Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Bad Dreams


I had a bad dream last night. Oh, it wasn’t a scary dream, like about monsters or such, but it was, nevertheless, a really bad dream. It made me wonder, once I awoke, whether or not dreams like this could be fatal.

Whenever I used to hear that someone died in his or her sleep from a heart attack or stroke, I would always cluck sympathetically and assume that the person had some sort of underlying risk. That their time was up.

But after my bad dream, I have to ask myself, “What if someone’s death was really from a bad dream?” Because, if they died we’d never know if the bad dream caused the death.  He or she wouldn’t be around to tell us. After my bad dream, I have to wonder.

In my dream, I became so angry at someone, that I was out of control furious. I’m pretty sure my blood pressure had to have shot through the top of my head. I don’t suffer from high blood pressure issues, so the end didn’t come for me last night. But what if I had high blood pressure? Or a bad heart? Seriously. Maybe I would have died. And my poor husband would have told everyone at the visitation, “So strange that she died of a heart attack. She didn’t have heart problems. Of course, she wasn’t a teenager anymore. Tsk Tsk.”

Many years ago, I read an article by a psychologist or a psychiatrist ( I always get those two mixed up) who postured that if one was in the habit of having scary dreams, one could train oneself to say “this is only a dream,” and then bring oneself out of the dream.  I’ve actually tried that a time or two, and saved myself from some blood sucking monsters. I would wake up and the dream would fizzle away.

But back to this terrible rage I felt. I didn’t tell myself I was only dreaming. Probably because the dream was so vividly real. Someone was messing with Cami, my ’79 Camaro. It stayed with me all day. I think the only solution to that is to train myself in real life not to get so angry. Wait, I did that already. Perhaps it’s all the repressed rage manifesting itself while I sleep. After holding it in so long, and all.

I may need help from one of those psycho people… psychologist or psychiatrist?

 

10 comments:

  1. Love muscle cars, too ! I'm writing a young adult mystery in which the main character drives a '69 GTO. I'd be pretty ticked off if someone messed with my classic car, dream or not. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Psychiatrists are medical doctors, can prescribe meds, and specialize in mental health issues. Psychologists study psychology, usually have a doctorate (but not a medical degree), and are licensed by their states to practice in their specialty after meeting certain criteria.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll try to keep that info straight, thanks, Janece.

      Delete
  3. Interesting idea. I once had a dream of being on a airplane that was on a nosedive for the ground and everyone on board was sure to be killed, including myself and my husband. I woke up with a jolt, wide-awake, staring into the dark, not that groggy feeling you sometimes have from being wakened unexpectedly and very clearly remembered the dream.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Peg, that's the kind of dream I'm talking about, the kind that can scare you and get your heart racing!

      Delete
  4. I have stress dreams that were more common when I was still teaching and before a new school year was beginning, and I was busy preparing for it. But they were never scary, just upsetting, like showing up on the first day totally unprepared, or still in my nightgown, or losing my students and not knowing where they were. Sometimes I couldn't find my classroom and was wandering through strange halls and places looking for it. Once I had a dream where a nephew was walking down my sidewalk and a small child was running in front of him - he was still a teenager at the time - and the young child fell into a deep, deep hole that had appeared in the walk. I know I felt extreme panic wondering how I would rescue this child, who had just completely disappeared.

    One dream that was possibly a dream of precognition was when I dreamed my oldest son had died in our finished basement. I was trying to figure out how to get rid of his body - this was long before I started writing mysteries, although I read them. It was several months later that we discovered my son had cancer and ten months later he died of cancer at eighteen. Dreams are strange things.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gosh, Gloria, I'm so sorry about your son. You probably did have a precognitive dream. I think dreams are so interesting.

    ReplyDelete