Recurring Nightmares

[Hana]

Here's an interesting topic. Ever have recurring dreams or nightmares? Or even worse, night terrors?

I have recurring dreams all the time. I have this one dream where I'm running around with a small group of followers and we are playing through some sort of game. It's awesome.

I have one recurring nightmare but I cannot for the life of me remember it. I know when I'm dreaming it that it is familiar and when I wake up I think "Oh, it was that  nightmare again..." but then it's gone. I have no clue what it is about or what happens in it. I just can't remember it. Kinda freaky huh?

My father and my sister both have night terrors. They scream and move in their sleep. It's really scary. My father once started screaming "Kill the non-believers!" and things to that effect; it scared us half to death. And my sister moves a lot in her sleep, like she twitches and she'll grab at the blankets and stuff and she always says "No!" "Stop!" "Don't!" "Help!" or just screams.

I wonder if anybody here experiences these things.

[Rose]

Hi Adriana, 

I do and I always have done. I love my dreams...they let me escape into 'my world' without hurting anyone or wasting time during the day, they let me act out and go through what has happened during my day to help me make sense of it, and they let me escape into different scenarios/other worlds to do as I please. 

My night mares don't. I used to have night terrors involving colours/textures changing, all really abstract things which I couldn't control or describe, and my mum has them too, but they all stopped when I was about 5 years old, only to return when I have extreme anxiety, sleep deprivation or the flu (strange huh). One night terror I still have (although rarely) is one where there is a song playing and it causes me immense physical pain, so I have to try and stop the song.

I have had recurring nightmares all my life though. The scenarios aren't the same but they feature the same characters. Most kids had the 'monster under the bed' but I had many of them, and was terrified of them (I have Asperger's which I think is to blame for my imagination which is a curse rather than anything else). A lot of these monsters went as I grew up but a few of them have stayed, and out of them the worst one by far is Jurgon. The storylines of the Jurgon nightmares can be narrowed into the following:

1. A normal dream in every other sense (e.g I'm at work, at home, down town with friends, whatever) and then Jurgon appears, and I realise he's been there the whole time. I freak out and wake up
2. Jurgon appears at the start and I spend the rest of the dream trying to get away from him but I can't
3. I'm trying to destroy him, but everyone either thinks he's not bad, or don't believe me. 

I hate these dreams and never know when I'm going to have them. This will sound weird,  but when I was a kid, my dad used to do woodwork and joinery and he made my bed for me out of pine. On the first night of sleeping in my new bed, one of the knots in the wood on the bed I thought looked like a horrible face, and it has terrified me ever since. I could never (not even now if I had my childhood bed) sleep with Jurgon uncovered (e.g. with a pillow, or a poster etc). Those were the days when it was the worst...I'd wake up after a nightmare about him, and I knew if I turned on the light and moved the pillow out of the way he'd be there. 

The thing which confuses me is that I still to this day have nightmares about him. I wake up screaming. I hate it. I can't talk to people in real life about it, they'll think I'm mad.

[taffle]

Yeah I have recurring dreams and nightmares. Sometimes I dream about places that I've visited before in other dreams. My dad occasionally sleepwalks and sometimes rummages through things, grabs onto things, etc. I think it had something to do with back in the old days when he was in a war zone.

[Hana]

@Rose  "I'm trying to destroy him, but everyone either thinks he's not bad, or don't believe me." That's the way m normal dreams play out ALL THE TIME. Like I have something I need to do, I know I need to do it, but the other people in my dreams don't believe me, or they tell me that I've already done it, or they get mad at me, or they try to get me to do something I know I shouldn't do. It's always some sort of struggle. 

I think it's kinda cool, although unfortunate to be haunted by it as you are, but it's very interesting that Jurgon came from a knot in the wood. It makes sense that he would be a recurring nightmare for you as a kid, because he was there on your bed. But he still follows you around even without the bed, he's still in your dreams? It kinda gives me the creeps!

@taffle  "Sometimes I dream about places that I've visited before in other dreams." I hate when that happens to me. Because I get really confused in my dream. Sometimes I'm doing something and I'll be transported to another place/time from another dream and then I try to remember why I had been there to try to figure out why I would be there now..... it always ends up with someone yelling at me about something I'd done that I don't remember doing and still think I have to do...  (0.0) 

[Rose]

Adriana - A lot of my dreams do this, but it's not a huge deal if it's just something normal (e.g. I'll be a cop locking someone up in jail and no one believes me that they're bad) just annoys me when it's Jurgon-related.

Jurgon has the face and appearance of the knot in the wood, but his personality is as complex as any real person I know. His personality has stayed the same since the first dream I had of him. I guess it's just a side of my personality, sort of like the 'devil me' on my shoulder, maybe. You know how some cartoons on TV have the devil and angel versions of themselves on their shoulders? Anyway. I hate dreaming about him cause he's not on my bed anymore and I have to wake up and remind myself that he's not in my room. 

This is a bit off topic, but basically I told my dad I couldn't stand that bed anymore cause it was too old and squeaky so he swapped me and my brothers' beds over. One night on a family trip, me and my brother were in a hotel and he asked me why the bed was so bad for, cause he could see nothing wrong with it. I started to tell him about Jurgon and how I want to stop the nightmares and what his personality is like, and my bro got a bit worried and told me to stop talking about it because he didn't want to hear any more. I have a lot of strange phobias and Jurgon isn't as strange as some haha

[Megan Lynn]

I used to when I was little, it was terrifying. I was trapped in my Grandparents basement by Grover, the character from Sesame Street. The dream went on for months and months and when I finally got upstairs my family was all gone. Looking back I now understand how symbolic that dream was and that it represented some very traumatic events that took place in that basement. Anyways, I think that was when my MDD started.

[Jessica]

When I was a child, I had a reoccurring nightmare. I would be in the car driving down this hill with my parents, sibling, and older cousin. Suddenly, I'm running in the darkness away from this scary woman. My family is no where in sight but I hear them telling me to get in the car and leave with them. I have never forgotten this terrible nightmare and it still sticks with me.