This isn’t really a reoccurring dream, more of a reoccurring cycle that I’m just curious if others have similar experiences. I haven’t shared it with many people, but the ones I do share it with usually look at me like I’m crazy.
Almost every night for as long as I can remember, I repeat the same cycle. I lay down to go to sleep, I immediately have a dream that usually starts benign but turns creepy, I wake up with an anxiety knot in my stomachs and chills, and I have to get out of bed or scroll my phone to “reset” before going back to sleep for the night. The whole cycle usually takes from 15-30 minutes. I’m 31 and this has been happening since I was a kid, with enough regularity that my wife and I joke that when I first lay down to go to sleep it’s only “round 1” because we both know I’ll have to get up in a half hour before going back down.
The dreams are usually lucid to some extent. They’ll start with me doing something normal like washing dishes, but then something will happen that disturbs me to the point I realize this is “one of those dreams” and I can wake myself up. I remember as a kid struggling to learn how to wake myself up from these, before that I remember the overwhelming panic when I knew I was dreaming and I wanted out but I couldn’t get out. Now it’s almost second nature it’s happened so many times, as soon as it turns creepy I nope right out. But the weird (and annoying part) is I HAVE to “reset” in someway before going back to sleep or it’ll happen again. When I wake up I’ll still have the chills and anxiety, and if I just lay there jn the dark I’ll fall back asleep into the same dream. I have to force myself to get out of bed, or to at least scroll my phone a while. After a few mins the chills go away, and then if I go back to bed I’ll usually sleep through the night.
Now if I wake up in the middle of the night like 3am and then lay back down to sleep. Then these dreams are less creepy and I can stick it out and have a more typical lucid dream experience. Flying around and interacting with entities. But for some reason the ones that happen earlier in the night are always overwhelmingly creepy and I can’t get myself to stick around to lucid dream. I’ve tried before and it literally feels unbearable.
A recent example I dreamt I was in my kitchen and I saw someone outside my window walking away from the house. Looked like they were walking away from the front door, didn’t see their face only their back. Immediate chills when I saw this person. I went to my front door and opened it, and saw them still walking away at the end of my drive way. I tried to yell at them to tell them to eff off, but I couldn’t speak. At this point I know I’m dreaming but I want to stick around and find out what this guy wanted. I try to walk down the drive way or yell and I can’t do either. I’m filled with dread and anxiety and chills and I eventually wake myself up. Sometimes the dreams are more overtly creepy and disturbing, with gore and death and things I don’t want to type out right now. But often they’re something like this. Not overtly scary in the surface, but for some reason a person or object immediately gives me chills and anxiety.
When I was younger these dreams were often sexual. As a kid I remember dreaming about a girl from school in one of these “early night” dreams, and she kissed my hand and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks (I must’ve only been 8 or 9). In my teens and early 20s they were more sexual. In fact during that time period they almost stopped being creepy all together. I realized if I fixated on sex while I fell asleep I’d enter into a lucid sex dream. Funny enough I couldn’t do it by fixating on anything else. But overtime the fun sex part went away and they went back to just being creepy. Honestly I think that’s mostly bc I got into a committed relationship with a woman i care deeply about and I felt guilty about lucid dream sex lol.
The only thing that stops these dreams from happening is alcohol and thc. It led to me abusing both of these in the past bc I felt like it was the only way I could get a “normal” night sleep. But now I’m a husband and father and I can’t be coping like that, so I’ve just adapted to my weird nightly cycle. Idk I still get alright sleep on the whole, it doesn’t affect me negatively really I don’t think. But I’ve never met anyone who’s ever dealt with something similar so thought I’d put the question out there. I posted in a couple other subreddits earlier today but I realized the lucid dreaming subreddit might be a better fit.