Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

Post Reply
Swix
Moderator
Moderator
Level 18
Level 18
Posts: 2043
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#1

Post by Swix » Thu Mar 01, 2012 5:51 pm

So... some of you may know I've been suffering from nightmares, a while ago in a few back to back weeks, then they went away, then they came back in sparse spots. Now, I'd say within the past two months they have become so frequent that they are happening once every other night at the very least, some I know I had but I can!t remember (and some I wish I'd never tried to remember), so I'm thinking these aren't going to go away by themselves.

So, does anyone have any tips on dealing with these nightmares? Or maybe just calming them down, even a little bit? I feel this is rapidly turning from a minor but interesting annoyance into a big, big problem. So any tips of any sort are welcome.

Borg12345
Level 15
Level 15
Posts: 1029
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:00 am

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#2

Post by Borg12345 » Thu Mar 01, 2012 10:21 pm

I'm not sure how much help I can be seeing as I don't remember my dreams most of the time (this worries me sometimes :P), but I didn't seem to get nightmares very often since I got into horror movies. Maybe your mind stops creating nightmares when you view them as entertainment, a kind of "become your monster" type affair. :P

Swix
Moderator
Moderator
Level 18
Level 18
Posts: 2043
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#3

Post by Swix » Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:45 pm

Hm, that'san interesting thought, and I haven't seen any proper horror films for a while. Although I'm not sure how into them I can get. Hmm. Got any recommendations?
Last edited by Swix on Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Borg12345
Level 15
Level 15
Posts: 1029
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:00 am

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#4

Post by Borg12345 » Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:59 pm

And how! XD

Pontypool is amazing. It's a zombie movie with a twist, a proper one at that. Instead of your usual "bite = zombie" affair, the infection is spread through language. Certain words get infected, and once infected will infect anyone who hears that word. Closest thing there'll ever be to an "artsy" zombie movie, and I recommend it to everyone.

The first Saw film is actually pretty good. It's not that focused on the whole gore aspect (there's some, but not a huge amount), it's more about the fear and desperation of two men locked in a room. I'd recommend it. Two and three are okay, and my girlfriend refuses to accept the films after three happened. XD

Shawn Of the Dead is very good, but also being a comedy it might miss the point.

It needs to be a legal requirement to watch Alien. Aliens was also fantastic, but it's more of a tense action movie then outright horror.

28 Days Later is brilliant, a modern classic. Very atmospheric, and even more so compared to the sequel 28 Weeks Later. It's very obvious 28 Weeks was a Hollywood film. :P

Pitch Black is one of my favourites, and had a very original premise. Plus Vin Diesel played the role of the cold blooded killer Riddick brilliantly. The Chronicles of Riddick is alright, but again it's an action movie. The games are highly praised, and rightly so!

Dawn Of The Dead is another must see, as are the rest of Romeros zombie films. Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead are more actions films though. What is it with horrors getting action film sequels?! Oh and make sure they're the originals, not remakes.

Speaking of a Romero film re-make, The Crazies was really good. Fairly different from the original but in this case I think it was a good thing, it really tightened it up. Apparently people laughed at the title, philistines! [/snob] :P (For context if you're not aware, The Crazies was to 28 Days Later and the whole "viral infection" genre like Dawn of the Dead was to modern zombie movies!)

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a very cool musical horror. It's pretty silly at times but it's most definitely a horror movie (unless you're particularly bloodthirsty :P).

Cloverfield is definitely one to watch, it was a very interesting twist on both monster movies and "low budget" films.

The Blair Witch Project, which genuinely WAS a low budget movie, is freaking amazing. It feels real, which is the biggest thing I think (to the point where I wondered if it was based on a true story or myth).

That's all I can think of for now, hopefully there's some inspiration there.

Alakin
Level 2
Level 2
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 5:00 am

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#5

Post by Alakin » Sun Mar 04, 2012 12:38 am

Halloween was pretty good, as was the second one (they're pretty much one movie split into two). The ones after the first two a bit less so, but still not bad.

3kul
Level 7
Level 7
Posts: 257
Joined: Wed Nov 17, 2010 5:00 am

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#6

Post by 3kul » Sun Mar 04, 2012 2:53 am

You should probably be a little careful before diving into the horror movies Swix; they might work as Borg suggests, but if they don't you may find that they serve as inspiration for future nightmares to flourish on (that's what they do for me :unsure: ...)

I don't get nightmares all that often, but dreams are something that I find quite interesting anyway so maybe I can help you out. If you don't mind, could you answer some of these questions for me:
* Are you experiencing an unusually large amount of stress, for any reason, in your life at the moment?
* Is there anything that your nightmares have in common? For those that you do remember, what happens in them, and how do they make you feel when you wake up (aside from scared)?
* What is your sleep routine like? I.e.: what do you do before going to bed, when do you go to bed, when do you wake up, and about how much uninterrupted sleep do you usually get each night?

