Disturbing Dreams

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

The other night I dreamed that I couldn't fall sleep.

I woke up feeling like I was in a Steven Wright joke. Worse, I couldn't get back to sleep, and sat up till dawn playing Snood.

What dreams have disturbed your slumber?

[mike_c]

1. I recently did that over and over during a single night....

Dream after dream about not being able to fall asleep, all different scenarios, but all revolving around frustrated tossing and turning. Absolutely dreadful night.

[woofless]

23. Oh man, I have spent more nights like that than I care to

remember. Add to that sleep apnea. I will finally go to sleep, stop breathing, and wake myself up snorting for air, only to start all over again. Totally exhausting. What a spooky feeling to be consciously aware that you aren't getting any sleep only to wake up and realize that you have been asleep.

[belladonna]

2. I do the opposite

I dream that I've overslept and I'm late for work, over and over, all night long. Drives me insane :crazy:

[put out]

17. I dream that I am up and fetched the newspaper,

made coffee and had a cup, got my clothes together for work, got myself into the shower, and then someone says, "You need to get up! It's late!" and I sez "what what, I'm up, I'm taking a shower". And my entire dream has been getting ready for work. And then I have to do that for real, and I'm late.

I have a recurring one which is less mundane, and much more troublesome. Someday I'll tell.

[BigMcLargehuge]

3. I sometimes dream that I am reading my own obiturary

but it's not a nightmare. I only have one nightmare, where a bear kills me.

[LastKnight]

4. snood = awesome... lol nt

[salvorhardin]

5. Breakdown of self

I regularly dream where the barrier between myself and everything else in the universe has broken down (both physical and mental). There is no sight, no sound, at least not in the traditional sense. The overwhelming feeling is somewhat like I imagine being incased in a giant block of styrofoam might be like. Unable to move or breathe.

However, the longer I am in these dreams I begin to sort out hwo things work in this universe of of total connectedness. I begin to "feel" how to think about effecting things. Eventually I learn how to (move is the wrong word) propagate myself, sort of quanta of energy transferring from thing to thing, except there are no things here.

After a seemingly interminable time I am somewhat able to coalesce my normal waking world and that is when I wake up.

I've been having these dreams for many years now, and although they are quite disturbing, especially in the beginning they're much better than the dreams I use to have. At one point in my life, every single night, I would have a ultra-realistic dream in which I would die horribly with the horrendousness of each death becoming more and more intense each night. We're talking starting out relatively easy with things like falling to my death, getting shot, burned at the stake, etc.

Every detail in these dreams was sharp and defined, every sensation almost heightened to unbearableness. For instance, I can vivdly recall the sensation of the first bullet entering my leg, then my chest and finally my head.

What's so remarkable about these dreams is that, aside from the dying part, every time my death would result in the deaths of many others. In other words, my death would be a failure to save others.

[EstimatedProphet]

13. WHOA!

"I regularly dream where the barrier between myself and everything else in the universe has broken down (both physical and mental). There is no sight, no sound, at least not in the traditional sense. The overwhelming feeling is somewhat like I imagine being incased in a giant block of styrofoam might be like. Unable to move or breathe."

Dude, check to make sure no one is injecting you with ketamine!

[salvorhardin]

20. Nah, only a side effect of the alien mind control

:D The earlier dreams were really horrific, but in a way I understand why I was having them.

The other dreams are odd, I must admit, but oddly enough I feel like I'm being taught something. That's a recurring dream thing I've had throughout my life -- of someone trying to teach me in my dreams. I became interested in electronics as a very young kid and actually first learned how to read schematics in my dreams. I think I may have learned how to read like this too, as I have very vague memories of this and every now and then I'll have a dream where I'm very young again and I'm trying to learn how to read again though this time it's not English.

Heh -- There's another dream I've been having since childhood that is sort of related to the dissolution of self dreams but in an inverted sort of way. There's this old abandoned house way out in the middle of nowhere on the edge of a field and a forest. I always have the feeling that it belongs to a great-great-grandmother type of relative. Anyway, I and my friends go in it to explore and it's really kind of cool in that all of the old furniture is in there, right down to kitchen implements and such. There's a very 1800's feel to it.

