Asperger's and nightmares

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I just had a dream where in the dream I was talking about nightmares, but the dream itself was not an actual nightmare. wtf?

That's interesting.

I've had those same sort of dreams as a child too! Usually the nightmares that scared me the most were either the blatantly illogical ones (like seeing something being divided but somehow remained whole) or dreams that were just full of overstimulation. The overstimulation dreams were the worst. They would mainly consist of flying shapes and textures, usually quite incongruent with each other. I could never explain it to my parents because I never even knew what they were about; I just felt overwhelmed. Even to this day, thinking of strongly juxtaposed textures (like a very soft blanket laid on a rock or wood floor) gives me the willies.

Also had "math dreams", which occurred after a night of working on my math homework. Basically the same as the illogical ones, except with algebraic equations that were unsolveable and polynomials which I could not factor.

Insomnia I usually attribute to my overactive imagination. Anyone also get in trouble for daydreaming?

As a small child I often had nightmares that were both terrifying and fascinating. Very strange, detailed, and gothic. Castle ruins, ancient statues, chanting choirs, nearly indescribable monsters... I rarely have this sort of nightmare anymore, but when I do I actually end up being glad I had it, because it's so interesting to look back at later.
What I absolutely hate is dreams in which something bad is happening to people I care about, or dreams that are just really gross. I have a lot of those dreams. When I'm lucky I become lucid in dreams that are just sad and unpleasant like that, and am able to change them.

I am an Aspie and about thirty years ago I accidentally learned how to do "lucid dreaming", i.e. dreaming in which I take control of my dreams while in the dream state. Since then, I have never had a nightmare. I have had dreams that annoyed me and dreams that are enigmatic by no dreams that scare the daylights out of me.

ruveyn

I have vivid dreams, but I can't remember the last time I had a nightmare.

Wow. Interesting thread. Thanks for resurrecting it, Taliesin!

I used to dream in color, but have been unable to remember my dreams since a particularly horrible nightmare when I was . . . 6? 7? Something like that. The only exceptions have been when I actually woke up during the dream, in which (very rare) cases I had only the vaguest impression of what the dream had been, and could remember nothing about it within just a few minutes. Even if I consciously tried to keep the dream fragments in my mind, they just, faded away. Haven't had even that much recollection of a dream since I was in my late teens/early 20's.

There is one nightmare that comes to mind, I had it when I was about 7 or 8:

I'm driving a car close to where I used to live at that time. I know precisely how to drive and handle the car as if i'd been driving for years, but here it comes...
I drive up to a roundabout, stopping for a short while to look around, seeing the roundabout is completely empty (it's in the middle of the night), I drive into the roundabout when suddenly a white car comes from nowhere and rams into the side of "my" car. Everthing turns white and I fly out of my bed screaming and landing hard on the floor.

Everything seemed so darn real... and the worst part is, I can still remember it as clearly as rain with pretty much all the details (like the white car, it being night, where the roundabout is, the colour of the dasboard lights (amber), etc.).

other than that, I hvan't really had nightmares per se, but some other strange and pretty cool things come to mind.

When I was about 4 years old, I dream I was in a swimming pool with my dad, we were both swimming around underwater, we could see eachother and we just kinda played around, doing small underwater tricks and stuff...
The next morning it gets really strange at the morning table... it turned out we were dreaming the exact same thing,
This one keeps my belief in a kind of latent telepathy skill alive, as synchronized dreaming should otherwise be impossible, or at least incredibly improbable.

Lucid dreaming is incredibly awesome, but it requires you to "crack" the dream by finding some kind of flaw in it, kind of like hacking into a computer network really. Sometimes they're very hard to spot, usually a very small detail that's out of place, but at other times they're quite easy. It gets easier towards the end of dreams, at least in my case, as the dreams seem to slowly fall apart the further along I get and the flaws become more prominent (like a row of completely white books).
With lucid dreaming, you pretty much have an entire universe at your disposal and you can do pretty much whatever you like

wow Foxx, I'll have to try lucid dreaming now....never thought it was possible to "crack" a dream like that!

I love lucid dreams. It's been quite awhile since I've had any full blown ones. Or if I have lately, I've not remembered them after waking up.

My dreams all my life have been very vivid, full of color and seem very real. Sometimes when a dream is really scary and I want out...I suddenly remember all I have to do is wake up.

Most of the time, I wake up feeling, "Whoa what the hell was that!!" but I forget it by mid morning.
The worst dreams I had was when I was 9 years old. And I dreamed about a castle and my baby sister was in the crib and it was storming and lightning went into the window and struck her. I just woke up screaming
The next night I dreamed of her in a corn field, clouds formed overhead, I called to her to get out, but lightning struck her...again I woke up...so scared I could not move, then I just screamed as loud as I could because that was all I could do.
The next night I dreamed of being on a dirt road in a car with an old man. He took me to a house and there was my glow in the dark alarm clock...I touched it and was electicuted.
Again...I sceamed my head off...and really screamed when I saw that same clock by my bed.
The next night I dreamed of a man in a cloak...could not see his face, there was a fountain...he turned and was walking towards me...I was petrified but I realized I could escape by waking up. I did not scream, but could not sleep that night well.
Each time I would wake up screaming like someone was trying to kill me, and mom would run to my room and comfort me. My dad on the other hand was about to go nuts being woke up with a blood curdling scream 3 nights in a row and being a vet...it did not sit well with him for the rest of the night.

After these series of nightmares, I was petrified of electricty. I would not touch anything electrical for years. I have gotten better but I still prefer non electrical appliances.
I would rather use a broom than vacuum, a rotary beater than a mixer and so on. I was terrified of storms, and was really scared of anything that glowed in the dark until my early 20's

Well I learned in my mid 20's that in native american spirituality, if you dream of lightning and are terrified of it then you have been called to be a type of shaman called "a heyoke" or sacred clown. If you google the Heyoke, you will find many charateristics of the heyoke that could easily be autistic...but in native american culture, they were revered as holy men and women. This realization helped me accept who I am with a sense of dignity. So I guess in that way there was a happy ending