Bad PTSD dream.

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Well I have PTSD from being in a school when there was an active shooter situation. Was not a student but snuck in with students and held up a classroom and the police got most everyone out, but on of my classmates did not make it before getting shot. So of course even though mine was more of a one off shooter that was not a student and it was kind of a mystery why they chose my school. but of course still hearing about mass shootings and things like that brings some of that back.

But yeah last night had a dream, I was in somewhere idk maybe a store or something and there was an active shooter. Then at one point they like singled me out and were saying stuff, but I didn't want to do anything they said because I knew they'd just shoot anyways. Even in the dream looked around hoping it was someone else they had singled out to kill but it was me...and I was just trying to think of anything possible I could say to convince them not to shoot. It felt very real(idk can one feel actual fear while sleeping) and then I woke up saw i was in my bed with my boyfriend and well still had trouble getting back to sleep after that. I was of course very relieved when I woke up and realized it wasn't real but like it still felt real. But it still has stuck with me all day, like I almost feel like I have ptsd on top of my ptsd just from that dream.

Of course you can feel real emotions in your sleep!

Sometimes in your sleep you feel the emotions you supress during the day. I think PTSD nightmares are pretty common example of it. You've been through a hell and your mind is still processing it, even if you don't think of it conciously.

I used to have that kind of super emotionally intense dreams. In my therapy, I learned to ask myself: what supressed emotions are they revealing?

There's nothing strange about your dreams revealing deadly fear. You've been through a nightmare and we're living in crazy, intense times. Your minds gets back to known danger by old mechanisms of adaptation.

I'm sorry for all your pain. I can't really imagine what you've been through.

Well thank you, it is bothersome at times, but well all I can do is try and move past and beyond it. It does kind of make sense though, it is also getting closer to the time the incident I experienced happened, and I always start getting a bit bothered about it around this time because I dread the actual day of September 16th. I mean I never saw what happened, or I did not see my classmate get killed but I still experienced the lockdown and at the time for all I knew the shooter was running around and could be anywhere. But I did kind of just mentally check out once there was an announcement that there was an active shooter I was there, but I also wasn't there. So sometimes I feel selfish about having PTSD like some of the other students saw much worse like the ones in the room the shooter ended up in but well the symptoms are real, but yeah idk I guess I was kind of the outcast and even I didn't know something like that would effect me so much but it did, but well I was not popular so I didn't really get any support about it from other kids, one girl in my class even during the lockdown said to me she was surprised I wasn't the shooter. She apologized later, but I mean the damage was done once she had said that...I feel I do forgive her but that still doesn't fix how that made me feel at the time she said it(I know I said I checked out, so didn't really feel it till later).

and also seems every time I feel maybe I have gotten over it there is always something to remind me that you could run into an active shooter situation like anywhere you go, which just raises my anxiety level quite a lot. But yeah that dream was a new level...I have had some dreams that seem related to like a lockdown senerio before, but not one where like I was about to get shot for most I have had like I still get out, but yeah that one was like the worst. For sure like in the dream I was just like thinking in my head like 'f*ck this is really how it ends, there is nothing I can do' And that is where I woke up. It is weird waking up after just seconds before trying to prepare yourself for death. So yeah you know it has put me off all day...and now I have stayed up till 4 in the morning, because that dream made me afraid to sleep, but I know I will have to succumb to at least some sleep eventually.

There's nothing selfish about having PTSD. You could as well feel selfish for being frostbitten or sunburn. You don't control how your body reacts to the situation. Being dismissed and denied support makes things a lot worse.

I once had kind of a dream like this - not exactly a dream, it was a trip after experimenting with a bunch of wild herbs. They triggered delusions in which I was going to die in a collapsed cave and no one knew I was there to try to rescue me. The situation was delusional but the feelings - preparing for certain lonely death and nothing I could do about it - were very real.
It made me aware how horrible suffering schizophrenia must be. I did it out of my stupid curiosity. Schizophrenics have it all the time

Maybe you're viewing it the wrong way around. Looking at as being traumatized anew by dreams.

Maybe view it as your psyche finally expelling the trauma. Coughing it up, and out. Just live with some nightmares for a while. Something to endure to get to the next level.