Do You Have Dreams that Make You Sad?

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I was originally going to post this in the thread about Empathy by a mother with an autistic son )Katy Rome) but I decided to take it out and start a new thread about this. This is the thread I'm talking about viewtopic.php?t=327906 ...

Anyway, may I ask all of you something? Do any of you ever have dreams that make you cry upon waking up, and even hours after waking up? I mean crying about things that are not really sad. I mean dreams tend to make things more interesting, funnier, sadder, and scarier than they are in real life. And I've had times I would wake up from a bad dream or a seemingly bad dream and cry even for minutes. Some of these dreams have been about my mother even when sad things were not happening.

One time I dreamt I left my cell phone and other possessions behind. And that's not the worst part, as I was leaving, I heard what sounded like a baby crying and no matter how far away I got, the sound was just as loud. It sounded like one of my possessions was crying, probably my cell phone.

Getting back to rabbits for a moment, I've had dreams about rabbits getting attacked and eaten by predators. And that leaves me feeling sad despite it being just a dream. I cried my eyes out when I saw an anthropomorphic rabbit, that I was with in person, get killed.

In third grade, I cried about these four dreams:

1. Intentionally taking down and breaking railroad crossing gates to pieces (I've had some fascination for it but I generally hate it) http://willm3luvtrains.deviantart.com/a ... -574515684 I regretting doing that. Looking back on that dream, I imagine myself not doing that or stopping others from doing so, or doing something more productive like upgrading them.
2.Another dream was of me not appreciating food someone went out of their way to get me. A friend bought hotdogs for me and I said I didn't like them and immediately he threw them away. In the same dream my sister got a double cheeseburger that kept falling apart and she didn't eat it either. At the end of the dream both my sister and me cried. This is one reason why I don't like it when food gets wasted!
3. One dream was this big fire raging and my mother happened to be under it and when she looked up at it, she screamed. I didn't see her burn up in it but it still bothered me and I cried during school and after school after that.

But one of the worst dreams I had, and this happened in 7th grade, I dreamt I shot and killed both of my parents. To make a long story short, I was in a movie modeled after "The Fifth Element" a movie that takes place in the future like the Jetsons, only not a cartoon. Later I was walking with my parents from our apartment through a stair-well and then we came across a man who looked like Harrison Ford, and he turned out to be the bad guy! He was also holding a bag of McDonalds, which I think was also from the movie (I don't think Harrison Ford was in that movie.) Then the man pulled out a gun. I quickly sprang into action and tried to get the gun from him. Then he turned into my parents but evil versions of them, I don't know what happened to my good parents, they must have disappeared. I tried and tried to get the gun from them and I even slapped them. Finally I got the gun from them and shot my father and then my mother. Then I realized what I did and asked my grandmother who suddenly appeared if those were my parents and she said yes. Then I screamed. I was really sad when I woke up and I cried a few hours later during school over that. Dreaming of killing my parents?! That was one of the worst dreams I've ever had and it can still make me sad to this day that that even happened!

I'm gonna stop this is breaking my heart. I have many other examples of post-dream crying.

But the fact that I cried over breaking a crossing gate, I guess that shows some empathy. Or crying over dreaming of leaving my possessions behind, which is what we all have to do someday, one way or another. And it didn't help that I heard what sounded like a baby crying.

But I also cry over dreams of things that are not sad in themselves, although some of what I dream about really is sad, like seeing my mother cry or suffer, seeing an elderly version of her, or losing her or feeling like I'm losing her, or seeing/watching a rabbit get killed as I said in that other thread. I even almost cried over the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz (Judy Garland) melting. Why was I sad about that? That woman was an evil, wicked witch! And she deserved to die. After the witch melted I gave Dorothy a hug! I don't remember crying after that but I know I was disturbed when I woke up.

