night-terrors
 

have you ever had a dream that was so bad, so terrible, that you wake up from it and can't possibly go back to sleep??? i just had one of those dreams.... it was so bad guys, i was hyperventilating. i cant even imagine anything worse. i woke up still freaking out and when i finally realized it was a dream it was a relief but the damage was already done. man, that was a bad, bad dream.

I can totally sympathize with you. I have extremely vivid dreams and sometimes they are very scary. I just have to get up and do something and not even try to go back to sleep for a while.

I had them as a child. Unless you've had a night terror, you think that nightmares are bad. Crazy as it may sound, if you keep having them, try a saltine or two before you go to bed. I don't know if it's just cathartic or what, but it worked for me.

And that old wives tale that if you die in your dream, you die in real life? Not true!!

nope. i have dreams that are even worse. i mean, in these dreams, i hit the lotto and i buy all this shit and i dont have to worry about bills and im lovin the life...then i wake up and its like WTF...i dont have millions :(

it hurts it hurts.

I don't have night terrors, but my son did when he was a toddler. Very frightening just to hear him & deal with him after he woke up.

Instead, I suffer from sleep paralysis. Didn't know what it was until I tripped over a discussion of it on another list serve. Basically, sleep paralysis is a condition in which someone about to drop of to sleep, or just upon waking from sleep realizes that s/he is unable to move, or speak, or cry out. This may last a few seconds or several moments, occasionally longer. I usually hear a loud rushing buzz & usually feel an intense sense of dread-like something threatening/evil is watching me & is rapidly approaching, but I simply cannot move or speak. An intense sense of dread and terror is very common.

Sleep disorders suck.

Before to go sleep I listen a soft classic music. And as a result, only sometimes I can have a bad dream.

I just had one this morning, it was really weird and very vivid. I had to get up and watch TV to take my mind off it.

I've had them a couple of times. Usually when I am REALLY under stress, and then the dreams vividly picture the exact worst case scenario.

I have had night terrors so bad I woke up crying. Not fun.

I have had them occasionally. When I do wake up from them, it so hard for me to go back to sleep. It is a terrible feeling!

http://burns.thefinaldimension.org/c...Yikes_anim.gif

all too often...
I usually wake up shaking, hyperventilating... all sorts of fun stuff. I wish they'd go away...

I have night terrors and sleep paralyis. It sucks. I can almost predict when it will happen tho, by how I am feeling when I am in bed. Last night I had one, and I had that familiar feeling of dread before I fell asleep.

What's the difference between night terrors and nightmares? I'm assuming that I've never had night terrors since I don't know the difference.

When my son was 2-3years old he had night terrors. They were horrible for him, he was so frightened. It was horrible for my husband and I because we didn't know how to help him. They worst part of it all--while having night terrors my son would rampage thru the house, scream, yell, hit, kick, with unreal strength---his eyes would be wide open and yet he was sound asleep the entire time.

I am also prone to nightmares--but not to the extent of night terrors.

Good luck-
wendi

I have vivid, terrible nightmares too. Most involve something horrible happening to my daughters (getting hit by a car, a man being in their room about to kidnap them, etc.) We now have an alarm system on their bedroom windows and all the doors!
My oldest daughter used to have night terrors when she was a toddler. She would wake up screaming and crying and it would go on for an hour or two - absolutely no consoling her. We felt so helpless.

Questions - (1) does anyone else have image dreaming? I'm not sure if it is called that, but where you just have images flowing through your mind - places, objects, people etc. No rhyme or reason to it. I do this, and was wondering if anyone else experienced it. (2) Do you dream in color or black and white? Supposedly only a small percentage of the population dreams in color, and a small percentage will have dream sequences (where you dream something, and then a few weeks or months later, you dream a sequel to the first dream) Strange, eh?

1 ~ yep!

2 ~ I just found out not too long ago that most people don't dream in colour... I was surprised because I always have. I also have dream sequences pretty often... I didn't know that was unusual either!

I have had dreams that are in color. I don't know if that's in all of them, but I remember waking up with the thought of VIVID yellow and VIVD red.

I dream i lose my pretty boy charm and sit there crying.

-Rudey
--Don't hate!

I have always dreamed in color. :D My dreams are VERY vivid and lifelike. On occasion when i do have a nightmare, it always have to do with snakes.:eek:

Snakes?

-Rudey
--Fornicater!!!

To whoever asked about the difference between night terrors:

There's more to it than this, but I got them my whole childhood, and for me they were different than regular nightmares b/c my parents couldn't wake me up. I would scream and cry, and if they had any physical interaction with me, it just intensified the terror. So, my mom hugging her 3 year old turned into someone strangling me in my dream.

Night terrors also last mentally a lot longer than nightmares...at least for me they did...nightmares woke me up but I couldn't remember what was so scary, while night terrors left me freaked out and just disturbed for hte next 3 days...I couldn't get certain images out of my head.
Horrible horrible stuff.:(

AXJules, you describe the feeling left by night terrors pretty well. For me too, often, I'll be woken up and when I fall back asleep fall right back into the nightmare and this will repeat itself sometimes all night long. Not in awhile thank God. I still have night terrors, but the dreams are slightly differnet, tho no less scary,now.

