Cauchemar!

[darkemeralds]

Have you ever noticed how the most shocking nightmares, when viewed through the I'm-awake-now-thank-God lens of Jungian-esque analysis, are the most useful? And how the message is often pretty uplifting?

It's been years since I did any particular dreaming. I had a series of terrifying seizures which always came on first thing in the morning, and always in the context of trying vainly to remember a dream, so I became highly averse to remembering dreams. But just the past couple of weeks I seem to have taken it up again.

The one I had this morning between cat-letting-out and actual waking was a humdinger involving ice and high places and someone falling to her death and me hanging on for dear life so I wouldn't do the same thing. A wake-up-screaming nightmare.

And yet as soon as I was fully awake I recognized it as an ego-death kind of dream. I've been releasing lots of things, and ideas, and goals lately. Part of me falling to her icy death is a pretty apt symbol.

Still...rainbows and non-creepy butterflies tonight, please.

Comments

[darkemeralds]

By sleep paralysis, do you mean that "I can't wake up" feeling? Or is this a genuine "I can't move" kind of thing?

If the former, I get that sometimes and it's weird and frightening, like no amount of swimming will bring me to the surface, and yet I'm not so asleep that I don't know it.

[branchandroot]

Sleep paralysis is actual "cannot move". The mechanism that keeps you from flailing around while you're deeply asleep doesn't let go or re-engages while you're conscious of not being asleep. It's definitely alarming! And I always get stuck in the shallow breathing stage and panic doesn't help with that. Bleah.