Better to have a dream about women staring at you than you being in the bathroom and using it.

I suffer from an anxiety disorder, so my nightmares are anxiety related. I was told I was in control of my dreams, and should practice relaxation techniques, before bed. Also try to confront what fears, that appear in your dreams. I have a lot of bad dreams, where animals are chasing me. I now can turn around and fight back. There's a lot of good advice, about PTSD nightmares on websites for veterans.

If it helps at all, one sleep study I read about was that, if people are left completely to their own devices, no clocks or anything, it is not unusual for a number of them to wake in the middle of the night, be awake for an hour or two before going back to sleep. For some, that seems to be a normal sleep pattern. I can remember my father falling asleep in front of the TV then waking up about midnight to read for a couple of hours before going back to bed.

When I was very young, I felt that a lot of dreams that I had were about previous lives, especially since they involved things that I had not yet experienced in real life. I also had a recurring bridge dream in which I drowned. I always wondered if that was concerning a previous death.

I've also had extremely vivid precognitive dreams - one in particular was about the campus of the university that I first went to in Houston. The night before I went to the campus, I had a dream of being on campus, even though I had never been there, and in the dream, I entered a building in which I went up half a flight of stairs and then down half a flight of stairs into a quadrangle. I remembered while dreaming that I thought that this was a very strange thing to happen, but when I got to campus, I had the exact same experience that I had had in the dream the very night before. After that, I walked around in a daze for a few minutes, struck by the extreme experience of déjà vu, but I knew that the experience was from my dream.

I hope you can find a way to resolve this, Lars.

I haven't had a nightmare in many, many years....since I was a child, as far as I can remember, and I don't remember about what.

I have more trouble staying awake than I do sleeping. I go to bed very early. Sometimes it isn't dark out yet. I watch TV until I fall asleep or play 7 Little Words on my phone.

I wake up very early, around 4 and sometimes I try to go back to sleep and can't and sometimes I do. I watch the news on TV, until daylight, then I get up.

I usually have very mundane dreams, which I soon forget if I don't make a real effort to remember them.

I have heard that some sleep aids, such as Ambien, can cause nightmares.

Lars going through that on a regular basis must be horrible. I sleep very poorly with disturbing dreams whenever I have to take Diphenhydramine for an allergy. Luckily I usually only require 3 or 4 days of doses but those days have a very negative impact.

I hope you can get to the root of the problem.

I've had dreams that make absolutely no sense but one recurring anxiety dream did.

I went from working full time to being let go while pregnant with the first (they moved my department to another state and I declined to move) to a stay at home mom with no plans to go back to work. And since I was already over 30 we opted to stack them close together and our 2 kiddos are 17 months apart.

When the youngest was about 1 year old I started having a recurring dream about bathrooms. They would take place in a church house I went to when young and different gymnasiums (high school and college ones). Stalls would be disgusting, or the doors didn't lock, or the gaps between the door and "wall" didn't provide privacy, or there was no door at all! Sometimes the stalls were 2 deep so I'd go into one stall and there would be another door to another one behind it. These were the best but still caused anxiety.

Finally looked it up and all the sites I clicked were about how I wasn't getting enough privacy in my waking life. Well duh!!! After that I stopped having it.

Lars, do you have anxiety? My mother never slept well, but when she got older she started having, I think, panic attacks in the middle of the night. Her DO-cardiologist prescribed Xanax at bedtime (half a tablet, I think) and it helped enormously. She never was actually diagnosed with anxiety, she would have denied the diagnosis anyway, but everyone knew it.

I used to have a recurring dream regarding my sons, but I haven’t had it but once in the last several years thank goodness. I do have a lot of waking-in-the-middle-of-the-nights though. My local Facebook groups jokes about starting a private group that is active only from 1-5 a.m. Those posts usually come around 5am.

Lars,

I second Maifleur’s suggestion of trying to direct your dream.

