Dreams and Nightmares
In my late teens and early 20s i used to be able to dream and recollect the dreams I had the next morning, pretty regularly. But in the past few years I find it harder to remember the specifics and only have faint memories that last maybe 30-60 minutes after I wake up. but sometimes I get a whooper of a dream and it's one of those things you never forget.
But about 3 years ago i had some disturbing dreams and wondered if anyone has ever experienced something like this. the dream itself was pretty intence and not necessarily bad but when i work up, my whole body was numb and paralyzed. I could hear a loud buzzing in my ears. I could not even move my head around, just my eyes I think. It felt like my body was floating in the air because i could not even feel the bed. This would last for what i felt was about an hour, but I have no idea if it was longer because i could not use a clock to guage my time. I can't recall anything else because i think i would just fall back into sleep after and wake up the next morning like normal. But I am sure I was awake during that time because I had a concious feeling unlike when you are in a dream state. That happened to me twice and then never again and it happened within a years interval. i think my body was still in a sleep state although my mind had woken up for some reason.
Anyone have night terrors or weird dreams they never understood? I've always been fascinated by the reasons humans and animals dream and why we dream such weird stuff.
But about 3 years ago i had some disturbing dreams and wondered if anyone has ever experienced something like this. the dream itself was pretty intence and not necessarily bad but when i work up, my whole body was numb and paralyzed. I could hear a loud buzzing in my ears. I could not even move my head around, just my eyes I think. It felt like my body was floating in the air because i could not even feel the bed. This would last for what i felt was about an hour, but I have no idea if it was longer because i could not use a clock to guage my time. I can't recall anything else because i think i would just fall back into sleep after and wake up the next morning like normal. But I am sure I was awake during that time because I had a concious feeling unlike when you are in a dream state. That happened to me twice and then never again and it happened within a years interval. i think my body was still in a sleep state although my mind had woken up for some reason.
Anyone have night terrors or weird dreams they never understood? I've always been fascinated by the reasons humans and animals dream and why we dream such weird stuff.
Comments
It sounds similar to the way patients under anesthesia describe the experience when they become conscious in the middle of an operation.
You should keep a sketchbook and a pencil next to your bed, and when you wake up in the morning, sketch what you remember. An exercise I quickly go into the habit of doing my first semester in art school, and I still do it on a somewhat regular basis.
<strong>I rarely remember my dreams, but I do remember a particular one that was somewhat akin to yours. I kept "waking up" in the dream, only to realise that I was really asleep. It took four or five "wake ups" before I was actually conscious.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Dear Lord! This happened to you too?
When I was in my sophomore and junior years in highschool, I learned that you should always ALWAYS act nnormally whenever you can - even if you think you'er dreaming.
I almost got thrown out of school for grabbing a convenient breast in first period.
"Hey no screaming!"
Also, has anybody ever had that dream where you are just falling, and then finally you wake up? I have that one happen (or used to happen) to me every once in a while.
you know that you are still dreaming don't you?
you know that you are still dreaming don't you?
you know that you are still dreaming don't you?
you know that you are still dreaming don't you?
you know that you are still dreaming don't you?
you know that you are still dreaming don't you?.
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couldn't help but mess with your head
after all, we all know that in reality it is ME that's dreaming and you are all part of it:
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
you are my dream
PS: I'm sorry for all these lame replies today. I'll try to be serious tomorrow.
[ 05-29-2002: Message edited by: Ebby ]</p>
At the time I was working with a guy who was really into a wierd kind of christianity, although we were pretty good friends anyway, I told him about it, and he said it was prolly a form of Satan attack on me...Well I was actually pretty frightened by this dream, so it actually made it worse, although when concious I didnt believe it, the satan thing started to come through in this dream. Thats about the time when imagery started to appear in the dream, it was just lights and colours at first, but then it changed into me being conscious of the fact that something was trying to pull me from my body, which at this point was enough to really wake me up.
After a few weeks, and the feeling that I was actually conscious during this dream, I decided to see what would happen if I let this thing pull abit more. However I couldn't let it pull me far, before I really woke up in fright. It was then that I realised that the conscoiusness I felt during the dream was not my real consciousness, but the consciousness of one of 'myselfs' during the dream. And is one of the reasons I don't believe that Lucid dreaming is real at all. Although for a long time I thougth I was really lucid dreaming, because unless you get them regularly you really would believe you were conscious in you dream. But I am now convinced that It was not really my real consciousness.
