Vivid Dreams

100% agree with you I am looking into seeing a therapist that primarily works with autistic people it might help me just to work out how I feel about things it's hard for me t talk to my family about what I feel because they don't get my thought processes and I don't always know what I'm feeling in the moment or if I'm feeling the correct feelings I think that's partly because of my autism.

I also have great deal of very intrusive violent thoughts throughout my days that aren't necessarily directed towards myself or other people it can be quite random not sure if that is an autistic thing or not but my nightmares tend to happen when I have a spat of a lot of intrusive thoughts so maybe its my subconscious working it all out. I'm not a violent/aggressive person in the slightest I'm very much the opposite and none of what happens in head would ever make it's way into reality so it's quite jarring when I have SUCH violent dreams where I AM the one that honestly does monstrous things.

When I wake up I have moment of panic because it felt so real but then I remember it was dream and I'm ok but what bothers the most when I have these dreams is the fact I find very difficult to not think about it when I'd really rather not.

I define a nightmare having severe physical and emotional pain/distress. To be honest, my dreams are nightmares. You kind of get used to it. 

My son had a recurring nightmare of being forced to kill one parent. It was horrendous!! When he finally told me I told him he could kill me in the dream as I'm magical and will always be with him. LOL But serious though. I knew why he had that dream too. His father (we split when my son was 2) was always demanding loyalty as if I were the competition. In fact, when my son wanted to stay with me for the summer at 10, his father responded with, "but who will take care of your cat?" Now, I don't need to get into the anger I've been processing and resolving for years. However, his father passed away. So, letting it live and let die. 

I often have enjoyable dreams or incredibly random dreams. When I worked out Lucid Dreaming, it was fun. I was always flying over fantastic night skies, the world would be sparkling but hues of blues and greens. Lush gardens and architecture... But I often have dreams where it is Crowded! Hundred or thousands of humans. I hate crowds. And how do I invent all these faces. It seems they're associated with feeling pressured and trapped and typically overworked.

Sometimes dreams are as random and indulgent as daydreaming or escaping. Sometimes they're deep-rooted fears which need addressing. The first thing I hear you say is the need to share yours. A thing kept in secret can turn into a monster. I'd find a trusted source or even a therapist - or even just a helpline (Haha) and unload!!  Even this space can be good if you feel comfortable. 

Technically, it's perfectly fine to kill others in our dreams. "Kill your darlings" is a nice quote - things society has echoed which are worth killing. Destruction and deconstruction, decay are part of a life cycle. Necessary to further life. NTs especially love a good dance with the symbolic! Jung wrote an extensive deal on dreams. Everything permitted in them. The mind is a powerful dimension. Allow yourself the space to be however you wish in them as perhaps this might be the next step in enjoying them. 

When do you class a dream as a dream and how do you define nightmares?     I've been killed many times in my dreams - I just take it all as data - even when I can feel blood pouring out.  

I have what people class as nightmares. I have almost gotten used to them now. I never have a night where I can't remember every detail of that dream. 

This is an interesting topic, something like this is hard to talk about because dreaming is so personal and 'internal' to a person it's like describing colours to someone who was born blind.

For my self I don't dream often but when I do they are vivid and are nightmares 99% of the time the most recent one I had was where I was basically killing people (people that I don't know) and I didn't want to do it but I couldn't stop I won't go into detail but its was very ... graphic and traumatising for me when I woke up because I though it was real. as I'm typing this I have a question for anyone who wants to answer that is on the spectrum.

When you dream are they usually nice or more often nightmares?

I often have repetitive vivid dreams about journeys,. Sometimes it's by train, at other times it's by bus, or its walking.  Some of these journeys repeat themselves with minor variations in the same dream.  I wake up totally exhausted.

