Nightmares

Favorite nightmare? Isn't that an oxymoron?

I quit smoking pot a number of years ago due to random drug testing here at work. But every couple of months, I've have a dream in which I smoke a joint or a bowl or something similar, and I always freak out over it. Even after I wake up, it takes a few minutes to convince myself I didn't get high.

 

Mrs. JB:

When I saw the title of this thread, I almost didn't clock it, because I was too embarrassed of my most common nightmare... which happens to be almost the exact same as yours.

For me, it's not that I have to take the exam though, but that I missed any # of deadlines on papers since I've never attended the class. Always wake up trying to remember which class it could be...

 

How very strange that you started this thread, Mrs. JB. Just last night I had what was easily the strangest dream of my life, and I thought I would start a thread about it asking others for their weird dreams. But it kind of fits in this thread too, so I will just post it here.

I and many others had been kidnapped (this process was not part of the dream, I just knew it had happened) and placed in a large house that looked strangely like my grandfather's. As we (no one else there did I recognize) were all kept there, it slowly became very obvious to us that something very evil was going on. People would show up, take one of us away and that person would never come back. Various tortures were performed on the people in the house, but never really on me. In fact, the odd thing is that I never actually saw any of the tortures occur, but I just knew they happened (this always happens to me in dreams, I just have this acquired knowledge of the situation).

Anyway, time slowly passed, and then finally someone came and took me out of the house. I was brought around out front by my captors (who were humans when they came to get me, but slowly transformed into these strange imp/demon creatures as we got outside). I was placed on this wooden moving scaffolding thing. They made me stand there, with no restraints or anything, and it slowly started moving upward. In the dream, I guess I just assumed these creatures wouldn't understand anything I said to them, because I never vocally questioned what they were doing, I just accepted it.

They sent me up on the wooden scaffolding about 100 feet or so in the air. At this point, the wind picks up, and a humongous cyclone forms on the ground around the scaffold. It picks up dirt and foliage so that it has this odd brownish green hue. In the center of this cyclone forms this strange demonic face (it was gigantic). The face starts speaking, but it is in a language I have never heard. It just sounded like your typical demonic language a horror movie would have. Very deep and throaty, and it sounded similar to Latin, I think. At that point, after it had repeated its evil message a few times, the suction of the cyclone started pulling on me. I reached out and grabbed the wooden railing of the scaffolding, but the pull was very strong. The whole while, the giant, evil head keeps speaking its message, and the cyclone is pulling at me towards its center, which is now the head's mouth. I could only hold on for so long, and then my hands slipped and I fell quickly down into the mouth of the huge demon head.

Now, let me stop right here and say that, up until this point, this entire dream had been very frightening, and NOTHING about it suggested anything other than a terrible nightmare that I would have to wake up from. But then this next part occurred.

After I was sucked through the mouth, I appeared suddenly on the wooden scaffold. The head and cyclone were still there, but wind suction was no longer pulling on me. The head was still speaking, but inexplicably, I could now understand what it was saying. Not that I knew what the words meant, but I was hearing them in English at that point, even though I knew the head was still speaking in the same language. But here is the REALLY, REALLY, REALLY strange and confusing part. The words it was speaking were exactly, verbatim this: "You need the defensive presence of Wang Zhi Zhi. You need the defensive presence of Wang Zhi Zhi." It just kept on and on repeating that message until I finally woke up. At that point, though, it no longer felt like a nightmare, because the ending was so confusing and comical on many levels I couldn't bring myself to be even the slightest bit scared about the rest of the disturbing dream.

Anyone have ANY idea what the hell this dream was all about? I have had plenty of different nightmares in my life, but this is the first time I had a dream that started out as a nightmare and finished as some kind of weird joke.

 

Raven: You either need to see...

a. A Priest
b. A Therapist
c. Wes Craven
d. Mark Cuban



Wow. That is some dream. People are always asking me to interpret dreams so, I'll give this a shot. It is harder for me when I don't hear someone say it because people emphasize certain words that have a tendency to make a difference, but I'll give it a go.