I used to have horrible, terrifying dreams all through my childhood right into my teens. As a child I started to learn how to take control of my dreams due to a great suggestion from someone I knew. Many dreams I had involved trying to run away and it would feel like a great wind was pushing me back, I couldn’t run against this wind to get away from the danger. A friend suggested I try swimming into the wind, make myself aerodynamic and cut through the wind. I must have subconsciously remembered that, or I was half awake...but I remembered and tried it in my dream. It worked!! By time I was in my teens, I could take control of almost any dream situation.

Only situation when I couldn’t, that was when I was pregnant. I don’t know if it was hormones or what, but I had vivid dreams I could not control, both good and bad.

I still don’t sleep soundly at night. It’s rare I get 8 hours without waking up multiple times in the night. But at least if a dream starts getting out of control, my mind automatically turns the course of the dream.

This is so interesting to me. I'm sorry you are having these nightmares though. One thing I have found regarding feet - when my feet are cold, they start to hurt. So I wear nice light fluffy sox to bed and I sleep so much better. My cold feet were keeping me from sleeping soundly.

I have very vivid dreams every night and it can be somewhat exhausting because in my dreams, I am either trying to find where I parked my car or I am trying to get back home but find the city I'm in unfamiliar and I am taking all manor of transportation to get home. Weird. Sometimes lots of water is involved. I am either being swept along or using the water to get away. I have also had the school nightmare but mine is being unable to find my locker. I do find that I sleep much better when I am warm. Being cold seems to make things worse.

I must either talk a lot during my sleep or thrash around because my dog has taken to whining softly to wake me up. I usually think she needs to go outside to go potty, but she will walk me into the kitchen and then turn around and go back to bed. She sleeps right next to me, on my bed, so I must be disturbing her sleep. LOL

I hope you can find some peace and resolve. I don't take any medications at all so I can't relate to that part of it. When I have anxiety in a dream, I just think that I know this isn't real and that usually relieves the anxiety. I love having friends and family that have passed on to show up in my dreams. I am always glad to see them. :) Good luck.

I have never had nightmares but did have disturbing dreams while trying out an antidepressant...I think Prozac. That's precisely why I won't take any medications anymore. They wreak havoc with my body. I have had no dreams I recall about college , but I go further back to elementary school when I'm late for school. There is this large clock suspended from somewhere showing the time and I try to run but my legs turn to mush. Since these last months of this hideous year, I have dreamed a lot and the more news coming from the white house, the more bizarre the dreams. The closest thing to a nightmare was a childhood dream I had when I got up and my parents were in the bathroom beside my bedroom. They looked exactly like my parents but it wasn't them. Now analyze that!

Does it help to know that many people have the university or other school dream? I had one just recently - I needed one class to graduate, and I had forgotten to attend all semester, and had to take the final exam.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/radical-teaching/200909/recurring-final-exam-dream

I've also had dreams where I'm trying to drive a car from the backseat in heavy rain and the windshield wipers don't work. Also some bridge dreams.

Sometimes in my dream I know that I'm dreaming, but don't wake up.

The only dreams that I find scary are those where I'm being chased by someone or something, and can't get away.

Didn't read all responses but if you are off the medications, try 1/2 can of beer before going to bed. (A full can will sometimes lead to a headache in the morning for me.)

I have a recurring dream that happens every 5 or 6 months, sometimes multiple nights in a row and then I won't have it for a while. A demon (a large, black smokey figure) comes to my room and climbs slowly on the bed, crawls up it and tries to suffocate me. I am paralyzed in the dream and unable to move. It's pretty terrifying and I sometimes wake up screaming or try to scream in my sleep.

Sometimes it's so bad I will end up sleeping with the lights on for the next week. I always wondered if it is related to my borderline sleep apnea. I found out recently that my daughter has these too.

Someone once said dreams become recurring because they‘re disturbing to you and get stuck in your subconscious. I don’t know if there was any sound psychology behind that but it seems plausible.

Lars have you tried weed? I‘m a terrible sleeper but recently noticed I seem to get more uninterrupted sleep with a just a bit of help. I certainly don’t find it the miracle drug some claim, but with sleep it does help.

