Vivid active dreams, with other symptoms of stress

Posted by vinq @vinq, 4 days ago

Hello everyone, I'm a 17-year-old girl, and I've been having vivid dreams for years now, bordering on nightmares. I often realize I'm dreaming, but I have never tried to control the dream. I also have another symptom of stress, which is constant hand tremors. The thing is, I don't consider myself 'stressed'; I go to sleep in a good mood. Sometimes I wake up scared, so I always go to sleep with a video playing. It helps me regain consciousness faster. I'm concerned that this will continue until I'm an adult, but I don't want to take prescriptions until I'm older.

Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Sleep Health Support Group.

gloaming | @gloaming | 4 days ago

I can't be certain, but it might just be a phase....however long it must be. I went through a horrible phase as a toddler, maybe three years old or more, where I would wake up several mornings a week on my stomach, arms clenched over my chest, so under me, and I had just dreamt that in order to awaken, I had to repeat a dog attack where large dogs would enter the room and attack me. Naturally, as soon as I started awake, I was an old hand at this ere long and knew to relax. But, them nightmares..... The imagery was self-limiting and I no longer recall how long I had to endure this ritual...seems like it was many weeks.

It couldn't hurt to seek out a sleep disturbance specialist, perhaps a psychoanalyst or a psychiatrist. Maybe there really is some kind of emotional burden trying to swim up from the depths and see the light of day. I would always recommend seeing your family physician first, ideally for a referral if he/she knows of someone with a good rep. Lastly, I would recommend dealing with this as constructively as you can manage until you get it put to bed, so to speak. You have graduation coming, and college/university, or some other evolution into adulthood, and you need your full faculties dealing with all the travails that are going to appear before you. You appear to be motivated, so please consider using that motivation to get some local help soon.