What I found most interesting is that the imagery in your dream shifted rather dramatically from cerebral to visceral. At one point, you were essentially just thinking about what was going on. The second half of the dream, you were in the middle of it. However, and this is the really interesting part, you appear to be the observer in the dream throughout all of it.

Yes, it was scary, but you describe it in detail as if you were paying really close attention the whole time. Generally, when a person is afraid, details get hard to remember. The fact that you remember so much is significant.

Anyway, to me, there are a few key elements you mentioned...

1. It was kinda like your grandfather's house but full of strangers.

This would denote some type of familiarity yet the strangers denote feeling out of place. Dreams with this type of situation tend to point to a feeling of being out of touch with those around you despite the fact that they are close to you in relative terms.

2. There was torture occurring but not to you.

This is another image of disconnect. You knew it was happening and you knew it was "evil" but you were powerless against it AND it wasn't effecting you. This can signify guilt because often survivors of terrible situations (plane crashes, serious crimes, etc) experience feelings of guilt because they survived and others didn't.

3. There was the mention of demons and evil on several occassions.

Evil is almost always indicative of chaos or anger in dreams. It is focused imagery that makes the dreamer feel powerless. Generally, evil represents emotion rather than an actual person or entity.

4. That wooden scaffolding.

The fact that you mention it twice and say "wood" more than once is significant. Why not a platform or a "metal" railing? Wood represents a degree of frailty. It is enough to hold you up but can crush under pressure more easily than metal or another substance.

5. The mention of a cyclone.

Cyclones, storms, tornadoes are all indications of a lack of control. The fact that you are falling is another key to this one.

6. The lack of understanding of language and the happy ending.

A lack of understanding what someone is saying or someone saying jibberish is often a sign of some normal mis-understanding. What makes this element of your dream so significant is that once you were able to understand, the storm cleared up, you were ok and you even left feeling fine.

7. Finally, the stament that you need "defensive presence."

This is key not because it is related to basketball but because of the statement of defense which connotates protection from harm and the fact that you need a "presence" or protector.

What does all this mean?

Well, if I were to guess, I would say that this is the result of a feeling of vulnerability despite the sense that you "should" feel safe and ok. The whole idea that you are in the presence of strangers and that you are essentially alone and unprotected despite being in a relatively familiar place would seem to incdicate that you feel lost among people who feel like strangers to you even if they aren't.

It would also seem that you feel powerless in the situation and that you feel like some part of your life is being manipulated without your permission and even as you watch without doing anything.

The lesson is that having a defense against these things not only makes you feel better (and less afraid) but it also resolves the out-of-control situation. It's like in your life when you find things to be hectic and frustrating, if you find a way to center yourself and get some distance from the situation, not only do you feel better, but the situation seems to be less crazy.

I'd say look around and see if there is any part of your life that feels out of control and where you feel out of touch with those in the situation. See if getting some distance doesn't help to clarify things.

Hope that helped.

 

The wierdest thing is Wang Zhi-Zhi cant play D worth a ****.

 

At the beginning of the season, I had a nightmare that the Rockets lost a game to the Raptors, 169-58. Pretty scary...

 

I will admit at this point, Jeff, that I have always thought of dream interpretation as a form of quackery. My understanding of how dream's work is that it is just random synapses firing while you are unconcious, and often times what happens in dreams is just a product of things you have experienced lately. For instance, I live in Dallas, so I see a lot of the Mavs, and a very good friend of mine is Chinese, so he is a big fan of Wang Zhi Zhi, which kind of makes me one by association. I figured that was how certain things got into my dream. However, having said that, the advice which you imparted below is very applicable to some things that are going on in my life right now. To be honest, your advice was a solution that had already occurred to me as a good idea, and I think I will follow it. But the amazing thing to me was how dead on some of the interpretation was in regards to my situation (I won't spell that out, it is boring and would take too long).

