Feeling pain in dreams

**Nexi** · 03-01-2012 03:50 AM

To start this off, I'd like to tell you a story. All my life I've naturally been a lucid dreamer. In about the second or third grade, I specifically remember this one dream.

I had just became lucid. I was out on the playground when a big scorpion man comes out and starts attacking people! I'm standing beside my friends and I tell them something along the lines of "Hey, this is a dream. I can't get hurt by him." So I walk casually up to the big creature, trying to look brave. It hits me and pain is inflicted. I don't remember what happens after that.

So the question is, have you felt pain in dreams? Is it common for you?

**Burke** · 03-01-2012 03:56 AM

Yes, pain can be perceived in dreams but it is entirely based on your expectations. Pain is all in the mind, a reaction to physical occurrences on nerve endings. In dreams since you have no true physical element it is entirely in your head, which means whatever you expect to happen will happen. Even if you aren't lucid, if you expect something to hurt, it will; If you don't expect it to hurt, it won't.

**kevojy** · 03-01-2012 04:05 AM

I'm not sure if you could really feel a truly horrible pain in a dream, but it's pretty common to feel numbness or an odd (sometimes pretty unpleasant) tingling feeling. Often a lot of people say they can still feel the 'pain' long after waking up. I think I've only ever felt pain once in a dream, and this was years ago (nightmares are really rare now for some reason). I was shot right in my gut. It didn't hurt like I thought it would, just felt like there was a big numb hole carved out of me. It was weird.. When I woke up the area just felt numb and tingly, like I was expecting something to be missing. In hindsight I think it's pretty cool that my brain could make me actually feel all of that, but at the time it was mighty uncomfortable!

**Sivason** · 03-01-2012 06:02 AM

I feel pain in some LDs. I have had a couple where the pain is still there for a minute or two after waking. In one LD some lame DC kept poking me with a tiny pocket knife and it really did hurt.

**Puffin** · 03-01-2012 06:44 AM

I've felt pain in dreams before, yes. I once dreamed that I was getting ready for school and that I was very, very tired - so tired, in fact, that my body was sore all over. It was exactly like I'd be in real life. Other dreams involving pain are usually lucid nightmares; I've been stabbed, had things sewn into my neck, and blades dragged along me; these ones hurt like CRAZY. The pain was intense and very realistic.

Since I daydream a lot, I can easily imagine tactile sensations and such, which is helpful in my LDs when I want to do something but very unhelpful when I'm pinned down and am being cut up or something. I haven't actually felt a knife being pressed into me or anything, but the sensations are so realistic. I have been cut by a few knives before, so I suppose my subconscious takes that, slows it down and amps up the pain level.

**fOrceez** · 03-01-2012 03:44 PM

I feel pain in my dreams when I'm non-lucid. Usually when I'm lucid, I choose not to feel pain.. I mean.. who likes getting hurt? Heh.

**Robot_Butler** · 03-02-2012 12:09 AM

I always think I can feel pain in dreams. It hurts at the time. Then, anytime I feel real pain in real life, I remember what an idiot I am. Dream pain is just an annoyance. Real life pain is absolutely unbearably horrible.

**lily** · 03-02-2012 06:55 AM

I have felt very intense pain from my dreams before. One time I got stabbed in the eye and I woke up with that eye watering and it hurt so much I kept it closed for a bit. I was even scared it was really damaged but it was fine once the pain subsided there was of course nothing really wrong. And there have been other times I've been hit or stabbed where the pain was really intense. It wakes me up and usually takes awhile to go away so that's pretty annoying. Good thing is it doesn't really happen very often.

**kevojy** · 03-02-2012 03:39 PM

I think what often happens (or could happen - this is just a theory), is that you experience a real physical pain. Say a sudden cramp, or in the case above, something flying into your eye. Your mind interprets the pain and weaves it into the dream somehow. I'm not saying that's always what's happening when you feel pain in your dream (and wake up with it). But it could happen I suppose. It'd be interesting to research..

**Toozul** · 03-02-2012 10:36 PM

I feel pain in dreams very well actually, which isn't fun because if you have cardiac arrhytmia, it may carry in to the dream as pain, not as slight as it should be! (If it is painful, of course)

**lily** · 03-02-2012 10:37 PM

I know I always do try and see if there is some external source for the pain, but there need not be. We are capable of experiencing the entire range of sensations. Like, I can remember eating some delicious dessert in a dream. I woke up with my pillow in my mouth.. most certainly the pillow was not delicious but in my dream the dessert was. It's the same as in the dream. I can't prove something didn't just fly into my eye, although I would have expected my eye to stay irritated longer if that had happened. Even if it did that doesn't quite explain the deep and realistic pain I felt as though someone really had shoved something sharp into my eye. In all of my dreams when I felt pain, I tended not to have a way to explain that pain from the outside world.. afterall if it is realistic enough then it's not very common for me to actually be under assault and getting stabbed and hit in my bed.

