I was in an induced coma for a month after my accident. It was a horrific experience that traumatized me severely. Tons of nightmares I could feel. Constantly shifting from one to another without sense or reason. No consistency, no mercy, lucid but unable to make change. No escape. I feared I wasn’t actually in reality when I truly woke up at first. I kept fearing another shift. I died countless horrific deaths and lost my mind in there.
In researching coma dreams and nightmares in others, I see similar themes. Not always terrible, but always shifty ridiculous dream logic. The dreaming mind is not a realm of coherency telling a long story with a super clear thread. It is an ocean of ideas, fears, thoughts and needs that crash and clang together. In a single night you can have a fragment of a dream you remember that kinda sorta makes sense, but stuck in there for extended times? Chaos reigns.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Sounds horrible, sorry to hear that. Heard similar things through my friend circle: she was put in induced coma after serious food poisoning for I think 2 weeks. Horrible dreams of her or family members dying, being sexually assaulted, getting pregnant and losing a baby. I’m wondering what is it with comas that fuck up dreams this much.
theangryseal@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Dreams are always fucked up like this, only we don’t remember most of it. Have you ever nearly ended a day when suddenly you catch a glimpse of something that triggers your memory of a dream you had the night before? I have. It can be a silly little thing, like the time I was standing outside at work and seen a girl strike a lighter. I suddenly had an entire story open up in my memory, and fortunately it was pleasant.
Have you ever woke up in complete horror and knew you had a nightmare, but you didn’t know what it was? It had to really, really bad, you just can’t remember it.
It’s something to do with being in a coma, probably the duration or that the simply of chemicals that keep us asleep are exhausted. Take that with a grain of salt. I’m just an idiot. I don’t even remotely know.
I believe that dreams that I don’t remember directly contribute to my daily moods. If I wake up feeling wonderful, I must have decent dreams. If I wake up angry, I must have had nightmares. This is consistent when I remember them.
Opisek@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Those little glimpses of memory. It’s even worse than remembering the dream when I wake up, because in the latter scenario, I at least know for sure it’s a dream. Sometimes, for the little glimpses of memory, I don’t know if they are from the reality or from a dream. They do get very vivid occasionally.