Yes, it was scary, but you describe it in detail as if you were paying really close attention the whole time. Generally, when a person is afraid, details get hard to remember. The fact that you remember so much is significant.

I have a few questions, Jeff. When you say that details are hard to remember when a person is afraid, do you mean when concious, or just pertaining to dreams? Because throughout my life, the only dreams that I generally remember with any kind of detail are my nightmares. Most fade from memory very quickly after I awaken, but the scary dreams do not. Is this abnormal?

1. It was kinda like your grandfather's house but full of strangers.

2. There was torture occurring but not to you.

Surprisingly, your analysis here has a great deal of pertinence to my current situation.

4. That wooden scaffolding.

The fact that you mention it twice and say "wood" more than once is significant. Why not a platform or a "metal" railing? Wood represents a degree of frailty. It is enough to hold you up but can crush under pressure more easily than metal or another substance.

I am glad you picked up on this. In the dream, for whatever reason, I did focus on the "woodeness" of the railing and scaffolding more than I thought was normal. I can still imagine the way it feeled on my hands as the cyclone was pulling me. That sharp scraping you get from wood that is not well sanded down. I don't really know how pertinent the frailty represented by the wood is to my personal situation, but I do feel like there is something there.

7. Finally, the stament that you need "defensive presence."

This is key not because it is related to basketball but because of the statement of defense which connotates protection from harm and the fact that you need a "presence" or protector.

Interesting. This is not something that had occurred to me at all. I hadn't really thought about the wording of the demon head's message. I just assumed I was utterly insane for having a nightmare turn into a subconciously suggested Rockets basketball acquisition.


I'd say look around and see if there is any part of your life that feels out of control and where you feel out of touch with those in the situation. See if getting some distance doesn't help to clarify things.

Hope that helped.

This does indeed help a bit. Just out of curiosity, how do you know so much about dream interpretation? How much of an exact science is this?

Oh yeah, and how much do I owe you?

 

Mostly, I do too. I HATE those big books of dream interpretation where they have a list of all these different things and then say, "Well, if you dreamt of riding a horse, it means you are impotent" and stupid things like that.

I'm much more of a context person. I like to look at context and see how it fits in with the whole dream rather than just one thing or another. Plus, I tend to believe that everything in a dream is a reprentation of a feeling or occurrance in your life. It is kinda the way for your brain to mull over things that have happened or things that might be happening. Because our brain picks up on things we don't always conciously grasp, dreams have a way of bringing that stuff to the surface.

I think both. We have a chemical in our body (cortisol) that actually blocks memories during traumatic events, which is why people often don't remember car accidents or things like that. When those things happen, certain chemicals in our body have a tendency to increase to protect us from that traumatic memory.

In edition, the increase of those chemicals (including adrenaline) can cause us to not remember details with the clarity we might in a calmer situation. In dreams, our body and our mind often work similarly to when we are awake if not exactly. What I was referring to is the detail with which you represented your dream. The exactitude in your case is probably due to the powerful emotional imagery that you dreamt.

Most dreams are lost. Some people actually keep dream "diaries" by keeping a pad and pen by the bed so they can write them down if they wake up at night. Since most of these, IMO, are musings by the brain AND we are barely coherent when we first recall them in our waking state, it is understandable that they fade.

In your case, the vividness of the dream and the real-ness that it evoked probably carried it over longer. The stronger the imagery in a dream, the more likely we are to remember it even if it was a nightmare.

Ah, see, you didn't relate things like the fact that wood wasn't sanded down or how you could feel it. Texture is important. I was using the elements at hand but your description adds to it. The fact that it was rough and "scraping" would seem to indicate that even this scaffolding that was supposed to hold you up was, in a way, painful. It was as if the one thing supporting you was also causing you pain. That is a very powerful image.

Easy to get off on basketball here! The reality is that the fact the words were repeated over and over both incoherently and understandibly is significant. Words have a tendency to be cryptic in dreams. You have to stretch a little to get the meaning.

I'll bill you.

