Quote:
Originally Posted by JoBo
Hi,
I wonder if anyone else has had a dream like this. I was woken up fighting & gasping for breath. I was physically pulling at a massive snake which I could feel squeezing me around my neck. I felt it was real & was pulling at it trying to get it off me. I thought I could actually feel the snake in my hands. It freaked me out & am finding myself looking around my room before I go to bed now. I had been with my T that afternoon & was attempting to talk about some really difficult stuff. Anyone else experienced anything like this?
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Welcome to PsychCentral, JoBo!
Hmm...When I was attending university, and minoring in psychology, textbooks of that time drew a distinction between
night terrors and
nightmares. The kind of dream you just described sounds more like a
night terror than a conventional anxiety
nightmare. Firstly, it occurred during deepest sleep (the way a night terror does) rather than during REM sleep (ordinary dream sleep, when nightmares more often occur). Secondly, the subject matter (fighting for your life and breath against a snake trying to squeeze them out of you) is not so different from the classic night terror where a thing is sitting on your chest trying to crush the breath out of you.
I wonder, though: do psychologists today draw the distinction between night terror and nightmare that they did during the late 1980's/early 1990's? More importantly, is there any clinical difference between people who have experienced at least one night terror and those who have only experienced nightmares? A good question for DocJohn, especially on Halloween....
(*sings
Welcome to My Nightmare by Alice Cooper*)