Horribly Vivid Dreams/Nightmares?

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Does anyone else have this "problem"?

All my life I've had VERY vivid dreams and nightmares. I don't know if this is an Asperger's thing, or if it's an NT thing.

Any thoughts?

Jen

Varies with the meds I'm taking. Right now I take Melatonin to get to sleep, and my dreams have been VERY vivid. Other times, I wake up and don't remember dreaming anything.

I get nightmares quite frequently, have since I was very young. Even my “normal” dreams are vivid enough that my mood for the morning is based off them quite frequently as well.
On the other hand, my husband (also an aspie) says he rarely dreams, or remembers them at any rate at all. So I think maybe it is a person to person thing and unrelated to Aspieness.

When I was younger, perhaps 8 years ago, I used to suffer from nightmares that I actually came to think were real because they were so vivid. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming because of them.

Now-A-Days I don't suffer from nightmares at all, I do get a lot of dreams regarding real life with science fiction blended in with them and most of the time they are quite interesting (such as booting around London in a V12 BMW ) but they are often rendered really strangely (such as a more recent dream where my parents bought a new car, whilst the car had a steering wheel, it also had motorbike like handlebars and I couldn't control the car when I attempted to drive it)

But other times, I often wakeup with that feeling that you know you've had a dream, but you can't remember what it was.

I don't have dreams too much because of my insane sleep cycle. Dont really nightmares per se but when I do dream they are so weird it freaks me out.

I have a lot of nightmares, usually, it's about a man trying to kill me either with a gun, or knife. I always manage to get away but these dreams are starting to scare me quite a bit since they're recurring. The dream is always differnt, with a different setting and person, but someone is always trying to kill me and it's always a man.

I first had this dream at about 7. And then I don't remember getting them for years, but recently, over the last year, I've had this dream about 7 times. It's freaky and I don't know what's causing it or if I should take the dreams as a warning or something.

I sometimes have vivid dreams. Not necessarily nightmares, but they can be quite intense, or downright disturbing. They're usually so clear and detailed and colorful I can swear everything is happening for real at the time, but they're also very fantasmagorical. It's like being in another dimension. Some very common motives are being by a river or at the seaside and seeing waves swelling up, suddenly and very quickly, and having to run from them so that they don't sweep me away; vividly colored, fairytale-like flowers; thunderstorms with lightning bolts striking very close, and my desperately seeking shelter from them, or being around electric wires and fearing that I'll be eloctrocuted; being in a park or forest, seeing trees fall before my eyes, and being afraid of being struck down by one of them. All of these are probably connected to outbursts of emotion or something.

I've tended to think it could be tied to bipolar disorder. Having extremely vivid and disturbing dreams seems to be a common thing just before having a manic episode, or during one, possibly when severely depressed too, and as a rule I have these dreams at those exact times.

When I take Melatonin, my dreams are very vivid. Sometimes when I wake up, I believe my dream was real and freak out

Never had medication.
No Oreos: No dreams.
Oreos: Vivid and bizarre dreams.

My dreams are always freakishly vivid, and I've had a nightmare "problem" for basically my whole life. It would be perfectly ordinary for me to wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares 5 out of 7 nights in a week.

However, about a year ago, I decided to try an experiment. I figured that my brain could only hand me back things that were dumped into it, so I decided I was going to avoid putting any scary/violent/disturbing things into it. I stopped watching all horror movies (no matter how "silly and not scary" they seemed to be) and stopped watching all TV programs that were about ghosts or gory/scary stuff. The nightmares are down to a more manageable amount now. I'd say I get them less than once a month at this point. I was actually just talking to my psychologist about this very thing last night.

I've had terrible nightmares for ages and frequently shout in my sleep! Whats causes this problem? Are sleep disorders common with AS?

Since AS people have a bigger language/analytical center, and tend to be smarter, I guess it is possible there is a better chance of having dreams, etc... I used to dream a LOT! I still do to a degree, ESPECIALLY if I take 5-HTP(a melatonon precursor). Sad to say, a lot of them aren't really GOOD dreams. Sometimes it is like I am living TWO lives, one in my dreams(?), and one in "real life"(?). They tend to be REALLY realistic, and can bleed into reality.

One MYTH is that you can't dream in Color. I DO! SO, maybe THAT is an aspie thing. Then again, the idea of not being able to percieve something in a dream is ludicrous. After all, all perception ends with the brain.

Steve

Yes, I've had this problem, and when I was young I would confuse dreams with real life, because the dreams were so vivid.