Nightmares on My Street
I have always had a problem with nightmares. Ever since I was very, very little. I’d absolutely love to consult a sleep specialist and find out why that is…but then, maybe I don’t want to know…if you know what I mean.
My nightmares don’t seem to mean anything. They are incredibly weird and usually, I don’t remember very much once I’m completely awake. The trouble is, now that it’s summertime and my daughter is home and doesn’t have to be up at any particular time (which means I don’t have to be up at any particular time) we’ve gotten into sleep patterns that haven’t helped keep the nightmares at bay.
For one, I’m going to bed very, very late. My daughter and I love watching “Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century.” Trust me, guys, this show is hilarious. If you like the old time cartoons with pop culture in-jokes, this is the show for you. My daughter just likes Daffy (he plays Duck Dodgers) because he’s so stupid. Anyway, that’s at 10:30pm. My husband is usually long asleep by then. This is actually my quiet time with my daughter because even though she’s at home with me all day, I’m mostly working. This is cuddle-on-the-couch time. We don’t do it every night…but about three times a week. (Thank God for TiVo the rest of the time!)
On those nights, I put her to bed around 11pm. Then I do what I *think* is causing the nightmares–I take two ibuprophen. Then I work another little bit (okay, usually I’m blog surfing) or read and then I go to sleep.
Now, I’m very susceptible to drugs. If there is a side effect, I’m usually going to get it. Muscle relaxers, which I absolutely need for my back to be able to sleep, make me very sleepy. I’m usually an incredibly light sleeper, but with the drugs, I think I go deeper and I think that’s where the nightmares breed.
Around 6am, which is my normal wakeup time during the school year, I wake up and with nothing good to do (and only about 6 hours of sleep since I roll into bed around midnight) I go back to sleep. The nightmares commence. They wake me up, but not all the way. Sometimes they are gory, like today’s. Sometimes they’re just weird and disturbing. It makes waking up even harder. At least I’m old enough now to know that they can’t hurt me, aren’t real, aren’t premonitions of anything and generally are just a pain in the butt because those last two hours of sleep aren’t really sleeping at all.
Anyone else suffer from nightmares? What do you do to get rid of them? Mine aren’t even good enough to inspire some good spooky stories. I’m actually working on a paranormal story right now and not one thing I’ve dreamt about is fodder for this story. At least I don’t think it is…hmmm…maybe I need to explore this a bit more.
Wow… sounds like a Halloween post, doesn’t it?
Maybe it’s just a side effect of having a VERY active imagination, staying up past my bed time and not enough tequila. :cocktail:
Halloween post without the :bat:. HUGS, Julie! (Hey we don’t have a hugs emoticon!). Anyway, I can get repetitive dreams that are nightmarish, but nothing like what it sounds you get. Maybe repetitive dreams are blog topics for another day! I don’t think Advil would put you into a deeper sleep unless it’s taking away the pain enough to let you fall asleep, which makes sense … I have no idea how to alter dreams though. :sad:
Comment by Carly — June 28, 2006 @ 6:27 am
Hugs to you Julie! No, I rarely have nightmares (no imagination?), thank God. They can be really scary. The other night I dreamt was a hostage that was not going to live - freaked me out. Luckily my nightmares aren’t gory or too detailed. I’m just sorry you suffer from them.
Comment by Stacy ~ — June 28, 2006 @ 7:25 am
Morning everyone.
I’m telling you stay away from those cheese curls they alter your state of mind in the dreamworld. Heehee. Seriously though, do you eat anything say a snack close to bedtime?? That is when I find I have the most vivid dreams.
Julie I don’t have nightmares on a regular basis like you do. But, I have noticed if I have a little snack before bedtime like maybe a hersey kiss or something it makes my dreams seem real. (Yeah yeah, I know you’re not supposed to eat past 8:00pm.) It also depends on what I have for the snack though. Once I little bowl of Cheese Curls and dreampt (sp?) about counting money with a rock star.
Comment by Kelly — June 28, 2006 @ 8:48 am
Julie, I have pretty vivid dreams–not always nightmares, I sometimes wake up crying after dreaming of my mother. But the scary ones, for me, *have* provided story fodder. My thriller came about as the result of a dream.