You don't have to answer all of the questions (or any of them, I guess) if you don't want to, but the more I know the better I can advise you :)

(On an aside-note, I saw the second half of Aliens on TV a while back without having ever seen the first half, so I was incredibly confused during that scene at the end where Bishop gets chopped in half - it wasn't until I looked it up later that I found out that he was an android :P )

User avatar
MDude
Evil Council Member
Evil Council Member
Level 5
Level 5
Posts: 164
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Contact:

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#7

Post by MDude » Sun Mar 04, 2012 4:24 am

I've been told that eating a lot of sugar before going to bed can cause weird dreams, which lines up with the ones I had near Christmas after having a bunch of cookies and stuff. Junk food in general does that, I think. Also consider reviewing your dreams like you would a movie, acting like the ones you don't like are boring. Be careful though, one time when I did that, my subconscious went and decided to get artsy on me.

Swix
Moderator
Moderator
Level 18
Level 18
Posts: 2043
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#8

Post by Swix » Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:06 am

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Borg12345</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>And how&#33; XD

Pontypool is amazing. It's a zombie movie with a twist, a proper one at that. Instead of your usual "bite = zombie" affair, the infection is spread through language. Certain words get infected, and once infected will infect anyone who hears that word. Closest thing there'll ever be to an "artsy" zombie movie, and I recommend it to everyone.

The first Saw film is actually pretty good. It's not that focused on the whole gore aspect (there's some, but not a huge amount), it's more about the fear and desperation of two men locked in a room. I'd recommend it. Two and three are okay, and my girlfriend refuses to accept the films after three happened. XD

Shawn Of the Dead is very good, but also being a comedy it might miss the point.

It needs to be a legal requirement to watch Alien. Aliens was also fantastic, but it's more of a tense action movie then outright horror.

28 Days Later is brilliant, a modern classic. Very atmospheric, and even more so compared to the sequel 28 Weeks Later. It's very obvious 28 Weeks was a Hollywood film.

Pitch Black is one of my favourites, and had a very original premise. Plus Vin Diesel played the role of the cold blooded killer Riddick brilliantly. The Chronicles of Riddick is alright, but again it's an action movie. The games are highly praised, and rightly so&#33;

Dawn Of The Dead is another must see, as are the rest of Romeros zombie films. Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead are more actions films though. What is it with horrors getting action film sequels?&#33; Oh and make sure they're the originals, not remakes.

Speaking of a Romero film re-make, The Crazies was really good. Fairly different from the original but in this case I think it was a good thing, it really tightened it up. Apparently people laughed at the title, philistines&#33; [/snob] (For context if you're not aware, The Crazies was to 28 Days Later and the whole "viral infection" genre like Dawn of the Dead was to modern zombie movies&#33;)

Repo&#33; The Genetic Opera is a very cool musical horror. It's pretty silly at times but it's most definitely a horror movie (unless you're particularly bloodthirsty :P).

Cloverfield is definitely one to watch, it was a very interesting twist on both monster movies and "low budget" films.

The Blair Witch Project, which genuinely WAS a low budget movie, is freaking amazing. It feels real, which is the biggest thing I think (to the point where I wondered if it was based on a true story or myth).

That's all I can think of for now, hopefully there's some inspiration there.[/quote]

Hm, I've never seen Pontypool, Saw, or The Crazies. I have a feeling Saw wouldn't help very much or, y'know, I might not be able to watch the whole thing through because horror films that show that sort of graphic violence on people (like Hostel, which I know I know, it was only an eye and only in one scene and I'm probably a wimp but.... yeah. I refused to watch that film and I've never even thought about touching 2) is just, bluuuuuurgh. Eurgh. Yuck. Basically XD. And I've only seen The Blair Witch Project for about ten minutes. So, I guess that leaves me plenty to dive into when it gets really desperate XD-and if I'm honest it's starting to.

I do love all the Alien films though, I've seen all of them, even seen Aliens vs Predator which I'm not sure what to make of still however I refuse to accept that that little yellow Alien creature with four Predator mandibles is in any way shape or form canon. That's just silly XD. However I have had several dreams more than nightmares actually involving these guys.

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Alakin</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>Halloween was pretty good, as was the second one (they're pretty much one movie split into two). The ones after the first two a bit less so, but still not bad.[/quote]

I've never seen them either, guess that'll have to be added to the list too.

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>MDude</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>I've been told that eating a lot of sugar before going to bed can cause weird dreams, which lines up with the ones I had near Christmas after having a bunch of cookies and stuff. Junk food in general does that, I think. Also consider reviewing your dreams like you would a movie, acting like the ones you don't like are boring. Be careful though, one time when I did that, my subconscious went and decided to get artsy on me.[/quote]

Huh, I've never really experienced nightmares through eating lots of sugar. Mind you if I do have any sugar it's like half a bar of little chocolate or a yoghurt or in a small cup of coffee or tea. I do know that sleeping with your head near a socket of any sort messes up your brain and dreams-it did mine when we slept in the living room with our heads almost directly above an unused socket for a phoneline, and gave me a headache when I woke up too. I don't recommend ever doing that. Or putting a mobile phone near your head since that does the same thing.