Why do I have dreams that make me cry, even when they're not sad in themselves or not that sad? Does my autism have to do with any of it? Or am I just that sensitive? Or what? I admit I have mental-emotional and psychological problems and it's worse than autism. I don't know if I have PTSD, never been in the military, though some things do disturb me very much and cause me to get unduly emotional. And hopefully I'm not bipolar either (I don't think I'm either bipolor or PTSD positive, I guess I'm just super sensitive.)

Enough about me, do any of you ever have dreams that make you sad or make you cry after they're over. You don't have to share if you don't want to, especially if you think it sounds ridiculous to others but just know that I feel your pain. If you cried just for dreaming of seeing a mouse run by, or a tree trunk turning different colors, or your bedroom door all of a sudden crumbling down to pieces, I won't make fun of you for it, it's not ridiculous, it's just something that bothers you personally (those were just examples I was giving. I gave examples of what made me cry so hopefully that will help.) And I know your feeling, at least some of it.

Your turn.

hello, i just saw this because I saw your post about leaving, then went to see your other posts. I only come on every few days, usually at night (though I should sleep instead).

1. Don't leave! we want you to be here.. ok, speak for myself, i think you make great contributions.

2. The dreams. Interesting. I have woken up crying from dreams, I also have what I call 'paranoid dreams', where my husband has left me and is with someone else, which is not the worst because the worst is that I'm crying like crazy, and he is indifferent and disdainful. I had a paranoid dream last night about my mum, where i was yelling at her about my son, and understanding him, loving him, and giving him space 'do you not understand that he's got Aspergers, do you know what that means?' and she was all cold and indifferent. My mum would never be cold in a million years.

The worst dream I ever had was, I think, an out-of-body experience. I woke and wandered round our flat, but the lights didn't come on when I switched them. I saw my flat-mates sleeping in their beds, but they couldn't hear me. It was all kind of grey and murky. Finally I went back to bed and kay down, and then battled with myself till finally i forced myself to wake. it was horrible.

I've also dreamt often that I was a criminal, and I was running away and shot in the side by the police. I wake up with an aching side.

Finally, and i love this, I can fly sometimes in my dreams. I fly over woods, mountains and lakes, it's so easy and so beautiful.

Your dreams sound very interesting, it's important to remember them. I think the ones that are negative and involving people sound a bit like what I call my 'paranoid' ones, anyone who's sensitive i reckon has this kind of anxiety, also probably things happened in our past that hurt us and we're afraid it might happen again, we don't always trust happiness and secure relationships..?

i love your empathy for railroad crossings, i think it's beautiful. I think NTs have a deficit in empathy often, in that they have trouble empathising with beings or things that don't look like hs and don't talk like us.. or talk at all

About 10 years ago I had a dream about my dog dying defending me from a rabid dog. I cried in the dream and cried waking up. The dream was powerful for me at the time, and I felt near tears but only actually crying upon awakening and right after.
This summer I had a dream about my now late dog. He was with me and we had a good time. As I woke up I groggily thought that we still had years together. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. He was dead, had been for 8 years. Having woken up thinking he was there left me with a raw grief and I cried my eyes out.

Those are the only two times I can remember actually crying waking up. I've had plenty of dreams that were scary or shocking, but somehow they didn't make me cry. A couple of them influenced my feelings for a time because they were powerful in some way or other, but not actually made me cry.

Exciting dreams like flying or exploring just leaves me feeling excited and eager to write it down in my diary so I won't forget the fun adventure.

Hi, TimmyTurnerFan1.

I know a little bit about dreams! Dream research has shown that most dreams tend to focus on more negative emotions, like anxiety, sorrow, anger, or fear. There may be more than one reason for this!

One good explanation is that serotonin levels drop dramatically when people dream. Since serotonin is the neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of happiness and reward, low levels of it during sleep might contribute to our tendency to dream of more unpleasant feelings.

Another good theory is that it's these negative emotions that require our attention, psychologically or emotionally speaking, so they get the attention during dreaming. In other words, it's the sadness that causes the sad dream. It's not the sad dream that causes the sadness. Strong emotions in our daily lives are signals to the brain that a certain issue is pressing, or needs to be reviewed while dreaming. This makes sense in evolutionary terms. If you were frightened by an angry dog while walking home, your brain may use this feeling and create a dream that compares your fear to past fears, and tries to calculate solutions based upon past experiences, and projections of the future. That would be beneficial to any person in terms of survival.