I studied dreams and dream interpretation as a hobby in college. I used to keep a dream diary and attempt lucid dreaming (to literally be conscious while in a dream), things like that. I found that I had a knack for understanding imagery used in dreams. I read a lot of books on the subject and found that many of them seemed a bit textbook-ish. They tried too hard to define dream occurrances without focusing on context.

Like most things of this nature, it is hardly exact. I just try to look at things and see if I can put the pieces together. There are certain images, emotions and occurrances in dreams that are generally universal (falling, showing up naked in public, etc) - almost everyone has them in common. In addition, many things are common in terms of how they are represented. I think this is mostly because we all experience things as humans that relate to us in a similar manner, particularly being from the same country and culture.

Anyway, glad I could be of help.

Next...

 

I think I've had about 348282040230 dreams about school. They always are either I can't get to a class on time or I need to turn something in but I haven't even done it or I have a test and I haven't studied. Sometimes the dreams are even in the same school as previous dreams but rarely, if ever, are they in schools I have actually attended. It is always so damn frustrating.

When I'm late it's usually me trying to find a room I have been in earlier in the dream but for some reason I absolutely cannot find it anymore. I don't ever actually get there before I wake up.

When I have an assignment due, it's always some paper that I either remember earlier in the dream hearing about but not knowing the due date or I walk in and find out it's due and then try to rush and do it somehow. Of course, I never actually accomplish anything and wake up before it's actually due.

And if I have a test I never actually can read the problems on the test (although I may even answer a few, don't ask me how that works) and again wake up before anything is resolved.

So basically school dreams are just one long extremely frustrating process where nothing is accomplished and I wake up trying to convince myself nothing in real life has actually happened.

Occasionaly I have dreams where some person/people are either trying to kill me or a large group of people I'm a part of. The last one a lot of us were in a room upstairs and gunmen were on the stairs and pretty much shot everyone trying to flee, I never saw any of the shooting and never got shot but anyway it was fairly weird. I think only one time ever in a dream have I actually been injured (some guy sprayed some acidic thing on me from like a supersoaker type gun) so I usually don't get hurt but the dream is still bad.

The large majority of my dreams are nightmares, but occasionally I have good ones. The coolest are when I wake up from a good dream (usually snooze alarm) but then am able to fall back asleep and continue the dream until the next alarm. Sometimes I can do it twice.

 

I'm by no means an expert on dream interpretation, but the ones I keep having have to have some significance. Recurring themes cannot be ignored, unless you're watching a movie directed by Kevin Smith.

My nightmare is mostly a nuisance-mare. I'm preparing to play a show with my band (never the same faces, as I've gone through a whole lot of bandmates, and I gig VERY infrequently), and I'm walking around a club/house/stadium/whatever, and I never get around to playing the show. I don't get lost, and it's not as if I get up on stage and my guitar breaks, I just never get around to it.

Or I'm getting ready to do anything that would be wicked fun (see a show, play a game, meet someone, anything), and I never get around to it. It just never happens. And, yes, I've had the one where Miss so-and-so is up in a bedroom waiting for me, and I never get around to visitating said bedroom.

Don't know what it means, but I'm sure even an intern psychotherapist (they have those, right?) could deconstruct me in one afternoon.

 

Being a waiter, I always have dreams where I am overwhelmed by customers. I'm late getting to the lady who wants extra lemons or the fat guy who has to have an extra basket of bread or he'll want to talk to the manager. The party of 8 who walks in late or without reservations yet insists on being seated now. The customer who wants everything for free because the food came out ten minutes late. The customer who threatens to not tip you because the chef cooked his/her steak wrong. The manager yelling at me because he thinks I'm rushing a customer or not turning my tables fast enough. The chef yelling at me because I don't have a free hand to run out food.

All of this has happened to me while waiting tables. The difference in my nightmares are that I can't escape these situations.

 

This is extremely hard for me to admit, but I used to have really bad nightmares about Kermit the Frog. I used to dream about him chasing me around the house I used to live in, and then when he caught me he hung me up on giant hooks next to my family.