I could do that, I suppose. Well, it's another thing to consider doing, which is definitely appreciated ^_^. Though knowing my subconscious in dreams it's quite likely to pull off the artsy thing too.

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>3kul</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>You should probably be a little careful before diving into the horror movies Swix; they might work as Borg suggests, but if they don't you may find that they serve as inspiration for future nightmares to flourish on (that's what they do for me ...)

I don't get nightmares all that often, but dreams are something that I find quite interesting anyway so maybe I can help you out. If you don't mind, could you answer some of these questions for me:
* Are you experiencing an unusually large amount of stress, for any reason, in your life at the moment?
* Is there anything that your nightmares have in common? For those that you do remember, what happens in them, and how do they make you feel when you wake up (aside from scared)?
* What is your sleep routine like? I.e.: what do you do before going to bed, when do you go to bed, when do you wake up, and about how much uninterrupted sleep do you usually get each night?

You don't have to answer all of the questions (or any of them, I guess) if you don't want to, but the more I know the better I can advise you

(On an aside-note, I saw the second half of Aliens on TV a while back without having ever seen the first half, so I was incredibly confused during that scene at the end where Bishop gets chopped in half - it wasn't until I looked it up later that I found out that he was an android )[/quote]

Yes, I can imagine that horror movies can/will/would provide new inspiration for new nightmares since that's happened before, as did playing Dead Space last year which I know was responsible for the two weeks of back to back nightmares. I do know that that is not the reason for them this time since I haven't been playing it. But, well, I'll take any help or advice I can get at this point I am becoming quite desperate :S.

There was one point where I didn't really get any nightmares at all, and even if I did most of them didn't scare me. I think the first time this happened (during the back to back weeks) was that when I'd had it I remember being completely amazed that my head still had the capability to seriously frighten me. That initial reaction has faded now.

I don't mind answering your questions about them at all. I actually started keeping a dream journal (that is what they call it, right?) on a suggestion from my partner to see if there was some link. It's also got a few in it I guess I can't really term as dreams or nightmares and a few rare dreams in it. I made the mistake of thinking maybe just putting them down in something had calmed them down recently and then had one of the worst ones that same night-guess something in my subconscious decided I needed a good kicking for daring to think such things.

*I don't know if I'm experiencing an unusual amount of stress, I guess. Getting increasingly disillusioned with my 'job' and their outright refusal to actually let me do anything that involves anything that I actually have the skillset to do, and we had a change of store manager and they (Head Office) keep changing things and cutting hours and making dumb policies I swear I am really not at all surprised that less and less people come into the place, never mind the fact that a lot of people have little to no money to spend anyway (seriously the jobs 'market' over here is really bare compared to how it was at one point)

I am quite worried about my Uncle and have been for the past oh, two years I think since he's developed lung cancer from smoking and the doctors originally gave him only six months to live after diagnosis-boy has he showed them&#33; And the cancer, too. Just shows what a little digging of your own can do.

... I'm always worried about my dad, so I guess that doesn't really count.

*As for the third question. my sleep pattern is usually regular. Usually, I come home from work, I have a small supper if I'm hungry-usually crackers or noodles or soup, on one occasion a single baked potato, something quick since it's about half past ten when I get home with a little cup of coffee or juice. Or I'll have a little fromage frais pot when I'm really not hungry Then I'll try and do something to get my mind off work and calm it down a bit. Sometimes I'll play my DS, or watch The Big Bang Theory/Coupling/South Park, or watch my bf play a game which was more recently Skyrim but was Mass Effect before that, or I'll play some little arcade game on the 360, or read. Then we both go to bed at around half eleven or twelve, to wake up at 6 in the morning. Sometimes we'll sleep in the bedroom but I think our neighbours downstairs might be deaf because sometimes it's impossible for us to go to sleep in there since they've got their tv on so godsdamn loud we can often guess what the film that they're watching is called, never mind just the genre, so we sleep in the living room on those nights.
As for uninterrupted sleep that very rarely happens, whether in the bedroom or the living room. I will almost always wake up at some point during the middle of the night for some reason and sometimes, but not often (well more often now really) several times during the night. I have no idea why. There was one point where when I woke up and looked at the clock every time it was exactly 3:46 AM.

*And the nightmares themselves, I thought I'd put this last since I'm gonna have to go retrieve my little book of horrors. I'll have to brb for a bit, then I'lll be back to edit. So, brb&#33;
Last edited by Swix on Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

Swix
Moderator
Moderator
Level 18
Level 18
Posts: 2043
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#9

Post by Swix » Sun Mar 04, 2012 3:44 pm

Sorry, since my phone refuses to add anything to any posts over 5048 characters long I'm afraid I'm going to have to resort to the Double Post of Doom&#33; To tell you that I'm sorry this is taking so long. I realised time had gone by faster than I thought it would during that last post and I had to go and get ready in order to meet my bfs kids in town to go out and have a meal with them. So I'm writing this on the phone whilst on the bus.

