Pain in dreams??

I'm sorry if this has already been posted, but I was wondering if anyone has ever experienced pain in a dream, especially while lucid. I have felt small amounts of pain, such as hitting a wall after being pushed, but I have never experienced any extreme amounts of pain, such as breaking a bone. I wonder if it is possible to feel excruciating pain in a dream, and if so, do you remember what it felt like? Would you remember the pain of an amputated limb even after you woke up and still had an arm?
Just something to think about :)

Hah, yes. In my first LD (a very short one), I got sliced on the palm of my hand by a blade (instinctive reaction, the guy was aiming for the head). When I looked at my hand, the huge gash I expected wasn't there, but there was a few small scratches I had accumulated earlier.
I healed the hand just before the dream ended, so it didn't carry on after the dream.

Never felt physical pain in a dream. What has already happened is that I thought "oh, I'm feeling pain", but I didn't for real. I even wonder if that is usable as a RC.

I have all my senses in dreams. Feeling, tastes, Smells, I can even feel the wind. So, I feel pain often. The worst is when I fall or get stabbed, since I don't wake up when I die. Falling off a cliff sucks... I hit the ground, and feel the pain, the pain is usually what wakes me up, but sometimes it doesn't and I just lay there bleeding and gasping... When the pain wakes me up, I jolt up in my bed and usually yell, it hurts so much...

Ya rarely I feel some real pain. The vast majority of the time I don't get injured and when I do it doesn't hurt much or I just wake up. But sometimes I get dreams where I get injured and really feel the pain, like one time I was lucid and got shot a bunch of times and it felt like getting hit with a bunch of little bb's in real life, I was crouched down on the ground holding my head and hoping I would wake up. Other times I have gotten stabbed and even when I woke up the area was still red and hot like my body was actually reacting to the wound.

Yeah damn i hate it when i fall off something, just the other night i was sitting on a railing and fell off backwards and broke my back.. i guess some people feel it and others don't, but it most likely depends on the vividness of your dream ;)

I haven't actually broken very many bones before, I'm pretty indestructible even outside my dreams, so it's kind of hard to dream about it happening. I have felt pain but I don't get injured too frequently in dreams. The feeling usually fades away pretty quickly when I wake up.

While you are expieriencing it, it will seem real. Like one time there was this ugly boy biting me. It didn't hurt, but i thought : ahh! he's biting me! Then i woke up, but the point is that if you think, then you seem to feel pain because you see someone pushing you to the ground, but your nervous system is not working. Maybe if you had a really complex nightmare, it would be real, but most likely not.

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Originally Posted by Kromoh

Never felt physical pain in a dream. What has already happened is that I thought "oh, I'm feeling pain", but I didn't for real. I even wonder if that is usable as a RC.

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Same here. I have "thought" I felt pain, but when I wake up, I realize that I really haven't.

One of my RC's is pinching myself, and since I can't feel it, I know I am dreaming.

I fell off a motor bike, one time, in my dream, and smacked my head on a rock. I thought it had hurt, but it really didn't. Then I realized I was dreaming, and became lucid.

So, no, I can't really feel pain in my dreams.

Yes I feel excruciating pain if I wake up with sleep paralysis and someone is touching me. Wherever I'm being touched causes me intense pain and I try to scream for them to get off me but I can't of course because of the paralysis.

Loads of people have asked this question. It's very common. I often feel pain in non-lucids, but have never felt pain in a lucid. This is usually because in lucids, I tend to avoid activities that will cause me pain! However, in non-lucids, I'm constantly getting limbs eaten by sharks, or being shot with arrows, or being injected with massive needles. It's definitely not as painful as in real life, but it can be quite bad, and often I wake up with a lingering pain.

Oh, yea, one thing that freaked me out was when in a dream my leg was split open, near the shin... when I woke up, I had a gash in my leg, in the exact same spot, there was nothing in my room that could have done it. it was smaller then the cut in my dream, but had it been the same size, I would have died...

i tried to complete the task of the month and take a bit into something, i picked a metal pole after already taking a chunk out of a tree, as i bit into the pole my teeth felt as if i had bitten into a block of ice, it sent shivers down my spine in the dream lol.