I also have had a recurring dream since childhood about looking out the third floor window of an old Victorian house, screaming for help because the house was on fire, and the people below couldn’t get to me. I knew I was going to die and as the smoke strangles me, I usually wake up. Sometimes I wake up coughing, telling my husband the house is on fire, which sends him running around the house looking for the nonexistent fire.
??: I think that must be how I died in a past life.
Comment by Leslie Kelly — June 28, 2006 @ 8:52 am
Morning everyone! Kelly, good question. We eat dinner pretty late b/c of my husband’s work schedule–around 8pm, so no, I normally don’t eat anything after that. (Normally, she says.)
Ironically, I had NO nightmares last night or this morning, even after waking up at 6am and then going back to sleep. The only difference is that…my dog didn’t sleep with me last night! She slept with my daughter, who kicked her out around 2am and instead of begging to sleep with me, she jumped into the world’s largest dog bed (my husband’s king-sized “bean bag” chair) and went to sleep.
Which makes me wonder.
My daughter is very susceptible to noise. When her guinea pig was in her room, she had horrible nightmares. Guinea pigs are fairly noisy at night, so I moved him into the family room and bam, her nightmares stopped. I wonder if our little dachsund, who snores and likes to sit on my feet while I sleep, is part of the cause. I’m going to test it again tonight.
This whole thing is fascinating to me. I think I need to go get a book on sleep and dreams and such!
Comment by Julie — June 28, 2006 @ 9:00 am
:shock: Leslie, I really believe that passed life stuff. You know, I can’t watch anything to do with Hitler and concentration camps. I get seriously hysterical, I can’t even explain it. That must be so scary when you are having that dream again, and your poor husband scarmbling out of bed looking for a non existent fire. :oops:
Julie, I would definately try sleeping wihtout the dog tonight. That sounds like a good start to me. And where you do eat late that may be contributing to the nightmares too. I would start removing things one by one and see if they have any effect on your nightmares or lack of. Good Luck!!
Comment by Kelly — June 28, 2006 @ 10:05 am
I have only had a couple of nightmares in whole life and they scared me to death. I wish I knew how to tell you to stop having them. I did go to ask.com and found a site that said nightmares are things that we fear deep deep down happening to us or someone we love. I thought well, Duh!!!
The site is pretty cool though and you might want to look at.
http://www.lucidity.com/EWLD10.html
Maybe something will help…sending peaceful sleep your way tonight.
Comment by Vicki — June 28, 2006 @ 12:06 pm
it scares me
Comment by kim H — June 28, 2006 @ 12:21 pm
Julie, I have twodachshunds that sleep with me and while I adore them to pieces, the nights that they sleep elsewhere are waaaay more restful. One has to sleep on the pillow right beside my head and the other spends the rest of the night either burrowing under or out from under the sheet!
Thank goodness the other two sleep with my kids! It is easier to fall more deeply asleep and therefore not dream when the doxies are not napping with me!
Comment by Angie — June 28, 2006 @ 12:36 pm
Julie,
I have the EXACT same sleep pattern. I go to bed late, kids are out of school, but I wake up anyway. I go back to sleep. And have nightmares, too! I think mine are stress induced. When I’m going back to sleep, I’m thinking about everything I’m doing that day and I have some awful nightmares, none of which directly relate to anything I was thinking about. Just wierd, creepy dreams that seem totally out of the blue. I do think, however, that stress is the culprit for me. I also think if I were to consult a book or a specialist, I would find that the dreams have meaning. I, too, however, would rather not go there right now. When I get to bed early, I notice that I don’t have the early morning nightmares. So maybe that’s the answer. Unfortunately, they don’t show re-runs of Sex in the City until late. While I’ve seen them all, I still find myself watching. That and Dog the Bounty Hunter AND Elimidate. Sad, but true. But hey, school starts in 52 days (yes, I’m counting).
Comment by Kimberly Raye — June 28, 2006 @ 1:53 pm
Kim, I’m glad I’m not alone. You’re right…I do wake up and start thinking about all I should do…and then I go right back to bed. And I so treasure that last hour I have to myself, I can’t seem to give it up. Stress is definitely a BIG part of my life.
However, I’m kicking the dog out tonight to see if there is a pattern. She can sleep on the world’s largest dog bed. It’s not like she’s not perfectly comfortable!
