The only bad dreams I can remember having involve me being on a wall-like structure far above the ground and worrying about falling, and being aware that I’ve got my eyes closed but not being able to wake up. I’ve also felt for a brief time that I was losing my balance and falling (kind of like Inception)
In real life I’ve had anxiety and depression. My dreams are usually nice and often are awesome. I deliberately try not to be ambitious. (being happy in the moment rather than in the future) I wonder if I was ambitious if I’d have nightmares about problems?
I often have what I call “waking dreams”. Basically, what happens is, something impossible will happen that defies the laws of physics. (Usually something falling upward towards the ceiling)
As soon as this happens, it doesn’t take me long to figure out I’m dreaming. I will then tell myself to wake up. But what usually happens is, I dream that I wake up. Soon after that, something impossible will happen again that let’s me know I’m STILL dreaming.
I might repeat this process three or four times before I actually do wake up.
I guess most people would consider this a nightmare. Me, I sort of enjoy the intensity of it all. Oftentimes, while I’m still dreaming, I’ll question if I’m actually still alive, and if that’s the reason I can’t wake up for real.
I received a supplement called ZMA as a freebie with some protein powder last year. ZMA (supplement) - Wikipedia
Every night I took it I was chased, beaten up and/or raped, I handed it off to a young male bodybuilder friend who got back to me a week later with the news he had awesome dreams on it and was buying more. I gather he went and lived in porno land every night but didn’t ask for details.
My night time horrors were variations on real life experiences, maybe his were too. I’m not asking.
I haven’t had a nightmare since I was about 8 years old, when I saw a movie about prehistoric monsters on a remote island.
Now the closest thing to a nightmare is where I’m working at a goldbrick job, I haven’t done any work and don’t even know what I’m supposed to do, and the anxiety is trying to look busy. Or I’ve got an important exam, have never been to the class, don’t even know what room the exam is taking place in. School lays the groundwork for all nightmares. I’ve been out of school for 60 years, it never goes away.
In my most vivid nightmare I was being chased by a lion, and it killed me. In my dream I died, I don’t have any way to effectively describe this except I knew I was about to die and then the lights went out. I woke up with a start, drenched in sweat and my heart pounding. i can’t relate that to real life in any way. It’s nothing like other dreams or nightmares I’ve had, most of which I can’t remember at all. I have had dreams where I can’t seem to move to get out of the way of an on-coming car, or can’t seem to speak to warn people about something. Maybe that ties into frustrations in real life.
Oh my god my sophomore year of college was this dream or some variation of it every damn night. I’d be looking at a schedule full of classes I’d never attended and it was halfway through the semester. Or show up on exam day and be like “where am I!?!?” Yeah, school is anxiety fuel and I am not an easily anxious person. In my case, however, it mostly went away after that year. I still had them to a much lesser extent in my jr. and sr. years and I never had such a dream while in grad school.
I occasionally have odd, disturbing dreams where I have to save someone or something and am a few seconds too late due to all kinds of odd things that happen. Sometimes they continue from night to night like episodes of a TV show.
I have stress nightmares all the time. They’re always different and usually kind of on the mundane side. I’m normally not being stalked by monsters or anything.
A lot of times, it’s stuff like… I’m late and keep getting delayed because things and people keep popping up that need my attention. Or a recent one where I moved into a nice apartment and people came over and had a party and made a mess. Or that I got fired at work or otherwise was in trouble at work for any reason. Or that some long-ago foster dog didn’t actually get adopted- I just forgot about them and so find their desiccated corpse in some back room.
I guess the only thing that is generally consistent is that whatever is happening is always rather private and internal. It’s something that it happening just to me and nobody else does or could understand it. Usually because it’s my fault and I’m in the wrong. I killed the foster dog. I did whatever got me fired. That sort of thing.
I do occasionally have more dramatic or exciting dreams. Having to save someone trapped in a submerged car and tied to the car seat, being pursued by Nazis and being the only one taking the whole Nazi thing seriously, being handed a gun that will go off if I take my finger off the trigger and having no idea how to disable it… but mostly it’s more of an internal anxiety spiral.