Thread: Anybody Else Slightly Enjoy Nightmares?

Originally Posted by Jai

Exactly. Nightmares are traumatizing. I am still traumatized from nightmares I had as a young child, and traumatized by every one since.

Anyone who can state that they 'love' nightmares has obviously never had one .

I love nightmares, and I have had one according to the definition Lëzen gave ("It's the kind of dream where you'll wake up either screaming, in a cold sweat, crying uncontrollably, or some combination of the three."). Not sure why I love them. Maybe it's not love, it could just be longing. Like a nightmare is actually necessary every once in awhile (I haven't had one in ages). Maybe if I had another one that feeling would go away.

I believe nightmares exist because we are still animals, and need to be prepared for dangerous and incredibly scary situations. I think that perhaps they are meant to keep our senses aware and our instincts (fear and panic are instinyual responses) working.

I once read a post here on DV from a guy who asked a DC in a nightmare why he was trying to kill him. The DC said "We want your energy". Perhaps this was the subconscious confessing its true goal?

A personal note: the reason why I can't wait to kiss a girl in real life is because I did it once in a dream and it was the best thing ever. Pure magic.
Maybe this is my mind's way of getting me to do stuff?

Originally Posted by Lëzen

But a nightmare is most certainly not the same thing as a scary dream - even though 99.9% of them tend to be scary in nature. A nightmare, by very definition, leaves you feeling emotionally distressed - usually to the point of not being able to fall back asleep, no matter how you try (although most people who've woken from a nightmare don't even want to try, for fear of reliving the awful experience). It's the kind of dream where you'll wake up either screaming, in a cold sweat, crying uncontrollably, or some combination of the three.

By this definition, I have a lot of nightmares and I definitely don't miss them. I can only remember one truly scary nightmare, and none of the three above happened. However, it was in 5th grade and my friend had convinced me that magic was real ( he was pretty good at his trickery ) and he had told me about these demons called wraiths that hunt people down. In the dream, these wraiths had attacked me and this same friends, and we were the last ones left, hiding in a room. The wraiths started beating at the door, and a red flash shrouded my vision and then I woke up. I was freaked out about it the next day, and for a week afterwards. And to make it worse, in the dream, I heard or saw two dates. Those dates are coming up sometime around next year.

All my other nightmares have been about something like my family dying. I wake up with tears streaming down my face, and sometimes sweating, but never anything else.

Originally Posted by Timothy Paradox

I believe nightmares exist because we are still animals, and need to be prepared for dangerous and incredibly scary situations. I think that perhaps they are meant to keep our senses aware and our instincts (fear and panic are instinyual responses) working.

Maybe. That's actually a good possibility. I actually always wanted to have them as a kid because I thought they were adventures. lol!

Originally Posted by Timothy Paradox

I once read a post here on DV from a guy who asked a DC in a nightmare why he was trying to kill him. The DC said "We want your energy". Perhaps this was the subconscious confessing its true goal?

Why would your own subconscious try to steal energy from itself? I'm not too sure about that one. Maybe it was just a way of making even lucid dreamers scared and do what you do in a nightmare: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

Originally Posted by Timothy Paradox

A personal note: the reason why I can't wait to kiss a girl in real life is because I did it once in a dream and it was the best thing ever. Pure magic.
Maybe this is my mind's way of getting me to do stuff?

I had that experience in a dream. i agree, it's effin awesome. But I'm not sure about your brain telling you to do something... I experienced lots of stuff in dreams that I'm sure wouldn't be a good idea to do in real life... Its some sort of coincidence I think. For all the things we dream, I'm sure there's at least one that can be done and can be really tempting in real life, kissing a girl in this case lol.

Plus, what's the relation with nightmares?

Aaa! Don't suggest Suicide Club. I've had at least eight (possibly more-- and that's not a joke) vivid reccuring nightmares about the opening scene in the past year, only having saw it once. It's very disturbing. :'(

Originally Posted by GenericUser10621

I Love Waking Up From A Nightmare And Just Going "Woah."

