Dream-life affecting real-life. Advice needed.

jjjaspar · Joined: 03 Sep 2008 Posts: 145

What in the world does a person with a REM-type sleep disorder (yes, narcolepsy - one of those cases that looked like "mental" before the sleep study) do with the trauma from too-realistic dreams? Does a person go into therapy to get over an event as if they went through it in real life? An example (sorry-I am NOT going to tell what it really was) is what if a person lived through this... Met a woman he completely fell in love with and they spent much time together head-over-heels in love and he wants to marry her, knowing she is the love of his life... and then he wakes up. The love of his life is simply... gone. He just lived 4 months of his life with her in it, and she no longer exists. The grief is overwhelming. He knows it is a dream but the emotions say otherwise, 6 months later people wonder why he is not dating and it is because he doesn't want another girlfriend. Because it FEELS like she was real and that he lived through what he lived through in the dream.

So what the heck is a person supposed to do? A mother can "lose" a baby this way. She may not want another baby after losing the one she had... but actually didn't. A father a baby boy he was changing diapers for and playing with, watching grow and begin to say da-da. A child can get a beloved dog, have adventures and it be gone. We can spend what seems like months in what turns out to be a dream. Poof it is gone - a life you lived for months. Or worse - we can watch our child or girlfriend be killed, or we can be in a war and be tortured.

Anyone have advice for such a thing?

RedbAdGE · Joined: 06 Apr 2008 Posts: 101 Location: Texas

jjaspar, I don't have any advice to offer. All I can say is that typically for me the emotions tied to events in my "dream-life" tend to erode quicker than events in my real life. Sometimes days or weeks, usually hours. I also have a tendency to bring back old dreams from years ago long forgotten from my conscious memory and it can bring back a wave of emotions. We are forced to compartmentalize our lives.

If there is any benefit to what we suffer, I'd say that I seem to have unusually high composure in new situations or events. I attribute this to the likelihood of having lived similar experiences in my dream-life. If there is ever a zombie apocolypse, let's just say I will know what to do. Laughing

I think you have raised an excellent topic here and I look forward to reading what others can share.

Willow2007 · Joined: 03 Feb 2007 Posts: 1476 Location: Iowa

At first when I read your post, I thought, "no, I've never done that." but thinking about it for awhile, I can remember some dreams where I saw grown up children, or an older husband (that I never knew before this dream), and how wonderful it all was. But like redbadge, it fades really quickly. but when first waking up, I can feel the wonderful love in that dream. But within a few hours, its gone.

All of my life, I've had this one dream. When I was a small child, I used to dream I was in the backseat driving up to this yellow house. Several times a year. As I got older, I used to dream about the kitchen of this house. By the time I was 20 or 25, I would dream about going up the stairs to the second floor bedrooms. I knew this house very well, and the house never changed from year to year, I just seemed to go into different rooms as I grew older. My last dream of it was about 5 years ago (I'm 59 now). And I was painting the outside of this house, looked down the driveway and here comes a car with my family in it. I don't actually know who they are, but I knew they were my family coming to visit. Same house every time. Picking up magazines and looking through them. National Geographics from the 1914s in the attic. I know that house so very well. But yet I've never seen it. My Mom used to say maybe I was their ghost, wandering around in their house in an out of body type experience. LOL. But I don't feel sad when the dreams are over, and I dream this every couple of years. so when i start dreaming about this house, I know the house as well as I know my house now. Weird, isn't it?

Star · Joined: 07 May 2005 Posts: 53 Location: USA

That's a hard one for sure. I do know that if the experience was neg. and in your past it can recur and recur and recur. I saw a therapist who helped me with that. I still have dreams, of course and very realistic and sometimes unpleasant but at least that particular dream doesn't happen very often.

jjjaspar · Joined: 03 Sep 2008 Posts: 145

jjjaspar · Joined: 03 Sep 2008 Posts: 145

happy2bnappy · Joined: 15 Jun 2010 Posts: 82

jjjaspar,

This is a very interesting and thought provoking topic. In my opinion, the choice of whether to seek out therapy for this issue or not would depend on whether you feel the dreams are impacting your functioning now or not. If it is still causing you distress, then by all means seeking out therapy would be appropriate. If so, I would suggest that you call some therapists and try to find one who has a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic approach. This type of therapist will be the most open to interpreting dreams and focusing on dreams as meaningful in therapy. Alternatively, you could just call some therapists and ask them what they think about the meaning of dreams prior to setting your first appointment.

