I keep reading on the net that it is very unusual to experience pain in dreams, but I always do. What is the most painful thing that has ever happened to you in a dream, Lucid and not-Lucid, if you experience pain in your dreams at all?
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I keep reading on the net that it is very unusual to experience pain in dreams, but I always do. What is the most painful thing that has ever happened to you in a dream, Lucid and not-Lucid, if you experience pain in your dreams at all?
It is usual to have pain but you never really feel the real force of the pain, Like it will never be as painful as it would be in real life. I once had a dream that i fell on my knees, and it hurt. You could also be experiencing pain due to what is happening to you real body outside of the dream.
Today..
I just got stung my a ton of bees.
What it feels like someone throwing superballs at me. Lots and lots of superballs :(
Once in a lucid, if you check your sense of touch is at work, then you will obviously feel some sort of pain, as your mind knows what pain feels like, so will conjure it in your dreams when you get hurt in a dream.
That's what I think anyway. ;)
Although it is hard to find a study with how many experienced pain in dreams in their lifetime, samples of dream studies usually find 20% reporting pain in dreams.
Hope this was enlightening.Quote:
Little is known about pain in dreams. Some studies indicate that it is rare and that it may be beyond the representational capability of dreaming. However, the present study describes experiences of dreamed pain that were reported incidentally in experiments on the effects of somatosensory stimulation administered during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Dreams were selected from five subjects who had reported at least one instance of dreamed pain in these studies. The subjects had undergone 42 stimulation trials over 20 nights and had reported a total of 13 dreams (31%) with one or more references to pain. Most often, these references appeared to be direct, untransformed incorporations of real sensations produced by stimulation. Pain was the principal motivating agent in a majority of these dreams and was in many cases associated with strong emotion--typically anger. Dreams often depicted the subjects' attempts to obtain relief from pain, in some cases by repetition of actions, in others by metaphoric renditions of the goal. The results indicate that although pain is rare in dreams, it is nevertheless compatible with the representational code of dreaming. Further, the association of pain with dream content may implicate brainstem and limbic centers in the regulation of painful stimuli during REM sleep.
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The very worst was that I once had a dream that some friends and I were in a prison somewhere in the middle east. This was a non-lucid. The guards started beating us and I thought I was dying. I've never been beaten to death or beaten severely. But I've been hit in the face with a baseball bat before and every hit to the head felt like that. Every hit to the stomach gave me that awful feeling of having the wind knocked out of you, and then the pain of the impact on top of that. I woke up and curled into a little ball. Nothing hurt anymore, but it had been real enough.
Luckily I have not had a dream that I remember similar to that one, which I hope means I have not endured anything similar at any other point in my life. Other pain in dreams is very, very minor stuff. Teeth breaking, just thumpy impacts, stuff like that.
There was this one time in a lucid when I decided to grab some gravel from the ground and squeeze it just to anchor myself to the dream. The rocks hurt like the real thing.
Other than that, I never suffered any injuries in a dream so I really don't know if it would be painful.
Why not? It sounds like a logical depiction to me. Non lucid dream pain, of course, makes sense, because expecting pain could bring up a small amount, even if it is very minor compared to what you would experience from the same thing in real life. In a lucid dream, why should it be any different? Personally, I think that even while lucid it would be natural that your first thoughts may not always be, "Well, this won't hurt, it's only a dream," and often enough simply, "Prepare for impact!" If you have your sense of touch (ie. feeling) about you, it makes sense to me that this impact, bite, or whatever it may be, could cause pain. Just want to know what you think is wrong about that.
As far as my worst pain goes, it's relatively minor. I was just running barefoot and built up quite a speed on a sidewalk that was very bouncy just like a mattress, but when it curved too sharp for me to follow I was forced into the rough street, which hurt my feet a little.
There is always the chance. That it was stated as fact is what I replied to with "not true". Yes, it happens. No, it is not the standard or law or rule.
Anyway I just remembered in a lucid, my sister had a knife and was chasing me. I ran out onto the screened porch and tried to jump into the air and fly, and I bounced right off the screen (which wouldn't have happened in RL that stuff breaks easily) and I got slammed back onto the pavement. I felt the thud and it hurt a bit, not too much, and then I tried again and got through. I never got slashed, thank god. Fear of pain during lucids is so distracting :(
Oh, OK Shift, to me it seemed that your "not true" was also presented as fact, which sort of confused me. As far as dreaming goes, you can't present anything as fact, because everyone's different, and making laws just sets us back. The biggest one I see that annoys me is "You cannot read in a lucid dream." I've done it, and it's possible.