Sounds like you (Lars) are already talking with medical doctors, so that's good. Gut health is an avenue to consider, if you haven't already. Also a small amount of alcohol or weed, as suggested above. Hypnosis, maybe. Meditation, exercise -- I'm sure you've tried many approaches already.

Best wishes that you can find a way to peaceful, easy dreams.

(edited to remove some stuff about Covid, that on second read-through wasn't relevant here)

jemdandy, that was a beautifully written piece!

I seldom have nightmares. When I do, it is almost always because there are too many bedcovers & wake up from the nightmare in a sweat.

Have switched to a memory foam mattress so have to be extra careful about not getting too hot. Have just a sheet & a mid-weight open weave cotton blanket for covers.

Little did I know but there is a scientific reason why sleeping too warm can be cause for nightmares. I had always assumed that it was just a quirky part of my personal body chemistry. Wrong.

https://catcountry1073.com/having-lots-of-nightmares-turn-down-the-heat/

So Lars, you might try turning the AC down, ditching some of the bedding, getting a box fan for the BR, lighter weight or no PJ's....

I only have a sheet and a comforter on my bed, and I tend to sleep with the ceiling fan on. I have the nighttime thermostat setting at 65°, and so I am not getting hot at night. I do hate that when it happens, and it used to happen a lot when I was growing up in Texas.

Here's the interpretation of the university exam dream that I can relate to:

"The dream is a reminder not to miss an opportunity or take a more active role in one's destiny."

Last night I tried to direct my dreams before going to sleep but had trouble deciding on a direction, and that kept me up for a while. I think I am going to have to make these decisions much further ahead of time. Anyway, I did sleep 8.7 hours without waking up and did not have nightmares this morning. Instead, this morning I dreamed that I had a cooking show called The Naked Gourmet, which was filmed at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. I had celebrity guests on the show, and everyone was allowed only to wear an apron and shoes, but I insisted on wearing underwear as well. My first guest was a young John Travolta. The only time I was ever at Paramount Studios in real life was for a Halloween party many years ago. I don't think I ever got around to cooking anything in the dream. Maybe I will have this dream again and actually make something.

I think I've been watching too many cooking shows. I have also made a few pizza videos with my brother, but we were fully dressed. Maybe I should make a poolside pizza video wearing a bathing suit and a cabana jacket. I'm thinking of wearing this for our family Zoom meeting on Dec 26. The pizza oven is already close to the pool, and we have a small wood burning BBQ near the pool.

I do have some marijuana that a friend grew and gave to me, and it really does help with my sleep and also helps prevent nightmares, but I forget to take it. I should probably get it in cookie form. It's readily available here, but I think it might be expensive. My BIL drinks half a glass of wine before going to bed, and I did have a glass of wine with dinner last night. Maybe that helped also.

I think I've been watching too many movies and TV series -- and reading too many novels. I'm dreaming about 'other people's' lives! Sue has disappeared! Her own life is too dull to generate dreams.

Lars, your life is evidently still *interesting*!

DH had 'seeking' nightmares for the first seventeen years of our marriage. He'd be climbing hills, wandering through empty buildings, looking for...something hidden from him. These stopped once his mother was dying and he discovered that he'd been adopted as an infant. He was then forty. There were so many secrets and 'rules' in his difficult life with his mother that he'd never cracked this one.

His father wanted a son (or a 'do-over' of his own underprivileged youth). He insisted on this charade, that he and his wife -- both middle-aged and newly married -- were 'expecting'. DH's mother didn't want a child, and certainly not this Irish/Italian one, but obediently wore a little pillow under her dresses. The birth was supposedly premature, and my DH 'gained strength' in hospital (actually Catholic Charities) for a month, thus disguising the healthy, full-term baby they brought home. The secret was kept, even after DH's father died ten years later, leaving his estate to his wife on the condition she not remarry before DH was 18. (In reality, *never*, as she would then be 65.) She was trapped raising this kid. Can you imagine the bewilderment that was DH's life?

