Scary dreams

[Mnemosyne]

I have a bunch of questions related to the dreams I had as a kid. I hope someone can share some insight or stories of similar dreams.

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When I was a kid I was able to remember a lot of my dreams, but about 90% of what I remembered was really scary.

Out of that 90%, probably 5%-10% were nightmares that would stay in my head and leave an impression on me for the rest of the day (meaning I felt pretty lousy and out-of-sorts). I can still remember most of them pretty clearly, as if they happened very recently.

BTW, growing up I didn't have cable or a VCR so it wasn't like I was watching violent movies or anything. And for the most part I didn't read many books, and those that I did read (Julie of the Wolves, Incident on Hawk Hill, Island of the Blue Dolphins [hmm, I see a theme... ]), they certainly weren't scary.

In all of my scary dreams (which was about 90% of everything I was able to remember), I was always putting my life at risk to save people. Lots of close calls but I was always able to save the people and I usually came out unscathed.

Question: Does that happen with other people? Is it normal? Does it mean anything? Am I just a weirdo?

Also, I would wake up briefly during my dreams and fall back asleep, but still continue with the same dream. This would occasionaly happen several times until the dream 'completed'.

Question: Is this a form of lucid dreaming?

But when I was in my late teens, when I met the guy I would eventually marry, I stopped having scary dreams, and I pretty much lost the ability to remember any of my dreams. It's almost 9 years later and I'm now getting better at remembering my dreams again, but they're not scary like they used to be.

Question: Can major shifts in your lifestyle change your dreaming habits?

The last dream I had during my scary-dream phase, was me fighting a devil. It slashed my stomach open and I can remember something akin to physical pain.

Question: Has anyone ever felt something during their dream?

[AndyMartin]

You are more likely to remember scary dreams because you are more likely to wake up. Forgotten dreams are the result of the conscious awareness not engaging during the dream.

I had night terrors from the time I was very young and actually into my early 20's, with decreasing frequency. This left me with the habituated pattern of waking up in the middle of the sleep cycle regardless of dream content. So for many years I remembered most of my dreams every night. In addition to the nightmares, I've had lots of action-packed dreams. I generally think most dreams are like housecleaning your mind--you come across something and reminisce about it, activate the imagination, etc. then move on. So dream content can change radically with changes in what's going on in your waking awareness. I also think that some dreams come from spirit rather than from mind, but that's another conversation.

Continuing a dream is not necessarily a form of lucid dreaming; you can do it intentionally or unintentionally with lucid and with non-lucid dreams. It's basically a matter of keeping your mind in the same state as the dream. This happens more easily with scary dreams because the fear bubbles over into the waking state. Not fun when you keep slipping into the same nightmare each time you wake from it. On the other hand, I've done it intentionally with interesting dreams that had a long story arc.

As for the final question, I have had experiences like that as well. What I refer to as night terrors were mostly that. There is a phenomenon called sleep paralysis or from folklore, the "Old Hag" that describes this experience. There's a physiological explanation, and there's a paranormal explanation. Whichever you choose to describe your own experience is up to you, but it's damn scary either way!