Do you let dreams bother you?

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I do!! ! I woke up at 4:30AM (usually I'm 8AM or later!!) I dreamed I was paralyzed from the neck down and this happen from being shot/stabbed (not sure which would images were in the dream) 1)a knife stabbed in my kneck 2) a bad guy getting me down at a robbery my hand over my kneck he looks down and BANG! I'm the type of person to analyze the dream which drives ME NUTS! I researched what it meant and it means you are not going forward in life. I told my mom and she didn't seem to care. How do you deal with weird dreams/nightmares? Thanks fellow WP members.

This is funny, cos just yesterday I dreamed I woke up out of sleep paralyzed. Was extremely wierd, and I remember it very clearly. This was at work during a nap BTW.

Anyway, with dreams, I've always loved the nightmares. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but if I wake up, I'll try to get back into that dream I was in. I've dreamed of being in a fire, being shot at, or just generally dying, and I try to dream as far as I can, I don't know why tho. It feels like I can control my dreams as well.

Anyway, can you "control" your dreams? Maybe if you can, a nightmare can be more managable?

I rarely ever remember my dreams but when I do; they are so incredibly vivid, that unless they are absurd, I confuse them with actual memories. Most of the ones I remember are terrible nightmares and they tend to linger with me all day...sometimes even longer. I do not really have any advice for you. I have trouble shaking them myself.

Controlling your dreams--are you referring to 'lucid dreaming'? This is simply the phenomenon of being aware that you are dreaming while you're still dreaming. Most people will experience it occasionally; some people, regularly. It can indeed help with nightmares if you are prone to it.

I have a history of severe, repeated nightmares. Eventually I learned to wake myself up, wait for the adrenaline to fade, then go back to sleep!

Incidentally, dreams are very personal and not all of them have any important meaning. I think they are more like your brain "defragmenting" at night, like a computer does, making its operation more efficient and storing memories away properly. (There's evidence that dreaming has something to do with learning; people who have 8 hours of sleep but are prevented from dreaming--you can tell when they're dreaming by the eye movements, so you just wake them up then, and wake your control subjects when they're not dreaming--will do pretty badly at learning and memory tasks.)

Dreams do show what you have been thinking about during the day. They often take place in familiar locations, or at least recognizable ones. The people in them, if they aren't generic people, are often the people you deal with daily. The subject matter usually includes what you've been thinking about during the day. See the pattern? So that means that if you're dreaming about it, it's probably on your mind--and that could be as mundane as you repeatedly dreaming you're in your room because you've been in your room recently, or as insightful as repeatedly dreaming that you forgot where your classroom is and got lost at school, because you're worried about your academic performance.

Repeated nightmares with similar subject matter often have to do with something you are anxious about. My nightmares usually involved being powerless in some way--and guess what? My diagnosis of PTSD from childhood abuse and an 18 month stay in a totalitarian environment involve exactly that problem. I could tell when I was starting to recover because I started to take control in the dreams, too; I would throw fireballs at the monster that was threatening me, or just ignore him altogether and go flying. (I will admit I took advantage of my tendency to have lucid dreams to do those things. It's an advantage to anybody with nightmares... but then I could have that tendency because of the nightmares.) Anyway, nowadays I can tentatively say that I no longer have problems with nightmares; sure, I have them occasionally, but most people have them occasionally. (I also think they need to put "in remission" after that PTSD diagnosis.)

It's funny how much dream content is violent, even when your life isn't particularly so. There are many people who keep online dream journals; you'll see a lot of vague, non-logical stuff, but you'll also see violence quite often. I've heard a theory that these violent dreams are your mind preparing to defend you if it needs to while you are awake; but I'm not sure if I believe it because I'm not sure how you could test it and haven't heard of anybody who has.

I dream but its usually absurd nonsense. Occasionally I can control the content of my dreams and I dream about flying then because that's my secret wish. Occasionally I dream about sex too.

The only time I let dreams bother me was when I was cleaning up off of liquor and dope and dreamed I got loaded and blew my clean time. Fortunately those dreams never led to a relapse.

I've had a couple of dreams that bothered me for a while. Two that I remember are:

1) Someone who I knew fairly well and was interested in romantically at the time died (It was in a nondescript fashion, but I remember an explosion) That left me shaken until I saw her later that day.

2) One of my freakier dreams, a Butterfly Effect/time travel dream which had two parts. The first wasn't freaky, but in the second I ended up married to the girl I like now. That one I couldn't help but analyze for almost a week.

I've never had a paralyzed dream, but I there is something called 'sleep paralysis" Wikipedia article. A dream in which you are paralyzed my be a sub-conscience reaction to that.

I had last night dreams about some of my fears... spiders, being ignored, being not relevant person: my dream started when I was being bitten by dangerous a spider on my finger and I couldn't get the medical assistance, people couldn't hear me, they were busy on their stuff... Then, latter in the same night, I was making a speech on a meeting, and a very stupid guy said some stupid idea, and everybody liked his idea and ignored mine.
I should say that I couldn't sleep well after that, and took 0.5 mg of clonazepan to help my sleep...
The funny thing about all this is that my therapist is working about my fear and anxiety this week, I'm not actually a fearful person, but this suddenly popped up this week.

No, most of my dreams are so vague and disjointed that they make very little sense during my waking moments, and they're soon forgotten.

Dreams are weird and fascinating. The ones that probably should bother me, don't usually. The odd ones that do usually aren't violent or scary, but they change my thinking or the way I see some things. And it can come as a bit of a shock.

I never let dreams bother me because they are not real even though I know they can tell you something. I get deja vu occasionally but I will not remember it was in my dream until it has actually happened.

I never had/have nightmares/don't feel afraid in violent dreams. But I care a lot for my dreams, what I dream and all. It's usually accurate, though of course being autistic and slightly antisocial and just overall weird, symbols and sense of my dreams are rather atypical.

But dreams usually (unless you're into occult things) just reflect what you feel or think. If you worry about getting further in life, if you had thought that in just 1 situation or have a subconscious feeling you're not getting further in some situation or your life then you might dream about it.

If a dream says you'll fail or be happy forever, it's just a reflection of what you think and thought, feel and felt.

It's not a prophecy, just a mirror.

I believe inrpretation of dreams is a very important practise. Dreams are usually warnings and we must understand its meanings, also nightmares can be avoided by dream interpretation.