Everything fell into place once DH had the truth. His mother and her family stonewalled to the end, but we did get the whole story from his late father's sister (and Northern Trust). We did find his birth family, too. No more 'seeking' nightmares. No more concerns about self-worth.

bpath, I was diagnosed with anxiety, and I used to take Librium for it, which helped. I did not have anxiety every day, and so I took the Librium only when I needed it. However, the doctors I have today told me that I should no longer be taking it, due to effects from taking it over a long period of time. I think I still have some, however.

I also have the recurring "lost car" dreams, but those are not really nightmares for me. I've had trouble finding my car in real life as well (especially in parking garages), and one time I misplaced it for three days before I realized where I had left it.

Chisue, your DH story sounds like it is from a Perry Mason episode. On the episode today, an 18 year old daughter was unaware that her uncle was really her father, and Perry Mason promised the mother not to reveal this to the daughter. So at the end of the show, the daughter still believed that her real uncle was her father instead of his brother.

Lars, you certainly have an imagination!

When I was younger and into soap operas, I used to have dreams that were like adventures with the soap opera characters.

Dreams reflect inner worries and concerns, but in a highly dramatized way. They often tell us something that may not have otherwise been center stage in our attention. Research shows people recall more dreams during the pandemic compared with pre-pandemic. Stress tends to make dreams more intense which explains part of the enhanced recall. People who sleep longer remember more dreams because the length of dream cycles stretches out the longer the sleep session goes.

Psychologists cannot prescribe medications in California; only psychiatrists can offer medical management. There are therapeutics (Prazosin) that can treat nightmares and your current medications should be evaluated as they may be a contributing cause.

Zoloft can actually intensify dreams and increase nightmares. Perhaps a second opinion is warranted.

Dream Rehearsal Therapy may be helpful:

https://www.verywellhealth.com/diagnosis-of-nightmares-and-nightmare-treatments-3015240

Thanks Lars. Last night I had a dream I was in school and could not finish a paper on time! At least it wasn’t a nightmare, for me!

As a vivid dreamer I say embrace your dreams. Really. change your mind set about what ever happens there. Most people get to live part of a day. If you dream (and we all do) and remember them (not everyone does) you get more time to live. The great thing about dreams is no matter what happens nothing bad happens to you. I have given birth at least three times. I have drowned. Fallen or jumped from high clifts, gotten lost and did not study for tests. I have driving dreams where I am in a car where the brakes never work or I cant see. I have built houses and bought houses to renovate. These dreams repeat for me. I look on them as more life. It is attitude. You dont normally get to drown and live to tell the tale. How fun is that? Get over the fear. It is an experience. When I was very small I realized that dreams were different than awake. You could fly for instance. I did not make a distinction between awake and asleep as real and not real. Just different, because I was very young. I was lucky. You can change your point of view about what you experience. You can do this. Stop fretting and enjoy your gift. Really. you are a lucky man in that you remember the experience of your dreams. Celebrate.

I find it interesting that many here have what I consider vivid dreams to be nightmares. I know we are all different but for me a nightmare is something that wakes you up with an intense fear. One that may last for more than just the time it takes to reach a wakeful state. It's not something simply worrisome or confusing. It has to be something that actually affects you both psychologically and physically for me to interpret it as a nightmare. I guess my perception of a nightmare is narrower than that many others. I never gave it much thought before.

In the dream I mentioned above I was shot in the back of the head. I heard it, I smelled it and I felt the explosiveness in my head. I would reach to the back of my head and feel the warmth of the blood, the tissue and the size of the exit wound. I would wake up literally trembling and the feeling and sensory things would persist for up to several minutes at times. I would just lie there staring at my hand which of course was free of blood and brain matter. Then I would calm down and ponder how the exit wound was behind me since my perception at the time was I was shot while running away from the danger.

I still have very vivid dreams, that are in color, full of getting lost, doing things that are not really possible, falling, being trapped etc. But those don't waken me in terror. Like patriciae_gw I find them interesting not scary.

