Weird sensation in dreams

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I'll see if I can describe it the best I can.

Sometimes when I'm having a really vivid dream, I get a weird sensation that lasts a few seconds, in my dream, like the same sort of feeling you get when riding a really fast rollercoaster. It usually occurs if I'm actually dreaming about riding a rollercoaster or if I'm moving really fast in the dream or something. It also involves a tingly feeling in the dream. It only lasts a few dream seconds, although I am aware that dream seconds can be minutes in real time.

It doesn't wake me up or anything, and I know I don't have sleep apnoea, and I don't think this is even related to what my body is really doing, it's just all in the dream. But I can actually dream about pain without actually feeling the pain in real life.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? I think I've explained it well enough.

Yeah I've had that before. I've also had it where it almost felt like my stomach was about to do a flip when looking down from a significant height, then feeling something similar to pain after falling down - then being happy about the fact I'm not in pain when I wake up and that it was just a dream.

Whether or not I experience this fake pain depends if it's similar to something I've experienced before, if it's not then I won't feel it. For example, I've never been stabbed, so I don't feel that, but if I fall onto a tarmac floor or I fall down in an ice skating ring - I'll feel that. Then again, I had a pretty vivid dream about drowning which felt disturbingly real.

For me, whether I sense something / have an almost physical reaction in a dream depends on how important the detail is to the dream itself. I think having phantom senses in dreams is fairly normal though, your brain doesn't fully realise it's asleep and is trying to fill in the blanks. You associate that sensation with going fast, so you experience something similar to the sensation you'd feel in real life, but in this case it is purely psychological. Your brain tries to compensate.

Experiencing a phantom sense of smell in a dream is fairly uncommon, which is interesting to me because I sometimes experience a fake sense of smell in dreams. I remember a dream where I was in a rundown building with mould in the walls and ceiling. It was like I could actually smell it, which was unfortunate.

Pretty fascinating what the brain can fake. I used to know someone who had a particularly uncommon case where he experienced blindness because he thought he was blind. Baffles my mind to this day. His parents had a degenerative disease which caused their eyes to slowly deteriorate to the point of blindness. Nothing could be done to fix the damage and it was assumed that he would follow suit. He seemed to show the same symptoms and seemed to be getting worse every day. Yet it didn't quite add up, when he finally reached the point of not being able to see at all, he showed a bizarre awareness of his surroundings for someone who had only recently gone blind.

More tests were run and it was discovered that he had believed that losing his sight was such an inevitability that his mind started telling him inaccurate information - creating a phantom blindness. When he learnt this information, which took some getting used to, that his mind was lying and that his vitals were actually fine, he started to rapidly improve. To the point where I saw him smiling, waving, whilst riding a bike and taking in the sights. Which was definitely a jarring change to witness.

Yes, that's what I meant - my stomach does a flip in some dreams and it can sometimes be scary, in a thrilling sort of way (half liking it but half hating it).

Sometimes I dream that I'm swinging or sliding very fast or whatever, and then that weird feeling happens. I can tell when it's coming on (in my dream) and I have to just persevere through it each time. It's not very pleasant really. It's like a hallucination in my dream.

Reminds me of when I was a child, if I was ill with a temperature I'd have these crazy dreams, actually they weren't really dreams, they happened whilst being awake in bed but maybe quarter asleep. During these incidents, in my head I'd keep zooming in to an object, more than it'd be physically possible to in real life even with a powerful microscope, and the more I zoomed in the more I panicked, wanting to wake up and get out of the hallucination. I'd actually be crying for real. Other times I'd be walking in a building that kept filling up with rice that I had to walk through, and sometimes more and more rice would fill up the room and I would panic, then it'd decrease and I'd relax, then it'd increase and I'd panic again.

That only happened in childhood when I was ill.

But when I had my last covid vaccine I got a temperature with it, and when I was in bed trying to sleep it off I fell into a semi-conscious state where I was absolutely sure that someone had broken in and threw a dead corpse over my bedroom door. I remember laying there feeling terrified, wondering what I was going to do with this body, and feeling to afraid to open my eyes and see for myself that nothing was really there. I know it was just a weird hallucination from having a temperature.

I've heard those called 'fever dreams'.

And what you described with someone breaking in and all, sort of sounds like sleep paralysis. You can have that going to sleep or waking up. A sense of dread or fear is very common with it.

I've experienced sleep paralysis before & that was scary.