I can't really write down the main lot on this thing as I'm sure you can appreciate, but I can tell you some of the more minor ones/ones I can't remember as much.

(EDIT: Hurray, I can edit again. I'll just do the nightmares but I can put the dreams up too if you think that might help. ^_^). Here's the little ones:

There were two nights where I don't remember what the dream was but I do remember waking up in the middle of the night, feeling compelled to walk into the bedroom. I didn't because I also felt convinced that if I did give in to that compulsion then aliens would abduct me through the large window.

I had one where I and some dream girl had found this gigantic, homemade wooden adventure grounds in some obscure part of the country. So we started playing around in it, and found that straight was curved and vice versa. So we'd walk along this little wooden bridge and it would appear that we were moving straight, but we'd end up back at the start at the end. We then went and climbed up what looked like a big wall of wooden planks attached to each other in a pretty rickety way that made it easy to climb up, but when we got up there we realised we were actually on top of a massive wooden bridge that stretched all the way into the horizon as far as we could see, both ways. We started walking down this bridge since we figured this should curve too. It didn't of course, but by the time we figured that out we'd both walked so far the entire landscape had changed, and when we went to walk back the bridge collapsed behind us. I also vaguely remember something about having to climb a part of the bridge with my bare hands because the floor started collapsing, and at one point stopping to admire the scenery because it was so vast, I could see so much in each direction. Even so we couldn't climb down the sides anymore.

There was one where everything was pitch black. Almost literally, since I remember not being to see anything. But I knew I was running down a corridor that was very, well, square and there was something that was chasing me. I don't know what it was, because I couldn't see it, but I knew it was chasing me somehow and if I stopped moving whatever it was would catch me. I remember stopping at the end of the corridor, I couldn't go any further because there was a bottomless pit ahead of me but there was a turn right next to it. So I tried to turn, and I could only do it slowly. Too slowly.

And here's the bigger ones:

I was in a house, apparently I lived there (which makes no sense since I live in an apartment but eh) and there were three people there plus me-except everyone was in silhouette, shadows, I couldn't make out any features. We seemed to be having a party of some sort that involved quite a lot of gaming, movies and food and I had the back door open. At some point I found a letter which I put down on top of a bunch of letters to send to the post office the next day, as it was late, and it wasn't addressed to me so I figured it was probably delivered by accident. I can't remember what the address was, all I remember very clearly on the envelope were the letters 'DIW'. Then one of the people there brought this newspaper over because they really really wanted me to see something on the front page. So I looked, until I insisted that they stop insisting I look because I was missing out on what was going on around me. That person left and I fired up the computer so I could play a game with one of them, then went into the kitchen where the open back door was, only to come across this very large man who was holding a screwdriver in a weapon like manner. And he pushed into the wall behind some curtains then put a finger to his lips to say 'Shhh'. I was quiet but I whispered "why are you threatening me with a screwdriver?" and he went "Oh, this? Sorry, this is for protection. I didn't mean to threaten you. The real danger is the person who walked in here while you were distracted" so I made a weiord look and the guy sat down in a chair and sighed, then asked me if I'd seen a letter with DIW on it. I had of course, so I said yes, and the guy told me that the letter was extremely important, in fact so important this dangerous person who'd entered the house would do horrible things just to get it. I offered to go get the letter, the guy with the screwdriver said I could but I shouldn't trey especially if the guy had already seen it, as then he'd know I knew and would do those horrible things to all of us and screwdriver guy wouldn't be able to stop everyone getting hurt if that happened. I went back in and counted heads-there was one extra, but because everyone was a silhouette they all looked the same so I couldn't figure out who it was... So I went to check on the letter, found it still where it had previously been... and then had danger guy come up behind me, and I got the impression he already knew about the other guy somehow. Then I woke up.

There was one that actually involved Doctor Who, not sure if this exactly counts but it definitely doesn't count as a dream, it was much closer to a nightmare, I trod on a crack in the pavement (sidewalk) and ended up stuck somehow in a large elevator that was also stuck. Then the TARDIS appeared in the centre of it and apparently I'd managed to not only step through a crack in time, it was also a crack in dimensions, and by doing such a thing I'd stopped both-that 's why the Doctor turned up. He fixed it, somehow, and I had to leave the elevator or it wouldn't work properly, but I had to make sure, somehow, that the swirly grey vortex that opened up when the doors opened was the right place and time otherwise I'd be stuck in an alternate dimension forever. On the way I remember thinking that I probably wouldn't mind so much if I did end up in a different dimension but I never did find out if it was the right one, because I woke up again-and was very confused and wondered if this really is the right place.

