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The Dreams Megathread vs We Need To Go Deeper

No Nay Xes

Ex-Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 10, 2004
Messages
257
How do I stop remembering my dreams? They're too intense and.. bad is the only word I can describe. I cringe thinking about them and want to claw out the memory from my body (if that was even possible). Is there anyway to stop dreaming?

Cuz damn i hate these dreams.

Thanks.
 
^^ if you can't give good advice, don't post.

Perhaps you should do something to try and get the images out of your mind.. write about your dreams or something... purge them from your mind in other ways than coming out in the subconscious to bother you.
 
randycaver said:
Perhaps you should do something to try and get the images out of your mind.. write about your dreams or something... purge them from your mind in other ways than coming out in the subconscious to bother you.

Very good advice :)

Usually what happens in your dreams relates to what is going on in your life or how you are feeling. Though I don't know of a way you can "control" dreams. You can however deal with your real life problems and hope that when your life is balanced, your bad dreams will go away.
 
i used to have horrible recurrant nightmares, things like walking along a beach and suddenly stepping on something squishy and lukewarm and looking down and realizing that it was a rotting baby's corpse :|

they were so bad that i woke up screaming in the middle of the night and i'd flail and hit the wall... for me they were actually dream images which occurred during REM sleep, my body used to have a particular dysfunction where i'd remain slightly awake during my REM periods, into Beta Waves but i'd still be dreaming. the significance of this is that the dreams muddled with reality, i'd sometimes open my eyes and see my room and it would be a hallucinatory nightmare, i'd see the couch or the desk and then rotting corpses would fall onto them etc. etc. your beta waves are the brain waves that you experience when you're completely sober and awake, your normal daily consciousness. REM (rapid eye movement sleep) is similar in a way to Beta waves, except that your consciousness is not based on sensory experience, you are not usually conscious and you are in effect paralyzed. ever seen a dog sleep and watch them yelp and make little whimpers or jerk their legs about and make snorting noises while they're sleeping? humans sort of do the same thing during REM. it's a device used by the brain to stop us from getting out of bed and sleepwalking our dreams and injuring ourselves.

you need to distinguish between nightmares and night terrors, because there are different treatments for both. even though night terrors are affiliated with children much more, they can still happen in adults, though it's usually pretty rare. you need to record when the bad dreams are happening. night terrors happen during the first hour and sometimes hour and a half of your sleep cycle during the n-REM (non REM) cycle of Delta wave sleep -- which is the deepest level of sleep you can achieve, which is the state which replenishes your brain chemicals, etc. if your bad dreams occur during the first 1 1/2 hours of your sleep, or if you suddenly wake up out of the dream sweating all over, if you scream, or thrash around, that is a night terror, which is usually treated as a physical problem. nightmares which occur during REM and real dreamtime are usually associated with mental illness and may even be early onset signals of certain disorders and should be definately treated by a therapist. another way to tell nightmare from night terror is if you can remember vivid emotions other than fear directly associated with your dream. if you can remember jealousy, anger, rage, betrayal, embarassment, any of those, then you're likely having nightmares rather than night terrors. you usually can remember vivid details associated with nightmares as well, intricacies of the dream, detailed plot etc. you usually only remember the emotion of fear or horror and not much of the dream with a night terror.

if you're still unable to distinguish between the two, go to your general practicioner or shrink if you have one, tell them about it, and ask to go to a sleep lab. i had to do this, they put little electrodes which read your brain waves on your head during the night, and observe your breathing and pulse rate to determine what exactly is going on with your brain.

for me, they've gone away... what they did with me was try ALL sorts of different sleeping medications to knock me into a deeper sleep where i would dream less. benzodiazepines such as klonopin (6mg before bedtime) for about 3 1/2 years and i was okay... my brain just re-learned how to sleep i guess. i know for a fact that if you want to just stop remembering your dreams well take benzodiazepines about 45 minutes before you go to sleep - and long lasting ones, not short acting ones such as ativan or xanax. klonopin would be ideal. ambien didn't work for me, it only increased the vividness of my dreams... also, st. john's wort has been known to work for some people when taken everyday like an SSRI if you're shy of psych meds.

if you can let me know via here or pm whether they are in fact nightmares or night terrors, i'll be glad to give you more help. i've been through something similar and know a fair deal about this sort of thing.

oh and randycaver, writing your dreams down will help you to maybe see patterns such as frequency of familiar or friendly interactions, frequency of recurrant emotions, etc. but not much more than that. you can draw paralells to your daily life and try to pin them on dreams, but that only seems to correllate for people who aren't having nightmares. usually night terrors especially and nightmares come out of nowhere and have to be treated like a psychological disorder (they're actually both in the DSM - IV), and writing down your dreams ALWAYS makes you remember them more vividly, so i'd advise against doing that in this case unless the original poster's therapist or dr. thinks it's a good idea to do so, i know that i used to keep a dream journal to try and sort out what was going on, and it only made them more intense, vivid, and frequent so that i'd remember about 3 dreams/night instead of just 1.

anyway, here are some links that might help you:
http://www.nightterrors.org/
here's a page on medications used to treat night terrors, with klonopin at the top of the list.
http://www.nightterrors.org/med.html
FAQ regarding nightmares:
http://www.asdreams.org/nightma.htm

- good luck

p.s. don't ever believe any of those dream dictionary things, they're complete bullshit & they're laughed at by every reputable psychiatrist out there & will probably do more harm than good.
 
OMG I have exactly the same problem.

Every night I have these vivid dreams of people I love dying infront of me or people chasing me with guns.

