all that you listed and I do find it very exhausting, particularly mentally wise. It feels like I have to cram all those memories of weeks, months, years, in my brain in a short time, instead of being able to grasp them as you experience them, like when you are awake.
I ended up very often forgetting my dreams on purpose, to not overload myself.

Of course you’re exhausted. Who can relax with that music constantly going BWAHHHHHH BWAHHHHHHH?

I tend to dream of strangers being mean to me all night long. I wake up sad and upset. You don’t want to eat lunch with me that day.

I had a weird dream last night (and, yes, I get the irony). I was with my family but at some point I realized it was a dream and that realization would cause me to “wake up”. And I put that in quotes because I didn’t actually wake up - I just dreamed I woke up. But at some point I’d realize this was still a dream and I’d “wake up” again. As I recall, I went through several cycles of this before genuinely waking up (and spending a couple of minutes trying to assure myself that I was really awake at this point).

I don’t know if there’s any significance to that type of dream but it was an almost daily occurence for me in high school.

LOL, I was gonna say it is kind of like the episode of TNG called Inner Light.

Man one I had, it was ME and my regular life but I was living in a different area in an apartment building I have passed many times. This damn dream covered years(it seemed while in it) of my life exactly as it is but living in this building.

Then I woke up, and that created a very odd feeling that I recall everytime I see the building. I kind of want to go inside to see the interior which I can vaguely recall from the dream to see how off I was( I have never set foot inside it).