This one, is going up in creativity because it was so long and complicated and twisty it deserved it's own storyline, so I'll put it in a spoiler tag for people:

<div class='spoiler_toggle'>Spoiler: click to toggle</div><div class="spoiler" style="display:none;">This one happened on a lone planet with little vegetation and water, no seas, only very teeny tiny living animals, no mountains but lots of red-orange sand and rocks. There were prefabbed colony building that were a sort of yellow colour, uniform, had several floors and sloped down each side so there was a bit of a roof over each floor, and they had all been lowered down from orbit. I was up on the rooftop and saw an Alien on the floor of the other prefab building that was acting weird. It didn't attack or bring out it's friends it just went back inside the other building. So a few of us including me went over to the other building and found them acting even stranger, especially when they found us. They weren't aggressive at all, they just sort of... stared. We went back to the original prefab and they followed us in there. Almost of all them followed us in there. Then the screaming and running and terror, they caught everyone and herded them back to their building. Well, they herded females back to their building, males I never saw again. They rounded up all the girls of every age and took us all to classes, where they started teaching us their culture, language-how they talked, behaviour, perspective, that sort of thing, then when they thought someone had learned enough they'd take them away somewhere. They did the same thing over and over until you learned it off by heart. I asked one of the girls who was from the neighbouring prefab where they were taking them-she said she didn't know, but you never saw the graduates again either. At one point our 'teacher' got distracted by another Alien and I decided that jumping out of the window was my best bet for getting out of there. So I did and then came face to face with a single one, which opened it's mouth and looked like it was going to do the tongue thing to me. But it didn't, instead it looked in the window at some others, grabbed my arm and dragged me off somewhere. I asked it why it was helping me, but it never spoke but somehow it communicated to me that it didn't like what the others were doing. It took me off to a place that was beautiful, it was a calm pool with an arc of rocks and plants on one side, with the full moon and stars reflecting in the water and small life dancing around the place. We stayed there for a bit and I remember it had it's back to me looking off into the distance. We left the pool and went to a lower room in the prefab where I saw the other girls strapped to the walls and having their wombs ripped out from them whilst they were still alive to make a suitable environment for embryos (their eggs had no facehuggers since they had no queen, they were laid by the females with very slight crests in this group, and the embryos would die if they weren't put in a womb almost immediately). I asked what was happening and I was told they'd been 'sterilised' and that memory is passed to them from the mother-that's why they were making people memories their stuff, so that it would also pass from the womb to the embryo. I looked away for a minute and then back and the companion who brought me here has gone. I'm suddenly in the midst of a group of these creatures who don't take kindly to me being there of course and so they rip out my womb with their hand claws. I started laughing maniacally, holding my stomach-what was left of it, and slowly collapsing, as I died because it was only then that I figured out what was going on-that Alien had shown me and brought me down here on purpose so that the creature that came from my womb would know everything about what was going on here. </div>

There was one that started on another planet that had a fluidic neighbour, full of some sort of energy. People wanted to harness the energy and ended up making a long, black, rectangular hole in the centre of the planet-I was watching it open up from one side to another. Some people thought the machine that did that wouldn't work, others that something terrible would happen. Everyone was stood around 'the square' outside watching this thing open and then the square itself went fluidic, and around the edges of it a 'square circle' of water started rushing around like a river, then completely lifted off the floor and started floating in the air. Then someone yelled 'they're tearing a hole in reality&#33;' but even so, they couldn't turn the machine off or were too transfixed to do anything about it. Then, as I was starting to think of going over there and trying to shut it off whilst everyone else was preoccupied a large, angry, orange dragon (pretty much a Charizard) burst out from the fluidic floor, roaring. It had it's back to me but it was quite obviously roaring at the large white horse that had risen up on the other side of the square with a horrible, nasty, evilly happy look in it's eyes and a slightly twisted grin on it's face as though it had somehow planned all of this.

Another one had a small plot of square grass surrounded by houses that were being terrorised by ghosts. I called them red paper cut ghosts because they were red and flat and everything living turned into one of them if they gave you a paper cut, and they came out of the fog that surrounded the entire place. They could be scared off by little dogs-jack Russells and West Highland Terriers, someone tried a cat and someone else a mosquito but they didn't work. We had to try to find the airport in this fog as it was the only way to leave and I remember looking up and seeing a colourful 'lego exoskeleton' of a plane leaving just as the little group got to the place. I remember thinking that that might be the way out but it doesn't look like it could carry anything but itself.

