Have you ever, ever awakened from a bad dream the way they do in movies?

Nothing that dramatic as in a Hollywood over the top waking up from a nightmare shot. I think that’s a good thing for me. Don’t want the old ticker to get too excited.

I have. I think I was on my feet before I was awake. It was so real I thought it had happened and I ran downstairs to check.

No. I just wake up, thinking “well, that was weird.”

It’s happened to me a couple of times when I was younger.

A year after my Bar Mitzvah I stopped going to Friday services at my synagogue, and I felt really guilty about it. I had a dream that my Rabbi pushed me off a cliff. It was the most intense falling dream I’ve ever had

No.

@rockfan That is funny, although I’m sure it didn’t feel that way at the time.

I have woken up shaken and frightened but not sitting bolt upright.

(And I like your little aside about January 20th.)

@rockfan did your rabbi know my rabbi? Mine was pretty hard core strict.

I had some nightmares this year. One was extremely intense, and I thought I was dying. My heart was pounding harder than I thought possible. Still, I didn’t sit bolt upright when I awoke. (I was having symptoms of PTSD.)

I use to worry about not waking up for danger of some sort. Once, while asleep, I tried to wake myself up but it was a slow almost painful process. One other time I thought I heard a noise in the house and woke up immediately. Now I know I can wake up fast if I must so have never worried about it since.

I have. But only when I have horrible dreams about one of my kids.

I’ve woken up with a moan or a gasp or a sudden movement, but not to the point of sitting upright and panting.

@elbanditoroso

What’s funny is that he wasn’t strict at all, he was extremely nice and understanding. Years later I told him about my nightmare and we had a good laugh about it.

Never bolting upright, but I have woken myself up from my screaming.

Not exactly. One time, I did spring physically from sleep and try to physically attack the spirit I knew in my dream was lurking maliciously by the side of the bed.

Acid much @Zaku?!

Nah, just the cat torturing him with her subvocal oscillations.

@Dutchess_III Never.

Me either @Zaku.

I’m not quite brave enough to ponder what @ragingloli might consider a weird dream.

@Jeruba Probably Teddy bears singing him/her a lullaby!

@Jeruba
Well I got shot in the head once, then just laid there on the ground in a tunnel as my vision faded to black.
Another time a nuke went off behind me while I was at school, and I could feel my back getting warmer and warmer.
And then I was buried under rubble in a destroyed city, and after digging myself out, I witnessed alien walkers from war of the worlds herding humans into extermination camps.

@ragingloli And those were the dreams you enjoyed!

Nah, I never have night mares. Just goofy mundane dreams not even worth remembering. I do recall one, in which I was wearing a tux standing next to my old HS girlfriend, (whom I haven’t seen from heard from in years), and she was wearing a formal, and the audience was in swimming suits.(?) And I was introducing her as my wife, no idea what that was all about. Better dreaming of being chased off a cliff by Bigfoot I suppose.

Wow, @ragingloli, those aren’t actually any weirder than my own most bizarre dreams, including dreams in which I died, once by drowning slowly in bright blue water with multicolored blossoms floating in drifting suspension, and once by a sword through the throat. And others. [Pondering.]

Damn you folks are skeery. Thank goodness I nave have dreams like that. I’ll stick with the goofy shit.

I woke up like this at least twice a week, most of the time screaming. I had terrible nightmares/night terrors for years. As long as I can remember I walked, talked, and did things in my sleep – like when I was 2, my mom got me up to use the bathroom before she went to bed and said I tried to flush a dress down the toilet. At age 43 I broke the toe next to my big toe while walking in my sleep – I got tangled in the blanket hanging off the bed. This sort of thing happened until sometime in my early 50’s.

My favorite story happened early in my marriage: I was scrambling around on the bed, asleep, and that woke my husband up. He asked what I was doing (he hadn’t been exposed to my ‘nighttime entertainment’ for very long).

I exclaimed, “There’s a huge spider under that table!!” indicating a table that didn’t exist at the foot of the bed, and holding my hands about a foot apart to show the size of the spider.

He said, “Honey, there’s no table there.”

Panicking and annoyed because he didn’t believe me, I said indignantly, “Well just because there’s no table doesn’t mean there’s no spider under it!!”

I wet the bed until I was 12, so I suspect there was some childhood trauma somewhere in my past. I’m also adopted.