Wow Wildchild. though really, when else do you get to experience getting shot in the head? Grim sort of of course but still an experience. It is like living a movie. I feel lucky to have vivid dreams. I have always dreamed in color but no smell or taste till I was older. I feel the air moving over my skin. How about the taste of an indifferent white wine? I took a swig from a bottle in the door of a mini fridge. Balance that against a house too close to a river (I have flood dreams) and why on earth would I buy a house anywhere near a river? That will wake me with palpitations but of course I live on a hill. It really adds to your life. Really. enjoy it.

There are many nights that I am dreaming and have to get up to use the bathroom and crawl back into bed hoping to continue the dream. sometimes it works, but usually not!

Vivid dreams can be dangerous for your bed partner. Once I dreamed a floozy in a flouncy red dress was after MY DH! He was indifferent to her attentions. (Not surprising, he's never given me any reason to doubt him in real life). But there she was, grabbing the handle of the little two-seater sports car, intending to take MY place with him! I grabbed her and started kicking the ....! DH woke me up, "Ooof! hey whatcha doing that for"

Lars, since you respond well to hypnosis, do yourself a favor and make your own hypnosis treatment recording. There are studies that show a person is more open to suggestions heard in their own voice. You can find examples of inductions (the preliminary phase to relax and get in touch with your subconscious) and then create suggestions that work best for you. The main rule with writing a hypnosis script is to avoid stating things with a negative. For instance, don't tell yourself "I will not be afraid" but "I will be brave." The theory is that the subconscious (or unconscious) mind filters out negative qualifiers and would only hear "be afraid." (In hypnosis classes, they illustrate this by saying, "Don't think of an elephant." The only way you can do this is to first think of an elephant.) You can add all kinds of positive suggestions about dreams and life in general. Finish the recording by telling yourself that you will sleep easily and comfortably and awake tomorrow morning feeling calm and refreshed. The recording should be short enough that you are comfortable using it nightly, even repeating it if you want to hear it a few times before falling asleep. Another neat little trick is to begin the recording with a stanza of music -- just a few notes to immediately remind you that you are about to enter a deep relaxation. Once you start using this recording, you will find that just humming those few notes during the day will help you to relax.

I call a dream a nightmare if it causes me to wake up feeling panic and anxiety. Most of my dreams, including the most vivid ones, are not like this, but lately more of them have been anxiety producing. If I wake up in a state of anxiety, it is very difficult to get back to sleep, and if I do go back to sleep too soon, I will return to the anxiety producing dream. I seem to have no trouble returning to dreams that have been interrupted.

I will look further into the Very Well Health site, as the information there looked interesting and also seemed like it could be helpful. I think it might be helpful to have a polysomnogram, but that might be difficult for me to do, since I sleep with a CPAP machine, and that would probably interfere with the test apparatus.

PatriciaE, I have enjoyed the dreams in which I meet people from other planets, and I feel like I can learn things from them. Generally, these are not frightening dreams, but sometimes the aliens try to have sex with me, and that can be disturbing to me, although it does not rise to the level of nightmare. I've never had dreams (that I can remember) of anyone trying to kill me, but I have had scary dreams that involved predatory animals, such as leopards and wolves. Usually I am able to climb a tree to escape being attacked.

I've not seen a psychologist since I was in my early 20s, and I've only seen psychiatrists in California. One psychiatrist did diagnose me as hypervigilant, but I did not consider this to be a problem.

As a child, I had auditory hallucinations (although I did not consider them that) when I was trying to go to sleep. There was a fireplace in my bedroom, and I would hear voices of Comanche (or possibly Apache) Indians who would talk about how they were going to kill me with their tomahawks and scalp me. I believed the voices were real because I could tell where they were coming from, and I would hide under the covers, hoping that the Indians would not see me. I complained about this frequently to my parents, but they told me it was my imagination. This did nothing to help me.

I've always felt that dreams and imagination are real, and I had difficulty as a child separating different types of reality. A dream is a real dream, just as an imagination is a real imagination, and therefore they both exist. Today it is much easier for me to recuperate from a bad dream, as I can feel relief when I tell myself that something was just a dream. As a child, this made no difference to me.

