Asperger's dreams?

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I wondered whether the way our minds work, makes us susceptible to being more affected by dreams.

I can remember a couple of dreams I had when I was about four years old vividly. I can be affected for 24 hours by an unpleasant dream. Last night I had a bad one, that I was with a man (no-one real, just a made-up dream character) who bought me a really expensive meal, like over £400 (!) and I was horrified and embarrassed at the cost, and thought it must be wrong. But I looked at the till (cash register) and the last person's meal was still rung up and it was over £600 so I knew the bill (check) was right.

When he saw how much it was he got sour, and started propositioning me. I got distressed, and he continued to validate why I should accede and why it was no big deal until I was crying and panicking. When I woke up, I was really upset. I felt like it was real, and I can't shake the feeling. I feel like it all really happened.

Does this happen to just anyone, or are we wired to feel it more deeply? I know Tony Attwood says that children with AS can believe their dreams are real and really happened, which did happen to me with one of the dreams I mentioned above, that I had when I was little. I had dreamed that I had a really pretty silver dress, and when I woke up, I went and opened the cupboard expecting to see it there, and when it wasn't I was sad.

I also once had a dream that I was in the 1940s (my favourite era) and I was standing at the graveside of my husband (who had been killed in active duty in WW2), holding the hand of my small child, crying. The dream was all almost in that sepia effect. Then I woke up and I really was crying, tears pouring down my cheeks and a painful lump in my throat, that stayed with me and upset me too.

It's just, it seems excessive that the overwhelming feeling of unpleasant dreams stays with me for so long and it feels so real, surely not everyone in the population gets this? Or do they?

Obviously we tend towards hypersensitivity in a lot of ways, and I wondered whether it was associated.

Back when i was young i occasionally had dreams where i thought they were real. Such as owning things i never had and things happening with friends while they never happened. Hell there was even one time where i honestly thought i was flying the day before that, such a disappointment when i finally found out it was all a dream

I lost this "problem" when i got older. There are still rare occasions where i think a dream was real but it takes me no longer than 15 minutes to realize it was all just a dream.

For whatever reason i never have sad dreams so i have no idea what i would feel like if i had one.

What I like to do is convince myself that bad/embarrassing experiences I've had in the past were really just a bad dream. Makes it a lot easier to dismiss bad memories instead of agonizing over them. As a kid I sometimes had trouble telling if something had been a dream or not. As an adult I can only remember fragments of dreams, but most of them appear to be wild ride adventures.

Yes, literally every single quirk unique to you is a clear sign of autism / definitely related to AS. Or maybe not.

No.

Never had a dream effect me like that.

Most folks think that theyre in reality while they are dreaming, and are startled that it "was all just a dream" upon wakeing. Myself included. Have even woken from dreams within dreams a few times as a child ( I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulence, put under anesthesia and had a vivid dream that I got lost in my nieghborhood while under. Then was shocked "that it was all a dream" when I awoke on the operating table surrounded by doctors when the operation was over. Then while I waited in the waiting room of the hospital for mom to pick me up- I awoke AGAIN in my bed in real life- I was never in the hospital!).

But never had my mind concoct such an intense emotional narrative like what your talking about.

Constant nightmares, all with the same theme. Been happening for a while now. It's driving me batty--usually my dreams are interesting, and about half the time lucid as well. Once I can get rid of this nasty PTSD symptom, I will be much less reluctant to go to sleep.

I've done some pretty crazy things while asleep. The craziest has to be flying straight into the sun to bring back a wisp of plasma to Earth. Had to plan that one before I fell asleep, though. I've also visited Mars five hundred years into the future--it had a culture all its own, with most people staying underground even though the surface was habitable, simply because they were used to it and the surface just felt too big and exposed. The whole place was outfitted with moving sidewalks instead of highways, so most people would walk to their destinations, and there was a pneumatic-tube mail system that worked automatically and mostly delivered parcels. The population was small for a planet, big for a city, and people held privacy sacred because of how close they had to live to each other, since building new space is harder when you do it underground.

Great dreams Callista.

But what I'm getting at, is not necessarily dream content, it's the effect of how the emotions or feelings from the dreams stay with you once you are awake, for a long time after it happened. Almost as if it really did happen.

I thought about it. I'm not too good with writing fiction, unfortunately. I'd like to use it as a setting for a role-playing game, though. The people I play RPGs with are working on such a mid-future hard-sci-fi setting, and maybe I could plop down my Mars in it. Dreams that spark ideas need to be refined and made more rational, but the initial idea can often be useful. For example--they'll need long distance transport, which really can't be done with moving walkways even if you do step up to twenty miles an hour. On the other hand, maybe they don't go long distances to begin with--they just telecommute with holograms--and a long trip is a bit of a production that needs to be done by getting in a vehicle and going across the surface to another cave-system-type sub-colony. Which to them would be as scary as flying is to us, what with there being no ceiling and all that wide open space to contend with.

My most recent one that I woke up crying was when I was being chased by someone. He had a strange ability to control shadows and triped me. I kept calling out for help when someone came and tackled the man to the ground. I thought I was saved and tried to get up but the shadows still had me pined. When I looked up the fight ended and the man saveing me had been stabbed and was dead. The shaddows lifted as a woman with a knife handed it to the shaddow man and he started to bring it down on my neck when I shot up awake crying. I was so scared he was real and comming to get me again I went into the bathroom with the lights turned on and hid for a while with my kitten. When I came out my roommate had to repetedly tell me he wasn't real and It was just a dream. I have that kind of thing happening about once or twice a week

I am usually deeply effected by my dreams (nightmares?). I've always been able to remember them, although as a child I did get them mixed up with reality and that worried my parents. Sometimes I still feel like it really happened. My dreams are very very vivid and detailed, but always have fear and death present.
The earliest dream I can remember was when I was about 4 and I was dragging the body of a girl through the forest. I'd just murdered her and was disposing of the body. She was wearing a white night gown. I stopped in a bathroom to wash up and I glanced up in the mirror and instead of my face, I saw hers staring back at me. That dream still bothers me, and isn't an abnormal dream for me.

*edit: although I always thought that being so deeply effected was due to being so sensitive rather than being on the spectrum.

NT's (most everyone) think that their dreams are real -while they are dreaming. It rare to be aware that you're dreaming while you're dreaming.

If thats what you're asking.

But Ive never heard of anyone, spectrumite nor NT, who dreamt something as emotionally intense as what you're relating about that fictional family in mouring that your mind conjured up out of whole cloth. Your werent even mourning the death of a real person in your real life dying a fictional death. You were dreaming you were in a fictional family mourning a fictional person.

Ive had incites and emotions from dreams- but never woke up crying from one.

I dont think it has anything to do with being on the spectrum.

In fact I think that if you get THAT emotional, and do so frequently, in dreams and nightmares-then you have somekind of issue. Could be a physical health issue. Could be neurological, could be psychological.

This post is one of the reasons I joined. My doctors and Therapists say that I have Aspegers. I thought that the dreams were only in part from my meds, but my therapist says it might be my AS.

I usually have realistic dreams (like going out to my favorite bakery). Just everyday stuff like that. It's hard for me to wake up in the morning,, because my dreams are so real. When my alarm goes off, I don't know which "reality" I'm in. It's so weird that I got hurt the other day (by my awkwardness) and, instead of seeing that I was hurt, I had my eyes closed and hoped to still be in bed -- I actually believed that I was sleeping instead of being in the real world. I'm glad there are people out there who have the same problem.

WA