Nightmares suck!

[baratron]

When I'm depressed, one of my main symptoms is nightmares. All of the anxious thoughts in my subconscious manifest themselves in my sleep, and I have horrible dreams that make me incredibly panicky.

OK. So I understand where nightmares about people very close to me dying come from - that's a fairly obvious anxiety thing: "I love you, so you're going to leave me". When you've been with someone for long enough to know they're not going to suddenly dump you, then obviously the way in which they're going to leave you is to die. Unexpectedly. Of some disease that neither of you knew they had, or being murdered. (This dream of course quadruples in frequency when friends get diagnosed with serious illnesses, or friends of friends die suddenly, or even when there is a news story about a random person getting killed).

But where the hell does a nightmare about one of Richard's friends dying come from? The person in question is someone I like, who Richard is relatively close to - but he really is only an acquaintance to me. So why did I wake up on Saturday upset and needing Richard to check that he was definitely okay? I knew it was "only" a bad dream, but...

And yes, I have dreams that real and upsetting at least a couple of times a week. It's a big part of what makes me non-functional when I'm depressed.

Comments

[kshandra]

Ugh. I'm sorry, dear. *hugs*

[ludy]

the flippant answer is that you dreamt about wuzzie's friend dying cos you'd already done horrible dreams about close people dying

the geek answer is to look at possibe effects of your meds and the stuff you do before sleep and on waking

It sounds very Not-Fun - Good Thoughts

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Oh crumbs. That must be horrible. I think sometime before adult hood my brain just decided that it couldn't cope with bad dreams and it stopped dreaming.

I now notice that my lack of depression has meant that I am starting to dream again.

Anyway the point is that I know bad dreams can be nasty. *hugs*

[memevector.livejournal.com]

Best book about dreams that I know is by Gayle Delaney, "Living your dreams".

er, obviously you don't want to actually live these horrible ones!

but it has some very useful stuff on how to ask your unconscious mind what it's on about :-)

and also lots of anecdotes about other people's dreams and what they turned out to mean - so an enjoyable read if you like that kind of thing.

[judiff]

do you like need a dream-catcher