Woke up Crying

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So last night I was having a really bad dream. It was kind of sad and it was a reflection of what's really going on in my life right now. I woke up in bed at 5:30AM crying and a little shaken. I continued crying for about 10-15 minutes and then I didn't exactly fall back into a deep sleep, but I was able to rest my eyes until 7AM when I had to get up for work. Needless to say I woke up a little tired and I wasn't super excited to start my day. Now that it's the end of my day, I'm tired and I just feel mentally, emotionally, and physically spent. I cried a little bit earlier too but I still feel like I should cry more. Is this okay? What does this mean? I don't have a sleep disorder and this doesn't happen every night. It only happens once in awhile if I have a dream that hurts me inside that mirrors reality.

Nope. Nothing wrong.

I had a bad dream the night before last. I didn't cry---but I didn't feel good for the rest of the day.

I agree, when your reality is painful it makes complete sense to cry. Crying releases chemicals to help your body cope with your pain and begin the healing process. It is healthy to cry.
If you are having dreams which mirror reality and it is making you cry, I think it means your body desperately needs an emotional release. Maybe you only feel safe enough to express emotions at night? If you still feel like crying, by all means, please cry. It really does help when sad things happen.

I am so sorry you are hurting. I am sending you a hug.

Crying like anger is a response to emotional intensity. It makes sense that dreams would capture some of this condition. Some think that dreams are the visual representation of the process of sifting through daily experiences and concerns when short term memory is converted to long term memory.

Emotional intensity can work like a smoke detector to tell us to examine our environment for anything that may need our attention.

Thank you all for your responses. I think the stress was just wearing me down yesterday. I actually had a flashback on Monday which may or may not have triggered the dream. The flashback almost made me cry but luckily, I was able to hold my tears since I was in front of people. My life just feels like pretty much the same thing day in and day out. I wake up at 7, go to work for basically 7 hours, come home, eat dinner, pay the bills and sleep. That's during the week. On weekends, I do try to go out but it's basically grocery shopping and other errands. It's just sometimes it just feels like a lot and I mean I know we all have to do it but still, I guess I just feel like my soul is tired a lot lately.

I can totally relate to the feeling of soul fatigue. Is there anything you can add to your life that you enjoy doing?
I had quite a slump earlier this year, it was awful and depressing. I knew I had to do something, or I'd be in trouble, so I evaluated things. I added little enjoyable moments for myself to help. Like challenging myself to find a different, efficient route to work each day until I exhausted all the possibilities. I found a few games I liked to play solo and set aside time each day to play, like 20 minutes, re-read parts of my favorite books because time was short and I couldn't read it all, but it was still nice to visit my favorites. I ordered a box set of a tv show I like and watch one episode when I can. I downloaded a book on my phone to read while I wait in the grocery line so even that is a time I look forward to now.
In bigger changes, I also changed jobs because I really needed a new challenge or I'd go crazy.

Is there anything you can think of, small or big, to add more joy into your life?

Thanks for your response. Currently, I am working on setting up a Kickstarter campaign for a company that I am trying to get off the ground. The company will be selling my 2 new tabletop games. Doing this, I have been trying to give myself small daily tasks to get ready for this and keep me on track. I had my friend design some custom coloring books to pass out to patrons as a method of promoting my KS so I've been trying to just set aside some time to make sure I work on this a little bit each day. Yesterday, I assembled 30 booklets. Today I went with my friend to do other stuff for the project which took the place of the coloring books. Other than that I mostly sit on the computer and listen to music and watch tv for a half hour to an hour a day if I even have that much time left in the day. I used to really enjoy spending time brushing up on my French skills on Duolingo and entering radio contests for the concerts in my area but lately, I just haven't had the ambition to do these things.

Over my life I've regularly gotten dreams which were a reflection of an [at least] relatively important issue in my life, spaced apart quite distinctly. Sometimes it was even over a year between such dreams.

But neverless they keep happening, and they're always quite impactful. Sometimes they'll even occur as a kind of waking day-dream. Some are even almost premonitory. My subconscious has long since proven that it can be extremely intelligent on occasion. It's pre-emptively spotted a few then-upcoming issues that I had barely had any awareness of. Some of them were devastating, enough that I traumatically broke down and cried.

But they don't always mean something. I've had a fairly dynamic relationship with my dreams over my life. Some dreams are complete nonsense. Some are highly symbolic or interpretive of obvious problems in real life. For several years in my 20's I had nothing but non-stop zombie and monster dreams where I always died horribly, and then all of a sudden I had almost no dreams whatsoever for about two years.

For those wondering how seriously they should take their dreams, my recommendation is to first recognize that dreams are often just mostly nonsense, and that secondly, even when they're not, regardless if it's your self-aware self or your unknown subsconscious, we humans are faillible.

At best, dream content can be an indicator that something is wrong in our life. Just like with many emotions, being too specific in regards to what exactly it is, or how much we should care about it, can be harmful.

Treat them like a hint, and use your abilities to observe and think to properly investigate and problem solve.

Playgroudlover22695
I am so sorry to hear that you haven't felt like doing the things you like lately. I know I get these slumps too, and it can be for so many reasons for me, from loneliness, to job boredom, or just being upset because I am reaching melt down or feeling burnt out. Is there any root cause you can identify to help you navigate the situation better? Sending hugs. These rough patches are tough.

I think your plan for the KS campaign sounds like a solid one.
I am so curious about your board games. Do you have mock-ups for people to see? (No need to share details here or anything, I know internet land is not friendly towards proprietary info and don't want that) Or is the KS to enable the funds to make the prototypes possible?
It is so awesome you are pursuing this dream! Go you!!

That's the thing with me right now. I've been feeling so lonely lately. I do have a wonderful staff where I work and my parents are amazing, but just don't feel like I have anyone to intimately spend time with. I feel like I basically have no friends. All the friends I had were either too busy with their lives to pay attention to me or just stopped wanting to deal with me as much as possible. My own half brother (much older than me and we never grew up together) doesn't even want anything to do with me unless it involves me bailing his ass out with money.

As for the games, I do have a few prototypes of my card game ready to show people. The issue is that in this economy, nobody wants to buy new games when they have to save the extra money for the rising costs of food and gasoline (thanks to Joe Biden). I just feel like a failure sometimes. I feel like I haven't really accomplished anything in my life that's worthwhile. It feels like I'm living each day to go to work, pay the bills, play on the computer, and go to sleep. Sometimes it just feels so depressing that I can't wait to go to bed and cry. Other times I go to bed feeling sad, but no tears come out. Either way, I wish I could just feel more at peace with my life.