The unsual thing about this dream is that it's a sort of MC Escher type of house in that rooms don't necessarily lead to where they're supposed to and doors don't always lead back to where you came from. No inversions of gravity or anything like that though. Oddly enough, this has always been one of my favorite dreams.

However, I've learned to tolerate the terrible and bizarre dreams because I also have the most amazing technicolor, surround sound, fully scripted Hollywood spectacular adventure dreams. Just one of these dreams will make up for a whole week of bad ones.

[sundog]

6. truly disturbing dreams...

bodies with missing arms, legs & heads in war torn buildings... lots of blood... not too much fun...

[sundog]

7. or dreaming that I'm busy at work &

I wake up & I'm busy at work... double whammy... no break

[Lisa0825]

8. I had a really vivid nightmare two nights ago....

I often dream about whatever I was last thinking about when I fell asleep. I made the mistake of falling asleep with the news on that night.

I dreamed that Homeland Security was after me! Apparently some anti-Bush emails and posts of mine had been collected, and this guy flashed a badge and a gun at me, and started asking me questions. I was with my father at the time, which was starnge, because he has been dead for about 8 years. Anyway, in the dream, i was living in this HUGE apartment complex, and it was some kind of magnet for liberals... everyone there was a liberal, and we had our own entertainment complex there too, so people were at clubs and arcades and things, and we were all libs. So, I was in the arcade when I was questioned, and I ran. I got to my apartment and locked the door (stupid, I know), and then I started hearing sirens and saw flashing lights, and doors being kicked in. They weren't just after me, but all of us in the complex. I looked out the window, and the whole complex was surrounded by military and police, and they were yelling over bullhorns for us to all come out and give ourselves up. I ran out the back door and tried to find a back way out, but the alley was blocked too. Some guy I didn't know caused a scene to help me escape. Later, he caught up with me, and he and I became fugitives... our pictures were on TV, along with some others who escaped. We were chased everywhere... there were car crashes, explosions, etc. I felt like I was in the Will Smith movie, Enemy of the State!!!

I have NEVER had a dream like this before! It was wild, and I woke up sweating, with my sheets all tangled around me, like I'd been tossing around wildly.... and my cat had her face up at my face, like she was trying to figure out what was wrong with me!

I was so disturbed for a couple hours afterwards. It was so vivid, and hard to shake, and also seemed too possible these days... like a peek into one potential version of the future.

[fujiyama]

9. Bush winning

in a landslide. It was the strangest dream, because election results are about to start coming in. I fall asleep in my dream, and when I wake up Bush has won the election with over 400 something electoral votes...and Kerry is conceding.

:scared:

[Colin Ex]

10. Not really disturbing, but

A long time ago, I dreamed Brett Gurewitz and Greg Graffin (songwriters who've had a little success with a band called Bad Religion) were my roommates and we were hiding from the police, who were working under martial law. Brett got shot by a cop and the side of our house blew up from helicopter fire, leaving us staring at it as it held outside our house. then I woke up.

-C

[havocmom]

11. Keep dreaming about dead people

and some of them just aren't pleasant. Unfortunately, some have proven prophetic and that makes going to bed at night rather tense.

Had a really bad one about a situation which happens in a very large, grandiose palace like building. I think it may be something turned into an embassy or some such makeshift diplomatic headquarters. Anyway, the place is under siege and there are many dead. It is hot and hostile fire is keeping everyone pinned down, with the dead, for days. I got the feeling there is payback coming for that sort of thing happening in Falajah. The dream was terrible, corpses and desperate people, just enough incoming fire to keep everyone down and keep the plaster dust falling in this grand old building with this incredible staircase.

It worries me cuz have had several prophetic dreams of late. The one of the siege haunts me cuz I fear our troops are much hated right now. It seemed too plausible.

[EstimatedProphet]

12. I've done that one myself

In college, I was up late and by the time I did get to sleep it was way early, and I dreamed that I couldn't go to sleep. Pretty convincing too; I skipped class because I was awake all night.