But I'm alright now.....

Yes, mother. I've taken my medication......

Anyone care to analyse this?

 

I used to have black and white, sort of grungy and fuzzy nightmares, about whenever I got up to the bathroom (in my dream), a thing would chase me. I would never see the thing, but I would know it's there.

 

My most frequent dream/nightmare involves me trying to run somewhere, and I just can't - all I can take is slow loping steps, or every time I try to take a step, one leg gets caught behind the other. I wouldn't call it a nightmare, because I don't think I'm ever scared, ir running away from something - just trying to race, or get somewhere in a hurry.

I think I've heard a psychiatric explanation for this dream in the past , but I can't remember it.

 

Kelly: I wonder if all musicians have that one because I get that too. You are correct when you say reoccurring dreams are significant. It's like anything that repeats. IMO, dreams like the one's we have is a combination of practical and emotional. On the practical side, I'm not a terribly organized person. I try to be but it doesn't always happen. On the emotional side, dreams where you are lost or forgetful and the like are almost always related to feelings of being out of control or unorganized.

getsmartnow: Man, that is ODD. I'd have to hear more details to really dig in.

davo: There is also a practical explanation for that dream. One thing that happens to us when we are dreaming is that the body partially shuts down our voluntary nervous system. But, in really intense dreams, we try to do things like open our eyes or run and have difficulty because our physical movements are restricted by our brain as a means of protecting us from injury while we are sleeping. That's often why running is so difficult in very intense, deep dreaming - because, on a conscious level, you are actually trying to pump those legs and just can't. However, psychologically, running symbolizes, most of the time, escape from something. It can be running scared or running away. It can be escaping fear or even a feeling of being trapped. A lot has to do with context.

By the way, my nightmares always involve elevators falling. Part of that whole feeling out of control thing. Yuck.

 

Mrs. JB.

I rarely have nightmares anymore, but missing an exam or being late for one was one of the only recurring ones I ever had. I do recall having yours a couple of times.

When I was younger, another one was being chased but your feet felt like lead and you couldn't run. They scared me pretty well, so I started willing myself to become 'aware' during nightmares. I found that I could gain control of the dream, and put someone else in the 'chased' role; suddenly it was like I was watching a TV show. Ultimately, I could end dreams and wake-up if I wanted too.

A few years ago a friend of ours was having bad nightmares. I told her about my technique, and it worked for her.

 

My most recurring nightmare is eerily similar to this. It's where I have just realized the day I am to graduate college that I am 3 credits short. Sometimes it's a bit different: I have to write a paper in order to graduate, and the deadline is coming up.

When I first graduated college I started having this dream. Back then it would take me a bit of waking up to realize that it wasn't a dream. Now it just gives me a chuckle.

 

I have a few different reoccuring nightmares. The school one is pretty common for me, and man I wish I could get that one to stop. I'm tired of dreaming about tests I don't know about, 25 page papers I still need to write and sleeping through class, etc. Now that I'm out of school also I have nightmares about getting up, going to work and working a full day. Now that wouldn't seem too bad to most people, but the problem with that is that I wake up and have to do the exact same thing so it feels like I'm working 16 hours instead of 8. But the worst nightmare of all is that I'm with some really attractive girl that I'm in love with (no idea who), and then I always, without fail wake up and realize I'm single and I can't go back to sleep because I have to work. That's by far the worst one, since it's like a slap in the face.

B

edit: One other very common dream that I'd love to get rid of is that I keep getting hired back at a job I was let go from. In the dream the workplace is very Orwellian, and causes me a lot of stress. I feel like there are multiple cameras in my office and that every keystoke is recorded and used against me. I'm working very hard in the dream but I never seem to get the full recognition I feel like I deserve. Only one time in the dream did I get awarded employee of the month, and in the dream I felt like I got it because they thought I'd quit if I didn't get recognition. I currently live across the street from this company, but I now work 50 miles away, and I'm hoping when I move this nightmare will end.