Thread: Terrifying, disturbing dreams

Hey Kee,

As far as nightmares, what causes them, and what they mean, I cannot tell you. I can offer you a way to get over these nightmares, and this is what I suggest you do:

Learning to lucid dream will offer you the ability to be lucid, to control the dreams, and to consciously direct your behavior and the course of the dream. The purpose of this website is to teach others to lucid dream, or to become awake and aware in a dream while it is still happening.

One way to do this is to ask yourself, every time you see a pet, if you are dreaming or not. Your pets could serve as a dream sign, and you could easily become aware in your dreams that they are simply dreams. This awareness and control could provide you with the ability to rationalize and to think logically- this is a dream, this is not real. These are not my pets. Furthermore, such awareness could allow you to wish your own pets, healthy and well, to appear in the dream and rid you of these nightmares.

I don't know if you've ever had a lucid dream, or if you've just stumbled on here for some dream interpretation advice. But I think that, as you are having these dreams about pets so frequently, you could very quickly learn to become lucid in your dreams and to overcome these nightmares.

If this sounds like something you are willing to try out, well, you've stumbled upon the right website Let me know, and I'll do my best to help you learn to lucid dream

Here's some more info that I PMed to another person who is suffering nightmares and who has turned to lucid dreaming to help her overcome them:

Originally Posted by Shift

Lucid dreaming is, simply, having a dream and knowing that you are dreaming while you are dreaming. It's having your mind be awake and aware, and realizing that you are inside of a false dream reality as your body stays asleep and dreaming.

Spoiler for Looooooong read, sorry! haha:

Depending on just how lucid you are (and this depends on a lot of factors, but mainly experience and if you took the time to pause and recollect yourself, since your mind can be a little iffy when you first become lucid), you should have a degree of control and ability to manipulate the dream. Think of it like virtual reality, except that instead of just watching a program you are in full control of it. Every person present can be changed into someone else, physically altered, made to disappear all on a whim, simply because you say to yourself "Well I'm in a dream, so that person doesn't exist anyway. In fact, I'm starting to see through him! He's disappearing!" Poof, the guy will literally disappear.

Having good control over your dreams once you've learned to become lucid depends a LOT on confidence. No one can really tell us what dreams are and how they work yet, but personally I really like this post on dream control, it makes sense and in every dream experience I've had it's remained accurate. It's a long read, but to sum it up: everything in a dream exists because you pay attention to it. If you aren't paying attention to something, well, it doesn't exist. Things don't exist in dreams, but it is possible for you to perceive that they do. When you want something to be different, you simply have yourself perceive that it has changed. The thing is, dreams are very realistic. So while you're in one, doubt can come creeping in. Things like, "I want that chair to float into the air... but, chairs DON'T float... so maybe it won't, because chairs aren't supposed to." Instead, what you ought to be saying is "This is a dream. That means that that chair doesn't even exist. It's just the fact that right now I am looking at it. So if I point at it like this, and I move my hand into the air, it will go where I point because it's MY dream, and I say it will, and it doesn't exist so it can be whereever I want it to be!" *poof*, chair floats. This can be a hard mindframe to get in, and that's why having good dream control requires viewing the entire world a little differently, because you have to anticipate that everyone and thing around you doesn't exist. This is very different from how someone thinks during waking life in the real world, obviously

The reason I just wrote all of that is because when it comes to addressing scary elements of dreams, the same approach can be taken. Have you ever watched a horror movie on mute? I hate horror movies, so when I get scared or when a scary commercial comes on tv, my first impulse is to mute it. Why? Because that way you're separating yourself from the scary situation. You're making it less prominant. You're changing it, you're able to manipulate your perception of that same scary movie. But if you sit in the dark watching it, you'll be freaked out. And if you sit in the dark watching it, alone, getting freaked out, that fear will emphasize the fact that you are alone, that you are sitting in the dark, that there is a corner something could be hinding behind, or that someone might be outside the window. If you prevent that fear, you can pay attention to the fact that that same actor was in a childhood tv show, or how good the special effects of the movie are, or that the pillow is on the couch upside down, or that someone left a dirty sock on the floor that should be put in the laundry room.