I ALWAYS dream in color and have sequence dreams too. My dreams are so freakishly vivid people freak out when I start recounting them in minute detail days later.

Here's a weird one:
A few months ago I dreamt there was an earthquake in South Central. Turns out we did have a small one a few moments later that was centered in Compton.

Last night I dreamt that an earthquake woke me up. I knew the magnitude of it. It was the same as the one the Dominican Republic had. Weird, huh?

actually, that's interesting - most people will claim to dream in color, but most will NOT claim to dream in 'sequences' per se, when realistically (according to the limited insight gained) people probably don't have many of the story-line "dreams" as we remember them.

The 'sequences' concept is pretty accurate, apparently - there's a theory that dreams are really just random images the brain emits as it recouperates at night, and it's the waking mind as it exits sleep that ties together the random images into a somewhat cohesive story (again, for the majority). The images aren't necessarily in color - this is also added later. This helps explain why you can remember a dream right after you wake up, but not later that day. Also, it explains how dreaming is decidedly different under stresses and disturbances.

The absolutely random nature of the brain during sleep is almost surreal, and that also helps explain why your dreams will include a sudden scene shift from Wrigley Field to the Greyhound Bus from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - it's cool stuff to read about, even if people are just now scratching the surface.

Very little of this is on-topic; my bad.

Now these kind of dreams I have, although not night terrors. The kind where I dream about something and then it happens. I usually dream about stupid stuff though. The only significant one I had concerned a friend of mine, a camping trip, and a bear. Sure enough, his camping trip was cut short... because of a bear. :eek:

Re: night-terrors
 

Yea, I think I had one of those a while ago. I think maybe it was because of all the Vodka I drank earlier in the night. I dreamt that I was in jail, stuck in a cell with a 350 lb black guy named Jarvis and that I had recently been diagnosed with AIDS. It was so freaking scary. I definitely changed my life style after that one.

I think what's worse is havign recurring nightmares, only each time you have the nightmare it gets more graphic and intense, to the point you think about it for days..........because it bothers you that badly.

Re: Re: Re: night-terrors
 

Stop being so gay, Cory.

Sleep paralysis
 

The worst is waking up and thinking that you are suffocating but not being able to turn your head or to move to be able to get a strong breathe of cool air.
Silver

I freaked myself out just reading this thread - the heart pounding, shaky, perspiration, yuck!

I usually dream in black & white, but sometimes in color, or in black & white with a "featured attraction" in color. I also do have those flashes of people or things at times - no real plot, just flashes.

As a child, the worst night terrors I had were when I was in competitive baton twirling. I'm too embarrassed to say what the worst one was like, but if I hadn't such wonderfully understanding parents, I could have ended up in Hotel Silly.

And I am not going to read this thread anymore! It's too hard!!

I had night terrors as a child and can still vividly remember some images from them. My mom would take me in her bed but I would shake in fear all night afterward.

I also had recurrent tornado dreams. In each, my entire house and family would be taken away in a tornado except for me and I was left to fend for myself. Shortly after leaving my first (and very controlling/abusive) husband, I had a tornado dream in which the tornado missed my house and everything was fine. I haven't had another one since. My marriage counselor at the time suggested that my life always felt out of control (had a controlling father too) and once I was out on my own, I finally had control of things so those dreams didn't happen anymore.

I have very detailed techno color dreams still with intricate details.. almost like full length movies.

Because of my detailed dreams, I've always been fascinated with the subject. I do believe that we try to work out our problems through our dreams.

Dee

what i really hate is when i am half asleep and my body suddenly shakes. it is like having a convulsion that is making you wake up. i get it a lot and it always sacres the crap out of me.

Thats from doing too much cocaine. Not saying you are, but thats what happens to coke addicts.

that happens to me too and i hate it!

i would never do drugs. but i know someone very close to me who is an addict. i see him having convulsions way too often

Interesting! I had a recurring dream where someone was trying to break into our house to take my darling girls...I used Gestalt dreamwork to work through the dream, and I have not had it in over a year. It was neat.

Yea, random twitches suck.

Thanks to this thread and the ghosts one, I had a horrifying dream last night that I was in a school alone with two sorority sisters (who I couldn't identify) and it turned out they were really ghosts. Power of suggestion???

The part that irritated me was that every time I went back to sleep I kept going back into the dream and waking up scared again. I also hear that it's rare to go back into a dream but it happens to me all the time.

Dee

I get those too, more often when I was younger, every once in a while now... I know guys who do it too.

I just had one, that's why I'm up at 7am when I don't have to be! It must have been pretty bad because I was told I screamed last night... and I don't ever recall a time I've screamed, or at least remembered and someone telling me I had. Anyway, basically the dream had me in this house, and I was in a very high bunk bed and there was some girl also in the house who looks normal in the daytime but then at night, she'd turn into a ghost and kill this unsuspecting guy... and I was hiding under the covers in my high bunk bed terrified... I couldn't really sleep after that.

ETA: Oh yeah and another part of the dream was that I had this huge ugly red spot that was slightly raised toward the front middle part of my head... and went to a doctor and he couldn't help me... I could have screamed out of terror from that too. When I got up, I subconsciously checked my head (luckily no ugly spot), and after a second I remembered my dream and was like oooh that's why I'm doing this!