Dream memory and real memory Help!

I am starting to confuse my dreams with reality. I have noticed that in my dreams, I have a set of memories that are intact no matter where and when I am asleep. In other words, in my dreams, I went to college for 4 years, but decided to go back and do another 4 years as an undergrad, living in the dorms and taking many of the same classes, etc. There are other things, but that is a theme that comes up often.

Most of my dreams are anxiety based, as in realizing I am missing a class or haven't been to a class all semester and I am just remembering that I should have been going. Sometimes I have one of the many jobs I had in real waking life and realize that I forgot I had the job and haven't been there for years. It is all very surreal and there are other very strange things that happen such as people turning into pets and pets turning into inanimate objects.... I could go on...

Anyway, lately, I will be sitting on the couch in real life as awake as I can be and I have a memory. Instead of realizing that I dreamed it one night, I feel as if it is my real memory.

It is traumatizing to have these real memories of the whacked out stuff in my dreams. It feels as if my dream history is becoming my real history and I can't tell the difference. I have a hard time remembering that it was a dream and not something that really happened to me.

Does this make any sense?

In other words it feels as if my dog really did turn into a bag of baseballs instead of remembering that I dreamed that my dog turned into a bag of baseballs.

How's that for crazy?

Has this happened to anyone else? What did you do? I am afraid my dream self will take over my real self and I will lose what my real history is in place of this messed up dream history.

i used to do that a lot a couple of months ago. it was really bad b/c i could remember having a conversation with a person, that actually didn't happen....sometimes i would reference these conversations and the other person would have no idea what i was talking about.

a key to overcoming this is to be more mindful, and takes lots of notes. i practically document most of the conversations i have (especially at work). i just jot down a couple notes in my journal. over time, this has made it easier to separate both worlds, and not ask if someone got fired, when they actually didn't.

I am glad you started this thread. I even talked to the pdoc about this very thing last week and he had no answer. I told him only 2 times before in my life I have had very real scary dreams...during pregnancy (which 100% not) and when I have had to take strong pain killers in the past after surgery's. But, know that I am on this Depakote.......I have to think about everything even more confusion to go with all the confusion already in my head. My pdoc looked up at me when I started to tell him about this and he said "No people usually talk about dreams and thoughts like that before medication."

I thought I better shut up or I will end up in a padded room for the weekend, which wouldn't have been half bad after the weekend I had.

I wonder if the Depakote has something to do with it. I was taking Depakote, but when I stopped it, it seemed to help with the confusion and such.