Have you ever woken up crying after a dream?

[Laurelindo]

This last night I had a dream where I think that I had some minor arguments with a couple dream characters - or maybe not exactly arguments, but it was some sort of disagreements or something like that, which I think put me in a bad mood - and I woke up in the middle of the night for a moment and felt that I was actually in the mood to cry. I tried to smile, but it was almost impossible since the corners of my mouth were shaky and tense, just like they typically are for people who are crying, and I felt a strange sad sensation, and my eyes were squinty and half closed. I just accepted this as a very powerful effect from the last dreams that I had, and I had stopped feeling that way the next time I woke up. Have you ever experienced anything similar to this?

[adrez]

No, but what you're feeling is common. Our sensations and emotions pass from the dream to wake life. Your best option is to separate wake and dream life, don't make dream things affect you (if they're bad, y'know)

[sloth]

I'm not exactly sure how, but I know for sure that dreams are closely tied to emotion. I used to experience this every week. One time I had a dream that I was a child again, in the floor of my grandfather's house. I got angry because he would not play with me. He passed years ago, and I miss him dearly. But in this dream I was truly furious with him for not playing with me. I felt the exact same emotions and mentality as a child would, with absolutely no awareness of how immature I was being. I WAS a child again.

[Lang]

Welcome back!! Laurelindo and sloth! Once I fell asleep listening to "For What It's Worth" by the Buffalo Springfield. This was after someone important died in my life who had cancer. I felt so emotional in the dream that I woke up balling. I missed him so much. The dream felt like everything that I knew and loved just flashed before my eyes. The scene of when they died replayed in my head, over and over. The rest of the day felt so hard for me. I felt both happy, sad but, mostly lost.

[scadsticker]

For dreams are your repressed wishes. If you want to avoid dreaming dramas you have to relax first before falling asleep.

[Lang]

You are partially right. Dreams are a lot of things, not just your repressed wishes. If you keep a dream journal as long as I have, you would find that there are other factors that cause you to dream certain things. Sometimes, though relaxing before falling is not enough.

[anti_nation]

Yes, I've woken up from a dream crying. But it was from the opposite of what you're describing, Laurelindo. I remember having these kinds of dreams as early as 5 years old, and they'd happen once every several years. The last one was about 2 years ago I think. In the dream, no words were said, no particular event happened and I usually wouldn't personally know the DCs in waking life. But the common theme was that there would be a group of DCs, all stopping and staring at me with the warmest smiles on their faces. I would be overwhelmed by a sense of unconditional love and acceptance stronger than I'd ever experienced in my waking life. And then I would wake up and want more than anything to go back to that dream and stay there. I would cry my eyes out because of what I just had and lost so quickly. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't ever get back to a dream like that (by choice). They just had to happen naturally.

[Lang]

Sometimes, though relaxing before falling is not enough. I mean falling asleep. This is why you should never underestimate the power of your subconscious! Heck, use that raw emotion like that to do a reality check. Perhaps the next time you are dreaming and something makes you cry or laugh, even if you feel fear, in your dream, you will reality check. I mean, that way it will help you feel better. *shrugs* It's a suggestion? It could help?

[Komisoft]

Yeah, it seems my deep dark fears of losing people get me sometimes.

[DarkestDarkness]

I've had a few dreams where I've woken up crying; of course, quite often this used to be because of nightmares, when I was younger. But in more recent years I've had completely fictional dream plots occur during which I started to cry before waking up, and that feeling remained and made me actually cry (more read as sob) once awake. At those moments I obviously realise immediately that it doesn't stand to reason for me to still be crying but I can sometimes appreciate the emotion and don't try to stop it too much. I had a specific DJ entry in mind to share here but I just can't find it right now and the search function is sadly not helping. In any case, I think this has happened with other things/emotions for me but to be honest I remember being sad/crying best anyway, maybe just because it's happened more.

[Xanous]

I wake up crying, laughing, talking all of it often.

[mobwicket]

I've experienced it a lot of time already

[lawjam]

I have experienced that a few times. Mostly, this is also accompanied by the inability to wake up. I'm aware I'm dreaming, but I can't become wakeful. Some sort of sleep paralysis occurs too--can't move my limbs or any body part for that matter. Can't open my eyes either. Strangely enough, Finnish researchers have found that around 55% percent of Finnish people who experienced bad dreams or nightmares during this ongoing pandemic dreamt about situations directly involving the pandemic (See: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wel...id=mailsignout). Researchers are thus positing a "shared mindscape," characterized by shared visual imagery, concerns, and fears. This shared mindscape is in fact not far from what sociologists like to refer to as the cultural sphere -- that intangible repository of values, practices, and interests which shapes individual and collective action. Edit: So sorry guys; I posted the link to this thread instead of to the article discussing the research findings. Rectified.

[Lang]

I have a ton of dreams about the pandemic, it may be even more if you are recording your dreams. (IMO)