anyone else persistently HAUNTED in their dream at night

[Insomniac]

when I was younger, my dreams used to make no sense and always had a messy storyline and vague/incomprehensible events/images and I rarely remembered them when I came out of them.

Today, I'm 24years old and no one told me that being an adult meant that you were going to be constantly harassed in your dreams at night.

My dreams are now extremely vivid, have clear, sophisticated storylines and are always about the SAME thing. Every single night, I make the same dreams, disguised as different stories.

The more I accept that I have failed at life, the more I resignate myself to my fate, the more traumatising my dreams get.

they are not nightmares at all. they are photoshoped memories of me younger and as a teen. In those dreams, I experience acceptance and inclusion by my friends at primary school, something I have always craved. I experience deep love and friendship with the people I've always wanted to be noticed by in real life. I'm acknowledged by my family and relatives for accomplishments I have always wanted to make. I experience me being wed, in a fairytale like setting...

the more I accept that I'll never have those things, the more aggressive my dreams become in reminding me how good these things would feel.

I wake up in the morning, and it's so brutal to come back to reality after dreams so vivid with feelings so intense of closure, resolution, coming full circle... then I wake up and realize it was just...a dream.

anyone else experience that? It's like a curse. It's like there is no respite, even in my sleep...

this makes me feel like maybe death is like that. Maybe death is not about resting in peace at all. Maybe it's just you constantly yearning and longing and being haunted by the things you want most but can never have.

If I can't even have peaceful nights, empty of images or sounds, what exactly is the guarantee that my soul will rest in peace after I die?

 

[netrezven]

ever tried a treesome before going to sleep? Sorry, had to say that :). Anyway, dreams are just dreams. There are people spending most of their nights with their worst fears as nightmires, like me. It sucks, ya. but anyway it's just a dream, i've been death for a short time, it's just a comple nothing, not a deal at all, but still a subjective point of my view. I wouldn't bet that death goes on like a dream, bad or not. Just hope like me, that you would be more curious than scared when the time comes, if you had the luck to know that it's comming.

 

[motyxia]

I'm scared of sleep but for different reasons. Nightmares, hallucinations when waking/falling, so vulnerable someone/thing can hurt you & unlike death you have to wake up & live with whatever happened. I wake up think about the time wasted sleeping & that adds more stress to my life. I also feel physical pain in sleep. I had a really bad experience in April & I still don't know if I was even asleep or not. Sleep is a curse yeah. I wish sleep wasn't necessary. At least it's comforting that death won't be anything like sleep, you don't have to worry about any of these things when you're dead. You can't worry about anything at all.

 

[motel rooms]

I'm scared of sleep but for different reasons. Nightmares, hallucinations when waking/falling, so vulnerable someone/thing can hurt you & unlike death you have to wake up & live with whatever happened. I wake up think about the time wasted sleeping & that adds more stress to my life. I also feel physical pain in sleep.

I'm scared of sleep too. Vivid nightmares of abuse, the physical pain of it included. I'm grateful I only need about 5 hours of sleep a day to function.

 

[FuneralCry]

I do have nightmares, often relating to the past in some way. The other day I woke up panicking after having one. It can be unpleasant but I still look forward to sleep. I do tend to forget the specific details soon after I have woke up. I believe that once we die, we will finally be at peace and there will be nothing, just like before we were born. I'm sorry you have to go through this.

 

[Insomniac]

I'm scared of sleep too. Vivid nightmares of abuse, the physical pain of it included. I'm grateful I only need about 5 hours of sleep a day to function.

you to me jn another thread that you were sexually assaulted by your father as a child. I'm really sorry.


do you feel physically exhausted when you come.e out of these nightmares? I rarely have nightmares (although I consider my utopians dreams to be disguised nightmares), but when I do, I wake up exhausted

 

[motel rooms]

you to me jn another thread that you were sexually assaulted by your father as a child. I'm really sorry.

do you feel physically exhausted when you come.e out of these nightmares?

Yes, of course, but I immediately take a cold shower & shock my body into action, work out & take a shower again

 

[Insomniac]

we will finally be at peace and there will be nothing, just like before we were born

were there really peace before we were born?

We don't remember most of our toddler years and newborn years, but does that mean there were no suffering. You don't remember the trauma of your first breath but it still happened.

as a young adult, I have only now started to realise the amount of trauma babies experience. they are completely powerless and seen as "empty" of a self.

2 years old toddlers throw tantrums when they can't have what they want, until they realize that they are powerless and that the only option they have is to assimilate. To become manipulative, cunning. And so at 3 years old they start to use the same tricks as their parents, manipulation, deception, pretense and with time their skill become more refined.

Young adults are like that. We first try to fight, we throw tantrum, we are in immense psychological pain that is constantly overlooked... and then one day we resignate ourself. we realize how truly dark adults are, how deeply manipulative parents and governments are. Then we assimilate and with time...

and this process repeats itself at different stages of life. My point is, I'm convinced that babies suffer tremendeously in their own way. we're just too sociopathic to see their pain. and I'm starting to think that even before birth, there was only suffering. Even before conception.

I don't know if I'm going insane, but I can no longer conceive of or imagine a single state of being that is not of suffering. We tell ourselves that death is peace just as a coping mechanism. I'm sure that suffering is the only state of being there is and will ever be.

 

[seaweaves]

This is not any medical advice on my part, and I know I don't hear you asking for advice so much as venting, but whereas some in the thread at least have alluded to trauma and dreaming, and in the context of dream distress generally, there are medications that can be prescribed to reduce dreams and to more easily enable sleep. My own PTSD related sleep stuff has occasionally made me consider substance assistance in sleep

Not necessarily a preferred option for all, and I bet folks with more insight into other forms of substances probably have better or less pharmacological recommendations, I just wanted to name it to name it.

Wishing you gentler dreams and sleeps

 

[Insomniac]

there are medications that can be prescribed to reduce dreams and to more easily enable sleep.

I knock myself out with Xanax but still manage to dream. It's surreal.

 

[motyxia]

I'm scared of sleep too. Vivid nightmares of abuse, the physical pain of it included. I'm grateful I only need about 5 hours of sleep a day to function.

I wonder how common it is to feel physical pain in dreams/nightmares. The people I've told before didn't understand what I was talking about, so it seems not everyone has to suffer it. I'm sorry you have to too. Screw sleep. I don't have a sleeping pattern. Some times I stay u for 2-4 days which is awesome to avoid sleep, but I always end up sleeping no matter what, can't win. Years ago I heard of some man who got struck by lightning & apparently never slept since, for years (and somehow not sleeping for years didn't cause any harm). It was nonsense though obviously. Wish it was real, I'd happily get struck by lightning despite my fear of thunderstorms if I could become a sleepless superhuman.

 

[seaweaves]

I knock myself out with Xanax but still manage to dream. It's surreal.

Oof. On a superficial level, I'm supposed to be envious, as someone who rarely gets past phase two sleep and is regularly exhausted; but on a realer level, I hear you, and that just plain sucks.