Ever since high school I have been having the most unsettling dreams. Most of the times the settings will be places that I spent a lot of time in, but everything is switched around. Mostly they are dreams of either my high school or elementary school but everything is always changed around. For instance, where there would be stairs in my normal high school, there is an escalator that is so steep, you have to hold on to it for dear life. My high school also now has a morgue, and giant fish tanks. I even have dreams that I am driving, but the highways curve so sharply that I fall of the edge. I am never hurt when I fall off. A lot of times, my dreams will be me going to back to my old neighborhood and picking up right where I left off. I will go back to jobs and start working again, even though it has been years since I have last been there. Or I will randomly attend classes. I always stay for only an hour or so and then leave and no one has a problem. The only constant in my dreams has been an overwhelming since of someone or something horrible coming for me. It could be the government, or aliens, or the police. But always there in the back of my mind is the fear that someone is going to come and do something horrible to me. Lately, my dreams have been me going back to school or going to my old job, and someone starts shooting everything up. They go around and just kill tons of people, but never ever do they kill me. I have never died or really been harmed in any of my dreams. It is starting to get to the point that I don't want to sleep, because I can't stand the images of these mass shootings. Sometimes, it is snipers, or just straight gun men. Every time I will try to hide somewhere that it is impossible to not be seen, (under a table, behind a couch). I have experienced lucid dreaming on almost a nightly basis now. At first I loved it, but now I can't wake myself up. Even if I feel as though I am drowning, I can not get myself to wake up. Sorry for the long post, I just can't come to a conclusion on any of it. There are a lot of abandonment issues in my past, and I grew up with parents that were never really present. I never established solid connections or relationships with anyone and we moved constantly. Maybe that could help provide a little input on what the hell is going on here. :gorgeous:
this is normal. the subconscious gets bored with everything being the same all the time. nature in which we evolved wasn't that way. other then the anxiety part. there might be some physical problem its trying to tell you you are ignoring. i would try wearing earplugs with soothing music though. there could be an environmental noise problem 'triggering' the mass shootings and things like that. television or video games or even just cars backfiring all the time.
I am starting to think that it has to do with the relationship I am in. I am in love with someone who has told me themselves that they could never love me. I think I am just too chicken shit to end it and it is taking a toll on my dreams. Last night I had a dream about being stuck in a submarine that was sinking. I have a deep seated fear of anything sunken, sunken ships, coral reefs, underwater statues. I often have dreams that I am on the Titanic on the bottom of the ocean, walking through the rusted hallways. It is getting to the point where I am self-inducing insomnia, because I am afraid to fall asleep.
@themnax, It isn't normal to have nightmares that often, or to lucid dream that much. There could be something in your diet causing you to have the dreams. Maybe you are waking up in the middle of the night briefly, and don't remember it. Stimulants like caffeine for example. You have to not be afraid of the dreams, because that can give you anxiety over time. You can't really stop yourself from being afraid, so you just kind of have to accept the feelings of being scared. Don't avoid the feelings or try to stop them, or over think them, accept them. Think of the things that have bothered you recently and in the past. Not just things you think about often, but things that are kind of in the back of your mind like your past. Something might still be bothering you that you need to move on from or let go. I used to have a social anxiety and I would let people push me around. I would continually have dreams about being at school or work, and me doing something embarrassing like forgetting which classes I'm supposed to be in. When I began to fix my social anxiety, stick up for myself, and not be afraid to be myself around people, I had another dream about being at work. My boss was yelling at me. Instead of me feeling bad about it, in the dream I said "don't worry about what he says, he's a fucking idiot" and that was the last one.
