I know what it feels like (graphic details)

[Ginger Harp Seal Pup]

I occasionally will have nightmares. Not very often, but I do have them. They always involve people dying. Monsters and such don't scare me at all. This nightmare happened last night and it was the worst one I'd ever had in my life. I started to cry when I woke up and it had shaken me up pretty badly.

It started like this. My friend Sam, who I have not seen since before Christmas, asked me if I would like to come shopping with her to a town a few miles from this one. I said yes and we were on our way to catch the bus when we realised we'd missed it. We decided to walk the full 10 miles to the town but on the way there, we caught some people's attention...

The road was usually busy but this time it was totally deserted. The road in question actually does exist and we drive up there a lot. It lies between a massive quarry and there are gates and tracks leading to the quarry. Me and my friend crossed the road and we were right next to a white metal gate. Suddenly, two cars came from out of nowhere, and surrounded me and my friend. One of the men came out of the car. He was a big man, and wore a grey t-shirt, jeans and his hair was also grey. He stood over me and said "What do you think you're up to, eh? Do you want me to run you over in my car?"

I said "That's really offensive, you know!" I turned to my friend and said "Come on Sam, let's get out of here."

But before I knew it, he'd grabbed Sam and hurled her through the gate and into the quarry. I was a bit more aggressive and tried to fight him off. That's when two women and a man came out of both cars. Between all of them, they pushed me into the quarry too.

There was a bit of a time lapse or something in my nightmare (which is very typical of dreams) and also a bit of a continuaty error, which I'll get to soon. Me and Sam were in the quarry, lying down and dazed. There was one car in the quarry and the two women were sat in the front all smily and happy and excited, as if they were about to watch a movie. The other man was in the back.

Then, as Sam got up, she started to run further into the quarry. She seemed delirious and I was worried about her. Then, a white van came hurtling towards her. The big nasty fat man (I have so much hatred for him and it was only a dream) was in the seat and when he saw Sam he really slammed his foot on the accelerator and his mouth was a big manic grin. He caught Sam full speed on the bonnet of the van and already the front of the van was covered in blood. She went forwards, her face contort with pain and fright and he squished her body under his wheels.

All I could do now was watch in fear. I was frozen to the spot and just waited for my fate. The van rammed into me and I fell down. The wheels of the van squashed my legs so much that there was nothing left of them but blood and broken bone. He got out of the van as the three other people got out of their car and they left the van and car where they were. They completely ignored me and my friend as we lay there and the fat man's wife, who was thin, blonde and with curly hair, tried to hug him, as if to say a job well done. He started to punch and kick her but she didn't seem to mind. It turned out that the other man and woman were also a couple. Then, they disappeared into the quarry.

I crawled over to Sam, using my arm and torso, but found out that she was dead. I picked her up in my arms and just started to cradle her. Then I woke up, close to tears. And then I just started to cry.

It was then that I realised just how traumatic an experience like that is. I felt like it was really happening to us and I can just remember thinking all the way through "this is it; I'm going to die..." I really thought I was going to. And seeing my friend as the van hit her full force...well, it was really overwhelming and my heart went all funny. It felt like I'd been knocked for six. Also, I couldn't understand how people could give descriptions of people, but I know now. When I woke up, I was still in a sort of trance and could see myself at a police station giving descriptions. I could remember every detail about each one. It's fading now, but I still know the full description of the big nasty fat man and that his wife was wearing a flowery dress and had long blonde, curly hair. All I know of the other couple now is they were dark haired and posh looking.

It's really affected me though; so much that a large man with greyish hair walked up to me in the high street and I had to move away because I felt suspicious of him. Poor fellow! I bet he was wondering what he'd done wrong But I couldn't just say "Oh, you remind me of this nasty fat man who was in my nightmare." That would be silly. A nightmare should not affect me like that.

I don't ever want to have another nightmare like this.

[.neko.]

Oh I have awful nightmares all the time too. That one sounds bad, but the thing about nightmares is that the pain/fear/anxiety and other emotions fades fairly quickly.

If you have frequent nightmares make sure you aren't keeping the temperature in your room turned up too high at night. If I have the temp up even to normal room temperature I always have nightmares, I have to turn it down to about 16-19 degrees.