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Originally Posted by Delphinus

Oh, yea, one thing that freaked me out was when in a dream my leg was split open, near the shin... when I woke up, I had a gash in my leg, in the exact same spot, there was nothing in my room that could have done it. it was smaller then the cut in my dream, but had it been the same size, I would have died...

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Alright, I don't mean to contest you people who said you woke up and the pain continued for a bit. BUT... What's most probably happened is that you indeed felt that pain for some reason while asleep, and because of feeling that pain, you dreamt of something that could have provoked the pain.

your leg hurts -> you feel your leg hurting -> you dream your leg hurts (getting stabbed on the leg, for example)

I don't think you can feel anything but very slight, imaginative pain in a dream; and if you can, your adrenaline levels will rise, making you wake up. Same is with nightmares.

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Originally Posted by Kromoh

Alright, I don't mean to contest you people who said you woke up and the pain continued for a bit. BUT... What's most probably happened is that you indeed felt that pain for some reason while asleep, and because of feeling that pain, you dreamt of something that could have provoked the pain.

your leg hurts -> you feel your leg hurting -> you dream your leg hurts (getting stabbed on the leg, for example)

I don't think you can feel anything but very slight, imaginative pain in a dream; and if you can, your adrenaline levels will rise, making you wake up. Same is with nightmares.

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Yeah I agree, that makes sense to me.

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Originally Posted by Kromoh

Alright, I don't mean to contest you people who said you woke up and the pain continued for a bit. BUT... What's most probably happened is that you indeed felt that pain for some reason while asleep, and because of feeling that pain, you dreamt of something that could have provoked the pain.

your leg hurts -> you feel your leg hurting -> you dream your leg hurts (getting stabbed on the leg, for example)

I don't think you can feel anything but very slight, imaginative pain in a dream; and if you can, your adrenaline levels will rise, making you wake up. Same is with nightmares.

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Fair assumption, but why can't it work the other way too? A sort of placebo... Waking up with the pain fresh in your mind and feeling it in the same place. We've all been in that halfway state between awake and dreaming...

I know that, in some cases, people who lose a limb feel phantom pains- after losing an arm, they may still feel their fingernails digging into their nonexistant palm, for example. What if that were to happen from a dream? You still felt a wound when you woke up, even though it is not really there! That would be scary. I don't really think it could happen, though.

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Originally Posted by Stefan

I know that, in some cases, people who lose a limb feel phantom pains- after losing an arm, they may still feel their fingernails digging into their nonexistant palm, for example.

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That's a great example, stefan. Thanks. I add that to my argument.

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Originally Posted by Stefan

I know that, in some cases, people who lose a limb feel phantom pains- after losing an arm, they may still feel their fingernails digging into their nonexistant palm, for example. What if that were to happen from a dream? You still felt a wound when you woke up, even though it is not really there! That would be scary. I don't really think it could happen, though.

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First of all, let's explain the phantom limb thing. Your brain keeps an updated image of your body: where each part is, what each part is feeling, what each part is doing, etc. That is what allows you to close your eyes, but still know where your limbs are, even if you move them.

When a person loses a limb, their brain is still used to the image of having that limb, and although there's nothing to be felt, the brain still keeps an updated image of it. Most people who lost a limb dream they still have their limb - their body image is acting there.

That way it is possible for one to feel their lost limb. But in terms of pain, I find it impossible. What can happen is that some broken nerve wrongly signals the brain for pain in the limb when it is actually occuring in another area (the scar for example).

There's a huge difference between pain and a little tingly feeling. In intensity, nature, and effect.

I've had numerous experiences where I become hungry in dreams to the point of keeling over in painful pangs. Sometimes it even wakes me up. The pain feels real and defined, however it may just be a result of my physical body being hungry (the likely culprit).

I have not, though, experienced pain (that I can recall) from an event that happened within a dream on its own random tangent. Instead, I've only experienced pain from my physical body that my dream world manages to incorporate in a seemingly random, though connected, way.

I've felt pretty severe pain in a couple of dreams. The most memorable would be in a really odd dream where I fell into a really thorny bush outside of my friends house. The pain was incredibly realistic, it felt almost exactly like a ton of thorns getting stuck in your skin. It hurt! Oddly enough, I didn't wake up from it, and carried on as if nothing had happened.