I have two nightmares that just wont go away. the first is about nuclear war or seeing a nuclear bomg go off. you get that ohh SH** feeling when you see it. this has only intesified since 9-11. My second is where I have to protect my wife of kids and I cant. I am trying to punch this guy and its like I am moving in slow motion and my punches wont do a thing. Its ver frustrating
I have this weird dream that I am playing in a basketball game against some folks I have a huge rivalry with, and it starts out great, but over the course of the game, I begin to lose my sight. WEIRD......
IVFL: If you don't mind me suggesting, these both sound like classic representations of feeling powerless against outside forces. In the case of nuclear war, it is understandable. There are times when the brain uses dreaming as a way to, for lack of a better word, vent emotions including fear. However, to have it repeat and be mixed in with you inability to protect your family sounds very much like a representation of helplesness.
You guys are all funked up! I have had the nuclear bomb dream and the slow-mo dream too (very frustrating!) One of my craziest is I imagined I was at school and these two guys were fighting. When one punched the other these huge white burst would occur - it was just amazing too watch. Then I also have dreams where I am visualizing myself going to the bathroom - that usually wakes me up to go pee. Also I sometimes dream about a lost love, what if stuff... Really weird when you wake up and they are not there...
The worst occasionally recurring dream I have is that I have a lot of loose teeth. It is very real and I can literally feel them move dramatically to and fro in my mouth. The feeling is the same sensation I had when I was young and a tooth would get real loose prior to coming out.
That is, according to what I've read, one of the most common dreams among men. I've had those before too.
Jeff, Any suggestions on what the dreams I listed above might mean, and any ideas how to get rid of them? I'd like to just have some peaceful dreams once in a while. The Nightmares of B have been dragging me into an abyss that only Rocket's victories can pull me out. Thanks, B
I died once. I'll never forget it. Car slammed on it's breaks, I went thru winshield, then slid across pavement for about 30 yards, when I looked up a car's headlights slammed into me. I floated up from body, looked down at myself on the street, and then woke up. Holy Crap! It's as clear as day and I will never forget it. Typical dreams include my teeth falling out and forgetting my locker combination before a big exam. My favorite dream was when I made love to that blonde chick in movie Summer school and from TV Show Melrose Place. It was very real. Strangely, we made love on a big rock.
I always have dreams that freak me out when i wake up, but 10 seconds after I am awake I can't remember what they were about. This ALWAYS happens to me.
First off, you probably do have peaceful dreams, however, you just don't remember them. We all have a wide variety of dreams but we tend to remember the one's that are the most vivid or the most poignant. As for your dreams, it sounds like you have a lot of responsibility-related issues in your real life that are intruding on your dreams. The fact that your whole dream life is either swallowed up by or interrupted by (in the case of waking up after a positive dream) work in some way. The way to rid yourself of those images is to look into how you view your work experience. Dreams are a reflection of what we think and feel about our everyday lives. It is very likely that you feel oppressed and angry about having to work doing something that isn't what you really want. It sounds very much like your work experience in real life is just for the money and you resent that because you feel like it is taking away from time better spent doing things you enjoy. When you have the types of dreams where you are forced into working and then you wake up mad because you have to work in reality, that says something about how you see what you do. The only suggestion I could make would be to determine what it is you dislike so much about work and the preconceptions that come with working in general. For example, oftentimes people who do jobs they hate because of the money or because they think they have to for status or family resent the hell out of it. Who could blame them? Just examine what you are doing in your normal life and why you feel pushed into doing what you are doing and determine if there is a better way. Only when you rid yourself of those feelings of resentment over work will your dreams cease to bother pointing it out to you. And it doesn't necessarily mean you have to quit working and join a farming community. It just means you need to figure out WHY you resent it so much. Sometimes, it is because you feel forced to by family or because you feel like you have to make a certain amount of money. Examine those feelings and go from there. Hope that helped.
