[Young]

Bizarrely I never ever had a nightmare in my life. I can't remember the ones when I was a kids but there haven't been any to remember.
Last night I dreamed about a zombie invasion of a massive amount of zombies that appear randomly and are invisible. Many deaths, even some of my friends but I was just really excited in that dream like "finally something happens". When my dreams get tough I get energized by them, not afraid.
Is that an ENTP thing maybe? If you have nightmares, what do they look like?

I never dreamed about family death or stuff, so I don't know if that could be bothering in a dream.

 

[Haldir]

I'm going to go ENTP on you right now. You might like it or you might not.

I don't dream nightmares. I write them.

 

[Mephi]

I do that too. I have what others would call a nightmare and I like them and share it with the world instead of be afraid of them. Its just like watching a horror movie for fun. Usually the main character in my dreams isnt me tho so I guess that might help a bit.

 

[IDontThinkSo]

Had tons of bad nights as a kid. I blame N dom. Frequent nightmares as a kid is correlated with creativity and risks of psychosis. The latter I guess can be avoided by not indulging in NI and drugs. I think being N dom from the start lengthens significantly the early stages of brain plasticity and thus the phase of night terrors, among other things. After the night terror (or nightmare, since I remember them) phase, most of my dreams weren't nightmares, but anxiogenic. Threatening. I guess it was a vicious circle since as I feared to have them, the state of anxiety provoked them. Often, the main threat itself was just an entrance to what I knew in my dream was a deeper, older, darker one and all the situation ended up revolving around that issue. Those dreams were recurring and geographically or dimensionally connected. It was some sort of lovecraftish world. I remember many of them vaguely, even the first ones, those I feared the most to have again. But they're impossible to describe.

 

[Panorama]

Eat five cloves of garlic before bed and report back.

 

[Geonerd]

I am exactly the same way. I usually am disappointed my weird dream/nightmare ends because I am curious on what will happen next like I am watching a horror film or thriller. I have had dreams that made me really wonder what caused them (there is usually some stress in real life that makes them come about). I often have natural disaster dreams but those usually happen when my life is chaotic and I feel like I am barely hanging on to control. I am not bothered by those dreams though. Often I am aware in the dream that I must be dreaming because it does not make logical sense.

When I was real little, I remember being afraid of my nightmares but I don't remember being afraid since maybe 10 or 11.

My INTP son mentioned that he is rarely afraid of his "nightmares" and said the exact same thing as me that he is often aware he is dreaming but likes to see where the dream/nightmare goes.

 

[FueledByEvil]

Lucky Ducks.

I have never remembered my dreams.
Even as a child. Yet as a child I don't remember ever sleeping.

I thought I was having a nightmare one night but then the dog
jumped through my bedroom window for real, glass shattered everywhere
I damn near shit my bed and at that moment I realized that it was not a
monster knocking at my window it was my dumb dog breaking my house down.
Think I was 8ish at the time.
Another time I thought I was dreaming about something I was in jail.
I thought I was dreaming about being in a fist fight. Then I woke up
to a ringing in my ear and it was a few cell mates bashing me in the
head with soap in socks. I swear they permanently damaged my ear with that move.
Doc said I was going to get a cauliflower ear. Thank goodness that didn't happen.
Side note ..I had to fight those two guys after that. That was a little scary.
They were pretty big. But I knew the guards would jump in before I could
be damaged too much. I started the fight in a public place and after that
no one really messed with me. Worked good.


In both those instances one of the first things I remember was thinking
"YES THIS IS IT I AM HAVING A DREAM !!! FINALLY" I almost got disappointed
that it was just outside sources fucking with me.

I do on the other hand have "Exploding Head Syndrome" sounds cool and mildly porno
but its not that exciting.

Basically all my senses fire at once when I am on the precipice of falling asleep
and it feels like a jarring of all senses at once. Its kinda neat. Sometimes it is
tied to me jumping and then noticing the effects of gravity...then the explosion.

 

[CrispyBacon]

I've only had one 'nightmare' where I've been scared. I was in a parking garage with my mom and my sister and someone pulled a gun on them. I woke up with that whole, 'my heart fell out' feeling with rapid breathing.

Everything else could be considered nightmares by some, but since I'm never afraid in those dreams, I'm not sure if I can call them nightmares. I actually wrote a thread about a series of disturbing dreams I had here:

http://personalitycafe.com/advice-center/1150610-extremely-violent-dreams.html

I've had ultraviolent dreams before. Some of them were just me lashing out at predatory beings in the dream. In those instances, I was raging, but not afraid.

But yeah, I guess if shit is happening to me, I adapt and react. If shit it happening to my family, I get scared.

 

[IDontThinkSo]

As an adult it is extremely rare that I have a nightmare, but one was very troubling and particularly special. I don't do that sort of religiously stuff in my nightmares and.. well.. it was particularly scary but not only. It was my grand father, I realized it wasn't him anymore but a demon and he realized I knew and was menacing me with allusions and scary glances, you know, then he finally turned into a cyberdemon, like in Doom, and chased me like a terminator in his house. It was very vivid and realistic. Then I woke up. But it doesn't end like that.. There were some sort of emphasis in my dream on how to know if he's the real grand father, and how the next time I see him I should pay attention. And I kept that in mind when I visited my grand parents the day after. My grand father was here and he welcomed me unusually with unusual words, and that weird smile, and stare... like in my dream.. like he knew I had that dream. It was... I'm shivering just by thinking about it again. It doesn't end here... shortly after that, he was diagnosed with alzheimer and frontotemporal dementia, doctors weren't sure about what he had and why.. well, so he began to sink. But it was the only time he scared me like that. Sometimes I can have very sharp intuitions, you know, like Rain Man counting toothpicks... and I think somehow, this time I anticipated his mental issue. Fortunately as an adult, I remember more the cool funny dreams than the others..

 

[Scarlet_Heart]

I am plagued by nightmares and have been since I was a kid. Typically they don't really bother me and a lot of times they are exciting. But every once in a while, I'll have a bad one about my children or I'll have a waking nightmare (if you've never had one, they are REALLY fucking scary) and it will affect me.

Since I've had them for so long though, or maybe as a result of some personal growth, I am usually able to overcome whatever is happening in the dream.

 

[Mister Bimbo]

Same with me.

 

[Senah]

I always had nightmares as a child, and often slept (for years at a time): under a table, in a closet, in a cupboard. It was weird I guess. Nightmares continued into adulthood and insomnia. I die, other people die. The worst ones are when I am in a dangerous situation and I can't see.

But of course the flip side of that is that I always dream, and sometimes have lucid dreaming (which I want to learn more about so I have a book on). I have certain dreams that when I have them, I know they signify something specific, perhaps subconscious, that is going on in my conscious life so it is a little flag.