And yet another one, where I tried to go into a house that I thought was safe because there were 'sand hippos' in the ground that would tear you to pieces, lots of little dark coloured ones in soil, and larger ones in sand, but there were small rocks that you could stand on scattered about where they couldn't get you, but they could move the rock platforms. There was only the one house nearby so I went for that one, but I had to run across a sand courtyard to get to the dark brown stone door and steps. But a large purple headed hippo with an open mouth that was bigger than I was rose out of the sand before I got halfway there and came towards me, making me back up until I climbed on top of the stone fence that surrounded the courtyard to get away from it. At which point we just stared at each other, for a while, since I couldn't really move. Then a grey wolf so pale it looked almost white appeared out of nowehere and jumped on the hippos snout, forcing it's mouth closed and drawing the monsters attention when it leapt away from it, enough that I ran past the hippo up the stone steps and finally into the house. The door was intricately carved, and the inside was almost gothic in it's architecture. I found more people inside, huddled together hiding from the 'hippocalypse' at the top oif a balcony. I joined them for a short while, until I realised they were barely able to talk and didn't want to explore the perfectly safe if slightly eerie large dark house, because they didn't want to touch the floor. They'd gone completely insane. So I left them to it and went and explored, at one point even seeing the word 'eerie' written in glowing white on a corridor wall, in a sort of flowing script. On my explorations I met the white-grey wolf again near a door and remembered that it had helped me so I knelt down and started talking to it like you would a dog, to try to get it to come over so I could pet and thank it for earlier. It had been staring at a door but it turned it's head to look at me with really bright blue eyes before turning and bounding towards me. I stood up, and when it got to me it stood up on it's back paws with it's front paws on my shoulders, stared directly at me and started to talk. I was amazed and surprised at this, of course. It asked me not to talk to it like that but it was glad I'd gotten away safe. I asked it if it was called 'White Fang', it said it guessed I could call it that if I really wanted to but 'Grey Fang' would probably suit it better as it had never considered giving itself a name before. It also said I could help it out by opening the door, as it's paws weren't very good for that. So I opened the door, it said thanks and ran outside. I yelled 'G'bye White Fang' as a bit of a joke and it turned around, ran back in, came really close up to me and said 'you know what, just call me Fang' then turned around and ran off. I remember shouting something else that offended it and it came back in and had me down on the floor this time making perfectly sure I knew it wasn't happy, then it ran off again and I woke up.

There was one another one, where mud had accumulated in cities little six inch tall batwinged demon creatures with no tail, sharp teeth, rounded ears and double bent legs would pop out from another 'Grey' dimension and swarm around people, causing general chaos and destruction until the mess was cleaned and the swarm of 'vermin' caught or killed. But they wouldn't stop popping up out of the muck until the dirt itself was destroyed by fire. By a firebreather, as ordinary fire would only work temporarily. Whi9ch is what I was in this nightmare-I could destroy these interdimensional muck portals by breathing fire on them until they were destroyed. That's also what I was doing, walking around the concrete city collecting the horrible muck and setting fire to it, waiting until it was destroyed. I'd almost cleared out the whole lot of the muck until someone told me that the creatures were actually quite harmless once their disorientation from coming through had passed. So I gathered what was left of the muck in a bucket and waited for one of the creatures to pop out so we could ask it why it and the others were so desperate to come into our world in the first place. I set fire to the muck after it popped out so it couldn't leave, and was going to ask the other guy who's idea this was how we were supposed to communicate with it when I woke up.

Yet another one, I've had a lot:

In this one, there were twins and I wasn't really there, I was just watching. There was one twin running around quite happily on the outside watched by a female caretaker. He was happy and like a normal kid. His twin was in this square building that was looked after by a male caretaker. The door halfway down a corridor to the kids locked room was really thick, and it had a floating keyhole. It was basically a round hole in the centre of the door, that had a floating metallic circle in the middle with white light around it, and rectangular hole in the centre for a key. The twin on the outside found out that his twin on the inside was locked in, stole the key and let the twin out. Turned out the twin inside wasn't exactly right, they went to the market together which was surprisingly bare for a market, and the kid started stealing, well, everything. Absolutely everything he could get his hands on. he became invisible when he was noticed, so the other twin got all the blame and taken back to the two caretakers who were a couple, the kids were theirs. Yet even they mistook the innocent for the bad one and locked him up instead. All I could do was float, watch, and yell uselessly because I could make no noise.

This was the worst one, this is the one that came when I thought they'd gone away, this is 'the worst one':

In this one, I dreamt that me and my partner went to see a live wrestling show where we got to take part in the show via disappearing into a hole in the middle of the ring. I got hit with some liquid of some sort on the cheek by some suspicious looking guy, but thought nothing of it until we went back to our flashy hotel room in a flashy high rise hotel, when my face started developing these horrible overlarge pus filled boils that almost immediately shot out projectile pus as they kept growing-which then immediately set off more whenever they touched other parts of mine or my partners face. So I had to call 999 (that's Britains emergency line)and get a helicopter to come get us out of the window, and I warned them 'not to touch the stuff with their bare hands, and if they did not to put it anywhere near their faces'. So they turned up in biohazard suits to take us away. After we got 'cured' (well, we didn't have projectile boils anymore anyway) we went far away from the city to the middle of the countryside to stop anything from spreading, or so we were told, only to find that angry mobs of people who'd got the thing from us were there too and that we were all being held in 'protective captivity' to see if the disease did anything else. Eventually, the threats, break-ins, and 'official visits' that involved a guy in a wetsuit with a needle and a lot of force got too much and we managed to find someone who would repair and rebuild a crashed helicopter nearby to take us away from that place. It was ready and hovering outside the windows when some other angry resident smashed the door to pieces with an axe and a crowbar, then threatened us with it.

