Comments on: Bad Dreams

By: More Links For February - My blog

More Links For February - My blog — Sat, 30 Aug 2014 02:41:21 +0000

[…] has written a post on the creepiness of sleep disorders, which includes the story of a man who drove 10 miles and then murdered his mother-in-law while […]

Report comment

By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 03:59:44 +0000

This mystery is pretty well documented.

Report comment

By: Mara

Mara — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 03:39:57 +0000

The sudden nocturnal death syndrome can be intentionally induced by members of a tribe of southeast Asian dream-sorcerers called the Tcho-Tcho. For more detailed information on this you can listen to Douglas Dietrich’s radio show ‘Critical Omissions’ from April 22 2014 where he gives a very detailed account of this not very well known mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuC7wf-JNgE

Report comment

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 14:57:53 +0000

So, last night was something new. I had a multiple-choice nightmare.* It was your standard chased-by-monsters type of dream, except at several points, the action literally paused as I was given two options to choose from. Unfortunately, every choice led to horrible outcomes. Basically, I had a Choose Your Own Adventure (TM) — OF DOOM!**

Random firing of my synapses produces interesting metaphors for life.

—————–

I have a typology of bad dreams:

1. Horror movie-type dreams, usually without the weird branching above. I actually don’t mind these dreams, for probably the same reason people with stronger stomachs than mine like roller coasters. It’s a scary adventure.

2. Relationship stress dreams. Dreams about bad interpersonal conflict. For me, this is usually dreams about my emotionally abusive ex-wife doing horrible things to me, though I occasionally also have them about my children behaving much more awfully than ever happens in reality, or about other women I was interested in rejecting me in more harsh and humiliating ways than what actually happened. These are by far the worst kind of bad dreams. According to this article, type 1 is more common in men and type 2 is more common in women. This was true for me in childhood but reversed after my abusive marriage. These dreams are by far the worst kind of bad dream for me.

3. Tedious failure dreams. This might be a variant of epic dreaming, but it doesn’t last all night nor leave me tired. These dreams involve me trying and failing to perform some simple task over and over and over again. The most common variants are trying to make an important phone call and misdialing repeatedly (this one can actually happen inside a horror dream, where I’m failing to call for help/prevent a disaster) and repeatedly failing to get my contact lenses into my eyes. Tedium is much worse than surreal fear, but better than relationship terror.

*My dreams almost never wake me up, which according to the linked article means they’re not actually nightmares. I somewhat dispute this, because they can be very intense; I’m just not lucky enough to wake up from intense bad dreams.

**This overlaps about 90% with the outcome of an actual Choose Your Own Adventure (TM), of course.

Report comment

By: Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 13:35:43 +0000

epic dreaming

This American Life has featured Mike Birbiglia's story of his epic sleepwalking. This was later turned into a good movie called Sleepwalk with Me.

Anything to show that the doctors in this field are cultured, not just people who learn a bunch of biology without exploring the wider world of the arts.

Frank Zappa, in the introduction to The Real Frank Zappa Book:

The epigraphs at the heads of chapters (publishers love those little things) were researched and inserted by Peter [Occhiogrosso, the book's ghostwriter] -- I mention this because I wouldn't want anybody to think I sat around reading Flaubert, Twitchell and Shakespeare all day.

By: Miranda

Miranda — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 12:38:23 +0000

“Sleep paralysis is very common.”

The first time this ever happened to me, I was in first-year university and thought I was having a stroke. Once I knew that sleep paralysis was a thing, it was less freaky–but I’ve still had occasional creepy hallucinations, and it’s very distracting. It happens most frequently when I’m very tired and take a nap during the day; this dissuades the behaviour of taking daytime naps when I’m tired.

Report comment

By: jrayhawk

jrayhawk — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 00:16:48 +0000

Bingo. Major depression, insofar as it can be meaningful to characterize biochemically (the reader is encouraged to insert psych-vs-pharma and monoamine-treatment-sucks flamewars here, but keep it to themselves), is biochemically characterized by inflammatory and catabolic pathways, most notably serotonin disregulation (in production, clearance, and/or recycling) and cortisol elevation, and can be experimentally induced by such means.

Report comment

By: oetpay

oetpay — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 23:14:31 +0000

Yes. This is also a symptom of anaphylaxis and some jellyfish stings, as it happens, though no word on whether the sense of impending doom is always the same.

Report comment

By: misha

misha — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 22:39:00 +0000

I’m much more likely to remember dreams in those situations

Report comment

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 21:57:28 +0000

I will very rarely experience epic dreaming (usually when I’m sick). The first time was when I was in high school, when I was in the hospital after surgery. It started out as working on a number puzzle. Each time I had the dream, I realized there was more and more to it–mind you, this was over the course of about 15 years–and I dreamed that a whole network of dreamers was working with me on it. Once, a voice told me that the puzzle was nearly complete. The next time, I actually finished it, although I have no memory of its actual content.

I’ve had epic dreams a couple times since then, but not about the puzzle.

Report comment