If you are finding that sadness is a recurring theme in your dreams, there is a chance that sadness is a pressing issue in your waking life. I've noticed that with the dreams you've shared, there is also a common theme as to "why" your dreams are making you feel sad.

They all involve a loss, of some kind. You lost your cell phone and possessions, in one dream. Rabbits were lost to predators. The railroad crossing was lost after being taken down and broken to pieces. The hot dogs were thrown away, and the double cheeseburger proved to be inedible, representing a loss. The implied loss of your mother being consumed by a fire. And finally, the loss of both of your "good" parents to "evil" parents, and then additionally losing the "evil" parents to gunfire.

Perhaps there is some kind of a previous loss in your life that really struck home to you, and you think about that often. Or maybe there are reasons for you to fear that you will experience some loss in the future, so your dreaming brain is seeking ways to prevent that from happening.

If I was going to analyze the dreams you shared a little further to try and narrow down what loss your dreaming brain might be referring to, I would note that you seem to be dreaming of losing things that are somewhat imperative to functioning safely in the world.

These days, a cell phone is almost necessary for most people to get through the day. Losing one would pose a definite hindrance to daily functioning for most people. The sound of the crying baby only reinforces the idea that this would be a desperate situation that demanded your immediate attention.This might represent a loss of your sense of self. The rabbits may represent a loss of innocence. The railroad crossing seems to represent a loss of safety measures. The loss of the hot dogs and cheeseburger may represent a threat to survival for you and your sister. The loss of your mother to a fire may represent the loss of your support structure, or your connections to your familial past. The loss of your "good" parents to "evil" parents and then to gunfire could easily represent the same kind of loss.

Only you can really determine what your dreams might actually mean. Symbols and metaphors are often so personal to people, there's no way another person could tell you that the rabbits in your dreams represent good luck, without a doubt. Rabbits mean different things to people in different contexts, so you have to delve deep into your own understanding of symbols, and try to work them out in relation to your own life. So when I say that rabbits may represent innocence, that's just a vague, general, guess. I don't know how old you were when you had these dreams, or what your life was like when you dreamed them. Maybe for you, you own meat rabbits, and you're always worried about foxes getting at them. If that was the case, then it would make more sense that the dream rabbits represented a loss of income, or sustenance.

Why do you cry when you remember the dreams upon waking? A lot of the activity that takes place in the brain during dreaming, I guess, comes from the limbic system, which is the seat of emotion. The emotions of dreams are more intense than in waking life, because the limbic system goes into overdrive during dreaming. So the emotion when you recall it upon waking probably also feels very intense, and vivid. If dreams are meant, in part, to review emotional experiences of our day, compare those experiences to past experiences that created similar emotions, predict probable solutions to those experiences, and log the information into long term memory storage, then it makes sense that when you recall the dream, you also recall the intense emotion. It serves to sway your behavior in the future.

All of my remembered dreams make me sad these days. I used to have interesting, varied dreams, some were sad, some were weird, some were positively wonderful and happy, some were interesting, some were mystical, some were funny.

Now anytime I remember a dream, it's a bummer. Bad and sad things happening, unhappy things occurring and not-nice people. But then I have reasons to do with the situations in my real life, so I'm aware of why this happening. It's still a bummer though. I always used to enthusiastically write down my dreams in my diary, now I never want to. It's also making me stop remembering most of them, because clearly my mind doesn't want to.

I vaguely remember posting about this very topic (Dreams). I said something along the lines of The only dream, that I remember are Nightmares, Still true. Except sometimes I have dreams that are hard to differentiate from reality, that I'm doing something I usually do for example. In my room on the Internet on my Laptop. It's quite weird.