Then I Get All Paranoid In My Bed And Make Sure All Of My Bodies Covered By My Quilt.

And I Start To Hear Noises And Voices Due To Paranoia And Adrenaline.

It's Intense. And I Love It.

Anyone Else Like It?

Yeah, the scarier the dream the better. I think it's the intensity that I really enjoy too.

The best thing is getting Lucid in the middle of it, then showing the dream who is boss.

Yeah i like scary dreams and i love sleep paralysis but intense nightmares are a bit too much.Once i had a nightmare in which i was insane and i was trying to escape from a psychiatric ward.Woke up crying and took me a while to get my act together after waking up.

Honestly, I enjoy most dreams that aren't 'Night Terrors' (Yes, I've recalled a night terror)... Theres nothing worse than a night terror. Every time I have one, I wake up and have a terrible breathing attack. I feel like I'm going to die, like someones choking me to death, couple that with the panic from the dream.. its not pretty. But bizzare/Macabre dreams are great, I love waking up and thinking 'Did that really just... happen?'!

I really enjoy nightmares where I'm running away from gigantic monsters or physco killers for some reason. I just love the rush and intensity of it all. Other types of nightmares I could live without.

Originally Posted by kingofclutch

I love thinking about it the day after but during the dream and right afterwards I am always freaked out.

Originally Posted by EchoSun13

My nightmares are so vivid I wake up thinking it really happened.

I am pretty much the same as this. For example, I had a dream me and my Dad killed a guy and we tried to dispose of the body but we f**ked up [we tried to dump him over the side of a skyscraper but his head came off and blood went all down the side of the building... we dropped him anyway] so we tried to escape by taking an elevator down through the basement to the.... London Underground, then the dream ended.

I woke up in a slight sweat and actually said out loud, 'thank f**k that was dream!'

I really couldn't deal with the fact that we had killed a guy and I was s**ting myself thinking we were going to prison.

However, looking back on it, it was pretty cool seeing the guys head being decapitated [I was holding the legs, my Dad was holding the arms. He let go too early and his head smashed against the side of the building and came off] Also, I told my Dad about it and it gave him a giggle.

Yeah, I thought I was the only one with retarded inverted logic. But apparently not Yeah I wake up scared, and cover my body with the quilt, and pretend to be asleep as if that stops anything that would attack me from attacking me...but its so intense, the adrenaline, its sorta fun.

Maybe its got something to do with, despite having arachnaphobia, I'm fascinated by spiders and often play with them, although I get freaked the F out..

I am ok with nightmares as long as they are not too painful or too scary.

I once had a nightmare of someone melting into a puddle, it was sort of like watching a movie because i had no body in the dream.

I enjoy scary dreams. I enjoy fighting off hordes of zombies, blowing up Wendigos with nuclear explosives, and even running away from things that are most definitely trying to kill me. They're exhilarating. Life-affirming. Fun. Because in all these dreams, I have a measure of control over the situation. I can fight, I can run, and even if I lose, it was still an adventure.

I do not enjoy nightmares. I define a nightmare as losing complete control over the dream, and having no way to react to the situation. You know, you can't move, you can't scream, you can't do anything about the rabid creature stalking toward you?

Scary Dreams = Fun
Nightmares = Uncontrollable

tl;dr: No.

For me, intense, emotional dreams of death, dying, mutilation, gore etc are enjoyable. I jump from one DC's perspective to another or go into viewer or god-mode.
I don't feel refreshed after such dreams, as a general rule though.

Dreams I consider "nightmares" are emotionally traumatic themed- my hubby divorcing me, fights between me and my family- boring things lol but things I'm none-the-less anxious about and deeply affected by.

I never understood how I could enjoy swimming through blood while killing monsters and wake up feeling amazed and yet wake up crying and paranoid or angry because I dreamed of getting into a shouting match with my relatives

I used to have tons of night mares when I was young. I hated them but now that I look back at them they we're actually cool. The characters and things that happened to me we're rare and exciting.