I have no advice to really help you but dreams are apparently a manifestation of your fears so maybe therapy or sleeping tablets might help you.

I also like to sleep next to someone cause I find that fixes it and I can cuddle them if im upset :).
 
You could look into lucid dreaming. If you can "wake" yourself in your dreams and realize it's a dream you can then confront these nightmares you're having directly. Tell them you want them to go away or ask them why they won't leave you alone because it's really bothering you. Might sound weird but you're pretty much talking to your brain, can help alot.
 
Ah, i have night terrors, thanks!

I don't remember exact details of the dream, or most of the dream at all. However, i remember intense emotions as when I think of the dream (or rather the idea of my past dream pops into my head), I feel this strong emotion (anger/sad/etc).

Could be cuz I'm depressed too.
 
Night Terrors Symptoms: Sudden awakening from sleep, persistent fear or terror that occurs at night, screaming, sweating, confusion, rapid heart rate, inability to explain what happened, usually no recall of "bad dreams" or nightmares, may have a vague sense of frightening images.

Yeah. That fits. Thanks for the links~
 
^^
depression definately will affect your dreams. Dreams are images which represent how you feel. If your feeling angry, scared, sad etc your dreams will mirror those feelings.

Anti depressants and medication will most probably help with you depression and inturn help prevent the dreams.
 
This may not be the most helpful advice, but I think smoking a lot of good weed would help. Don't blaze right before you go to sleep - that would just keep you awake. But when you're smoking too much you don't really remember my dreams you have.

Evidence: the flood of lucid dreams you have while taking a break from herb.

Everyone's different and depending on a substance to achieve your goal is never good, but if all else fails..

And remember what Jiminy Cricket said: "a dream is a wish that your heart makes."
 
Glad to know I'm not the only one who hates their dreams. They're so vivid and real that I can remember them all day long, and if I don't remember them, as soon as I lay down where I woke up from the night before, they come flooding back in. It's kinda cool, but I hate it because of the dreams I usually have. Always people dying and stuff.. I guess I'm glad I have my dreams. It's kinda like living two lives!

Does anyone else ever mix real life and dreams? Like asking questions to people in your dreams, and then talking about it in real life, and they look at you like you're crazy? I seem to cross reality and dreams a lot.

And I took Anti-Depressants for about 2 weeks. I was also taking sleeping pills, and I remember having more of Night Terrors than anything.. Maybe it was the mixture of the two, but I remember having even more sleeping problems than I did before...

FiatFlux, that was very impressive, I actually enjoyed reading that... And I agree, writing your dreams down will only make them more real and more vivid.

And I noticed that whenever I sleep next to someone, I never have nightmares... That's about the only time I don't have nightmares... is that normal?

and...I think Jiminy Cricket was talking about different kinda dreams...
 
This may sound stupid, but are you on SSRI's? Cos Since I started takin Lexapro, Ive been having the most lucid intense dreams that I've ever had in my life....so lucid and real that when I wake u p everyday I go back to sleep because I always think at that moment of waking up that my "dream" is the real reality and my mom yelling at me to wake up fer skool is the dream....yeah pretty intense....and its the worst and only effect of an SSri i've had. Or are you an any other meds?
 
^^ I was taking Lexapro too.... Maybe it's that brand that increases dream visualization... ?
 
Dreams amaze me. Recently I've experienced this very lifelife dreams, almost as though I can feel my own body twitching and moving when I dream. Its very strange.

I remember a few nights ago dreaming that my Nana has died. My family and I were cleaning our her apartment and I walked out the back and down to this shed. A man was in the shed, a Ghost. At this point in the dream its as though some reality came to me, my body felt sensations throughout the dream and he continued to follow me around as I walked... I remember opening my eyes instantly and actually wondering if something real was of it...

Life is strange, and dreams, well I dont know what to exactly make of them, except to say that I love dreams. Someone who doesnt have dreams, doesnt have much. They are the one random thing in our life which we have such little control over, and they in some way enlighten us to the beautiful, the wierd, the desires, the dislikes, the horry, the amplify emotions of which we dont actually feel.

Dont stop dreaming...

shals :D
 
Dreams are a way for your consciousness to have a brief glimpse into your subconsciousness. So, if you're having consistently bad dreams, chances are somethings not right in your life. It's like if you have this big gash on your arm...and you think taking some pain medication is going to cure it.

But, I'm sure you can't afford a shrink.

So...I'd just say write down your dreams as much as possible and try to understand them.

MushMan
 
No Nay Xes, I see from your other thread that you are taking 375 mg of effexor daily. If you look up effexor or many other antidepressants, you will find that "abnormal dreams" are listed as a side effect. Obviously the chances of this increase when you are taking higher amounts. I had problems with unusually vivid dreams when I was taking paxil so I switched to something else. I never had that problem with effexor but everyone reacts differently to their medications. I would imagine that effexor isn't working well for you, especially since you are up to such a high dose of it. Perhaps it would be a good idea to consult with your doctor about switching to something else that wouldn't have this side effect.

Your depression/ anxiety are probably linked to your nightmares/ night terrors. The combination of your anxiety and depression as well as your medication is undoubtedly causing your nightmares, and your nightmares in turn are causing you more anxiety and depression. I've been through that annoying cycle a few too many times. Like I said before, you should probably talk to your doctor and tell him about your problems sleeping. Obviously, don't stop taking your meds suddenly. Effexor withdrawal is extremely unpleasant to say the least.
 
Thanks all. abieda - i've talked to my doc about getting of the Effexor but he keeps pushin it back. Maybe it's time to law down the law...
 
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