I have had pretty vivid nightmares since I was thirteen, largely about being raped or hunted by various DCs (almost never anyone I know in real life). When this first started occurring, I was very disturbed when I awoke and it took me hours to snap out of the bad mood I was left with, but after the age of 17 most of my dreams involving rape or murder began seeming more distant. They still occurred with the same frequency, though my brain felt much more desensitized to it and it seemed as though I could almost fast forward over the worst parts of the dream.
However, for the past year since I've turned 20, my worst nightmares are no longer about rape or being killed. I have dreams where I experience the emotions of all the characters in my dream. In all of these dreams my real life persona is present with another character and I can feel my perspective, but I can also feel the repercussions of everything I say or do in the other character as if I were them as well. I do not jump characters. I am both simultaneously. Honestly, these dreams are deeply heartbreaking. They normally deal with feelings of despair, loneliness and rejection--where I am responsible for inflicting the pain and experiencing it. Also, I have dreams where the other DC represents a person I know very well and takes the form of someone or something else, but I seem to intuitively know who they are without any sort of queue. In all of these cases, the dreams themselves are very uneventful, but the feelings alone are so gut-wrenching that they stay with me for months after they occur. I have a difficult time shaking the feelings I experience alone for days.
I still experience dreams of being raped and murdered, but during the dream I feel annoyed because I'm so desensitized to them and the other dreams are so much worse by comparison. Has anyone else experienced dreams where they are able to feel the emotions of everyone in their dreams? If so, have you always had these dreams or were they something you acquired? Also, does the fact that I can do this mean that I am making progress towards the awareness found in lucid dreaming or is it just another subset of nightmare I have no control over?