But now, I haven't had a night mare in 5 or 6 years...

Originally Posted by Crazydreamergurl

I used to have tons of night mares when I was young. I hated them but now that I look back at them they we're actually cool. The characters and things that happened to me we're rare and exciting.

But now, I haven't had a night mare in 5 or 6 years...

Although I wouldn't quite say I enjoy them, I find my nightmares much more interesting than many of my normal dreams- they actually have a plot usually.

Originally Posted by Lëzen

But a nightmare is most certainly not the same thing as a scary dream - even though 99.9% of them tend to be scary in nature. A nightmare, by very definition, leaves you feeling emotionally distressed - usually to the point of not being able to fall back asleep, no matter how you try (although most people who've woken from a nightmare don't even want to try, for fear of reliving the awful experience). It's the kind of dream where you'll wake up either screaming, in a cold sweat, crying uncontrollably, or some combination of the three.

I don't think the reaction always needs to be this extreme though. I get what you mean about the difference. I have had dreams that were exciting, in a scary run-for-your-life kind of way, that I kind of wished I could fall back into after waking up, and I have had dreams that I absolutely did not want to think about again or dream again that just made me feel sick and frightened - no enjoyable excitement at all.

However, whenever I have had one of these truly nightmarish dreams, I have very, very rarely woke up panting, never woke up sweating or crying. I have very rarely ever felt like I needed to get up and not fall back asleep.

Most of my nightmares I am screaming in the dream, and just want it to end any way, it's horrible. I wake up relieved it was just a dream and I might be panting and my heart is thumping but I simply remind myself "it was only a dream" and I quite easily fall back asleep.

Nightmares come at different intensities.


That all said, I'd say I value but do not enjoy nightmares. I would not trade them for anything as I feel they help me grow, develop and face my demons that I would be otherwise too chicken and egotistical to face in waking life. They teach me about parts of myself I do not want to admit are there, and kind of put me in my place. They are very humbling.

I dislike horror movies.
My nightmares are like being in horror movies. Therefore, no.
I hate nightmares, scary dreams, or whatever you might call them.

Most of my life, I remembered about 1-2 nightmares per year at most. I would have to say they were mostly just "scary dreams." I enjoyed them by daybreak.

Sadly, I rarely recorded my dreams before I lucid trained. Although the few that I would call terrifying nightmares, I still clearly remember. Apart from a few exceptional nightmares, (and one season of horrible, horrible, nightmares in 2007,) I have generally slightly enjoyed my nightmares.

Nightmare = A dream you would never want to have again.

I don't like nightmares, where you are truly scared and wake up crying, but luckily I haven't had one in years.
I do like scary dreams though, because i always create a way to battle them, for example i had a dream last night i was trapped in this house, not an ordinary house, a magical one, the owners trapped people in there to steal their youth or something. ANYWAY, my friends and i totally kicked their ass by discovering they hated loud noises so we kicked down the door, shouted, sang loudly and banged pots together, ran away and jumped through the portal back to our world. Now that was freaking awesome.

I love nightmares simply because they are so vivid and powerful-- I remember every aspect of the nightmare perfectly, as it scars itself into my brain with every nuance just the way it was when I dreamt it. It's such a rush, too.

Love them!! Its fun when you wake up and you are all parinoid

Hmmmm, it would appear that based on that description, I've never had a "Nightmare".
Now I was raised in the belief that we're all here to learn certain things. Even things liking being killed in horrible, horrible ways. However, you could still learn them in a dream. So really bad dreams are very very good things.
I myself never particularly enjoyed bad dreams. But I can remember some running dreams that were okay.

As some said there is a huge difference between nightmares and scary dreams. If you don't agree think of a dream which made you sit still in your bed for hours . that's a nightmare. I guess ima have one tonight