Sleep & Dreams

[prozacprincess]

I have terrible nightmares most nights and I’m quite often afraid to sleep. I also suffer from ‘exploding head syndrome’ where I hear an incredibly loud bang in my head when I’m just starting to sleep.

My nightmares have pretty much been the same theme since childhood. When I’m not having nightmares I have those frustrating dreams where I’m trying to pack up some house, or suitcase and I’m running out of time. Or trying to drive from the backseat of the car

 

[Maisie842]

Does anyone ever have dream premonitions?
I haven't personally but my granddad always used to dream of plane crashes a day or so before they happened.
I've always found premonitions really fascinating

My dad did once, and it wasn’t as altruistic as your grandad’s, but he dreamt the lottery numbers. He could only remember 4 of the number when he woke up, which he then placed that same day. All 4 that he’d remembered came up, which won us around £90. Needless to say my mum was furious he didn’t remember the rest

 

[Lalalalaaaaaa85]

I get sleep paralysis fairly regularly and it’s horrible. I’ve often panicked thinking I’m genuinely paralysed. One time I had it and could hear footsteps up my stairs (this was a hallucination) my son was a baby at the time and I was really panicking as I desperately tried to break out of the paralysis before whatever was coming up the stairs could get to my son. Awful.

I dream very vividly as well and I dream a lot, even short snoozes I will usually dream and I’ve recently been able to dabble into lucid dreaming where I become aware I’m dreaming and can then mess about with the dream. One time I became aware I was dreaming so decided to jump out of a window and when I woke up I got scared that one day I might get confused whilst awake and think I’m dreaming and do myself some harm so I’ve stopped being a daredevil in my lucid dreams

 

[WhatABore]

An idea from. The 'Today I learned" thread.

Sleep can be so fascinating so a thread to talk about dreams, their meanings, sleep paralysis and all other things sleep related!

Do you think dreams have a meaning?
Have you experienced sleep paralysis?
Other weird sleep behaviours?
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I'm going to repost my comment I made in there about my own sleep!

I get 2 different things.
One being sleep paralysis where I can't move. And I can see and hear things. The worst was a really dark haired horrible looking woman on top of me pinning me down.
This time around, luckily my partner was there and woke me up, he panicked because of the way I was breathing.
Other times it's like I can see the room but cannot wake up or move, no matter how hard I try I just can't get my eyes open or keep them open and I'll be trying constantly.

Another thing I get is where I can actually move, I guess it may be similar to sleep walking, apart from I don't very often get up.
But it's apparently where your brain has half woken up so still hallucinating like a dream, but awake enough to still move about/speak.
I can see things, imagine scenarios going on ect.
I see animals/insects/snakes ect in my room, I can see my partner asleep next to me, mid trying to get them away, it's like my brain wakes up properly and I realise what I'm doing.

I remember when I was a teen and had 2 friends stay over, one who stayed over a lot.
And I was trying to open my bedroom door because I thought the dog wanted to come in. And I remember waking up mid trying to let the dog in to one friend asking what I was doing and the other replying "She does it all the time, don't worry"
I will often say random things and then realise when they reply that it's completely random.
I had another time I got up and put my bra under my pajamas because i thought there was a group of my partners friends in the living room.

I don't know if it's related, but I've always had very very high REM sleep.

Any time I've measured my sleep (although I understand not completely accurate)
My sleep is always around 50% or more REM. And on the odd occasion it isn't above 50%, it's below 5%.
Where as for anyone else, I've never really seen it above 20%. My partner's and sister's is usually 12-15%

 

[leon19]

My dreams baffle me at the best of times but this one I had just last week has freaked me out! So I dreamt about 1 of the mums I speak to on the school run that she was pregnant. It was a really vivid dream and I remember waking up and thinking that's weird she's never been in one of my dreams before. She's always said she was done having kids. Anyway I saw her the next day and said oh so weird I had a dream about you last night that you were pregnant thought it would just make her laugh. Literally a few days later she's told me just found out she's pregnant I thought she was joking but she's not

 

[ElChanguito]

I’ve had sleep paralysis at times of acute stress. I think that my blankets are coming up over my face and I’m suffocating, or I think a cat has jumped on me and is walking up me (I can “feel” it walking over me so realistically), or that someone is lurking in my room It’s truly terrifying and I have to fight it to wake myself up.

