It’s just a dream. It’s not real.
Last week I was plagued by nightmares that woke me up every hour of the night and left me disoriented and foggy for the rest of the day, less from the lack of sleep and more from the lingering sense that I was somehow still stuck between sleep and waking, in a liminal space where I couldn’t trust my own mind.
There are certain drugs (pharmaceutical and otherwise) that suppress REM sleep, the sleep stage where dreams happen. When you experience withdrawal from these drugs, which I was, your dreams reemerge with a vengeance. Sometimes they’re just vivid and strange, as mine were on the first night, but other times they’re…brutal. Disorientingly so. Not everyone knows what it feels like to be genuinely scared of your own brain, scared of the horrible imaginative powers of that lump of flesh inside your skull. I was waking up every hour or two throughout the night with the sense that I’d just watched hours of an immersive horror movie starring myself and other people from my life. I was amazed, in a way. Impressed with my own creativity, and morbidly fascinated by the possibilities for sheer terror that my own brain had created. But those thoughts weren’t very comforting. If anything, they only made me more afraid of what my mind would concoct the next night. It took me several minutes each time I woke up to understand that I wasn’t dreaming anymore.
It’s just a dream. It’s not real.
I told myself that over and over. It was easier to say than to believe. Each time I woke up, I couldn’t quite tell what was real and what had been part of the dream. The lines kept blurring. I checked my phone for messages I swore I remembered receiving, for evidence of videos I swore I had watched. But there was nothing. I forced myself to doubt my memory of events that felt just as real as my memory of last night’s dinner. My dreams had centered around my classes, my friends, and real environments I frequently visit. I tried to tell people about these dreams, but I didn’t know how to articulate the feelings. I rarely get lost for words. But there were no words to describe this lingering feeling — the feeling that I’d experienced hours of near-traumatic events that simply didn’t occur in a reality that anyone else had access to. I gave up trying to explain it to my friends and settled into a sense of slight derealization over the next few days, my only comfort being the hope that the feeling would fade away as the dreams did. I just needed time to dissolve the barrier between my own brain and the rest of the world. And it did fade; thankfully, my dreams have become less terrifying since last week. I’m able to understand that they weren’t real.
Except…where’s the line? When you experience dreams through the same sensory pathways as real life, when they leave you with the same emotional impact as real events, can you honestly say they’re not real? Today I suddenly remembered an email I’d recently received from my doctor diagnosing me with a particular medical condition that I’d never heard of before. I searched through my email to find the record, but there was nothing. I’d never gotten that email — I hadn’t gotten any communication from my doctor in weeks. It must have been part of a dream. I didn’t know what the condition was, so I looked it up, and it inexplicably matched symptoms I had been experiencing for a while. I don’t think I have it, but I still can’t explain where the thought came from. Like I said, I’d never heard of it before.
It’s just a dream. It’s not real.
I’m grateful, now, that I can close my eyes at night and know I won’t wake up until the morning. I can trust my mind more — and that’s a good feeling. At the end of the day, it’s all I have. I am lucky that most of the time, my sense of reality matches what others experience. Although my nightmares were disturbing, they’re behind me now.But just like a tree falling in the forest when no one is around to hear it, they still happened. Just because other people couldn’t observe them, just because I can’t technically prove that they occurred, doesn’t mean they didn’t shake the ground I stand on.
Unruly Bodies 
Wow….just wow. When reading your post I couldn’t help but to think about a time where I was experiencing something that’s not the same but had some similar aspects. Soon after having to leave school and go home for quarantine, I was experiencing intense nightmares about one of my worst fears. Even thinking about it now brings uncomfortable feelings. I always tried my best to distance myself from thoughts of it despite it being popularly presented in television and having the people around me sometimes talk about it. I would go to sleep and I’d feel like I was actually there living this reality of my fear and would wake up and have intense spurs of fear and panic all throughout the day. I felt like I was going to die and that everything would turn to ruin. My body and mind were on edge with the overwhelming feeling of what could happen. It was crippling and I was truly afraid to go to sleep. It was so bad that I thought about killing myself in anticipation of what could happen. All I wanted was for go the constant and intense feeling to go away. Even though the fear is still there, thankfully I was able to get out of that space. What you describe in your post sounds extremely horrifying and something that I don’t know if I could even get through. I believe that all of those feelings you felt in your experience was real just how my feelings in my experience was real. You are strong for going through and getting through that. I am truly truly grateful with everything in me that you are able to go to sleep and that things are going better for you. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much for your kind words, and for sharing your experience too. It sounds like a really terrifying time, and I am glad to hear that you survived it too. For years I also dealt with intrusive thoughts/worries/sometimes nightmares about fears that felt in some ways worse than death, too. Something that helped me to cope with that was reminding myself that my brain wasn’t trying to hurt me — the intrusive thoughts and fears were actually a misguided attempt of my brain trying to protect me by preparing me in case they did happen. Kind of like jogging every day so that you could run away from a bear attack — except psychological. Your brain wants you to be safe and mentally prepared in case your worst fear does happen (even though it is probably unlikely). The more fear you feel, the more your body enters “fight or flight” mode where it thinks the worst might happen (even if it’s unlikely). The more you avoid the thoughts or try to push them away, the more your brain insists that you have to think about them. Ultimately, the intrusive thoughts and nightmares become unbearable, and they don’t protect you in any way at all — instead you’re distressed and upset from those thoughts themselves. But maybe it would help to think of them that way. Your brain isn’t trying to attack you or scare you, and the thoughts don’t mean that your fear is likely to happen. Your brain’s trying to protect you from what it sees as danger. Avoiding media (TV, movies, podcasts) that discussed violent and frightening things also helped me during that time, just to decrease my general fear and exposure to other threatening ideas. I’m grateful you’re out of that space now, and I hope you’re able to find more peace in the future.
I am glad you have the courage to tell us how you feel! Dreams can be extremely challenging and scary. How I view dreams are that they are the manifestation of my subconscious, and I give it no meaning- because it truly has none. I also can relate to your post but in the opposite, when I used to take the anti-psychotic Resperdal, I would have extremely vivid dreams that were virtually indistinguishable from real life, my dreams would include this little girl with a pale white face moving quickly and completely silent, and it would scare me to death, i could feel the chills as she approached in my sleep- and I would be frozen. I would have dreams of committing horrible acts of violence to people I love, and when I woke up I would feel so guilty and ashamed for having these dreams, it would cripple me with anxiety. Eventually I learned that dreams are just dreams, therapy helped with this a lot. Your subconscious is its own mind, and you just have to let go and enjoy the ride- much harder than it sounds. What also helped me was drinking lots of water & eating good, as well as sleeping and waking up at a set time everyday. I hope you manage to overcome your struggles and come out a more strengthened and wiser human being, good luck!