The same goes with dreams. Say you are in a lucid dream, and something scary is there. Let's pretend it's a guy with a knife wearing a mask, simply because I don't know yet what your nightmares are about. Normally, you could panic. "There's a guy with a knife, that means he's a serial killer, and he's here to kill me, and it's going to hurt, and I'm going to die." But... wait. That guy isn't real. The knife isn't real. Nothing exists right now, not even your physical body (in the dream) so you can't even be stabbed or die. It is possible to feel pain in dreams, but let's leave that for later (and if you are concerned, just like everything else, if you don't pay attention to it it will go away). So the guy in the mask is standing there, but now you're taking the confident approach. You have a couple of ways to go with this. One is to say, "Well, I'm in a dream. In a dream, nothing exists. If I don't look at him, then he won't exist anymore to scare me. Oh, look! A puppy dog!" Immediately diverting your attention will shift your focus from the scary element to whatever you chose to pay attention to, in this case a cute friendly snuggly puppy. Simply ignoring the scary guy will get rid of him, though this gets tricky because if you are consciously ignoring something, it will be in the back of your mind. The trick is to forget that that thing is even there to begin with, just completely immerse yourself into some distracting element. Why does this work? Because it completely eliminates the stimlus for your fear, and thus eliminates your fear (as long as you are making sure not to worry about it). Well, there are a few other ways to eliminate the fear also, and these are VERY powerful methods but take a lot of confidence to work properly. Say the serial killer is coming at you, with his knife raised. You can panic and run and turn the dream into a nightmare, or another decision would be to find a creative way out of the situation. With dream control, you may come across this fairly often. Convincing yourself that something in the dream is a certain way that you desire it to be can be tricky, and not always work. But if you have the confidence, it should be possible. What you should do is immediately think of a friendly person (a family member, best friend, boyfriend), and have them in mind. Say you're thinking of your brother Daniel. You should immediately laugh and go, "DANIEL! Where did you find my old halloween costume?! I thought the rubber knife was broken! And I forgot that mask! Let me see it, I want to see if it still fits."

Believe it or not, in a dream, if you do something like this properly the dream character will take the mask off, reveal himself to be Daniel, and hand you the mask and the knife.

Another even more drastic approach is to just flood your dream with the opposite feeling of what you are experiencing. The scary killer could be standing there, and you could be feeling fear- a direction you don't want the dream to take. Telling yourself that he's just a dream character, you should focus on on a positive, exhilirating emotion. For me, with scary things, I focus on friendliness. Instead of running from the guy, run straight at him... with your arms spread. Give the bad guy the hugest hug and tell him you love him. Focus on that feeling, on happiness, on contentment, and let the feelings of fear just completely vanish. I know it sounds hard, but in a dream, as soon as you start behaving this way his behavior will change to. He will be friendlier, more open, etc.

I know this sort of sounds hard to believe, but I promise you that in a little while, you'll know for a fact that they work. You just need to build up your lucid dreaming skill, your confidence, and work on coming up with creative ways to get out of these situations. If you know the band Creed, they have a song called Higher that is actually about lucid dreaming. The lead singer had a nightmare that had been plaguing him for a long time, where he was being chased (I think by a guy with a gun), and always turned left at an intersection and was shot. One day, he found himself in the same dream and became lucid. He was running, and instead of turning left he turned right, and that was the end of his nightmare. Depending on what your nightmares are about, and how quickly you pick up lucid dreaming, it may take some time to really master this. I don't think it should take that long, and if you think about it (I know this sounds backwards), having such consistent nightmares should help you learn to lucid dream since abject terror will be able to serve as a dreamsign. So by having them so frequently, you may actually be speeding up getting over them, if you want to look at it that way

Kee, I used to have recurring, disturbing dreams, too. There are many theories about dreams and, since I'm not a therapist, I can only give you some ideas to pursue.

