Question from a friend

[Suck4Luck]

My friend had a quick question for everyone. He said that he's had a recurring dream about suffocating in the dream, and then he wakes up gasping for air because he felt like he couldn't breathe. Is this some form of nightmare or is this an actual medical issue? Any answers would be appreciated.

[dolphin]

According to Dreammoods.com, to dream that you are suffocating signifies that you are feeling smothered or oppressed by some situation or relationship. Something or someone is holding your back. You are experiencing a lot of stress and tension. Emotions from dreams can persist for a few seconds after we wake up as we are making sense of the change in consciousness. Assuming the shortness in breathe is only tied to the dream in question, it's probably just stress.

[Verre]

He might have sleep apnea. It's relatively common, and there's a chance that he's experiencing bleedthrough sensations in the dreamstate. If he's physically "gasping for air" when he wakes up, it's possible that there is a physical basis at the root of it.

[robertcox88]

Yea he ought to film himself while sleeping to make sure it's not sleep apnea.

[HelloBro123]

Wow. I've an experience like that once. It freaked me out so much that I thought I was going to die if I didn't inhaled the air immediately after I woke up. Sorry if this sounds rude but is this phenomenon capable of making someone died. It's scary.

[proctree]

At least for me, feelings and emotions "bleeding through" as Verre described it is fairly common. Sometimes I wake up before my dream ends and I experience kind of a 'split screen' effect, and then stuff starts to blend and feel weird until the dream collapses. We have multiple mental canvases, and all of them are linked in some way. There's our physical eyes, our mind's eye which we use for visualization, and then another dream canvas which you use to see dreams. One can learn to manipulate all of them, and as you become more and more aware of them stuff starts to combine and jump around. In fact, I think the bleeding-through effect started for me shortly after I had my first split-screen experience and realised that there's more than two mental planes. I wouldn't worry about it much if I were your friend. Obviously though, if this happens more than once or twice, he should get a check-up, but it's all fairly normal stuff.

[RavenOfShadow]

There is a big difference between a gasp for air upon waking and gasping for air for a several moments. The first means something startled or upset you. The second means you were physically starved of oxygen. If its the first, it is probably just stress and potentially some sleep paralysis. If its the latter, it can definitely be sleep apnea as the others are saying.