(Still editing, this may take a while. Will put up nightmares one by one in this one post)
Last edited by Swix on Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

3kul
Level 7
Level 7
Posts: 257
Joined: Wed Nov 17, 2010 5:00 am

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#10

Post by 3kul » Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:26 pm

I might just jump in here since I think I have a good enough idea of what's going on with you, but feel free to keep posting your dreams/nightmares.

Basically, I'd say (in my completely unprofessional opinion) that nightmares or overly vivid dreams are usually caused by one or more of the following three things:
* Stress
* Fear
* Poor sleep habits

You have nothing new in your life that is causing you more stress than usual, as far as I can tell, so I don't think that this is the cause. There doesn't appear to be much linking your dreams, and you live a relatively comfortable and secure life at the moment, so I'd be quite surprised if this was a result of fear.

That leaves your sleeping habits. You might think that you have good regular sleeping habits, but there's definitely room for improvement here. This is going to really suck, because it's blatantly obvious to me that you have virtually no free time during the week, but that's exactly what I'll be asking you to sacrifice in order to try and get a better night's sleep.

These are all quite vivid and incredibly creative dreams, so the most obvious problem is that you are probably overstimulating yourself before bed. Part one of the best advice that you never wanted to hear is that you need to cut back on the video games, etc. before bed. Reading is fine, but if you find that's too exciting try something else; take a bath, listen to soft music or books on tape, or try some simple stretches. Keep in mind that no matter what you do, the key is to relax. Most people who offer advice on sleep recommend that you give yourself half an hour to an hour of 'wind down time', but I don't know how that would work for you, since you get home at 10:30...

Computers, consoles (handheld or otherwise), mobile phones and televisions are all double-threats in your battle for a good night's rest, in that they stimulate your mind and bathe your eyes in unnatural, unceasing light. Without getting into too much detail, the brain needs darkness to get the idea that, oh hey, it's time for sleep&#33; This is why we usually don't feel tired during the day, but get weary at night. Spend as much time as you can in natural light during the day, then stick to dim artificial light when the sun sets (low wattage bulbs are better around the house if you can manage it). This is why reading a book might not be a great idea for you, as it still requires light, but give it a try if you feel the other activities rob you of any and all fun you have after work.

There's also an old saying that you should try to keep in mind; "one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours after". I'm not 100% sure of the science that backs this up as people give a wide variety of reasons for it, but it's generally accepted that the more sleep you can get before midnight, the better. You say that you usually go to bed between 11:30 and midnight, which gives you almost no sleep time before midnight; I know that this will be difficult for you to change, but if you can manage it I think that you'll notice the difference.

On the topic of time, you also aren't sleeping enough from the sounds of it. A healthy adult should be getting somewhere between 7.5 - 9 hours sleep a day, and you are just barely falling short of that. Again, not sure how you can solve this if you only get home at 10:30... But if you wake up in the middle of the night, make sure to just lie in bed until you fall asleep again if you aren't already doing that. Don't get up, turn lights on or do anything, otherwise you might get into the habit of waking up before you should (you seem to have already done this, unfortunately).

Surprisingly, even if it's not the most nutritious dinner I've heard of, eating a potato (with the skin) before bed should do you a lot of good. Potatoes are great for getting your body to produce serotonin, which is the something that helps your body to better regulate your sleep. Dairy is also good to help you sleep peacefully, so you can try a glass of warm milk before bed too if you feel like giving an old remedy a chance (it's meant to be quite good, but I can't stand milk so I've never tried it myself).

I suppose your biggest problem is that if you need to wake up at 6am to get to work on time and you don't get home until 10.30pm, it's going to be very difficult to make any changes to your current sleep routine without sacrificing most of your recreation time. In addition to this, if you want to give any of my advice a try, unfortunately, you're going to need to stick with it for about a month to see any results - you can't just try it out for a week and expect big changes, your body needs time to accept any new routine.

Please remember to take everything I've said with a grain of salt. My knowledge comes from a casual interest in healthy sleep and several hours of googling, not much else. I could be entirely wrong about what is causing you to have nightmares, and so there's a chance that taking my advice could give you absolutely no benefit. You may ultimately decide that nightmares and vivid dreams are worth it if it means that you can get in an hour or two of video games before bed, and I wouldn't take any offence to that either.

I guess the best advice I can end my post with is that you should get a new job&#33; I know it's pretty lousy advice, but it sounds like your current job sucks and takes up far too much of your free time anyway.

User avatar
MDude
Evil Council Member
Evil Council Member
Level 5
Level 5
Posts: 164
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Contact:

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#11

Post by MDude » Tue Mar 06, 2012 6:58 am

Getting some exercise during the day can help with going to sleep too. I haven't read your dream stories yet, but if you do think your mind is getting a bit overloaded with ideas, maybe write/draw/whatever to get your ideas out before they spill over into your dreams. Laying around and just daydreaming is good too, since your mind gets to wander similarly, but you can more easily influence things to stop them from being disturbing. And if what 3kul said about your schedule is accurate, then you spend only 7.5 hours at home and thus actually have no time to do anything but sleep. I'd like to presume you do other things while you're out because if we take transit as being a whole hour one way, that's still 14.5 hours of whatever you do. If your job isn't something along the lines of working in an understaffed hospital there's really no way to justify demanding those kinds of hours. Now anyway, I should probably have waited until later to post this since it's almost 1:00am where I am and I ought to be asleep myself. Speaking of which, though, if 3kul's advice about sleeping before/after midnight is correct, I think I'll try saving some time by just scheduling my sleep so that I wake up at midnight, and shaving off the me by sleeping more beforehand.

