Having nightmares about my upcoming cruise! What gives?

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First of all, I hope I'm not irritating people with these repeating threads about my cruise, on the Carnival line. Please understand that this is my first cruise ever, so I can't help but feel apprehensive. I even addressed the apprehension one of my earlier threads. I still kept going forward, and have now finished 100% of the prep work: plane tickets, clothes shopping, registering for excursions, etc. I even went from being very apprehensive to thinking I have a slim chance of finding a fling onboard.

During the last two weeks, however, I had nightmares that were clearly cruise-related. Once I woke up, I was able to brush them off as crap that my brain was making up, but they had to have come from somewhere. Let me post them, and see if anyone can give a reading.

Nightmare 1:
It was set mostly in the indoor portions of the ship, at night. I never ended up going to an outside deck the whole time. In fact, there was nothing in the dream that clearly looked like it belonged on a ship; I simply "knew" where it was. The bulkheads (walls) were all made of dreary-looking light brown brick, and had rectangular windows with pitch blackness beyond them. Come to think of it, the hallways resembled a school or a hospital. I was running in panic from from one place to another, trying to find some room (forgot which one exactly), without success. There were other people on the ship, and when I asked them how to get to [room I was looking for], I found myself either unable to speak or not getting a straight answer.

Nightmare 2:
It was clearly set on a Carnival cruise ship. But instead of having the usual glitzy elegance that Carnival is known for, the interior spaces looked horrible. The decks had warped wood. The corridors were dark and narrow, and there were no directional signs. The carpet was torn up, and most of the light fixtures looked like they were smashed by a baseball bat. I found my way to my cabin, and the door was only 18 inches (45 cm) wide. I somehow managed to get through it (hey, dreams don't always follow the normal laws of physics), and it got worse. The cabin had nothing except the bed, and there were ominous-looking curtains covering the porthole (round window). There were no other people present at any point during the dream.

What the hell is going on? I know I read enough about the cruise, including the demographics of people on it, to have the information I needed to stop worrying. And yet, these nightmares. I know it's not the news reports about the Costa ships triggering them, because a disaster is the last of my worries for this upcoming cruise. So what gives? Give your reading.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 13 Mar 2012, 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

moved from General Autism Discussion to Random Discussion

Hyperlexian, why did you move it? It's clearly an AS-related topic. Are you trying to get even with me for something I said to you earlier? Or maybe annoyed by my cruise posts? These moves are making me very unwilling to share my personal concerns on WP, knowing that some power-crazy mod will move the thread to a place where it'll get irrelevant comments!

God, WP has gone way downhill since I first joined it many years ago. Or maybe it's a sign I need to migrate over to another aspie support site. Can you at least put a shadow link in the original place in the General Discussion forum? I guess the bullying I was afraid of encountering on the cruise has found its way onto WP. Gee, how comforting.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 13 Mar 2012, 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

you didn't mention anything AS-related. i checked (twice). your post is about having nightmares regarding an upcoming cruise and you asked people to interpret it for you. NT people have anxiety before trips too, so without any explicit mentions of AS in your post it's not logical to make a connection there.

i could move it to The Haven if you want, or if you have another suggestion we could work something out (Members Only? Love & Dating?). General Autism Discussion makes no sense though.

EDIT: there is a shadow link already.

If you're dead-set against moving it back to General Discussion, then Haven is good enough. I wasn't so much looking for an interpreration of nightmares, as why I'm having them in the first place. But obviously, I'm not the one in charge of deciding which thread goes where, so I'll settle for second-best and agree on moving the thread to Haven. Please move it there.

With that said, I stand by my opinion: knowing that my thread will be moved makes me unwilling to share my fears and concerns, or even use this site at all. These thread moves were nowhere near a problem in the past as they've become in the last month of so. Lesson learned. In the future, I'll probably find a way to deal with a problem on my own, instead of sharing it here.

thread moved from Random Discussion to The Haven

if you would like to know the best location to place a thread, you are welcome to PM a moderator in advance and we can advise you. most threads don't get moved, so if you've had multiple issues it may help to have a second opinion before you post anything. that could minimise the disruption for you.

Thank you.

To get back to the original intent of this thread, I'd like to get ideas how and why I got these nightmares in the first place and what they could mean. Post your thoughts.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 13 Mar 2012, 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was going to post something that would have been quite amusing had the circumstances been different but I don't want to upset the OP if this really is distressing him.

Aspie1: I bet you'll get laid. Just take it easy, and try to look at what other people want. Put on some charm of your own if you can - oh, and don't sleaze or lie. It looks crappy.

Redacted

Last edited by nat4200 on 21 Apr 2012, 1:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

I ended up going to an outside source to resolve this nightmare issue; the ever-so-prompt action this thread got from the mods was very off-putting. Haven has a tendency to vent, while Random Discussion is insulting: you're essentially telling me that a forum game and recurring nightmares have equal importance.

Anyway, there's a cruise review board that I started using since I booked my cruise, where people can also exchange advice. So I started a thread there, where I talked about my nightmares. I made the first post before I left home for work today. Guess what? When I came home afterwards and checked back, twenty people posted replies! A lot of them simply posted their own stories, although a few offered brief interpretations. Most of them revolved around the usual "forgot my passport", "left a family member in port", or "inappropriately dressed" scenarios, although a few were as outlandish as mine, like the whole ship being enclosed by an opaque fiberglass dome.

Whoever posted advice and/or feedback, I appreciate it. But having gotten much better support on an external site than on WP, I will now think twice before sharing something.

I was going to post something reassuring, but after seeing the slight paranoia and temper fit related to moving the post, I'm not sure at all how well the OP will react to anything on the cruise not going how he thinks it should.

I don't mean that rude or mean at all, I just think the OP needs to try and give things more thought before investing all his energy into negative emotions. Moving a thread isn't a big deal at all.

I do hope you enjoy the cruise though. My daughter loved hers.

Oh great. Now people are getting the idea that I'll react badly to something that happens on the cruise. That's incorrect. First of all, you'd be surprised by how much information about cruises is out there on the internet. Cruise lines themselves even publish onboard restaurant menus on their websites. There are also tons of amateur/fan sites, blogs, reviews, message boards, etc. You can even find PDF scans of daily activity schedules. Should I have a question, ranging from what travel documents are required to whether or not soy milk is available at breakfast, someone on the forums will post an answer sooner or later. It was all a big "wow". When researching hotel vacations, even all-inclusive, I've never seen anywhere near as much documentation available.

Anything that can possibly go wrong, from finding a stray tomato peel in my shrimp cocktail, to my luggage being sent to the wrong cabin, I already read about it. I learned who to contact and how to get my issue addressed. Plus, Carnival is a lower-end cruise line, so it's almost reasonable for its cruises to be not as perfect as, say, those on Silversea (a luxury cruise line).

The thread move, however, felt like a slap in the face with a wet glove. Hence, my reaction.

Redacted

Last edited by nat4200 on 21 Apr 2012, 1:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think I was the only one who said that, and why would it matter what I think you will do or not do on the cruise? It's your vacation, not mine, so however you react to anything there won't have anything to do with me, nor will my opinion of how you may react have anything to do with you.

My point was that if you get so insulted and upset over a thread being moved on an internet forum, which in the grand scheme of things doesn't really matter at all, then how would you react to something on the cruise that greatly upsets you?

As I said, it doesn't matter what I think. It's your vacation and I hope you enjoy it. I've posted a good bit of information from my daughter about her cruise, and I hope it's reassured you. Having the dreams about it obviously says that you are having anxiety about it. That's another reason that I assume you might overreact to something there, the anxiety.