That's a crazy lucid by the way. I hate fear of pain in lucid dreams. It prevents me from doing so much stuff.
As far as reading, I can do it too. Only I can't RE-read something because as expected the letters have changed.
As far as pain, it happens to me rarely but it hurts when it does. I guess the more real your dream the more real the pain. So I take the good with the bad.
Well they stated a fact, and I said that it was not a fact. Because I have had a sense of touch without any pain. Which means that it's not a fact, which means it's a fact that it's not a fact. Of course maybe I'm a freak, but that still means that someone else might be a freak.
Yea, they're such a bummer :( Curse you, pain!! *shakes fist*
I can read sometimes. It's weird. Hit or miss, really. Really
i have had pain in a dream before.
I was in my school walking around and then all of a sudden pain struck my leg like someone had just stabbed me(i have leg pains in real life this bad)and i could barely walk actually i think i fell, i dont remember that well but that was basically the dream because i woke up from the pain and found my leg in serious pain.
just happened a few nights ago
GLASS IN MY HAND. It hurt :/ woke me up
The worst dream pain that I can remember was when I was in a forest and a group of skeletons with runes on their foreheads sent skeletal dogs to attack me.
My theory on why pain is milder in dreams is that subconsciously you know the moment of impact exactly, and therefore there is no shock from it.
a little back story on me, i pass kidney stones very frequently, with that aside anyone who has ever passed one knows what kind of pain it is, and if you are lucky enough to not have it kinda feels like you are constantly being stabbed from your lower back(kidney area) too your stomach and sometimes into your genitals, well in a dream i had i was on a bus, going around a college campus that i had transferred colleges and no longer went to, but on the bus i was passing a kidney stone, and it felt like the real thing, wort feeling i had ever had in a dream, normally if i had a dream while passing a kidney stone, up to this point it was a relief because i didnt feel the pain anymore, but on a day that i was not passing a stone(or at least notice i was) i had a dream with the intense pain i had gotten used to an no longer really noticed
Ouch! My dad gets kidney stones. The first time he was flailing around on the ground. Now he has vikodin just incase they come back.That would be a nightmare!
Every time I dream of having a gun battle, I always feel the pain of the bullets that hit me. D:
If you expect to feel pain, you will. Just like in waking life:)
sidera,
Sorry I have to disagree with that one, there have been many times I have been lucid and expected to feel pain and not and vice versa.
Hmm in answer to the most painful thing I have ever felt inside a dream, it has been both inside lucid and non lucid dreams, I used to dream of gaint speakers that would then get unplugged or pluged in wrong and there would be massive feedback, so loud that it would blow my dream to peices and I would always wake with a massive headache that would last for about a day.
I know it sounds strange but the sound was so loud and ripped through my entire being, it hurt so much that if I did not wake up in the dream I would be forced to the ground unable to move from the pain until it passed, even in lucid dreams this was one aspect that I could not control, the pain level I mean, eventually i learned how to stop the sound but while it was happening it was hell.
they stopped giving me pain killers becasue i was passing them every day for a few months and theyw ere worried about me becoming an addict, but i must say that in that time i discovered Kava Kava, to help me sleep with the pain, and because advil pm had lost its magic unless i took like 10 or more of them, and im not going to lie, you get some vivid and as my brother and i refer to them, "crazy" dreams if you take some kava before bed.
Though I'd prefer to think of myself as more sadistic than masochistic, I'm very curious about lucid pain. I want to imagine the greatest pain possible and experience it in a lucid dream, I'm curious about how it would feel and what the effects would be. In the past I've only been able to experience the feeling of impact and not pain, but I wasn't lucid for that...
O-Suchin
I feel pain all the time. But yea, the are also times when you expect it (like falling off a building) and it doesnt hurt.
My most painful was when I was being chased down the street by a hedge (yes a garden hedge) and the hedge was shaped like a pair of pants and it was carrying huge metal scissors. I jumped into a car and it wouldn't start so I jumped into the backseat and I could see the hedge coming and it broke through the windscreen and stabbed me through the stomach and it was just this really intese pain like nothing I've even felt before and then I woke up. :eek: