Vivid Nightmares: Struggling to Shake Them Off

OMG LucianX That is terrible! I had a similar experience with ambien. I was in college with a roommate and she said one time I got out of bed and started rambling to her and another time I got up, took all my clothes off, said "I'm on drugs" and then put some of my clothes on and went back to bed 😆😳😬 I also don't remember the last time I slept 5 or 6 hours uninterrupted..

I was prescribed Ambien once. Not only did I not sleep, I began hallucinating. There were jackets hanging on my bedposts and I was convinced that the jackets were actually children. I put my bass guitar on my bed and was telling them that they had my permission to play it. I ended up in the E.R. for several hours. The doctors had no idea how to treat the issue except to let it wear off. Melatonin relaxes me but there are very few things I've found that will help me sleep and wake up without some side affect. I don't remember, honestly the last time I slept even 6 uninterrupted hours. But when I do sleep it's guaranteed that I'll have some extremely realistic dreams.

That is so crazy about melatonin! But I totally believe it. I have tried taking it for a while over different periods of my life to see if it had the same effect or if it was my meds, but it was always the same. It would actually make me sleep worse and feel weird in the morning. However, I do still have crazy vivid dreams and have since I was a toddler. I actually had a reoccurring one for over a decade of a werewolf chasing me and sometimes I would have to fight it. I wish I remembered when it stopped so I could see if there was some correlation between that and what was going on in my life then.

LORT I IDENTIFY WITH SO MUCH HERE !! So, Melatonin == sleep paralysis, period full-stop end-of-story. I started it once when I was having some more severe problems getting to sleep than usual (~ 4-5 nights slept/week for ~20 years, so, it was bad) and I had at least one instance of sleep paralysis (mine are always murderous situations too never benign nor low-key) every night that whole week. Looked it up and sure enough there's a correlative link. Stopped taking it and they stopped immediately. That's not to say I haven't had one since, but yeah there was definitely a cause-effect relationship. I literally sleep like the dead. In my life history I have slept through two (2) tornadoes which took out the building next door (Midwest shite). Neither one of them did i ever wake for a second, one was in a room full of teenage girls because we just moved a friend into a new apartment in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Didn't wake to the cacophony of screams and Nature, but I awoke the next morning to the smell of French toast and quoted Jay & Silent Bob "I'm hoooongry, where can we get some breeekfast?" to the surprise of everyone who actually thought I might be dying somehow 😅 People literally think I'm dead when I'm asleep, sometimes I literally don't move and my limbs are asleep when I wake, and don't even start to receive pins and needles for at least 10 minutes. Literally paralyzed, I'm flopping one arm around with the other so I can get around my room get to the bathroom and actually urinate. So, along with that, I've shared the experience of "either I don't dream at all, or it is slasher movie-murderous, violent nightmares which I often awake from yelling something I cannot remember, sweating, with my heart rate extremely escalated, then get a POTS rish from sitting up and sometimes pass back out. Trust, I'd rather no dreams than those dreams. Then, over the course of this last year I did a whoooooooole lot of Shadow work. I found a way to forgive my abusive father for leaving us and making some of the choices he did, and to forgive myself for many things in order to move on. The nightmares stopped. This was within a month or 2 of being put on meds for mental health for the first time ever (Vyvanse) and it seemed to also wipe away the regret of coming back to Life in the morning, much of my treatment-resistant depression, my threahold for frustration and unforseen change was raised considerably, my attention soan is nearly back to what it used to be, and I'm on a sleep SCHEDULE where I sleep nightlyyyyy now! It completely changed my life. So I can't be certain if i was just in a period between nightmares when I started it, and that the Vyvanse actually put the kabosh on them, or what. One thing I do know, is that psychiatrists seem to unanimously agree that nightmares come from unhealed personal trauma, and until you face it your subconscious will continue to scream it at you all night long, in the worst of ways, trying to make the message louder and clearer until you acknowledge it.

I've experienced extremely vivid dreams all my life but rarely are they violent in any way. Lately they often include the same people although I can't seem to determine what purpose they're serving. I nearly always wake up confused.

I used to have vivid, terrifying nightmares. So bad I’d wake up drenched in sweat every night. I started using cannabis 2 years ago and no more nightmares or night sweats!!! It’s a frickin miracle!!

Chillen I used to have this happen to me before. About it being real you can't tell if it's true or not. And SAMHAIN idk I had a really weird dream like that from a few days ago and I never get those dreams. (I think it means also a regression of my other illnesses) If I don't eat well usually my dreams turn out more bad.

It could possibly even be a side effect of a medication your taking. I had very vivid dreams after starting a new medication but it did go away after a whule

Fr. When you have enough of those dreams, dreaming isn't worth it! I will say tho, mini-almost success story, i used to get those horrible, horrible dreams all the time, but now with my anti-anxiety med that I take right before bed usually, they are much rarer! Maybe once a week or every other week instead of every day. I still dream, and sometimes they are stressful dreams, but they are not nearly as bad.

^^ I rarely dreamed before this experience. & I will happily go back to rarely dreaming. The vivid dreams made me feel like I was having an episode or on drugs.

I rarely dream. I wish I did. Anything would be better than reality.

^^ I switched to taking Benadryl too lol

I'm switching to diphenhydramine

REALLY?!? IVE BEEN TAKING MELATONIN FOR YEARS! Aaah

^^It was shocking! I wish I knew earlier, because almost any sleep aid contains melatonin & I would have never guessed it could have a negative effect! I was using a “sleep & burn” supplement that contained melatonin. I had vivid dreams at least 6/7 nights while on it. I was really struggling to define reality. All due to the dumb melatonin!

^I never thought about that @ Little Emm, I don’t use melatonin but i never even considered that a possibility that some people could be going through!!!

I was having them a lot. I was literally scared and anxious all the time. I found out that people with mental health history should not take melatonin. I stopped taking it and they were instantly gone!! My advice is to make sure nothing is causing them first.

Occasionally i get dreams like this and I actually had one last night! It wasn’t a nightmare but very vivid with very strong emotions. Today i’m feeling confused with the dream but accepting it was a dream and even though it was vivid it was not real :)

I had a dream last night where I found my hat that I lost last weekend. Kinda sad now

I've slept maybe 3 hours a night for the past 2 weeks because my nightmares keep me awake. I keep on reliving my trauma, and no matter how much therapy I go through it never gets better

I have vivid dreams that make me feel like I'm living 2 lives, it's very confusing since the dreams often continue after weeks of not having that dream, it's like a slower, different version of my life

Literally only the bad ones. Terroizing, literally murderous scenes.

I get bad, vivid dreams too. They suck... a lot. One thing a therapist suggested to me that has helped, is when you wake up from the nightmare, rewrite the ending. For example, in a dream where a loved one gets killed, rewrite the ending (physically write it down!) for them to live. Maybe you save them, maybe your favorite superhero saves them, either way, make them live and give it a happy ending. That can be a way to help "rewrite" the feelings a little too. To reorient back to reality... that is a little tougher, imo. I try to get up and walk around or pray (rosary can help calm me down too) or call my boyfriend. I guess I try to do things to bring me back to reality, but it doesn't take it away entirely. I'd love to see what others say on that because I struggle with it too. If I have a nightmare like that, it ususally sticks with me all day too.

La machina if I have bad dream and wake up I also use calming music (but also do this before sleep and like nature sounds and also Bible talk down? Meditation that's the word 🤣🤦‍♀️ for me)

I have a reoccurring nightmare about the same thing. I wake up screaming and in a cold sweat. Sometimes it’s thrashing. After I wake up I just get up and drink something. Maybe look at social media for a while to distract myself. The dream has tortured me for years now. I listen to calming music or vibrational music to get back to sleep after I shake off the effects of the nightmare. It’s has been going on so long now I know how to handle it.

Yes, I have had some vivid dreams.