First nightmare. Pretty traumatic..

[xhayatox]

I have never in my life experienced any nightmares. I've always been able to go to bed successfully, and sleep peacefully. Now, last night.. I went to bed as normal, and fell asleep. I started dreaming and I remember being in a church or something, and a priest gave me a cup that contained some kind of green-tea. I drank it, and the next thing you know, I feel my soul being purged out of my body. As it was getting purged, a green spirit/devil appeared out of me, as I was purged. It started screaming, and the dream shifted, and then I finally woke up in a panic. What exactly.. Did I experience last night? Like I said, in my dream I felt my soul being purged out of my body. It felt as if the sensation was actually happening. How is that even.. possible? How can a dream induce a sensation and make it feel like it actually happened to you in real-life? What's going on? Before I went to bed, I had a lot of soda to drink. I don't know if that contributed to me having this freaky dream, but yeah. So, overall. How would you guy's explain what happened to me? Did I experience a nightmare? What in the world happened?

[Skyblue]

When your dreaming your not receiving much external input from your senses however the parts of your brain associated with interpreting and comprehending sensory data still work. although nothing is happening to you it can seem as real as anything. The vividness of a dream I personally believe is linked to how synchronised your different parts of the brain are with one another. If all your senses and cognitions are communicating well it can be as vivid as reality. Without your brain you don't experience anything at all... I once took a hallucinogen rather than have a hallucination my visual cortex shut down. I was rendered completely incapable of processing any image coming from my eyes, I lost the concepts of shape, Form, Recognition, Motion, Colour. I was blind... my eyes worked but I was blinded. The opposite happens in dreams. No input but sensory processing happens anyway during sleep... Exactly why is a mystery. As for your nightmare... I'd say your lucky you've only had one... I get nightmares frequently, My subconscious is truly sadistic and regularly enjoys inflicting dreadful degrading and painful horrors upon me almost every night. I wouldn't worry about it.

[xhayatox]

When your dreaming your not receiving much external input from your senses however the parts of your brain associated with interpreting and comprehending sensory data still work. although nothing is happening to you it can seem as real as anything. The vividness of a dream I personally believe is linked to how synchronised your different parts of the brain are with one another. If all your senses and cognitions are communicating well it can be as vivid as reality. Without your brain you don't experience anything at all... I once took a hallucinogen rather than have a hallucination my visual cortex shut down. I was rendered completely incapable of processing any image coming from my eyes, I lost the concepts of shape, Form, Recognition, Motion, Colour. I was blind... my eyes worked but I was blinded. The opposite happens in dreams. No input but sensory processing happens anyway during sleep... Exactly why is a mystery. As for your nightmare... I'd say your lucky you've only had one... I get nightmares frequently, My subconscious is truly sadistic and regularly enjoys inflicting dreadful degrading and painful horrors upon me almost every night. I wouldn't worry about it. I'm really sorry to hear about that. It does sound like you've had some experience with it so I'm glad somebody understands. Thank you for the reassurance. Very encouraging. I guess what I've come to realize is, perhaps it's not the actual dream that bothers me. Perhaps it's the sensation I experienced within the dream, that I'm fearful to experience again. And another thing I have a slight worry about is.. In the dream, after I had consumed the green tea, as I felt myself being "purged", I saw something that looked like a green spirit coming out of, shrieking as it was being pulled out. That couldn't have been like a satan reference could it? Satan is red.. What I saw green. I just don't want to think I was under any "spiritual attack" you know?