My dreams are very weird… I’ll often be in places that feel so different and alien, and I feel different, though people from my past are always there with me. I have some that have recurred over a long time - that my home gets invaded by a gang of strange men; that there is a local town completely unknown to me that I must visit; that I go to a huge supermarket or mall and I feel acute stress not knowing what to buy and how I’ll get home; other ones where I remember I own an abandoned stately home and I explore it and it’s labyrinthine and I become lost… The dreams leave me feeling confused and somehow bereft, I feel desperate to go back in and resolve them.

 

[Eirawen]

Dreamt the other night that I was with a group of people (I didn't really know them) but we were being controlled by Paul McCartney who insisted on seeing all our possessions and would confiscate what he thought was inappropriate. We were frantically trying to hide stuff so he wouldn't see it, we were on a train and when it stopped the train was suspended in the air so we couldn't get out, but 2 cats managed to climb on board which I was happy about
---
If

Does anyone hVe dreams that kind of continue on from each other? I often do (not every night just now and again, maybe once a week) I've mentioned kt to other people and no one else has the same

If I am dreaming and wake up I will sometimes continue with the same dream when I fall back to sleep.

 

[Lalalalaaaaaa85]

Also hate it when a loud bang wakes me with a start but it was all in my head/dream!

 

[Lalalalaaaaaa85]

I remember as a child my mum telling me she always dreamt of houses, of being in a house which in the dream she thought of as her home, our family home but it was completely different. I now have very similar dreams! Always dreaming of being in my house but the house is nothing like my home. In my dreams the house is also often haunted and I’m quite frightened.

With regards to recurring locations I definitely feel I have this or else it’s just really strong deja vu/my brain telling me I’ve dreamt of this location before.

 

[Souffle]

I have a recurrent dream where I know I’m about to die and start to panic that I need to text my loved ones to say goodbye. I’m so scared in my dream that I actually physically do grab my mobile ‘phone to type my text. Luckily this wakes me up. It has happened so many times that I have had to warn those close to me that if they ever receive a text from me in the middle of the night saying something like “I’m about to die. Goodbye. I love you.” then I’m just having a nightmare and sleep texting.
Thankfully I’ve always woken up with my mobile in my hand before I’ve typed anything. I hate it and it really unnerves me. The strange thing is, in real life I’m not actually scared of dying but in my dream the fear is awful.

This is kind of similar, I once had a dream that I was one of those women that was pregnant without knowing. I had my baby (in the dream) and then woke up halfway through texting my boyfriend at the time to say we’d had a surprise child! Imagine if I’d sent it

 

[Mamacita]

I get sleep paralysis a lot, it's mostly the house being on fire, people screaming at me with guns an gas masks on, people breaking in etc, I've started to learn that it's sleep paralysis am going through at the time so can sometimes calm myself down to focus enough to kick my leg an wake myself fully

Am also a lucid dreamer, which can be ok at times but not something I'd recommend anyone train themselves to do, nightmares are dreams too an fear can very quickly take over an you forget it's a dream, am not sure if lucid dreaming causes your senses to still be there or if that's another thing as I can smell, touch, feel an taste in dreams, I've woken up sick because I dreamt I gorged myself on chocolate

I can also feel and taste in dreams! Sometimes I'm able to lucid dream too

Does anyone have certain common settings for dreams? I have dreams in random settings but there are locations that always come back like my school and a few other places. My dreams are often set in those locations but the locations can be changed slightly and it's always a different story in the dream

 

[WhatABore]

Don't know if it's already been mentioned but my dream last night reminded me.
Something that happens a lot is someone's in trouble or I need to call 999 for whatever reason and never can. It never goes through

 

[Meringue22]

I've had something similar when im looking for help and just can't text or phone anyone. Seems to be the case with dreams that there is a lot of frustration- can't get somewhere on time, can't call people, can't shout for help

Also not sure if those who have experienced lucid dreaming are the same, but whenever it happened to me, I couldn't really control the dream, I could only control my actions in it

I dream something similar where I cannot dial the number I need. Or I can’t text. It’s so frustrating and I get really upset and panicky. I KNOW the number but it’s almost as if my fingers don’t work anymore!

