Asperger's dreams?

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Yeah, that happens to me. I've established a few reality checks to determine if I'm dreaming... if I'm dreaming, it's possible to move things without touching them, or take off my glasses and still see fine, or pinch my nose shut and breathe through it anyway. You know, little nonsensical things that work in dreams but not in real life. Helps to tell them apart and lets you recognize when you're dreaming, so you can play around with it or just wake yourself up.

I've had a few vivid ones with great emotional impact, such as:

-An end-of-the-world scenario (right after reading On The Beach--finished it at 3am; not a good idea ). Things were literally falling apart all around me--I think that, in the dream, I was watching one of the shopping channels and the host was trying to carry on in the midst of literal disintegration of reality (for you STAR TREK: VOYAGER fans, think "Course: Oblivion"). I was a wreck for most of the next day--could not get the images out of my head.

-An intruder breaking into my home. Somehow, I had a pistol, but it didn't work, so I ended up beating him into submission with it. Woke up shaking.

-Right after 9/11, I dreamt that two guys in white T-shirts were somehow in my home, with a piece of paper that was actually a bomb--my mom and I put it in the paper shredder, but I still had this dreadful feeling that it was going to go off, in the shredder, at any moment...you can imagine my state of mind after that one.

So yes--they are rare, but they do happen.

I'm not entirely sure if it is because of AS, or if it's something special all on its own. I'm leaning more towards not AS because I'm the weird one in my family as far as dreams go and I know someone who is NT who also has vivid crazy dreams.
Sometimes a dream will shake me for a couple days. I recently had one of those. I can't write it down, it was just... so freakishly intense just thinking about it makes me feel kind of shaky. I tried writing it down and every time I tried I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. It felt so real, but it took place on Mars and I was a guy in the dream (...something about Mars...) So not quite something I could wake up and believe to be real, but it sure felt like it.

I've been able to have lucid dreams often, although it doesn't usually bring much comfort because I can't actually escape and the fear prevents me from changing much.



Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have a lot of issues, lol. Psychological is most likely for me.

Has anyone else died or been seriously injured often in their dreams and not immediately woken up? I've had a few falling dreams, but I don't wake up when I hit the bottom, I just lay there in pain. I've been shot, drowned, smothered, beaten, etc. Very weird. And then I just float around in darkness for a while, unable to do anything.

I’m very preoccupied with my dreams. If they’re interesting in any way, I’ll jot them down in my diary.

I tend to remember dreams if they made an impact. I can refer to dreams like I refer to memories of real things. Sometimes the feelings in dreams can stay with me for a while; a couple of nightmares in particular come to mind where the feeling of dread was hard to shake. But likewise, they can also be positive and make me feel good for a long time. Bad things that happens in dreams can stay with me for hours, even a day, despite me knowing very well it was a dream. Luckily the positive fun dreams I enjoy also stay with me, I’d say for longer, so I enjoy them a lot. I know very well that they are only dreams but I’m still as emotionally affected by the good ones as I would be were they real. They can make me smile for days and have me long to go back to that scenario for a long time. There are individuals who I only know from dreams who feel more real to me than most people I’ve ever known (excluding family) and who I liked a lot more than anyone I’ve ever known IRL (not including family). These dream figures have inspired my stories and daydreams and some of them really make me wish they were real and that I knew them IRL.
Luckily the impact of the nightmares last shorter. I remember them equally well but I’m not as affected. There is one nightmare that differed, it was really horrible and thinking about it still affects me, though less, even though it took place in November 2006.
I have had several dreams where I have been other people, even other species.

I can remember two incidents where I thought a dream was real. The first took place when I was 4, the other when I was 7 or 8. They are 2 of only 4 dreams I recall from my childhood up to 11 years of age. I began noticing and remembering dreams more from I was about 12, and from that age I’ve been writing them down when they were interesting.
It varies a lot how much I recall of the dreams and how many dreams each sleep (if any) and how much they impact me.

I have also had dreams where I dream that I wake up and either start writing down my dreams or tell my mother about it and then I wake up for real.

No, the general population isn’t impacted by their dreams in that way, at least not usually. They often have trouble remembering them at all.
I think all young children are able to think their dreams were real, not just aspies.

I'm pretty well-known among friends and relations as having wildly vivid and detailed dreams and the effect they can have on me.

My dreams feel like an opening into a parallel universe; most of them are related to subject-matter my mind has encountered, but rearranged in ways that make them almost believable (even if, upon waking introspection, they are completely ludicrous.) I have recurring dreams and/or nightmares, but I also have themed blocks of dreams in which over the a few days/weeks/months, I will dream about a particular thing in seemingly chronological order. It's akin to starting a movie, having to pause it twenty minutes in and focus on something else, then coming back to it later.

If you'll notice, I'm almost always "running" in some sense:

-Being on a cruise ship and running from Kermit the Frog because he was boiling lobsters and they were screaming.
-Running from some(one/thing) in the woods in first-person, barefoot, with an overwhelming sense of fear.
-Going on a jog with a Border Collie named Vega (that I do not own and have never met in my life - but is clearly MY dog.)
-Running into my ex in random scenarios. I'll be afraid to leave the house if I dream that I saw her in my town.
-Finding spiders/lizards/creepy-crawlies in my bed and not being able to get out of it and away from them.