I also get them a LOT more in the summer because I can't turn down the temperature.

P.S. Just as a modly note, please be careful about suggesting you now know what it feels like to have someone close to you die, if you don't. A dream is just a dream, and although it can illicit strong emotions it is not the same thing and it may upset some members of this forum who have lost someone real. You felt fear and relief, but they feel a kind of grief that I don't believe is comparable to that. Just be careful about what you say.

P.p.s. I hope you feel better soon.

[Ginger Harp Seal Pup]

Oh I have awful nightmares all the time too. That one sounds bad, but the thing about nightmares is that the pain/fear/anxiety and other emotions fades fairly quickly.

If you have frequent nightmares make sure you aren't keeping the temperature in your room turned up too high at night. If I have the temp up even to normal room temperature I always have nightmares, I have to turn it down to about 16-19 degrees.

I also get them a LOT more in the summer because I can't turn down the temperature.

P.S. Just as a modly note, please be careful about suggesting you now know what it feels like to have someone close to you die, if you don't. A dream is just a dream, and although it can illicit strong emotions it is not the same thing and it may upset some members of this forum who have lost someone real. You felt fear and relief, but they feel a kind of grief that I don't believe is comparable to that. Just be careful about what you say.

P.p.s. I hope you feel better soon.

Well, I have my fan on and the window open a touch, at night. I guess everyone gets the odd nightmare occasionally.

I know what a death feels like. I lost my grandad back in 1999. It was sad in itself but it was also sad because he would have loved to have seen the Millenium

[smudgeoffudge]

This might sound silly, but if you can realize you are dreaming, then tell yourself to hold your breath. It works for me, and I can get myself out of nightmares that way.

Of course, I usally have small clues in my dreams that make me realize I am dreaming. For one, most people in my dreams don't have very well defined faces. Faces are blurry for some reason.
I usually find myself in places that no longer exist, such as my old high school, which was demolished and my childhood home which burned down. Sometimes I see people or I might see one of my pets that has been dead for years.

Reaccuring scary themes in my dreams: Vicious dogs, being stuck on train tracks with a train barreling towards me, Being in a dark and mazelike building, A tornado is coming and there is literally no where to hide, because I am in a field or some place with no buildings or anything.

Some of the most amazing dreams I have ever had are ones where I turn and face what I am afraid of! I make friends with the vicious dog, I stop the train with my hands like superman or something, I find my way out of the building, or I go for a ride on the tornado.

[.neko.]

Ooh thats awesome, you are a lucid dreamer. Some people are very good at that. I think there are books that teach you how to have lucid dreams. If you don't know much about it you should google it.

I doubt you are literally holding your breath (but its not impossible). While you are dreaming your body is paralyzed so that you don't move around and stuff.

During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain, because otherwise the movements which occur in the dream would actually cause the body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens. This can lead to a state where a person is lying in his or her bed and he or she feels frozen.

Sometimes obviously that doesn't work quite right (sleep walkers, and other such REM behaviour disorders.). Have you ever been dreaming and felt like you couldn't move part or all of your body. Thats often a concious awarness of your physical state.

[smudgeoffudge]

Well I have had nightmares before where it seems very real and I even seem to feel pain. It is really weird though. Like sometimes I'll be dreaming that I am wounded in my arm or leg and I wake up laying on my arm or leg. SO did I dream that because I was laying on my arm or leg and felt the pain but didn't wake up? Sometimes I can hear things but I don't wake up, it just becomes part of my dream. So when my family wakes up early in the morning and turns on the news, I dream about things they are talking about on the news. Or I dream I am watching the news, which is weird. One time I had this annoying kitten meowing in my dream, and in real life a kitten was meowing, but I didn't wake up.

One time I had a dream that my locker at school was started to shake and then it came loose from the wall and begin chasing me with the door flapping in and out making a weird clicking sound. When I woke up, I found my sister had gone to bed with one of her toys still moving making a clicking sound.

The weirdest dream that I had that incorporated something that really was happening to me, was one where lava started spewing from the ground and I was running away from it. I could feel the heat of it as it moved along the ground towards me. I woke up with the electric blanket turned up on high and it was very hot near my feet.