**lily** · 03-02-2012 10:37 PM

Originally Posted by Toozul

I feel pain in dreams very well actually, which isn't fun because if you have cardiac arrhytmia, it may carry in to the dream as pain, not as slight as it should be! (If it is painful, of course)

Could you explain what cardiac arrthymia is? I have never heard of that.

**Robot_Butler** · 03-02-2012 11:05 PM

Next time you get stabbed in the eye, try to compare the pain to your dream. For science!

**melanieb** · 03-03-2012 01:37 AM

I used to feel pain in my dreams until I had a particularly bad dream in which I was shot through the chest at point blank range, which I felt in the most horrific of ways.

Since then, I don't really feel pain in dreams, and have even died again without concern, because I tell myself in my dreams that I'll be alright "because it's just a dream" or that I "have died before."

I still feel the need to pee in dreams. I might trade that for pain, considering some of the situations in which that manifests.

**RacyBiscuit** · 03-03-2012 01:41 AM

I don't feel real pain in my dreams, but I do feel something when I am shot/stabbed/killed. It feels just like a pinch, and that is all that I feel. It usually goes away after a second or so.

**hermine_hesse** · 03-03-2012 01:44 AM

I agree that the pain need not always have an external source. I had a non-lucid dream recently where a very sharp object stabbed me through the bottom of my foot. I had to take a deep breath and pull it out of my foot myself. When I woke up, I could still feel the pain of where the object went in up through the inside of my foot. This has happened to me in WR before and my mind reproduced the exact pain sensations. There is nothing external that could have produced that.

**silver2k** · 03-03-2012 01:56 AM

I broke a window by punching it, I did infact feel the pain on my hands.

**saltyseedog** · 03-03-2012 02:03 AM

I've felt so much pain in so many dreams. I've even woke up still feeling the pain. You should do whatever you hate so you aren't afraid of it.

**Robot_Butler** · 03-05-2012 08:28 PM

I have felt horrific pain during hypnagogia, sleep paralysis, and WILD transitions. Sometimes my body is ripped, twisted, folded, and electrocuted. The physical sensations can be really intense and painful. I don't know if that counts as a dream.

**WeirdoDreamer13** · 08-07-2012 12:47 AM

Only on about 2 separate occurrences (that I can remember, anyways) I've felt pain in my dreams. The first time, I was in this hospital having some kind of tests and one of them involved a needle in my back and I remember feeling it poking me and hurting pretty bad, and in the same dream a felt a pretty intense shock. The next one is actually pretty recent. I dreamed that I got shot, and it was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life, I remember wondering in my dream when I was gonna die.

**snoop** · 08-09-2012 02:14 AM

I've never experienced pain in a dream. To give an extreme example of how little sense it makes not to be able to, in one dream some how my member got uh... sliced off. I don't even remember how, but in the dream I was in my old high school's cafeteria. If I couldn't even feel pain from that, I can't imagine feeling it in any other dreams (and as I said, I don't)

**PaschaR** · 08-09-2012 04:53 AM

Dreams about getting shot feels really weird,i wouldn't really call it pain,but i do feel it

**Ewan** · 08-09-2012 02:42 PM

I've never had a lucid dream but I've fealt "pain" in normal dreams before. It's not really pain. It's more like imagining pain in real life, not very intense or harming but enough feeling to know what type of pain it is.

**The Cusp** · 08-09-2012 04:26 PM

Everything requires your attention to exist. Especially pain.

You will only feel pain if you take the time to focus on your wounds or injuries. In the majority of my dreams, I don't feel pain because I'm too focused on getting away from whatever is hurting me. It's only when I stop to look at my wounds or otherwise become aware of them that I feel pain. I've had flesh hanging off me in strips, and I didn't feel a thing because I was too busy trying to get away from the tigers who were mauling me.

**snoop** · 08-09-2012 07:26 PM

The above does not hold true for me. The same dream I talked about before... where my tool somehow got sliced off, I looked down and not only saw it was sliced off but held the severed pen0r in my hands. I still felt no pain, and then somehow I put the cut off end on top of the other cut off end and skin grew and manifested over the wound for a few seconds and then it was reattached like nothing even happened. This dream was non-lucid, thankfully. <_<