I haven't had dreams or nightmares in years. I called them anxiety dreams. When I was much younger they were usually about not being able to get to my locker at school in time to get a book and get to class. In later years there were many about losing my car in various ways. (Lars, your car dream got my attention.) Either I surmise it has been stolen, I can't find where among hundreds of other cars I parked it, or some such variant.

I have successfully taken Ambien for years, but find doctors are very reluctant to write it because of the bad press it has received, with some justification, I might add. I found that cutting it in half and taking half when I go to bed if that's when i can't sleep, or if i wake in the middle of the night i will take a half. This works quite well, and i can take it as late as 3 or 4 and still have no problem walking refreshed at my normal time.

I’m sorry you’re having problems with your sleep Lars. If things are weighing on your mind, it’s bad enough getting to sleep, let alone having worrying dreams when it finally happens.

As I’m not much of a dreamer these days (or at least I don’t remember them) I don’t have much to bring to the table.

All I can offer as far as getting to sleep is concerned is listening to things that you find relaxing.

In my own case, I’ve been through phases when I’ve had to listen to calming music that I have saved on a ‘send me to sleep list’. I’d pretty much always nod off by the forth or fifth track.

I believe there are also bedtime stories you can access that are narrated by people with pleasing voices, like this one...

https://youtu.be/7ZZ-Unu8ISY

This link may also be useful as it has info on controlling dreams https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-lucid-dreaming

The only recurring dream I’ve ever had was when I was young.

The figure in it was the bearded old man on the Quaker Oats porridge box, and he would taunt me as I tried to run across a vast white expanse in which deep holes kept appearing.

Sometimes if I wasn’t quick enough to avoid the holes, I’d drop into an abyss, and as with all falling dreams, wake up with a horrible start.

These days I don’t worry about getting to sleep as I don’t have to get up at a certain time. I also don’t try to sleep unless I’m really tired, which means around midnight has become my lights out time. If I get 6 hours, that’s a good night for me.

Lars...you're going to think this is totally crazy, but, do you eat cheese?

Believe it or not, cheese will cause a person to experience nightmares and restlessness.

If you eat it and have it closer to bedtime, try not having any after 3 or so in the afternoon-see if that makes a difference

I'll have to check out the cheese theory. What I've read is that the type of cheese you eat before bedtime makes a difference. I probably need to go back to keeping a food diary.

A friend of mine in Texas told me that eating avocados with cream cheese will give you nightmares, but I think this is a Mexican myth. However, I never put cream cheese in my guacamole anyway, but he used to.

For the last three nights I have not had nightmares, and last night I slept 8.2 hours. I am generally fine with anything over seven hours.

When I have dreams of falling, I do not necessarily wake up. Instead, I fall for a while and then end up in a different dream. The falling part may be scary, but it does not always wake me up.

What is confusing to me is when I dream that I go to sleep, and then I have a dream inside of a dream and wake up from that dream, but I am still in the previous dream. When this happens, I am convinced that I am awake. One time when this happened, I told myself in the dream to pinch myself to see whether I was really awake. So I pinched myself in the dream, and it hurt, which only made me more convinced that I was awake when I really was not.

Last night I dreamed that I moved back to Austin to go to university there, but I had not registered for any classes yet. I did have trouble trying to find the registrar's office, however. The main thing I remember about that dream was that I really did not want to be in Austin again.

Those falling dreams were how I learned to direct my dreams. I decided to use my clothing as a parachute. Not only did it "save me" it allowed me to float. Then in my dreams I could travel by adjusting the clothing. Eventually I would dream of my body flying above the earth looking at things below. I do not remember when those dreams stopped. They started in high school but I still have a warm happy feeling just thinking about them.

I really like dreams where I am flying. They don't happen often and I always remember them when I wake up. It is sometimes a lot of work to fly and other times it's so light and easy.

So interesting that we all have similar dreams.

Lars, I found your last paragraph in one post very revealing, IMO.