I have so many more recurring dreams to mention, but I'm really tired so I won't. A lot of these dreams I have had since I was four or five. I will wake up from them with the exact feeling I had in the dream, sometimes not knowing if I have actually woken up or not. The emotions will linger for anywhere from minutes to hours, sometimes even days if it was intense enough.

I also have the occasional "premonition" dream. When I was a child, before knowing that Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time even existed, I had a dream about being in a large, multi-level cave behind a waterfall with a deep pool in the center of it. Almost identical to Zora's Domain in OoT, and I had had this dream at least 6-8 months prior. I had told my dad about it at the time, and upon seeing Zora's Domain for the first time, I was frantic in trying to make sense of how I dreamt it before I had even seen it. This also happens with events in life: last month, I dreamt that my friend's mom was in California, and the next day he told me that she had called him to ask for a ride to the airport later that week. Before he even said where she was going, I said, "Isn't your mom in California?" He was shocked, because that was indeed where she was traveling to, she just hadn't left yet.

Now that I've ranted far longer than I had intended to, I do think that the way I experience my dreams has to do with AS. My friend has also commented on that being a possibility. Whether it is correct or not, I'm not sure. Just thought I would share my thoughts. :]

I had the same 2 dreams in a loop for 3 years when I was little. Had them every night till I had control over both the dreams and "solved" them. I also had a dream that I woke up from a bad dream, my mom tried to comfort me, and then turned into a dragon; I believed that for several years. I have had dreams where a person I didn't even like killed them self, and was very distressed until I next saw them, even though I knew that they were fine. A lot of times I'll have dreams that mirror something that could have happened to me, and I have to really thing about it to determine if it was a dream or reality.

My dreams are usually angst-ridden with me having to either escape something or do something really complicated that
takes ages to prepare for

I've had really scary dreams and can still remember the threatening/frightening atmosphere from some dreams years later though couldn't give a coherent description of what actually happens

At some stage looking for a toilet will feature as my brain will be telling me I need the loo

Then in the dream I'll spend ages trying to find some toilets and then a suitable cubicle

Often I'm walking round my secondary school too - completely lost, as I often was when trying to find the classroom for the next lesson if I didn't have other people to follow

I don't really know if it is related to anything or not, but I've always had extremely vivid dreams. If the dream is disturbing enough, it will stick with me for a while. I've also awakened crying on many, many occasions. There is one dream I've had repeatedly (at least a few times a month) since I was about 5. I'm at my grandmother's house hiding because someone is trying to break into the house. The person gets in, and I manage to sneak out. I start running through a field near the house toward the woods. I run and run and run, and I am terrified during the dream. After running a while, I find a place to hide (that is usually when I awaken). I remember as a child the feeling of terror (from that dream) would stick with me for a while, but it doesn't any more (with that dream, but it has happened in other instances as an adult).

oops, repost

Last edited by RagingShadow on 14 Apr 2013, 7:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've had a similar Mars dream. I think the differences I remember were:

* No reference to a mail system

* Living space was actually more available despite being underground

* No idea when in time it was happening.

I have a lot of vivid dream with numerous details. A common element for me tends to be that wherever I am I have a lack of privacy - my bedroom or my home or even my bathroom is somehow a major thoroughfare for everyone who lives with and/or near me, the doors won't latch or lock, or they aren't present at all. I have dreams about living in mansions and shacks, and the same thing happens.

Another common element is trying to get food, usually from a restaurant or a convenience store, and never quite being able to get what I want to eat. Places I try to eat range from my high school cafeteria (actually fairly good) to mid-range restauarants.

I recall a dream I had about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Kubla Khan (his poem), which included an opium trip to Kublai Khan's city Shangdu (Xanadu), and some random Shakespeare references. This dream ended when someone started banging on Coleridge's door. Was kind of interesting.

I've also had some rather nightmarish dreams that for some reason weren't nightmare-level frightening. Horrific stuff that was just what was happening in the dream, as compared to actual nightmares, which I stopped having regularly when I started lucid dreaming.

Fever dreams are the worst. I get stuck in an endless loop trying to complete some kind of task that I can't manage to complete, or if I come close I have to start over again.

I try to describe dreams right after waking up so I can remember them later.

I've had multiple very realistic, very simple dreams that would fit into my life simply that I was completely convinced happened until I realized that nobody else knew of any of what happened in that.

In one case this was 6 months after, when I found out that an agreement that I thought was made was never made, it only happened in a dream that had gone through a completely normal day.

I now will comment "unless this was a dream and it never happened" when people are staling and not responding, and I'm not sure how much people realize this is because this has happened.

I also lucid dream, but not always.

I've had dreams where the emotions I felt in it felt very real.

So can I.

Ever since I was a little kid, the really disturbing dreams get to me. A bad dream can ruin a whole day because I wake up with the feeling from the dream, and I can't shake it no matter what I do....it's like some part(s) of my brain gets stuck.

I had a dream once that I was eating a giant marshmallow. And when I woke up, my pillow was gone!