3kul
Level 7
Level 7
Posts: 257
Joined: Wed Nov 17, 2010 5:00 am

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#12

Post by 3kul » Wed Mar 07, 2012 11:17 am

Ah, MDude's right, so long as you don't go overboard physical exercise is also an excellent way to ensure that you get a good night's sleep :)

Swix
Moderator
Moderator
Level 18
Level 18
Posts: 2043
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#13

Post by Swix » Fri Mar 09, 2012 12:15 am

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>3kul</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>Par one of the best advice that you never wanted to hear[/quote]

Oh, don't worry, at least your advice is both good and constructive. I've had worse advice that I never wanted to hear, being:

1: Your brain is too creative, you should try to dull it down.

And

2: Smoke drugs before bed

I am having pretty bad nightmares but it's absolutely not worth altering my mind in either manner to stop it.

Also

3: You should be locked up and never let out again, people like you are dangerous and should be removed from society.

This one was from some random passerby as I was explaining one of them to a friend :S.


<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>3kul</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>need to wake up at 6am
to get to work on time
and you don't get home
until 10.30pm,[/quote]

Well, this is kind of embarrassing... I go to work at 3:30 pm to get there for 5, finish at 9 and then don't get back 'til 10:30, which often includes a ten minute walk through cold night air.

I get up at 6 because that's when my partner has to get up to go to work, and once I've already been awake for a half hour in the morning, I'm, well, awake.

Doing anything other than physical work that early is impossible though. It's like shuffling around in a semi-coherent haze.

Unless I'm totally exhausted but then I'll often end up oversleeping. Like yesterday, got up, did the morning thing, sat on the mattress in the living poom for a few seconds and then didn't wake up again til 10. Had an awesome dream/nightmare though-was one of those ones I'm not sure about XD.

So you could probably say I have from 7 til 3:30, which is, um, about 8 and a half hours of 'free time'... I wish I worked somewhere full time :(. Or at least in a halfway sociable timeframe-one where I can actually take part in a useful college or university course, even. I envy people who get home from work before it gets dark.

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>3kulI</dt><dd>&nbsp;</dd></dl><div>guess the best advice I can end my post with is that you should get a new job&#33; I know it's pretty lousy advice, but it sounds like your current job sucks[/quote]

Yes, yes it does. 'Build your career with us&#33;'. What a load of meaningless propaganda to snag people in with. Bah. And todays fiasco that's been unnecessarily prolonged for weeks before ultimately ending in me being yelled at by family members and then having a panic attack an hour later, over eggs of all things. Although not a big waste of time, I still feel like I'm wasting my time at work.
I think I'll be working on my curriculum vitae (resume) tomorrow, again, and then looking at the librarian job and what needs to be done for it..

Also, wow, I had no idea about potatoes link to serotonin, I can certainly give that a try. And exercise shouldn't be a problem, at least during the day-at night it's a bit more difficult.

The milk is interesting, it seems the 'Old Wives Tales' I've heard from around here say that dairy products before bed can give you nightmares-especially cheese for some reason. I may try that at some point too though, like I said, any help.

My partner hates the taste of milk too, as an unrelated note ^_^.

Give up console games and tiv after work? Sure, I can do that. If it might help. I have A Game of Thrones the book to read and I doubt that's going to be too overstimulating, at least judging from the first few chapters already.

Thank you all so much for the help, I really appreciate it.

Borg12345
Level 15
Level 15
Posts: 1029
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:00 am

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#14

Post by Borg12345 » Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:18 am

The dairy thing, I actually tried that. Ate a huge hunk of cheese before bed (oh, the horror. The delicious horror. :P), and nothing happened to me. I think it probably is just an old wives tale, but I could be wrong.

Swix
Moderator
Moderator
Level 18
Level 18
Posts: 2043
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2010 4:00 am
Location: Wouldn't you like to know?

Nightmares, nightmares and more nightmares...

#15

Post by Swix » Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:20 pm

Well, I can say one thing for definite after my weeks holiday.

3kul was right, I really am not getting enough sleep and it's certainly contributing to the nightmares. I got plenty of sleep and had two dreams and two nightmares, one night I had two dreams on top of each other and one night I had two nightmares on top of each other-and the night that last one happened I woke up at twenty to six-two and a half hours before I needed to. But, I didn't get out of bed then I did just stay where I was and tried to go back to sleep.

That sounds like a tasty hunk of cheese Borg ;).

Post Reply