"I have quite a few projects that I am trying to work on, but at times I feel I do not have the physical strength or stamina to complete them. I think I should spend more time doing stretching and yoga exercises, to help minimize the back strain that I am experiencing from trying to do certain tasks. If I could get everything done without back pain the way I used to do when I was younger, I don't think I would be having some of these nightmares."

Just based on my personal experience, it sounds like you need to take more time for yourself, exercise, and cut back on some of the projects. Have a friend/family help you finish some of them or hire someone. I'm also one that takes on a lot of physical projects and it has taken time for me to learn not to set an exact deadline on finishing them, especially as I've aged. I work for a few days, then I take off a few days. The project eventually (always) gets done and my body is not the worse for it.

Over the years, I found that by taking control of my daily interactions with people, such as expressing whether I disagree or agree with them (or sometimes choosing to walk away), and making more decisions on my own, that a lot of my uncomfortable dreams disappeared. I have much fewer 'out of control' dreams and my dreams now are more influenced by movies/tv shows that I watch.

I had weird multiple dreams last night/morning. The first one was me and my mom (who has been gone for many years now) were up on a platform and I asked her to cut my hair. She started but was going to cut it all off. I begged her not to and she threatened to do it anyway, got mad and left. I then decided to get off the platform too and go to work. I was angry and started throwing stuff that was blocking my way off the platform, including my purse. I then realized the blocked area wasn't a staircase and I was trapped. I found two ladders that weren't attached to the platform so I had no way to get down.

Somehow I did because the next thing I know I'm going to work, and my desk is in a cafeteria with small tables in rows. I'm told to find a place to eat or get a desk. Some guy I used to work with was there already and he told me they were serving seafood. So he shows me his plate and on it is a baby octopus, only it isn't any that exist, it is flat, kinda shaped like one but has a face, with big puppy-dog like eyes and it is alive and smiling at him. He picks it up and puts it on his thigh so I can see it better and all I can think is "you're going to eat it alive!!!" (I think this happened because the night before we were all discussing eating baby animals, calves & lambs in particular) Anyway I was horrified and decided not to eat. I also thought, in my dream, gross, you put your food on your pant leg.

I left and somehow me and my daughter were out on the street in front of the aquarium, where I worked (in this dream). We decided I had 20 minutes and enough time to ride a tram around town. We were across the street from the aquarium by the time we decided to go on the tram so we both take off running to the entrance and sidewalk. She jumps up on the sidewalk and I try but am afraid I'll fall so I don't. I quit running and just step up on it.

The first part was probably related to when I was young, my mom liked to keep my hair short, in a pixie cut. I hated it. I finally grew it out in my junior high school years. She hated it. I don't know why I would dream about this now, though.

Took Ambien for almost 20 yrs due to terrible sleep problems. Similar to yours except once i woke up, I could not go back to sleep at all. I was exhausted, had stessful things to deal with daily and I could not sleep. i looked like something the cat dragged in!

I finally spoke to my doctor and told her how exhausted I was. She offered to give me Ambien for two weeks. She was very against sleep medication, but saw how terrible I looked and desperate for a nights sleep.

OMG, took the Ambien, no dreams, no grogginess in the morning. I started feeling normal again. i begged her to keep prescribing it as it worked perfectly.

She did and I feel it saved my life.

Jane

Jane - I have severe insomnia. I've been through 3 different sleep meds, including Ambien and nothing has worked for me. It's rare that I get a deep, satisfying sleep.

HU 753, have you been to a sleep doctor?

I don't think sleep specialists sling pills around as much as docs used to do years ago but I'm sure there are diagnoses for which they're still used.

A lot more is known and understood today about sleep physiology and disorders, causes and different treatments. If you started taking Ambien more than 20 years ago, jane, that was back when the specialty and research were still in early days.

I bought some melatonin and tried it for a couple of nights. It did not help me sleep at all, but it made me feel completely dragged and tired all day. So I stopped.

It's so weird how I often feel more refreshed after a shorter sleep than a longer one. 6 hrs seems to be what I normally can do. On rare occasion I get up to 7. But xmas day for some reason, I napped in the am and then slept for about 3 hrs in the afternoon and then went to bed as usual and got another 6 hrs that night. That was freakin' amazing!