One theory is that every element in your dream is a reflection of some aspect of yourself. Under this theory, you are you as well as the Chinese restaurant owner, the pet's faces, the competitor, the dog that jumped out of the car, the dog who lost his front legs and was bleeding to death, the dog you couldn't control, (same dog, 3 aspects of him,) etc. Try to evaluate your dreams from this viewpoint and see if you recognize any patterns that match your personality, your fears, your failings, disappointments, or other negatives that you consider devastating in your real life. These can include personality traits, habits, characteristics, or any other personal attribute. Whatever these images represent, it is going to be something that feels or at least seems to be devastating to you in real life. By that I mean that some things aren't really that horrible, unless you don't know how to deal with it.

Personally, I always found it hard to use that theory to figure out my dreams, but it is a well-documented one, I believe Jung's. I use another method, and maybe it will work for you. I journal dreams as much as I can remember them. I write down everything that jumps out at me, colors, textures, sounds, quality of anything in the dream, as well as the storyline, outcome, impact, every feeling regarding everything in the dream.

As I recall them, I write down any associations I make to any element of the dream. Sometimes I can figure them out right away, other times I had to wait for enough dreams to reveal a trend.

My first experience in understanding dreams came from one my Mom had. She was a worrier, and often said that she "felt like she was coming apart at the seams." One day she told me she dreamt she was sewn together like a dress and all the thread was falling out. I reminded her of her usual description of feeling stress, and she related to it, immediately.

That was one of the more obvious dream interpretations. The point of that is that sometimes understanding your dreams can be as simple as that one. And sometimes we're just too close to the situation to see it for what it is.

My experience with recurring dreams was terrifying to me, though not as horrifying as yours-they didn't involve something so personal and dear to me as my loved ones. I often dreamed of airplanes flying overhead, and in the dream had the feeling of impending doom. I knew the plane was going to crash. Every time, before it crashed, I woke up, preventing the inevitable disaster. Over and over I had similar dreams, always with some sort of airplane or helicopter about to crash. It wasn't until I finished school and started working in my new career that the dreams took on a slightly different pattern. I was a respiratory therapist, and worked with huge oxygen and other gas tanks. the dreams changed to where these planes were now dropping bombs. One time it dropped a "bomb" that turned out to be an oxygen tank. I can still hear it crashing to the street and rolling down the hill, in front of my parents house. It had that echoing metallic sound of large cylinders falling to the ground. It didn't explode, which told me that the crashing wasn't representing my death, or impending disaster.

I began looking for other explanations, and finally realized that these planes and "bombs" represented either what wasn't under my control, or what I didn't understand enough to feel comfortable with. In other words, I was intimidated by bosses, work situations, any situation I didn't understand enough to predict how to respond or what someone else might be doing (i.e., was a boss a jerk and making my job harder, or did I not understand that circumstances required everyone to step up their performance? or Was I making a mountain out of a molehill?)

When I finally began realizing what triggered these kinds of dreams, I began using them to assess where I felt threatened in my waking hours, where I felt I had no control, where I needed to learn and understand more, where I just felt afraid. I also realized that the symbol of the planes and bombs came from my father, who had been a WWII vet and often watched WWII movies on TV. The sound of those planes had to create fear and a sense of helplessness, or at least I imagined that's how the men must have felt. Who knew where that bomb would land? And the outcome would be final and instantaneous, with no chance to go back and change the outcome.

As I learned to face my fears, and learn all I could about the things that intimidated me, the dreams came less frequently. One day, many years later, I had another dream, and in this one, I knew the plane would crash. I was hesitant, didn't want it to crash, but knew it had to. This time I knew it would be the last of those dreams as I had, finally gotten over my fears and leaned to be comfortable with not being in control, because I had learned to respond to anything that came up with a willingness to work it out. The plane represented my fears and the feeling of impending doom that they caused me.

As for your dreams, your repetition is that something horrific happens to animals that you love. As I wrote that sentence my gut told me to write "the animals and the way they are depicted are revealing something about what you have to face and resolve."

