YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

For the past few weeks I have been having dreams about corpses. Sometimes it is just one corpse, but other nights there is a whole party full of them. They like to hang out in familiar places, for example on my bed, but also in places that are foreign to me, like a large field. They are always different people, though not people I personally know. The only consistency is that they are always horribly mutilated as if they had been tortured before they were violently killed. Oh boy.

The dreams have been occurring at least a few times a week. It has gotten to the point that I dread sleeping. When I have the dreams I can only manage a restless sleep for the rest of the night.I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, though I am not on any medication. I have read a fair few dream dictionary things which all say that it is a sign of depression or emotional shut down. I could see either one being true, seeing as I am in a pretty craptastic home situation.

What I really want to know is if anyone else has horrible reoccurring dreams like this? They are disturbing for obvious reasons, but I also find myself ashamed of them. I know you can't control you dreams, but it still bothers me that I am dreaming of corpses all the time.

First of all, sorry you haven't gotten any replies yet and sorry no one has come forward to say they've also had dreams about corpses; it can be pretty disheartening to not be answered in this forum.

I find dreams interesting and I kind of think yours are really interesting--I'd hate to say I'm jealous but I like horror too much, even though I hate nightmares and realistically I'd probably hate having nightmares about corpses every night. I'm just saying that I think if you told the right person (someone morbid like myself) they'd be more interested than disturbed, since I don't think the dreams make you a disturbing person, but more like your brain is extremely poignant and skillfully vivid about what it's feeling. I have dumb dreams like potatoes turning into spiders and yours sound like the covers to metal albums; I'm just saying it's kind of cool from my perspective, even though I totally get that they'd be pretty disturbing to experience yourself and you'd be better off without them.

I find dream interpretations helpful, so it's cool you've done that, but it's REALLY helpful to think about what the dream means to you. I myself looked up what corpses mean, and I found "an aspect of yourself has died" and "You've shut yourself down and are dead inside" which sounds really harsh, so it's better to think about what you feel in the dream and what you feel immediately when you wake up from them. Maybe dreams are just our brains processing and rewiring but sometimes I feel like the stuff we remember are messages the brain is trying to get our waking selves to realize. Recently I've been having a lot of dreams along the line of, "Thank god that wasn't real!" that make me think my brain is reminding me that my waking life could be a lot worse than it actually is... or maybe that my brain has the potential to make things hell for me but that reality is much less overwhelming to process, or something, haha.

I'm just wondering--and no judgment here from me--do you feel like you're the one that mutilated and killed the corpses? Mostly wondering since corpses in your bed sound a bit telling, and that you feel ashamed of the deams in general. Or do you get an inkling it was someone else that did it and get a little afraid? Or if the corpses are just there and you've sort of accepted it via dream logic. The corpses, since they're strangers, maybe represent how you feel about strangers and people in general; that you're either going to hurt and torture them, or that people hurt and torture each other and you'd like to avoid that. Just an idea. The corpses could also represent aspects of yourself since it is all in your head--my therapist likes to think things that are in our dreams are just facets of ourselves, sort of a Jungian idea. That the corpses are murdered and tortured because you do that to your own mind in your waking life? You're the victim and the perpetrator, perhaps?

Sorry if this wasn't helpful but yeah, just wanna put out that that your dreams sound cool and interesting even if I know they must be disturbing and horrible to endure and experience--just that you shouldn't feel ashamed about them. I mean if your dreams give you enough shit while you're sleeping, you shouldn't give yourself more shit for them while you're awake, you know?

Hey, thanks for the response. Saying that I have very vivid dreams that read like a heavy metal album is a huge complement. I am currently trying to get some of my horror stories and a novel published at the moment and just sent out applications to Masters of Fine Arts programs in creative writing fiction. It is my hope to one day be a horror writer. I often have highly defined and vivid dreams that involve horror based creatures. The beginning of these dreams are often unworldly and strange and often frightening, but I usually recognize early on that they are dreams and then I am able to interact with the dreams and follow their course like a person immersed in a three dimensional video game. I also practice lucid dreaming. I have a trick where if something in my dream hands me a key I can identify I am in a dream, or if the light switches don't work that is another sign to myself that I am in a dream. This doesn't always work, but when it does it is amazing. I have also noticed that recognizing I am in a dream and enjoying it/ lucid dreaming is easier done when I am mentally healthy in my daily life. This doesn't mean happy, just not the creature I feel I become when my fear, anger, and depression come out to play.