Jeff, not to get all sychophantic and s***, but you just become cooler the more you reveal about yourself on this BBS. I haven't looked into dreams like you have, but I agree about context, and the brain giving vent to emotions/thoughts in the back of your head. Recently, I've had a string of dreams which reflect ambivalency over something which I'd rather not discuss even in the anonymity of this BBS (and no, it's not about my sexuality. ). At any rate, that the dreams are reflecting concerns over this ambivalency I've been carrying around is quite clear. My girlfriend apparently has nightmares quite often, but she doesn't strike me as being a particularly stressed person (I know I'm more stressed than she is, and I rarely get nightmares now). Generally, why do people have nightmares? And why do some people get them more than others?
Thanks Jeff! Now that I think about it you have a pretty good point about the work dreams. I graduated two years ago and started working for a dot com and I loved it. Unfortunately the company went belly up 6 months later, and I haven't been able to get anywhere close to the salary I was getting. Also, I feel like my past two jobs haven't really come close to tapping my potential and I'm concerned that my options are limited as far as where I can go in the future with my current job. I like what I'm doing right now, but it's far too easy, and doesn't stimulate higher levels of thinking. Thanks again Jeff! (You should start charging!) B
Thanks. Well, pretty much everyone has wierd dreams. Some are more nightmarish than others. And, some dreams may constitute an unsettling dream if not a nightmare. IMO, people have nightmares for the same reasons we have life "events" (can't think of a better word at the moment). I don't believe things just happen. I think that life is like one big lesson and that what happens in our lives helps to teach us things about ourselves. In addition, the more you believe that all things that happen (good and bad) are about teaching us something, the more control you exert over your own life - you determine how things effect you instead of allowing the things to make that decision. Anyway, dreams are the same way, IMO. I think that dreams are just your brain's way of going through all the stuff in your head at night and sorting through it - kinda like a program on a computer that is taking inventory and re-organizing. As you dream, your mind is sending out all these things at once which tend to make dreams rather metaphorical. Having a nightmare (like any vivid dreams you might have), IMO, is your mind's way of trying to alert you to some issue that you may have been ignoring or just hadn't recognized. The longer you let it go, the more intense the nightmare's tend to become and the more they re-occur. It's like a subconscious messenger trying to get you to recognize something in your life and do something about it. The only way to get rid of them is to find out what it is the dream's are talking about and work on it when you are awake. I know that when I am feeling lazy and don't do all the work I should have on a project or my bills or something like that, I get crazy out-of-control dreams. This is my mind's way of saying, "Look, not doing what you need to do makes life more difficult and makes you feel bad. So, fix it or you'll keep having these dreams."
There are 2 dream phenomena that annoy me to no end: 1. When I really have to pee, I sometimes have a dream that I get out of bed and go pee and return to bed. Though I do NOT wet myself, I wake up later realizing I really gotta pee even though I thought I had taken care of it. 2. Anxiety dreams: I make up some problem in my dream that is utterly nonsensical to the waking mind. The problem is not a big deal either. But, I obsess on it and review the problem a thousand times over in my head without ever coming to any conclusions. So it could be, for example, that I should let my bird go on vacation, but I never do it, much less understand what that would entail. It ruins my sleep when I have the dream. The worst part is that I can realize I'm having the dream, stop it, and then it returns when I fall back asleep. The only cure I've found is to wake up, get out of bed and walk around a bit until I am completely utterly awake and thinking about something else and then go back to sleep.