I tend to not remember my dreams but when I do I'm usually fighting for my life, falling, or running from something & then I trip & start trying to run while on my hands & knees. During those dreams I tend to feel sick to my stomach or like I'm having a panic attack scared for my life. Thinking about this, it almost seems odd to me that I never vomited or $hit in my sleep since I was little & my stomach always feels fine when I wake up from those dreams. I did get motion sickness a bit when I was a kid & would sometimes vomit & panic attacks made me need to stay in the bathroom. Thankfully I kinda outgrew a lot of my motion sickness & my psych meds are a major help with preventing anxiety attacks. Some say you cant experience physical pain in your dreams but I've experienced physical pain sometimes when I got hurt in my dreams. I do not feel the pain when I wake up.

I've experienced some other sleep issues before too like night terrors, sleep walking, groaning/moaning, jerky repetitive movements, & snoring. Some of those issues were worse when I was single & depressed. I HATED sleeping alone & that was one of the many reasons I needed/wanted to be in a serious romantic relationship. I love cuddling with my romantic partner. I have occasionally hit my girlfriend in my sleep thou but we both toss & turn in our sleep so that might explain some of the times. A few months ago I had a deep scratch on my stomach when I woke up. I sleep with my tShirt on & the only guess that seems likely is that I scratched myself in my sleep but I don't remember having any dreams or anything odd. I still have a little bit of a mark/scar there.

I've had a sleep study like half a year ago & I have sleep apnea. My report also said that there was little REM sleep. It seemed like a sedative effect from meds. I am on a lot of meds & half of them can potentially cause drowsiness or CNS(central nervous system) depression.

As for as fevers. It's common for me to feel like I have a fever & have hot flashes & cold chills but thermometers almost never register any. The only time I register a fever is when I'm very sick which is not often. I sometimes get delirious when I have fevers. I probably had a bad one the day after I got my 2nd Covid shot but I didn't have my temp checked so I don't know for sure. I spent the day sick in bed & at one point I was talking about shooting myself & I don't remember the conversation. I never got another Covid shot since the restrictions were the same regardless of vacination status. I haven't been that sick nor delirious since.

Sometimes I have nightmares about terrorists targeting the UK with deadly nuclear weapons and everyone in the UK are definitely going to die and there's nothing anyone can do about it. So I'm waiting and anticipating my impending doom but it's taking ages to happen and I'm crying and panicking and screaming "I don't want to die!" but also "why can't this hurry up so I can get death over with??"

I hate those dreams and they make me dread nuclear wars even more when I'm awake.

Could be anxiety

I wake up with electric shocks in the soles of my feet if I've been having an anxiety dream. I don't see why a similar feeling can't occur when you're still asleep

Electric shocks make me think of a nerve issue. Perhaps you put your feet in a weird position or tense up in your sleep when your anxious.

Yeah I used to think it was to do with nerves but then I noticed that I was getting the same electric shock feeling when I get anxiety in the day so I just thought it would be the same in the night as well.

It's not the most pleasant feeling in the world though I must say.

I've felt physical pain in a dream. It was the evening of Friday, June 2nd, 2017. I took a nap that evening because I was sick.

It started with me being in the back alley of the apartment building I lived in for the first 6 years of my life. Right behind me was a brick wall and a dumpster right in front of it. Suddenly, I noticed some of my dolls randomly being human sized and having a conversation with each other in the distance. I walked up to them but they didn't seem to notice me for some weird reason. Interestingly, I remember actually feeling my body aching and feeling kind of dizzy in the dream at that very moment. Suddenly, I saw the dumpster behind me spontaneously combust into flames.

A few seconds later, there were some weird walls that came out of nowhere and started closing in on me. I was confused as to what was going on and then I became fully trapped in a box. Next thing I know, I end up in what can only be described as "the void of nothingness". It was literally a weird void which I was trapped in with nothing in it.

The final part of the dream involves me suddenly ending up in the city of Anaheim at Downtown Disney out of nowhere. The dizziness and aching body continued. I walked around and for some very bizarre reason, there was a zoo there where they had signs that said "please do not feed the animals". I remember seeing some geese behind a small, flimsy wooden pen. Then, I met someone dressed in a Tinkerbell costume who proceeded to talk to me and follow me around.

Then I woke up from the dream feeling very hot and sweaty, plus my muscles were pretty sore. I've also had a few other dreams where I've felt pain or a weird tingling sensation since then (such as one I had in February 2022 a few weeks before I had my wisdom teeth removed), but this one really sticks out to me.