[FDRrocks]

14. Satan's large burning head appeared above my bed...

And I ran out into the hall. In the bathroom right across from my room I saw the virgin mary rocking the baby jesus. I stood around for about 10 seconds staring into the two rooms, with the satan and the jesus and the what-not, and then walked into my room/satan and the door slammed shut. I was 8 at the time and this scared the shit out of me, ran to sleep with the grandparents.

Anyways a few years later I was back in Oregon visiting my mother and we went by to check out my old house (the one I had the dream in). The lady remembers me from when we were showing the house and lets us in. I walk upstairs to find a flat wall where my bedroom door used to be. She said it had burned off the house when they were remodeling it.

I just think that's kinda freaky.

[FDRrocks]

15. My Aunt had a dream....

She said that her friend who had died a year before appeared in her dream, talking about how cold and wet she was, and begging for help. She had this dream a couple of times and begged the family of her friend to have the grave exhumed. When they did they found the water level in the cemetary had risen and the body and casket of her friend (and I presume the other occupants of the cemetary) were submerged.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

19. Spooky!

Those are like tales-around-the-campfire dreams. My dreams are never resolved in real life...no psychic abilities here, thank god.

[TrogL]

16. Horrible Matrix draemas

Watched Matrix 2 and 3 liast night.

Had a dream that there were these wierd instects that would fly around and bite you, then they swelled up really big with this wierd black thing on their proboscos, then would come and bite again.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

18. Ugh, those TV-influenced dreams are nasty, aren't they

I recall one of Spalding Gray's monologues in which he mentioned one of his compulsive behaviors: when listening to the radio, he couldn't turn it off until the announcer said a positive word like "bright" or "good." Even if he was in a hurry, he couldn't turn it off on words like "war" or "death"; he had to wait for a good word.

I have a similar habit if I'm watching TV before bed. I have to flip around the channels looking for one good image before I turn it off, so I don't go to sleep with something bad being the last thing bounced off my retinas. As you can can imagine, sometimes it takes awhile. It's silly but it does seem to help.

[Wapsie B]

21. I've had two that were disturbing.

One was about the day of Armegeddon. I was watching TV at home as a little boy then all of a sudden the civil defense sirens sounded and an emergency bulletin came on the TV saying we were being attacked.
Then explosions and mushroom clouds could be seen in the distance, and every minute the explosions got closer and closer. The last mushroom cloud was right outside our window and everything went gray and I woke up.

The second one was last night. I was with a group of friends and we were listening to the radio. Storm warnings came on. Off in the distance I could make out the shape of a tornado. We went outside to watch the storm and take video. All of a sudden I turned around and everwhere I looked on the horizon was a tornado.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

22. One of the benefits of getting older

is short-term memory loss, so most of my disturbing dreams are forgotten in a a few days.

But I still remember a dream I had when I was four or five years old. An enormous bridge spanned the world from pole to pole; one side of the world was being destroyed by tornadoes, and the other side by flood. On the flooded side, the rocks came to life and grabbed people so they couldn't escape the rising waters. A trapped man watched his young son drown before he met the same fate. Not the worst dream I ever had, but the first that upset me.

[7th_Sephiroth]

24. i had a dream of a past life

i remember it because it was a re-occoring dream when i was 2-3, i was a soldier on normandy who had exausted his ammunition, it was freaky

[TrogL]

25. Last night it was a "naked" dream

Where you're naked in a public place.

I dreampt I spent the day at work naked including attending several meetings. Nobody blinked (or screamed or laughed).

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

26. I have LOTS of these

I am always overwhelmed with shame, and it's always my fault (although I am never aware of the sequence of events that led to me being naked).

Another recurring one: Trying to walk up a REALLY steep street, paved not with asphalt, but with rectangular rocks about a foot wide. There actually lots of streets in real-world Rio that fit this description. The steepness is so overwhelming I have to crawl up or I'll fall back. And I'm unable to even crawl up. No cars there, and I don't feel any risk of being ran over.

To be exact, the above are getting rare lately. Months since I had one.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

27. My body was falling apart

I would look at my arm, for instance, and see these lines on my skin. When I tried to move my arm for a closer look, I would see that this was actually where my flesh was seperated, and the twisting motion of my arm would cause the flesh to come apart, like untwisting a braided rope.