In therapy, patients recount many experiences in life and share these with their therapist. The patient's recollection of the experience may or may not be truly accurate, but the point is, it is how they remember it. It is their truth, and that is really all that matters as far as processing it for deeper meaning. I think that for many therapists, that would probably extend to dreams as well....it didn't really happen, but it was your truth for yourself for a time, so processing that experience even though it didn't exist in objective reality is still a valid thing to do and can be helpful in your gaining insight into yourself.

In other words, what if your purple was my green, and my green was your purple? Imagine that everything you see as purple, I experience as green and vice versa. However, when you were in preschool and learning your colors, you looked at some leaves and the teacher told you they were green. So you learned that the color that I experience as purple is actually called green for you, and my color green is actually called purple in your world. So we both would go through life, calling leaves green, but seeing and experiencing them completely differently. And we would never know. And that's my point about therapy....who can really be sure what is truly objective reality vs one's personal experience of reality? There is a general consensus about what constitutes a shared reality, but the exact experience of it is extremely personal. Your dreams may have only happened in your reality, but it was your reality for a time, and thus worthy of processing and working through in therapy.

I hope this made sense. Best of luck with everything.

Willow2007 · Joined: 03 Feb 2007 Posts: 1476 Location: Iowa

Wondering if, just as one can have a sex dream if they are not getting enough sex, maybe one can have a love dream if not having enough satisfying emotional love in their life. My dream about the house might possibly be at times when I am alone. I've been unlucky in love (that's a mild way to put it) and maybe the dream about the house, the family coming to visit, etc. is my subconscious way of satisfying my need for love and attachment. Make any sense? If you live alone, or are in a cooler type relationship, could this possibly be your way of attaining love and caring, because you have too much love within you that never gets given to anyone.? Just a thought. Maybe with our N, its easier to dream about love than to go out and find it in real time, because we just don't have the time and energy to get out there and have a real love relationship. Just a light bulb going off, thought I'd bring it up.

Andromeda1528 · Joined: 04 Jul 2006 Posts: 348

If your dreams are bothering you so much, I would find a counselor who can help you with them. I personally have trouble with horrible nightmares every night for some time now, to the extent that I have sought help, however, unlike the poster, I don't feel that my dreams are as real as my reality... they just don't look the same most of the time. When I'm there, it can be quite emotional and even look and seem like real life, but I know that it is not real.

If your dreams are hurting your daily life, perhaps you have underlying issues you need to address, and a counselor could help you figure those out. I find that when things are good with me, my dreams are managable and it's only since I've been struggling with depression that I've had these awful nightmares all the time.

Andromeda
nisfornarcolepsy.com

RedbAdGE · Joined: 06 Apr 2008 Posts: 101 Location: Texas

If you choose to seek professional councelling, be sure to find one that understands Narcolepsy. You don't want an ill-informed therapist to diagnose you with schizophrenia or some other more common psychotic condition.

Willow, I love your post. Your Mom's theory gave me goosbumps. Shocked

jjjaspar · Joined: 03 Sep 2008 Posts: 145

jjjaspar · Joined: 03 Sep 2008 Posts: 145

jjjaspar · Joined: 03 Sep 2008 Posts: 145

jjjaspar · Joined: 03 Sep 2008 Posts: 145

Andromeda1528 · Joined: 04 Jul 2006 Posts: 348

I personally don't think that it's important that the person knows about Narcolepsy; most important is that you connect with the person and you feel they listen to you.

Who knows, perhaps a therapist would be able to give you ways to cope with the psychological issues due to dreams that you mentioned... I would expect that the right one would help you work through things.

I personally hate that I am a lucid dreamer because of Narcolepsy... I envy people who don't remember, because dreams can be awfully messed up and difficult.