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Ever since that elevator accident back in August, I've been dreaming extremely vividly most nights. And waking up utterly exhausted.
Last night, I was up at this summer camp I used to go to, and there was a tornado. I was standing outside watching it form, and the damned thing ripped across the camp. And it was detailed. Up to and including me talking about it with other people there.
And that's just the latest in a long string. Nor was it the only overly vivid dream I had last night.
And when I have these dreams, I might almost just as well not sleep. They're that restful.
Does anyone have any ideas? When I was little, I used to have a handful of recurring nightmares, and I found a way to banish them (I was 4), but what worked for me then isn't going to work for me now.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I usually end up sleepwalking/hitting/damaging things, etc. when I have dreams like that. Or, you know, engaging my husband in other activities. In my sleep.
Stress reduction is the only thing that helps for me.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I started having extremely vivid dreams and waking up feeling exhausted after I started taking Lexapro a couple weeks ago. I usually wake up after the dreams, sometimes after only four hours of sleep. I find that just getting up at that point, rather than trying to go back to sleep, makes me less tired. I've taken to sleeping in four-hour shifts throughout the day (something I can get away with because I'm a college student). Can you try taking naps during the day?
I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, and I hope you figure out how to get some rest.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I could try naps. But if my boss walks by my cubicle, he might take it the wrong way. <wan grin>
I also wake up after every dream. In fact, I wake up every time I need to turn over. It's brief, and I fall right back asleep (almost always), but I think it's one more example of my sleep not being deep enough. Or something.
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Pattern? Stress? I don't know whether to laugh or cry. My life is stress. If I didn't shut it out, I'd probably have a complete breakdown.
I take the Zoloft in the morning, btw. Maybe I should split it and do half before I go to bed.
No narcotics. I did have to take Vicodin and T-3 a few times over the past months, but I haven't for some time now.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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If it weren't for my passion for meteorology, I might consider dreams about tornados unusual. The detail in my dreams can be quite astounding, too. These dreams don't scare me, though I've woken up with a pounding heart a few times. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Hmmm.... this has me worried. I have vivid, exhausting dreams and I don't take medicines like that. In fact, I've had those kind of dreams since I was a little kid.
The last two nights were strange. The one from last night had me running through and around this building, the size of a city block, racing away from some kind of air-born virus that killed about 90% of the people it interacted with instantly. I would turn around and see people, who were fine one moment and gasping for air the next, fall to the ground. I tried to warn people, but no one would listen. And then I met someone who didn't die. And then another and another. I even saw a woman, who seemed to be immune, thrust her child into the "mist-o-virus" to see if he was immune. He gagged for a bit and her face was this wave of panic. Then he stopped and was fine. It was just weird. When I woke up, I was tired from all the running in the dream. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought it was one of my walking dead dreams.
Yesterday's dream involved a woman coughing up blood and then I was that woman and I could feel this
*nasty image up ahead*
glob of a blood clot come up in my mouth.
*/end of nasty bit
When I woke up, my throat was sore and I expected to have this glob in my mouth.
I guess what I am trying to say is I sympathize. I don't know why they happen, but they do. I hope things get better starLisa.
Posts: 822 | Registered: Jul 2001
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larisse, I regularly wake up from a dream of, say, being shot in the leg with pain where I was "injured" in the dream. It takes a few minutes to fade.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:When such tornado dreams are remembered, it means that the dreamers are, in fact, equal to the psycho-spiritual tasks of increasing self-awareness and self-acceptance that the unknown frightening future demands, whether they feel or believe they are equal to these tasks, or not. ALL dreams come in the service of health & wholeness, and that means that NO dream, (even the dream of the 'terrifying tornado"), ever comes to say: "Nyeah, nyeah, nyeah - you have these problems and you can't do anything about them...!"
posted
If I eat chocolate within a couple hours before going to bed, I get very vivid dreams and don't get very good sleep.
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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When I first started taking morphine for pain I had incredibly vivid dreams, but I wasn't particularly tired and they didn't continue.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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After being on tons of nitrous, general anaesthesia, and then tylenol with codeine when I had teeth taken out for my braces about 10 years ago, I had one night of very weird, very "real" feeling dreams involving large floating blocks, secret "doorways" to other realms, and aliens...and everything was in shades of purple and white, like sepia-toned, only with purples instead. It was a bit frightening, and I'm glad that hasn't happened again. (Although I was rather curious to see where all the other doorways led.)
Most of the time my dreams are rather nebulous and unmemorable, but I still wake up from recurring falling dreams every now and then.
Posts: 952 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Ever thought of doing dreamwork? Like writing down your dreams and spending a few minutes everyday actively thinking about why the images may be significant to you.
