Why do I keep having disturbing dreams?*TRIGGER WARNING*

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*Trigger warning for VERY disturbing dreams*


I've had these disturbing dreams at night, ever since I started taking fluoxetine again....And what's worse, they seem so real to me while I'm having them that I'm not even motivated to wake up and make them go away....they're so vivid and real, I just interpret them as reality, and resign myself to being stuck inside them.

One particularly disturbing dream I had about a month ago was one where my mom and stepdad were taking me and my half-sisters, Pandy and Birdgirl, somewhere. When we got there, we found out that it was some kind of nudist resort, where everyone had casual...um...intercourse with anyone they pleased, of any age. My mother said, "*Husband's Name*, what were you thinking?? We can't stay here with three girls!!" And my stepdad was just like, "Oh, it'll be fine; nothing bad will happen to the girls." And I spent the rest of the dream terrified of me or my sisters being forced into having intercourse with strange people who never wore clothes. I could see naked people going in and out of rooms, laying on top of one another, moaning and screaming in ecstasy, etc....There was a strange kind of mist everywhere. In the dream, I would put myself in front of my sisters so the nudists would take me instead. It was bad....I even remembered it after I woke up, and if I thought about it too hard, it came again.

The most recent one is the one I had last night....my sisters and I were being looked after by some woman we'd never met before, and when I woke up one morning, the strange woman wasn't nice anymore, and was putting all of our (my sisters' and mine) favorite things into a big bag....Pandy and Birdgirl's phones and laptops, Birdgirl's My Little Ponies and favorite stuffed dog, Pandy's stuffed duckie that she's had since she was a baby, and all my stuffed animals (Dory, Babs, Mac, Boofle, Rebound, all of them) and my stim/fidget toys. She told us, "You can each have ONE of them, if you are good and do everything I say, and I will decide which ones you will get each time." Then, I looked down at both of my legs, and noticed a knotted string poking out of of the top of each of my calves. I untied them and tried to pull them out, only to have it hurt really bad on the underside of my legs. I turned my legs over and saw two big orange strings strung thru holes in my legs, criss-crossing each other, and that's where the pain was coming from. I looked up at the strange woman questioningly, as she looked down at me with a satisfied yet cold smile on her face. I asked her why there were strings tied thru my legs, and she simply said that my legs were too fat, and she was just making them thinner. It hurt my legs to walk, but I knew it wouldn't do any good to tell her - she wouldn't take the strings out no matter how much it hurt me to walk.

Then I was awakened at around 7 AM by the sound of one of my suitemates (who are in sororities) or one of their ever-present entourage of boys throwing up in the bathroom my roommate and I share with them.

I don't understand....what's happening to me? I only watch nice, soothing things before bed, like Doc McStuffins and Pajanimals, and listen to soothing lullabies or slow songs and ballads. I also always sleep with all my stuffed animals and Cars blanket, but that doesn't keep me from having bad dreams, either. Is it the fluoxetine? What have I done to make this happen?

It's probably the drugs. It doesn't mean you're a bad or weird person if you have bad/weird dreams.

Also, you may have been having leg cramps or spasms in your sleep. Physical discomfort can weave its way into your dreams.

"Abnormal dreams" is listed as one of the less common side effects of fluoxetine on drugs.com!

(I'm inclined to think that the "rare" or "less common" side effects of any substance are probably just under-reported, or a combination of other factors, including the patient's individual biochemistry--the doctors can't account for everything, even if they say otherwise. Listen to your body and your intuition.)

I wish you sweeter dreams in the future.

Sounds like you are going lucid. If you are in there, and have any control over them, try to change dreams, or move far away as fast as you can if you have a bad one. Some can do this, some cannot. Practice for some too. The drugs, food, drink, your waking life, and many other aspects can effect you dreams. Mostly, if it is not lucid, and you have no control over them, alot of it can be a twisted form of recapitulation from your waking life. Whenever I have very spiritual, or disturbing dreams that I do not understand, I like to go on websites like dreammoods.com, and do a search of things that stand out in my mind. Key words, like if you were me, (everyone is different) according to those dreams, I would look up things like nudist, orgie, packing, stitches, and fat. Stuff like that. Maybe you can break it down, and see if it makes any sence to you at all. Maybe you need to change something, or your subconscious is trying to tell you something. Who knows? Nightmares usually don't happen on there own. Someting in your waking life usually triggers them.

For most people, very little is understood about dreaming, or the awareness attached to it if there is one. If you enjoy sleeping, and you are a dreamer, you just have to do the best you can. If that pill is too much for you, you are going to have to figure out what you are going to do.

That's all I got.

That's unusual. I have OCD (as well as Asperger's) and part of it is I get the MOST HORRIBLE, DISTURBING thoughts and I can't shake them but Fluoxetine actually stopped them for the most part and those it didn't, I was able to let go of more easily.

Medications can effect people quite differently. It sounds like the main cause of your bad dreams may be the medication. I suggest talking to your doctor about it. You don't have to go into details, just give them the idea that it is very disturbing and unusual. If you have just started the medication it may be something that fades in time, or perhaps the doctor can prescribe a different med.