What I only realized when you mentioned finding my dreams interesting and I thought about enjoying my own is that I have never been able to realize my corpse dreams are dreams. I always think they are 100% real while they are occurring. In the dreams I don't remember mutilating the corpses, but now that I think about it I think when I first see the corpses I often feel a guilty dread. This feeling of guilty dread follows me when I wake up. If I don't personally mutilate the corpses I certainly feel as if something I have done has caused them to be there.

The one dream I found the most disturbing was the one in my bed. It was the first corpse dream I had. It also disturbed me because the corpse was kind of attractive. I didn't share this at first for obvious reasons and because I had dismissed it as because the human mind can be a real ass. But your idea that maybe it is about strangers and people in general and my fear that I am going to hurt and torture them sheds a new light on that. I recently moved across the country so I am meeting new people every day. I have also been considering if and when I want to date again. While I want to be close to people I often think if I do I will more than likely hurt them. When I get very frightened I often show my fear in anger. While I haven't actually done it I often think of hitting people, breaking things, or yelling. My Father was abusive and an addict so I have that lovely thought that adult children of alcoholics have that at any moment I will turn into a raging monster who hits and tears apart those I love. I can't believe I just used "raging monster" to describe how I feel about that; a little more telling than I intended but I am going to leave it. Now that I frame it that way I could see the corpses as being a result of what I fear I would do if I were to date someone, not that I would actually kill someone but that I would emotionally mutilate them. This makes a lot more sense to me than part of myself being dead. I have been depressed countless times before but this is the first time I have had these reoccurring corpse dreams. Previous to my last relationship I was pretty confident about my ability to be a good partner. However, the last relationship blew that shit out of the water. Only within the last two months have I even considered dating, but that would make sense with the timeline of these dreams. I have to say about this post the most relieving was saying that I kind of thought the corpse on the bed was attractive. I felt pretty fucked up about that, but now that I can see it being related to my fear of what I might do to someone I am attracted to it just makes sense.

Glad my interest didn't offend you. Writing sounds like the perfect outlet for these dreams; honestly it sounds like Silent Hill the way you describe it, and I'd probably read anything you publish just based on that (and again, I love horror). Also jealous that you can manage to lucid dream; are you able to get yourself out of nightmares when you do that? I heard lucid dreaming often helps with reoccurring dreams and nightmares.

Also glad some of my interpretations rang true, and your own personal interpretations definitely make sense. If you're in therapy, maybe the more you're able to heal and subsequently open up to other people, perhaps the dreams will lessen or disappear; I wouldn't really know since I know I still have my own disturbing dreams that are more blatantly about my trust issues and anxiety (my parents trying to kill me are fun ones in particular) but it would only make sense that the more comfortable you feel with yourself and others, the less anxiety you'll have when you're sleeping and dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is a great tool for escaping nightmares. I was talking with one of my friends about this last night actually. She thinks the reason that I can't lucid dream in these corpse dreams is because dreams tend to be self-fulfilling in that if you believe you won't be able to lucid dream you won't be able to. Which makes sense to me.

Lucid dreaming has helped me to not only escape a lot of my nightmares, but also enjoy some of the more creative ones. There are lots of tricks to it if you are interested in trying it, but it does take practice.

The key method which I use took a particularly long time to master. What you do is imagine an object which you know does not exist in real life. My key for example is like an old skeleton key except instead of prongs on the end of it it has circles with interwoven designs in each of the circles like you might see in the book of Kells. I think a lot of people also use coins for a similar purpose. Right before you go to sleep you imagine you are turning the object over and over in your hand. You try to go to sleep imagining this. Then when it appears in the dream you often realize that it isn't an object that exists in the real world so you are dreaming.

My favorite, but not always dependable, trick is that you can never turn on or off lights in a dream. If you go up to a light switch and try it the lights will either stay on or off, and won't change. This works for me almost every time I can. However, I'm not always inside. Since there is a lack of light switches in the woods or a field I often find myself trying to find the key.