Comment by Julie — June 28, 2006 @ 2:09 pm
Julie,
I have them too. The really bad ones wake me up in a panic, especially after a noise that startles me. Unfortunately for my dh, I wake up screaming. It’s enough to scare everyone else in the house half to death. It usually takes me several minutes to stop and then I don’t remember much.
The look on his face is priceless.
When I come around he’s staring at me like I’ve grown another head. I can’t help but roll my eyes and ask, “I did it again didn’t I?”
Don’t know what triggers them except maybe stress, getting off my schedule? Hope your is just the puppy and easily fixed!
Comment by Madison — June 28, 2006 @ 2:45 pm
I do not have nightmares like I used to. But when I do have one it is the same recurring one. I have a real phobia for spiders. Whenever I have a nightmare it is about them. I will scream, get out of bed and leave the room………when I was younger I would scare the daylights out of my Dad, he would grab me before I got too far into the hallway and get me awake, at which point I would be crying. He would then have to turn on the lights, and do a complete search of my room before I would even step foot into the room again. When I got married he warned my late husband that this could happen and for no apparent reason, so to be prepared. It did happen a couple of times, but he dealt with it, and was very reassuring to me. They are not something that I’ve had in a couple of years, but let me tell you when they do occur they are totally scary and very, very real. I am not sure what triggers them.
When I am awake, I cannot get near a spider of any kind. And on the lighter side, I went downstairs one time when my kids were younger, and when I went to come up, between me and the stairs was a spider. I had to actually call my son to come downstairs, and his only comment when I called him as he was coming down the steps was “okay Mom where is it!” So as you can see this is a real phobia for me. :sad: One I have never delved into, but one I have none the less.
Comment by Cryna — June 28, 2006 @ 2:58 pm
Julie,
I have very vivid dreams early in the morning, too, around 5:30 AM or so, but they’re usually more weird and less scary. Have you ever tried manipulating the scary things in your dreams? I can’t do it all the time, but if I consciously realize I’m dreaming while I’m in the dream, I can concentrate on making the scariest or weirdest parts go away, or twist them to my advantage. It’s like being in the Matrix - there is no spoon.
But if that doesn’t work, I think you’ve got a great idea with the tequila. :cocktail:
Comment by Jamie — June 28, 2006 @ 3:22 pm
My nightmares only happen once in a while & they are very unpleasant. I always dream but don’t remember what most of the time. Nightmares are another story. Sometimes they are very scary.:shock:
Comment by Donna M — June 28, 2006 @ 3:35 pm
julie:
I used to have the recurring nightmare, but I only seem to have it when I am stressed. I am having trouble reading a book (it’s good, but it’s a Halloween/romance book and for some odd reason, it is freaking me out…I don’t know, something about it is upsetting me). Yikes. I think I am going to have to pass on it for another…
Hoping everyone has pleasant dreams tonight
Comment by katie — June 28, 2006 @ 3:56 pm
I have all sorts of dreams & nightmares. I have to say my most pathetic dream was that I was passing out communion with Keith Urban. I can definitely think of better things to do with him than that!
My 5 year old has nightmares & night terrors. the poor guy. He was hysterical one night because he thought bugs were crawling all over him. He wouldn’t stop screaming until we turned all of the lights on & pulled all of the covers & sheets off of his bed to show him there was nothign there. Last night he had a dream that a bird with a long pointy beak was stabbing him & my nephew saved him by bending his beak. I feel so bad for him. ( and us too if he wakes up too many nights in a row.)
Comment by Melissa — June 28, 2006 @ 11:57 pm
I have very vivid dreams and crazy nightmares. Everything from Vampires to Aliens. For the most part I’ve dismissed the dreams as just being dreams, but when things were very stressful in my life, I’d dream of blood. Lots and lots of blood. Not a good sign. The drugs may be a huge factor if you are having crazy dreams right now. When I take Ny-Quil, I end up with the worst dreams ever. Not sure how to stop them, maybe light a candle and meditate before bed. Hope you have a good nights rest soon!!!
Comment by Suezette — June 29, 2006 @ 7:48 pm
wow ! that is very interesting. What kind of dreams do you have? is there monsters?
or just scary situations?
Maybe turn on the tv and the will cause other dreams..
Lui
Comment by Lui — July 5, 2006 @ 5:34 pm