I've always had very vivid dreams. By stopping to meditate on them it helps my subconscious focus. The more I understand that they are just dreams, the easier it is for me to realize that fact while I'm dreaming which means I can redirect them to calmer events.
If your brain is using dreams as a way to sort out some stress in your life, trying looking at the correlation between your dreams and how you feel in them and how you feel in your waking life. If you can pinpoint the cause of your active brain, it should start to quiet down.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I got conscious with my vivid dreams, but that only works slightly. My brain has pretty firm rules set in place, so it's more like some more rational part is making suggestions that lead to ending the dream and waking me up. And I think I created that rational part myself. I wrote down my dreams, thought out the back doors, and spent time imagining in detail how it would all work as I waited to go to sleep.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I picked up a bottle of Tylenol's "Simply Sleep". It's Tylenol PM without the Tylenol. A friend recommended it to me. Hope it works.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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When I was having the recurring nightmares as a little kid, I came up with a theory. We had this little black and white TV, and when the screen was full of static, my Dad referred to it as "snow".
Well, I was in nursery school, and that winter, we'd learned a song about snow. I don't remember what it was, but I suspect it was "Let It Snow".
So my 4 year old brain put the two together, and came up with the idea that if I thought/sang the chorus of the song over and over as I fell asleep, it'd make whatever I was dreaming be blocked by static, like the picture on the TV.
Believe it or not, it totally worked. I don't know if it was self-hypnosis or what, but it was the first night in months that I woke up remembering not a single dream.
The problem now is that I'm 42 years old, and far too literal minded for that to work.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Wow, Lisa that totally sucks. I had a great aunt that was killed in an elevator accident back in the 50s. Was a different sort of malfunction though. The doors didn't close and it went up without warning.
Then my little brother developed a phobia of elevators and clowns after being being hospitalized due to a rattlesnake bite when he was two. So my family overall has wierd elevator issues. And with my luck, I know something like what happened to you could have easily happened to me.
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Wow, Lisa that totally sucks. I had a great aunt that was killed in an elevator accident back in the 50s. Was a different sort of malfunction though. The doors didn't close and it went up without warning.
Holy cow. That's horrible.
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Then my little brother developed a phobia of elevators and clowns after being being hospitalized due to a rattlesnake bite when he was two. So my family overall has wierd elevator issues. And with my luck, I know something like what happened to you could have easily happened to me.
My Dad is claustrophobic, and hates elevators. Once, we were in an elevator (my whole family), and it stopped between floors. He literally bent the metal doors behind the normal sliding ones with his hands.
When I had the accident, I called him up and said, "Well, there are worse things than getting stuck in an elevator." <grin>
quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: Hang in there.
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I've found that falling asleep with the TV on, especially if you’ve already woken up in the morning and go back to sleep with it on, is a huge influence on dreams. Once I had the ol' Fox news on and I dreamed I was in my English class when Ted Kennedy and John Kerry decided to pop in as guest speakers; scariest dream ever. Though in 'reality' they are only mildly scary, for some reason my subconscious had a real sense of dread attached to those two. It also can be disturbingly weird when an info-mercial comes on and it seems like they're trying to advertise in your dreams. Not to mention History Channel related exploits.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Oct 2005
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It could be post traumatic stress. In that case, Zoloft and sleeping meds might not help, but working it through with someone might.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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Tom, Xavier, and I got stuck in an elevator in the parking garage of Iowa State U. during BobandDanaCon. Not scary or anything, but for the next month or so I expected every elevator to get stuck.
Banna, that is just horrible. Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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There was no pun intended in "Hang in there" *headesks* I recently invited my neighbor to a party by telling her "yeah we are all crazy you'll fit right in" ... it came out wrong.
The elevator story about how my great aunt died has always been kind of a morbid curiosity for me. I never knew the woman, but I have an immense amount of respect for her. You see, she was finishing up her last medical internship to complete her MD, when it happened.
*grossness alert*
The elevator was either in a doctors complex or a hospital itself and she stepped inside that elevator with a bunch of other 4th year interns who were her friends. It killed her instantly, but I think the horror of it all as a med student to see one of your fellow students that you'd been saving lives with suddenly die, had to be traumatic, especially considering it took hours to extricate the body and rescue the rest of the interns that were stuck between the floors in the elevator.
posted
I have been having a great deal of vivid dreams recently as well, coupled with the exhaustion. Last night I was a wrongly outlawed cowboy running from train station to train station in an attempt to escape my accusers. As is typical with my dreams I died at the end.
Even though many of my dreams could easily be classified as nightmares there are only a few that have frightened me. I tend to welcome the dreams be they frightenening or mundane.
Bannana; that elevator story is intense. My father was killed in an elevator accident. It wasn't there and he didn't look. Interestingly though, It's the falling that I am morbidly fascinated with rather than elevators.
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