At around 8 or 9 years old I would have the same nitemare over and over, not every night but about every 6 weeks or so. This is it, very dumb but it used to scare the **** outta me and I;d always wake up screaming and crying: The bath tub faucet dripping...drip, drip, drip. Dripping more and more... more dripping to a trickle... the trickle becomes a water flow, the flow becomes stronger and stronger until the water is going full blast very violently... and I'd wake up screaming!? My mother would come into my room and hug me (this was real) but when I opened my eyes, it seemed as if I was hallucinating and that my arms around my mother felt like a football field of length. (My mom is only 115lbs) That part was even scarier, until a few minutes passed and I sort of snapped out of it and came to my senses. Wierd thing was, I could always tell when I was gonna have one of those nitemares before I went to bed. I just felt really unsettled, and a bit feverish. Finally my mother took me to a "curandera" a lady who heals people with bad spirits and such ( a mexican thing I guess). The lady rubbed an egg all over my chest and legs and body and cracked it in a glass of water. Supposedly I had a bad spirit inside of me cuz the egg did something wierd. The old lady made me a glass of herb tea, lit some candles, said some prayers and I never had them since. but what the hell was that dream all about?! I'm not scared of water or baths, I love my mother and dad and family. I don;t believe in evil spirits especially at such a young age, I didn't even know what one was!? hmmmm....
I dont know what it means, but I have only had about 1 nightmare that I remember in the past 5 years or so. It happened recently and I remember it very vividly. I am in the old BFI building (mom used to work there.. brown building memorial and eldridge) and I am standing there with my sister in an office overlooking all the trees and my neighborhood which is right next to the building. So we are just sitting there looking out and atomic bomb is dropped right in front of us. The mushroom cloud goes up, and my sister starts crying hysterically. The weird thing is it has almost no effect on me. I dont cry, I dont feel scared. The only thing I can think about is my sister crying and that I want her to stop and tell her everything is fine. I just think about it now and dont understand why I didnt cry or feel threatened, rather I was more worryed about my sister's feelings! It was a very real dream. I could feel the heat in the air from the bomb going off and it felt like I was breathing in smoke even after I had waken up.... Dr. Jeff, what does it all mean?!
Drew: That is an interesting one. Are there any more details you care to share? It seems to me that the real key here is not so much your worry over your sister as the fact you seem really fixated on why you don't feel scared yourself. Sometimes, this has to do with the need to feel responsible in a given situation. Your sister may represent your actual sister or it could represent a female member of your family or even a girlfriend. It could also represent your family in general. Bombs dropping, much like storms, often represent chaos and lack of control. Since you seemed in control while this was happening but felt at least some degree of responsibility for calming your sister down, I would hypothesize that this has to do with your feelings of responsibility. It is almost like you are so attuned to your sister's fear that you don't allow yourself to express your own fear. In the dream, that is represented by a LACK of feeling. It sounds like there might be some chaos in your life for which you feel a measure of responsibility (maybe a large measure), but even though it is difficult and maybe even frightening, you are forcing yourself to be tough as a way of protecting someone. If you have any chaotic or difficult situations facing you, try to look closely at your feelings and how you express them. If you are holding back at all, the dream may be your way of saying that you need to let go a little. One other possibility that strikes me at the moment is that this may be representative of an under-reaction on your part to something happening in real life. When you think about it, the bomb blowing up and your sisters obvious fear are very real to you and yet you don't really feel anything. This may very possibly be your mind trying to point out that you are not paying close enough attention to a growing problem in your life that would seem obvious to most anyone else, particularly those closest to you. Let me know if any of this makes sense. I'm curious to hear more details. Lack of emotion in dreams relating to chaos is an interesting situation.
I am not sure about either the things you commented about. You said , "It is almost like you are so attuned to your sister's fear that you don't allow yourself to express your own fear. In the dream, that is represented by a LACK of feeling.." ... I am a pretty layed back person, and others would describe me that way. One of my problems has always been that I dont express myself often. Feelings are something that I do have trouble showing. I have maybe once in my life truly been angry with someone enough to yell at them. But, fear is one feeling I have no problems displaying..... Number two may be closer though. I under react to pretty much everything.(note the lack of displaying feelings other than fear) We are in the process of selling our house (lived here all my life) and my sister and mother are scared about moving. I haven't really even been concerned about it.... I am not sure what more details I can give you about the dreams. Something that caught my attention when I was re reading my earlier post is that I have only had one nightmare in the past 5 years that I even remember after waking up. Does this mean that I have had a almost worryless and good life? In my opinion, I have had a great life the past few years with little more to ask for. Are nightmares directly associated with bad things going on in your life?