One time I had a dream I was running through the woods and I scratched my arm, and when I woke up I had a scratch there. That was really weird, but I just thought that my cat had done this somehow.

[shapu]

Sometimes obviously that doesn't work quite right (sleep walkers, and other such REM behaviour disorders.). Have you ever been dreaming and felt like you couldn't move part or all of your body. Thats often a concious awarness of your physical state.

I don't have nightmares, but this happens every so often - I'll wake up in the middle of the night, and feel frozen for a second or two. Really terrifying and weird.

[Dragonfire]

Wow, that's a very vivid nightmare.

I rarely have nightmares (at least, now that I'm older), but sometimes I'll wake up and I'll have done a full 180 degrees in my bed (my feet are on my pillow and my head is almost hanging off the edge of the bed). There was also one time where I woke up and I was halfway underneath the bed (but didn't feel anything in a dream).

I did have that one dream where after I had it I started liking strawberries, but that's another story...

[Ammer]

The best thing to do about nightmares is to not think about them so much. Some nightmares are worse than others, and yes, they can affect you a lot. But, it's best not to think about it, or you'll just be consumed with paranoia.

I know how you feel, I don't really recall having a nightmare per say, but I had a dream about my future which is likely to come true and I felt depressed for the entire day after I woke up. I even cried after the dream was over, and that's never happened.

All I know is if the nightmare is still with you a few months from now or even a year or two, than perhaps it symbolizes something? I still remember the above dream even though it happened in Grade 10, 3-4 years ago.

[Mongrel]

A couple months ago, I had a dream that I was killed in a car accident--my mother was driving, lost control, and we drove off a cliff. There was a moment of utter panic, of "Oh god I'm gonna die" and then a moment of acceptance. In all my dreams about my own death, there's always that moment of acceptance: the point where I realize there's absolutely nothing I can do to stop my own death, and I think "Okay. If this is it, I'm not going to go screaming. I'm going to go peacefully, even if I'm about to meet a very painful end." I feel like these dreams prepare me for my own death, whether it's unexpected or whether I learn of it months/years in advance. Yes, there will be regrets, but I can't go back and change what's already happened. All I can do is know that this was my chance at life and whatever happened in this life is mostly the result of my own decisions.
These dreams also helped me not fear death. I'm not going to seek an early end, but I'm not afraid of my own death anymore. It'll happen when it happens, whether I freak out about it or not, so why waste my time fearing something I know is going to happen?

This might sound silly, but if you can realize you are dreaming, then tell yourself to hold your breath. It works for me, and I can get myself out of nightmares that way.

I do that too, though not on purpose. It happens to me whenever I have drowning dreams; I start holding my breath, and then I wake up a few seconds later.

I doubt you are literally holding your breath (but its not impossible). While you are dreaming your body is paralyzed so that you don't move around and stuff.

Your skeletal muscles are paralyzed in REM sleep(it's called REM atonia), but you're not trying to move them when you hold your breath, so you can modulate your breathing. When you stop breathing, you wake up after a few seconds so you can start breathing again--which is a great thing, because otherwise people would die of sleep apnea all the time.

[ria]

Gosh, thats such a terrible sounding nightmare, my dreams are very, very strange and i'm a lot like smudge in that all the people and places and things in my dreams are very blurry, its like i'm there but i'm not at the same time.

And there's usually a point when i realise i'm dreaming and try to pull myself out of the dream, but i'm not a lucid dreamer cause i don't remember actually being able to control any dreams except to try to wake myself up (and you do get this weird feeling of being unconscious and yet conscious at the same time...)

But the weirdest thing is that basically all my dreams are nightmares, cause the only dreams i can remember are the ones that wake me up at like 4 am and then i'm completely freaked out and like turn all the lights on in my room and have to calm myself down for like 20 mins afterwards. Its like i get the weirdest feeling of panic even if the dream isn't scary, one of the recent dreams (like.. 1-2 months ago) i remember involved like.. all these cats in my house, and it was my house (but it wasn't at the same time) and it was like i turned to see my cat, then i realised it was actually my neighbour's cat in my house, and then suddenly there were all these cats trying to get into my house and i was just there like throwing them out the cat-flap and the door, but i couldn't close the door so they came back in. And then i was like... trying to secure a deal with the cats so they could live under the house... and then i went outside and there was this big bob-cat like cat sitting on a rock (which doesn't actually exist) by my pool, and it just sorta... slid into the water and starting sinking, like drowning but it wasn't struggling or anything, and i went and somehow pulled the cat out and my sister was like "you're trying to get rid of these damn cats, so why did you save that one?!"

