Idk how many other people experience this but judging by the prevalence of nightmares I’m guessing it’s not common but;

I have never had a nightmare. Because I do not experience emotions in my dreams. Oh, I’ve had plenty of dreams with unpleasant imagery. I’ve had dreams of being murdered, I’ve had dreams of blood and gore, I’ve had dreams of zombies, aliens, war of the worlds, monsters, raptors, you name it. I don’t think, imagery-wise, any of my dreams would qualify as “pleasant”. They’re weird. They often feature death. They don’t sound the same as how most people describe their dreams as being.

But like, I think it’s because on a subconscious level, I’m always aware I’m in a dream. Not lucid dreaming in the sense that I can control my dreams or anything (although I have had a few of those), but rather lucidity on a subconscious level, despite that being fairly contradictory. I experience dreams similar to how I experience movies, maybe even more apathetically actually. I don’t often make the actual connection of “Oh! Dream!” In my dreams, but rather, I participate in dreams with more of a “I’m just along for the ride” type attitude.

It’s weird.

All my life I’ve had these weird adrenaline-inducing dreams. When I was younger, they were about car accidents. My freshman year of high school I was in a terrible accident, but, like, because of all of these dreams I’ve had about car accidents, literally years worth of dreams, I had no panic response. None whatsoever. I was calm and collected for the entire ordeal, I made sure my mom and the other guy were alright and out of their cars. No one was hospitalized that day. 

After that it was about breaking bones. I’d had dreams over and over again about breaking my bones to the point where the adrenaline response was gone. In February I slipped on the ice and broke 3 bones in my foot. I walked it off, I didn’t go to the hospital, I didn’t panic. I went to the doctor’s office that weekend and had it x-rayed. They didn’t believe anything was broken because I was calm and collected and didn’t go to the hospital for it. Sure enough, though. I broke 3 bones in my foot.

Another one is tornadoes. I used to fear them, be terrified of rain-wrapped or nightly tornadoes, but I’ve had so many god damn dreams about them. I go storm chasing sometimes. I'm the only non-meteorology major that gets invited to storm chasing because I don’t have a panic response. I don’t freak out. I’m elected the photographer because my hands don’t shake.

I’ve never been a fan of dreams meaning much, just neurons firing and your subconscious trying to decipher them. But I won’t lie that it’s peculiar that it’s always played into something bigger.