Trying to fill up posts, and I'm wondering....

[conuly]

Do you guys (still) get nightmares?

Because it's the weirdest thing about my dreams. Last night, I had this dream about an evil house that a. tried to kill you and b. tried to split you up from any friends you had with you so you and your friends would kill each other and c. spit you out in the wrong time period when you left so you HAD to go back in to get home again.

And it wasn't a very scary dream at all, it was just interesting.

I don't generally have scary dreams that scare me.

But earlier this week I had a boring dream about I don't know what, it was so boring, and I woke up at 3 in the morning feeling incredibly uneasy and couldn't fall back asleep for half an hour because the dream was so upsetting. Even though nothing happened in it!

So I guess that earlier-this-week dream was a nightmare, because it sure scared me, but that doesn't make any sense at all, does it? Shouldn't nightmares seem scary when you think about them instead of being frankly about as interesting as watching paint dry?

Comments

[rho]

I get nightmares a whole lot. They're never of the standard "monsters are trying to eat me" type, mind. They're generally very psychological, and just mess with my head. They don't tend to leave me scared, so much as upset, confused and extremely disoriented.

[steorra]

I don't remember the last time I had a dream that actually scared me, although I have occasionally had dreams with things happening in them that should be scary. (For a while I was semi-frequently having dreams that involved some sort of societal upheaval, whether nuclear war or major epidemic or famine or... But it's been a while since that happened.)

I did once in adulthood have a dream that made me wake up crying, not from fear but from frustration and disappointment, because everytime I was going to eat something it turned out to be something I couldn't have for allergy reasons, to the point that just as I was about to enjoy a tasty cup of tea someone without asking reached over and added an ingredient to it that I couldn't have. I don't know how you categorize that.

[crystalpyramid]

I occasionally have real nightmares, but I much more frequently have strangely plotted dreams that read like horror novels but are not remotely scary. Which sounds like what you're describing — emotion and plot getting completely untangled.

[trialia]

All the time. Especially lately, because I can only sleep in one position without dislocating, now, and somehow that seems to set them off. They're so frightening that I can't go back to sleep immediately - I have to get them out of my head properly first. Awful.

[siderea]

No, I don't seem to have proper nightmares. I'll have the occasional bad dream, but not something that wakes me up, or really frightens me.

[dragonwolf]

Very rarely have I had the typical nightmare in the sense that I was actually scared. I think the last time I remember having one that actually woke me up scared was about 10 years ago, when I was in middle school, and it wasn't really the dream itself that was bothersome, but the fact that it would pick back up after I woke up and would go back to sleep.

I do have dreams that, if they were movies, would qualify as "horror" movies, though.

Lately, I've been having quite a few Zombie Apocalypse dreams.

[darkgods.livejournal.com]

I still have nightmares. Some of them, like Tuesday's nightmare, was rough. I dreamed I was cutting off my fingers with a kitchen knife. That one woke me screaming. But I know what you mean about the "blah" nightmares. I have those dreams that leave me unsettled (but I can't fathom why) frequently.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I get nightmares now and then still. To the best of my knowledge, I didn't get any when I was very young, but once I started getting them, I got them intermittently, often in clusters. I haven't had boring, unsettling dreams though. I also sometimes get sleep paralysis with hallucination, which is quite unpleasant, but that doesn't happen very often.

[bubblesbrnaid]

I decide whether to call a dream a "nightmare" based on the emotional component, not the plot. If I wake up with a surge of terror, it's a nightmare.

I've had a problem getting that through to my therapist. She assumes that a dream is a nightmare just because there's blood, guts, gore and/or dismemberment. Me, I consider that a calm night.

[sporks5000.livejournal.com]

I agree completely! The dreams I have that are filled with disturbing imagery are generally the ones that I consider interesting, while there are others that seems mundane, but leave me waking with a sense of unease so great that I feel the desire to shy away from thinking on them further. .

[wodhaund.livejournal.com]

Nightmares, oh my.

I still have them pretty frequently, to the tune of 3-5 a month, but I react to them better now than when I was a kid. More waking up thinking "well, thank goodness that was a dream!" followed by going back to sleep and less wide-eyed terror in the dark combined with trying to figure out if I'm brave enough to hide in my parents' room or not.

Like Leora, I get sleep paralysis, too, which is frankly more frightening than any of the nightmares I've ever had.