 

[Snippysnips]

I get sleep paralysis a lot, it's mostly the house being on fire, people screaming at me with guns an gas masks on, people breaking in etc, I've started to learn that it's sleep paralysis am going through at the time so can sometimes calm myself down to focus enough to kick my leg an wake myself fully

Am also a lucid dreamer, which can be ok at times but not something I'd recommend anyone train themselves to do, nightmares are dreams too an fear can very quickly take over an you forget it's a dream, am not sure if lucid dreaming causes your senses to still be there or if that's another thing as I can smell, touch, feel an taste in dreams, I've woken up sick because I dreamt I gorged myself on chocolate

 

[BorisBear]

I love dreaming have done my whole life, I would go to bed early as a child to dream!

Had sleep paralysis twice both horrific frozen & couldn't breathe traumatised me.

I dream about my days at school over 20 years ago very often, very vivid & I can wake up quite emotional when it involves love or heartbreak. I rarely dream about my husband or daughter/family.

I dreamt about the boxing day tsunami a couple of days before it happened & there be a few other smaller things too.

I often dream I’m someone else, I’ve just woken up from a dream about me being a woman who broke into a wealthy woman’s house who was selling lovely clothes on Vinted so I could try them on. Her husband tries to catch me but I escape. I caught my face in a mirror & i was foreign in my dream.

I have the best sex dreams too, often with celebs I fancy

 

[Lalalaand]

Does anyone ever have dream premonitions?
I haven't personally but my granddad always used to dream of plane crashes a day or so before they happened.
I've always found premonitions really fascinating

not a dream premonition as such but I went on a school trip when I was about 11 or 12 and the volunteers were checking everyone was in bed etc. so our room door was open. There was a really old fashioned fire alarm outside our room on the wall that I was staring at really intently and I could hear and see it going off though it wasn’t. About 3am that morning the fire alarm went off and we all had to go outside! That freaked me out.
I do sometimes feel like I know things are going to happen before they do or I’ll like I’ll be watching a question and answer gameshow and I know what the contestants answer will be even when it’s wrong I know what they’re going to guess creepy.

 

[Rosie glow]

I've always had very vivid dreams and occasionally nightmares I do remember a lot of them I used to keep a dream diary something I want to start up again. I also turn some of my dreams in to short stories as I like to write.
I have dreamed in languages I can't speak and understood every word I have dreamed about things i wouldn't normally understand irl and understood them.
I dream about lost relatives too sometimes in everyday life now and I have experienced sleep paralysis once I also sometimes have an experience where I feel like I'm free falling and I can feel the stomach drop feeling like if you're on a fairground ride I have no explanation for it.

 

[WhatIKnowIllTellYou.]

When you’re falling asleep and jolt awake what is everyone’s reason for the jolt if anybody understands what I’m on about lol. Mine is tripping over a kerb. I’ve asked a friend and they trip over a tree root!

 

[Tide'sout]

Great thread @WhatABore. Sleep paralysis is horrific and that's no exaggeration. For me I can see every detail of my bedroom, even clothes hanging up. A grotesque figure, normally with a mask like face, comes gliding in. Glides so close, I swear I can feel its breath on my face and there's not a damn thing I can do as completely paralysed.

I've noticed Tattlers calling them "Sleep Paralysis Demons" and having a bit of a laugh about them. Giving them a name and belittling them has really helped me. Glide off you ugly gits and never return

 

[WhatABore]

I've had it a lot where I've never been to a place and they appear in my dreams and occasionally I've driven past them and recognised the place from a dream. Even though I'd never been there before