And wow, i can't believe i still remember all that o____O i had that dream quite a while ago, and looking back on it, it was just weiiiiiird and non-sensical, but it scared the hell outta me at the time. And other common dreams i have are like, my computer (which i love to pieces and is in my room) gets some random virus and i can't shut it down, and unplugging it doesn't work, and it scares me heaps in the dream, but then i wake up and go "well er... that doesn't happen in real life, so calm down silly!" XD

But yeah, dreams are very weird things....

And I hope you feel better soon Ginger, I know most dreams i have leave a lingering freaked-out feeling all throughout the day, then it just passes until you can just resight what happened without being too freaked.

[Ginger Harp Seal Pup]

Well I have had nightmares before where it seems very real and I even seem to feel pain. It is really weird though. Like sometimes I'll be dreaming that I am wounded in my arm or leg and I wake up laying on my arm or leg. SO did I dream that because I was laying on my arm or leg and felt the pain but didn't wake up? Sometimes I can hear things but I don't wake up, it just becomes part of my dream. So when my family wakes up early in the morning and turns on the news, I dream about things they are talking about on the news. Or I dream I am watching the news, which is weird. One time I had this annoying kitten meowing in my dream, and in real life a kitten was meowing, but I didn't wake up.

One time I had a dream that my locker at school was started to shake and then it came loose from the wall and begin chasing me with the door flapping in and out making a weird clicking sound. When I woke up, I found my sister had gone to bed with one of her toys still moving making a clicking sound.

The weirdest dream that I had that incorporated something that really was happening to me, was one where lava started spewing from the ground and I was running away from it. I could feel the heat of it as it moved along the ground towards me. I woke up with the electric blanket turned up on high and it was very hot near my feet.

One time I had a dream I was running through the woods and I scratched my arm, and when I woke up I had a scratch there. That was really weird, but I just thought that my cat had done this somehow.

That happens to me too! Like I dreamed I was pregnant and woke up with a full to bursting bladder and it felt like my stomach was going to pop open. Or when a radio is on. Even if I'm in a dark pit and it's all scary and filled with doom, I still might here a Britney Spears song if it comes on the radio XD One time, I had a dream and I looked at my watch in my dream and it said 12:05pm. I woke up suddenly after that and looked at my watch to see if I was right. I was. I'm guessing I was half awake and half asleep and actually did look at my watch when I was still in a sleepy state. Then I woke up properly and looked again. But I did think I was psychic at the time!

I thought this happened to all of us, though. Is this a form of lucid dreaming then or something? Or something else. I figured it was just a normality with dreaming.

[Mongrel]

It's part of something called "hypnagogia," which is a fancy term for all those things that happen when you're falling asleep and waking up--you're technically asleep, but you're moving and seeing things that are really there. That's what happens when you transition smoothly from dreams to waking, without a real definite barrier between one and the other. I hate it, because I'll wake up and see things in my room that aren't there, and it freaks me out for several minutes.
The other part is "dream incorporation," when outside influences become part of your dream. They usually wake you up after a short time, though.

[Ginger Harp Seal Pup]

I remember a very weird dream that I had the once. I was awake because I could see my wall and my quilt. And then suddenly it went darkish so that the wall became hazy and a computer screen just materialized right in front of my eyes and I was searching through Google. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. All the links and searches looked absolutely fascinating! I couldn't remember ANY of them when I woke up for good, but I know they were great because of the emotions of excitement I felt in my dream at the time. I guess that is a good example of hypnagogia because I still felt oddly awake when I was browsing and then I full woke up just seconds afterwards.

It's also a good example of being addicted to the internet...

[.neko.]

Ooh ya, I hate when my alarm clock intrudes on my dream but doesn't wake me up. That is the worst, this unrelenting loud beeping that I can never locate in my dream. -_-