Many years ago I took a college course in dreams. There I started keeping a dream journal and from my experience I started remembering more of my dreams (not just the negative ones) once I started keeping the dream journal.

It's true that we remember unpleasant dreams more and I personally believe it's because our subconscious is trying to tell us something in a way we will remember. However, as you start dream journalling you might find (as I did) you stop having as many unpleasant dreams. It's almost as if your'e saying to your subconscious, "I'm listening to whatever you have to say, so you don't need to scare or shock me to have me notice anymore."

That's pure conjecture on my part, but it does match my experience.

But to address the topic at hand, sometimes I do wake up from a dream sad because of something happening, but the sadness goes away once I realize it was a dream and not something that actually happened. I still journal it.

Also, some types of psychoactive medication seems to make dreams more vivid. I've had two family members say they had much more vivid dreams when taking escitalopram.

For all who commented, thank you much!

I know this is an old post but I'm always open to new (but respectful) comments, so who else wants to chime in?

I only know of one dream that makes me tearful to recall it. It happened a month or two after I'd left my first wife and had begun another relationship that was going even worse. My first wife and I had owned two cats and one of them had gone missing after I'd left. She'd suggested that he'd been looking for me and that was why he'd got lost. I think she made that up to make me feel guilty for leaving.

Anyway, the dream: I arrived at an idyllic cottage surrounded by a beautiful sunny garden in the English countryside, and our two cats were living there. I asked them if they could ever forgive me for leaving them, and they told me that they did, and that they were perfectly content in their cottage. I had the impression that the cottage represented heaven.

I'd been feeling lousy the night before I had that dream, and I awoke feeling much better. But later I found that every time I remembered the dream I felt tearful. I think the dream was an expression of my remorse at abandoning somebody who loved me. It's saying a lot that the dream and the feelings it represents can have such an effect on me, because it's very rare these days that anything can move me to tears.

All the other dreams I've had to date, as far as I can remember, have either been simply intriguing, funny, or scary - the scary dreams are usually to do with things going wrong for me, such as my partner losing empathy for me and doing very hurtful things, or me becoming late for a very important appointment or getting lost while trying to get there. When I wake up I soon realise it was only a dream and I soon feel OK again.

Ten years ago this time, I had a dream that my favourite member of my favourite band passed away. I kept it a secret from my mum in the dream.

Rarely do I recall any dreams or if I dream ? Am knowing have dreamt in the past. QuitE lucidly but a lot that was somewhat. Induced by myself . Now , have to really focus , to get any recollection of a dream .
Perhaps a focus on a higher power of some sort could give me back some dreaming . As a basis for. A possibility of the idea of dreaming on my own . The more recent ones have involved a release of a huge stressor . But did leave me in a saddened state .

Now and then. I once had one about a Sphynx cat (a breed that is naturally hairless) being experimented on and basically tortured. I would remember it in the day and just shut down. My mother (in the midst of a stroke that altered her personality) would threaten to send me to the mental hospital if I didn't stop talking about it. Maybe I should have let her and they would have talked some sense into her? I was really sick that day from a messed up gall bladder and had surgery scheduled soon. I had lots of weird and scary dreams at the time. But after I was feeling better, I replayed the situation in my head where the cat was rescued and started using her as an original character in the stories about myself as an anthropomorphic meerkat creature.

The other night had a quite nice, richly colored and detailed, dream about a hobby I can't do any more because of declining physical health.
Bittersweet could be a good word for the feeling.

I can't recall any dreams that made me sad.
The closest I got was longing or regret.


But I had a lot of dreams that made me laugh, happy, peaceful, excited, nervous, confused, shocked, embarrassed, shameful and even guilty.

Dreams that made me afraid, angry, and worried are very rare though.
Like at least once or twice that I can recall.

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Yes often. Often I get so very saddened and depressed over them that I feel like taking my life. It's come to my realisation that potentially what others in my life force me through want this and they have no conscience or feelings especially for me cause they call me a ret*d and S'''t person and a ret*d frequently. I hate my family except my daughter.