Anyway, I saw a TV program, that explained that your mind could wake before your body, and would try to make sense of the bodily sensations, however, as the body was still paralysed from sleep, this resulted in feelings of terror and paralysis. It is also well documented, and people used to think that they were posessed by demons!
After this, although it takes a while to surface in your dreamed consciousness, you start to take this into account, and I could let myself be pulled from my body alot further during the dream without waking up(real) in a sweat. I usually check my heartbeat while 'lucid' to check that Im still OK, but wether this is really my heartbeat or an imaginary one I don't know. I do know that the conscoiusness that checks is not the real me, but during this dream I still believe that I am thinking for myself.
Alas after being pulled from my body, and now not feeling so terrorized that I wake, I can let my 'soul' go exploring. I have travelled a really long way from my body. But I do not usually have the confidence to leave for more than a few minutes, because Im worried that my body may die. So I come back, and it is usually when I wake up. In this dream, being away from my body, the sensations in the real world are very real, and it doesn't suprise me to hear that people who get OBE's really feel they left.
But I've had enough of them to actually think and analyse them after I wake to realise that OBE's are not real, but just a dream. I still get this dream about twice a week, although sometimes I may go a few weeks without it, and sometimes get it every night for a week. It doesn't really bother me at all, but I guess Id like it not to happen ever.
So there you have it. Lucid dreaming and OBE's are not real.
<strong>I hate the ones where you're falling then wake up and kinda jump in your bed. scares the **** out of me. I always have the feeling I'm dreeming when I am but I'm not 100% sure that it's a dream. It's too bad cause I'd like to do some cool stuff in a dream but I'm always afraid that it's not a dream.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Everything you said is 100% the same for me too!!!!!
tmp and cdhostage I also sometimes "wake up" too but I don't really wake up. When I was younger and I would have nightmares I sorta "figured out" how to wake myself up.
But I wouldn't really be a wake, but I'd be in bed in my dream so it was ok. I first figured this out when I thought I woke up so I tried turning on the light and it didn't work, even though that in itself isn't completely unusul, but somehow I then realized I wasn't awake and really still dreaming.
I often get dreams that I'm in a class or writing a test, hell I even have dreams in my grade 5 classroom, even though I'm in grade 12 (or what Americans call "senior year") and its really weird cuz I know I shouldn't have class in my grade 5 room but for some reason I don't exactly realize that.
But its not always my grade 5 class, sometimes its others, even from last year. And I kinda know I already did the class and therefore why would I be in it again??? but I don't exactly realize it. It's hard to explain.
And when I'm in "class" I have a test or something that I fail, but I'm *so happy* when I wake up because I know it didn't happen for real!!!!
A couple years ago when I had to take PE, I had a really bad teacher who gets really pissed and you lose lots of marks for being late, missing class, or worse yet, forgetting your gym strip, and if you did the latter once I think you go down a letter grade (ouch!)
What was really bad was having first period, especially on Monday!!!! What would happen is I would wake up around 7 then fall back asleep and dream that I went to PE (aka Gym) class and was late or forgot my badminton raquet or whatever, but then I'd wake up later usually when my alarm went off at 7:30 then I'd be so happy becaues I wasn't late for real!
I also every-so-often have dreams that I have to escape my house for whatever reason, usually people with tanks and guns are outside and I have to stay clear of the windows so they can't shoot me, then I have to escape out the back door, and I usually do, at least I think I do.
Sometimes it isn't armed "soldiers" but a person and I have to escape. And now that I think about it not always at my home but other places (not real ones though.)
And if I've been playing a computer game too long I start to dream it. I've had Starcraft, Urban Terror (a kickass Quake 3 mod, kinda like Counter Strike for Half-Life,) and Starwars Pod Racer (that one makes me really dizzy in my dreams hehe.)
If I dream a game then I know I've played it too much.
On a possibly related note, I was thinking aobut this girl I hadn't seen 5 years and a couple days later I saw her!!! Coinsidence eh? hmmm
Oh and sometimes I can control what happens in dreams if I know I am dreaming, but the funny thing is I forget that I knew I was dreaming, kinda weird too.
Oh yeah I also dream about Macs too and the configs of their upcoming models. Lots of the time they don't make sense, for example when the iMacs had 32 MB RAM I dreampt I was at a keynote and Steve Jobs introduced iMacs with 256 MB RAM, it made no sense, but it was in my dream.