You saw their faces in front of "Buddha" but screamed at "God" for what happened because of a competitor? Here are some questions to try to answer:
Why didn't you scream at the restaurant owner for letting someone do that without fighting back?
Why weren't you angry with the competitor for using this tactic to control someone, and for hurting your animals and you?
Why were YOUR animals involved in this (or was it YOUR competitor rather than the Restaurant owners?)
Do you see Buddha competing with God, or with what you were taught to believe?
Because it was only their faces, is there something you need to "face"?
Does it involve a belief system (Buddhism vs. Judaism or Christianity?)
In the dream with the dog jumping from the car:
Do you see yourself speeding through life?
Are you looking for a place to jump off the fast track?
Do you hesitate because you think that your hands are tied?
Do you feel as though you're being drained (really stressed, pressed for more than you can give? Being bled to death?)
Note that the dog lost his front legs and bled to death in your arms in one dream, and the intruder was stabbing you in the hands and arms in the other.

Your dream patterns include pets, arms, hands, violence, loss of control, someone else being in control, spiritual leader and the Creator, and homes/places of nourishment, and that someone threatens you–loss of life, loss of capabilities (hands and arms/legs), loss of love(ed ones).

The restaurant is a place of nourishment. So are spiritual leaders. The competitor (evil, Satan?) to do something that horrible and place that "in front of" Buddha (i.e., as in "before" or "more important than"). Evil ALWAYS puts itself before everything else.

In my dreams, a house usually represents me, my body, or my soul, as they are the place where I live all the time. You dreamed of your house in two dreams and a restaurant with a Buddha once. The restaurant and the Buddha can represent nourishment. In one dream you were taken to "your home" though it wasn't really your home.

In all three dreams you were a victim of some unidentified and powerful adversary. You were completely helpless against all three. In one dream he was doing violence to you (in your apt home), and in two dreams doing violence to pets you loved which hurt you as if they had done the violence to you. In one of those was in "your home" (though it wasn't your real life home) and in the other in the restaurant (another possible home-like place.) In both of those dreams you specifically noted how it felt to.....) so, another pattern is your awareness of how pain, helplessness, fear and grief feel. The most recent dream hints at a competitor. Are you competing, physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. If so, with whom or what (including yourself in some way.)

Are you dealing with a spiritual conflict of what to believe, being confused, deceived, or brainwahsed?

Are you dealing with a physical competitor? Life stress? Becoming aware of new levels of understanding that leave you feeling betrayed by your more youthful levels of understanding? Could this be the competition? New understanding vs. your "pet" or most comfortable understandings? (opposite of "pet" peeves.) Do you feel betrayed by God by finding out what you've always believed is not so? In other words, are you either becoming confused by conflicting beliefs, or by becoming more open minded?

You're at an age where you are letting go of childish beliefs, adolescent and young adult beliefs, all of which are limited by incomplete brain development. It takes several years for us to realize that our ability to become comfortable with abstract thinking vs. black-and-white thinking of youth, presents very different understanding of everything. Furthermore, it changes continually. I'm 62 and am still realizing new perspectives on just about everything.

So, maybe your dreams are conveying the complexities of melding material and spiritual understandings, competing beliefs, values, and the realization that we really have zero control over anything.

Hope you can use even a little part of this. I know how disturbing dreams can be when they don't make sense and are so nightmarish. Rather than jump to the conclusion that something's wrong with you, try to find out what's actually right with you that your dreams can communicate this way. You may have more insight, or be maturing faster than the people you're telling about your dreams.

My reluctance to jump right into lucid dreams at this point is that you might miss the opportunity to learn what these symbols represent to you. Even if you could figure out how to confront the oppressor (which isn't possible in the restaurant dream ... it all happened before you knew it, and you weren't concerned about the kidnapper who was apparently driving the car... your focus was on the animals as the active part of your dreams), you couldn't have stopped the injuries and death to the animals. It's better to know who/what the oppressor is, than to use lucid dreaming to run it off. You might just be suppressing something you're now ready to deal with.

Alternatively, you could use lucid dreaming to ask each element in your dream who/what they are or what they represent, and what you need to resolve the cause of your nightmares.

If it were a simple, surface thing, the dreams would be more self-explanatory. Dreams use symbols to convey the more intricate relationships between several things that can only be illustrated by imagery.