Anything that scares me enough to want to wake myself up. I always know I'm dreaming and I spend a lot of time trying to get out of my dream.
Most of my nightmares are of monsters and very rarely involve injury to myself or death or tragedy of loved ones. All of my dreams are in color.
After my step-son died, I had nightmares that my then 18 month old son died in his crib. It was a hard time, especially losing my dad right after my son was born. I would wake up very suddenly and had to go check on him. It got so that I put his crib in my bedroom just so I could hear him. It got better, as things do, as time passes. The nightmares came back after I saw What Dreams May Come with Robin Williams.
Since then, if I have a traumatic life event happen, it comes out in my dreams. I either listen to a book on tape, or some music to help smooth out the nightmares / bad dreams.
Trust me ! You wouldn't want to know what my nightmares are about. Luckily after 40 odd years, they are less frequent now.
I think a reoccurring dream is a nightmare ... I have one I've had since I was a teenager.. It's always the same ... I'm at picnic tables with a large crowd of people ... Then we all walk out to a beach .. Then a bunch of men start shooting ... I just lay down on the beach and pretend to be dead ... I can see the boots of one of the shooters so I lay really still . But I'm worried about someone that's there and I want to know if their okay .. It's a panic feeling even though I have no idea who it is .. I've had that dream more than 20 times . I don't like it at all.
My mind is very strange when it comes to dreaming.
I was last time walking or something and I came into contact with those evil looking things on "Evil Dead" I lost most of what happened but I remember in detail, knowing, they were exactly those gooles off evil dead movie.
This is why I believe in photo-memory.... Why cant I have it!
The most disturbing for me was always how Id be living in this reality and things would be different and often bad as a result. But my family would always be sort of living and doing things but seemed almost unaware of me and while all of this was WRONG and unacceptable, everyone I know would be completely OK with it as if it were normal. Sometimes they would be living different lives and they wouldn't take notice of me and there was nothing I could do to interact with them. Sometimes it was certainly a nightmare.
Lastly, sometimes id be driving in the dark and someone In my family would be walking in the middle of the highway as some evil looking zombie but I knew who they were. And again id be left looking around me thinking "Why is this HAPPENING!? No one seems disturbed!!" I hate that kinda thing.
Usually those are stress induced dreams for me. The only other are, rare but sometimes, I feel like im stuck in an eternal reality where im stuck with this strange life and It honestly feels like ETERNITY. Then I wake up SOO relieved that none of it happened.
Usually I wake from those sweating in stress! But sometimes I actually have enjoyable dreams and am kind sad when I wake up.
This was an intersting article on why the type of dreams you have occur: http://luciddreamleaf.com/blog/types-of-dreams-and-what-they-say-about-your-brain/ There are actually ways to cause certain types (allegedly) via seretonin and dopamine chemistry.
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