Sorry about a billion redundancies and so on (oh yeah, oh and, etc) I'm too lazy to fix them.
[ 05-30-2002: Message edited by: MacsKickAss ]</p>
I suffered from horrible night tremors when I was a child. They were so bad that I would still feet this excruciating sense of impending danger for even some thirty minutes after I was awake. My parents told me that I used to wake them up with my screams in the middle of the night.
It was bad.
I remember going to a clinic at some time when I was younger and had all these electrodes glued onto my scalp. They monitored me overnight and I remember getting this long copy of a printout of my brain wave activity with certain sections circled and all sorts of technobabble written on it. To be honest, I wish I still had it so I could read it all. I don't even remember what the results were supposed to be since this all happened some fifteen years ago. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
I still can remember bits and pieces from those nightmares, although I don't actually have them any more. I remember there was usually absolute silence but sometimes and abruptly I would hear this deafeningly loud low rumble. I was usually running from something -- though it wasn't actually a "thing" rather a kind of presence. I remember a sense of pressure on me from every direction like being deep underwater.
Anyway, in more recent times I've actually been doing a little bit of basic research on lucid dreaming and how to induce it.
The first hurdle you need to cross is the ability to remember your dreams. This seemed impossible for me because I normally would go for months without remembering a single dream. There are several different techniques I've read about going so far as to set an alarm to wake you every hour and a half to catch you as you go between sleep cycles. The best method I've found is a bit simpler and I still don't understand why it works -- it appears to be a form of self-hypnosis. As I lay in my bed about to go to sleep, I close my eyes and picture myself going down an escalator. I make a conscious effort to imagine as much detail as I can and to make it "feel" as real as possible in my mind. I stand on the escalator step with my hand on the rail and let myself ride downwards as I repeat to myself that as I dream I will be alert and aware that i am dreaming and that I will remember it with crystal clarity when I awaken. I repeat that in my mind as get sleepier and sleepier so that it is the last conscious thought in my mind as I finally doze off.
Well, it actually works, guys. I know it sounds cheesy, but it does work for me. The catch, though, is that you need to write (or in my case type) down as much as you can remember as soon as you get out of bed. After a while, you will begin to recognize patterns and specific feelings you have when you're dreaming and therefore will be better able to recognize that you are dreaming.
I have yet to have a completely lucid dream, but I have been getting pretty close. The second hurdle I've read about is to keep yourself from waking up as you become lucid. For the unconscious mind, it would seem that the shock or excitement of becoming lucid is usually so strong that it starts to awaken you or push you into the next sleep cycle. There are some rather weird technique for this too that I've read about, but the unconscious mind is already so strange that it wouldn't surprise me if they actually worked. The most common one I've found is to invoke a sense of motion as you become lucid. Like, if you feel you're starting to wake up, put your arms out and spin in a circle or jog in place or fall backwards or something. The sensation of motion in the dream tricks the mind into staying in the current state.
Sheesh, I know I probably sound like a kook now, but this stuff is pretty amazing if you try it out.
[ 05-30-2002: Message edited by: starfleetX ]</p>
I'm sure there is a psychological reason to all this and I almost have a grasp on it, but it would help to have a concrete reason for it all. Ten years is a long time to have dreams like this.
<strong>They often start with me beating someone to death (sometimes a dear friend)</strong><hr></blockquote>
I get that sometimes too, its disturbing really...
[quote] The most common one I've found is to invoke a sense of motion as you become lucid. Like, if you feel you're starting to wake up, put your arms out and spin in a circle or jog in place or fall backwards or something. The sensation of motion in the dream tricks the mind into staying in the current state. <hr></blockquote>
weird, whenever I know I am dreaming and am concious, I ususally wake up because I try and make myself move in the dream state and I actually move my body, waking myself up...
[off topic] has anyone fallen asleep on their arm and woken up to find that they cant move it? all the feeling in the arm is gone... it is the weirdest feeling in the world... its fun tho, i get up and swing my arm back and forth, i have no conrol over it what so ever...
<strong>[off topic] has anyone fallen asleep on their arm and woken up to find that they cant move it? all the feeling in the arm is gone...</strong><hr></blockquote>Yeah, like when your foot "goes to sleep" sometimes if you sit cross-legged or your arm if you hang it over the back of a chair. It's just a lack of blood flow to the affected area. Still, pretty funky feelings.