One thing I do remember was, many years ago, I was following a controlled carb diet and I was actually sleeping better...so diet may have something to do with it.

When I first started working with person for whom I work, I would have the same nightmare repeatedly... His wife would be hospitalized and I'd have to find him, often when he was overseas. Which, in real life, could've happened easily, he did travel constantly. It finally came true, but it was his daughter, and it turned out ok. I had the right connections and got them hooked up pretty much instantly, even though he was in Germany. Actually, his wife was with him. It was a bike accident, and she was wearing a helmet.

I finally quit dreaming it.

Lars. I’m very sorry you are going through this. I have periods where I have very vivid disturbing dreams. Sometimes they are not disturbing, but are very vivid and entertaining. Thank goodness there are times I’m not plagued by them. Or maybe I just don’t remember them at times, because I still wake at ridiculously early times.

My husband, I feel, is very good at interpreting my dreams, which very often involve people in my family, my childhood home, or is set in Brittany where my family is from and where we visited during summers

I wish I could offer helpful advice. This is more a moral support comment.

I agree that diet can affect sleep, and it can also affect my mood. I avoid sugar for this reason, but then sugar can trigger a hypoglycemic attack for me.

The last few days I've slept better, but I have been avoiding cheese before going to bed. This may or may not be the issue - I will have to see what happens when I do eat cheese again before bedtime. The British Cheese Board did a study that says that different kinds of cheese will give you different kinds of dreams, but I do not think that their study was exhaustive enough. I've never had Red Leicester (nor have I seen it that I can remember), which their study says will help you sleep well. I tend to eat Italian or French cheese instead of British. I never buy British cheese or even look for me, as I am not familiar with it, except for cheddar, and I buy domestic cheddar, as a rule. I've had Stilton and did not like it - I much prefer Roquefort.

Perhaps talking out your issues here has helped? My dh wrestles with his perceived problems most nights because he often keeps them to himself.

I had a horrible nightmare again this morning at about 4 AM, and I had to stay up long enough for the memory of it to fade.

I think I need to look into the effects of cheese and dreams because I did have some Brie last night late in the day. It's a snack I like to have late at night, and I'm not sure how often it causes nightmares, or whether it is the cause at all. I also ordered some Magnesium taurate supplements to see whether they can help.

I'm going to see my doctor tomorrow regarding new BP medication that he had prescribed for me (Nifedipine ER) that I believe is causing my feet and ankles to swell. This is a know side effect of this medication, and so I plan to stop taking it after I get my doctor to prescribe something else.

The dream I had this morning was another university nightmare, but this time I was going back to the first university that I had attended but was being put into on campus residential housing. I was assigned a roommate that I liked, but when we went to our housing, it was in a large building that we had to share with a lot of other students, and there were very few defining walls to separate the individual spaces, and so I could not tell where our space ended and someone else's began. I wanted to have more walls to provide privacy, and this was causing me anxiety that made me wake up. The interactions I had with other students and staff were particularly disturbing. The closet that I thought was going to be ours was already full of someone else's stuff, including a huge collection of heads or busts that were storing wigs. Some of the busts were somewhat grotesque, and I wanted them out of our closet. There were also a lot of very small dresses on hangers in this closet that looked like they were meant for dolls. There was an office in the building with managers, and I tried to get them to define the limits of the space that we were supposed to occupy, and so they started painting lines on the floor to show exactly where our space was. The lack of real walls was what caused me the most anxiety, and so I woke up and was afraid to go back to sleep.

I do appreciate all of the good advice that I have received here and will try to implement more of it - especially the suggestions right before going to sleep.

Yesterday or the day before I was watching old episodes of Candid Camera with my brother, and there was one that had a small girl in the early 1960s being interviews by Alan Funt. At one point, she talked about having nightmares, and she said that when that happened, she would tell herself to redirect the dream to something positive, and this worked for her. Unfortunately, this has not worked for me, but I will keep trying.