The girl I was talking to last night also mentioned her tricks which might work. She said that one thing she does is counts her fingers. Hands are often distorted in dreams, particularly if you are paying attention to them. I have noticed this in dreams myself, but I had not thought to use it to identify dreams. She also said you can often put one hand through another hand which can help you identify you are in a dream (If you are not freaked out by the sight of disfigured hands passing through each other). Another trick she said is to pinch your nose closed. If you can still breath through your nose while it is held closed you are in a dream.

Lucid dreaming once you get the hang of it can be fun. It doesn't always work, as is evident by my corpse dreams. I also find I can't just do what I want when lucid dreaming. For example I have never mastered flying which is annoying. When it does work it can be relieving and you can shift the dream to follow a more pleasant route. You might want to try it with your parent dreams. I know my less creative nightmares about my dog dying are usually easily controlled by lucid dreaming. Maybe with lucid dreaming you could turn the knife around and dole out a little pain yourself (I know that's what I would do). Then later join an elite task force and wait for a virus to break out so you can enjoy an interactive version of Resident Evil.

Thanks so much for the tips! I've been researching lucid dreaming since I was a teenager and haven't heard of some of those tricks. I've had waking dreams and some dreams that come close to lucid dreaming, but I tend to wake up or not recall what happened.

For instance, I had one dream where I was talking to people I guess about Pokemon, and I think I was saying something about an attack that I couldn't remember the name of and the person said, "Lucid?" and I was like, "Yeah, lucid!" and then my brain seemed to keep repeating "lucid, lucid, lucid" and then I pretty much woke up. It felt like my brain was definitely trying to prompt me but I couldn't get with it. Also have had dreams where people like my brother tell me I'm dreaming, but I just wake up since the one time that happened, it was a nightmare and I just wanted to wake up. The other time it came close to happening was when I looked at the time and then my mom in my dream made it an hour later on the clock, and I realized I was dreaming, but didn't quite get lucid--I went to get a cigarette that was about the thickness of a container of lipstick and then my cat started talking to me. It felt sort of like I panicked, but that was because it was a dream before I had to get on an airplane and I started the dream thinking I had overslept, and I was inside my house.

Not to show off, but I have a LOT of flying dreams, and they unfortunately often turn into nightmares. Actually, they're more like jumping dreams--I can scale distances and jump around stuff I would never be able to in real life, like flinging myself off of trees or jumping from building to building. Anyway, my dreams last night were AWFUL, I kept having to jump around this little area to escape and hide from pursuers. It's a shame since I usually love the feeling of being able to get away through that jumping, but I'm very limited in my dreams somehow, even though the sensation of flying is something I can conjure up--and I'm often being pursued in some way. I feel like I'd be able to at least jump like that if I were to lucid dream, and it'd be awesome, since if I were lucid I'd REALLY be able to get away in a way I can't when I'm just dreaming normally (sometimes it feels like I'm being blocked mentally from flying or jumping further or jumping in time to get away). My advice for you would be to recall what it feels like to jump, that feeling of being in mid-air, and extend that bodily sensational feeling in your dreams--maybe jump in real life more just to remember what it feels like. The extension of the sensation is usually what I lose, so I think it's why I tend to jump long distances rather than fully fly, but I have been able to fly before--and frankly, it can be just as rad to jump around from place to place, I would say close to the same feeling as flying.

The thing about having a dream memento of sorts makes sense--and I kind of know which object I would use since it's showed up in dreams before. It's a heart-shaped amethyst gemstone on a silver chain, about the size of a golf ball, sort of Titanic-esque--maybe I can make it more detailed in my mind's eye.

I think I'm just afraid since I know I get attacked in my dreams a lot, and when I attack back, I'm still scared of getting killed, even though it doesn't seem to happen a lot. I'd probably just run/jump away if I were to become lucid in a nightmare instead of staying to fight. Also afraid because my dreams also tend towards sexual and I think the other times I've gotten close to lucid dreaming, it always goes there instead of being at all psychologically freeing/epic, but at least those dreams are usually preferable to nightmares.

whoa, thats scary..

whoa, thats scary..