Oddly! I was just thinking about this. For-sight, pre-cognition. I was off on a walk and have a rule I always stick to the envisioned route. I don't always take the same route, but typically have a think just on my way to the park or just before I walk back. Today I really had a think about this - the times where envisioned plans or actions appear to have a synchronicity to them. Perhaps it's these experiences that taught me to always stick to the plan. Could be ideals, or seeing something into reality, but sometimes it's much more than just a coincidence! 

Yep, I have very vivid dreams, like whole movies. I've also had prophetic dreams which have come true, probably my subconscious communicating with me/picking things up via the collective unconscious. Have you ever had dreams that have come true?

Oh wow! What cool responses!

Very similar to my dreams too!

Last night I dreamt I was in a Soyuz capsule travelling in to outer space and landing in places in America! 

Very peculiar but very exciting indeed!

The dark side...

It's 2:30am and I'm having very vivid nightmares.

I don't want to go back to sleep.

Most of my close family are narcissists - I'd quite like some imaginary relatives 

I am, always was, and always will be, a daydreamer.

Most kids had an imaginary friend. I had imaginary relatives.

I had a brain injury a while back and I suffered from hallucinations for a few weeks afterwards - weirdly mundane hallucinations.

One was I could see a single wall in the bedroom was covered in heavily textured blown-vinyl wallpaper.      I could walk up to it to examine it in great detail but as I went to touch it, my finger bumped into a layer of glass in front of it about 10mm thick.       I could look all around my finger pressing on the glass with all the parallax proving my finger was 10mm from the surface of the wallpaper.     I could leave the room and come back later and it was still the same.      It went back to a plain wall later on.

Another was while sitting watching tv, I was aware of a person on the other sofa reading a book.    If I looked at them, they disappeared - if I looked back at the tv, they reappeared - I could describe everything about them except their face..

Another was having a little dog running around in the hallway - again, if I looked, it disappeared.

From that experience of my own brain altering my reality in real-time, I totally believe people who say they've seen ghosts and UFOs - they don't necessarily exist, but their brain has lied to them enough to convince them..

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Reading all of these comments is so interesting! I create entire cities and their outskirts, many times they're about going to school, finding the theatre or pottery class. The bus ride is picturesque. Or even sorting through political affairs - the royal family became this clan of vampires with a whole underworld... LOL. Sometimes  I am genuinely curious if there is a connexion, though. In psychoanalysis, it is thought there is a word prior to an image in the brain. But I'd suggest otherwise. Apparently people actually think in words rather than pictures, I just don't know how that's possible. And from conversations, most can't recall having dreams since they were young, so is there a correlation to Lacan's theory that autists lack normal defence mechanisms (dulling the senses to block out sensory loads or sublimation).  

BassFace said:

I'd be interested if there is an explainable link between ASD and vivid dreams.

I think it's because we generally notice more detail in the real world - our dreams are better furnished with smells and colours and micro-details.

Yeah - untangling real events from a collection of dreams is hard-  especially when the dreams involve unsettling interactions with people you know.

I tried cutting down on some medication which caused my new dreams to start to interact with old, semi-forgotten dreams which gave the old false-reality more weight - so seemed more real that my real memories.   Very confusing.

I have this too and it gets really confusing.

I have the ones which are places and occurances that aren't possible but I also have really mundane ones, e.g. being completely convinced I've completed a piece of work because I did it in a dream and have the memory of doing it or dreaming an entire week of completely normal school and then having my internal calendar thrown off.

Working out the reality can take a while and I've had to use text messages a lot to verify if conversations and interactions ever actually happened. 

I'm so glad someone else experiences this

I get quite vivid nightmares reasonably often. Usually stress related. The other night we had a bonfire and then I dreamt I was in a burning down house and just having a calm conversation about it, not leaving. When I was a kid I used to always dream about spinning around and not being able to stop, or floating away into the air and not being able to get down. And sometimes I get sort of cinematic dreams too, that I still remember years later.

I'd be interested if there is an explainable link between ASD and vivid dreams.