Am I weird...? Could this be something?

I have often confused dreams with reality. Like, my dreams sometimes get so realistic that I swear they happened in real life and I even continue to believe it for years! But when I tell my family like, "Do you remember when...." and they tell me that never happened. I never knew that I got them mixed up until they said that. Now I still have specific memories that I only recently started to question how much of these memories are actually from dreams...

My mom said I used to wake up screaming when I was very young, and sometimes I wake up so terrified from my dreams that I can't breathe or I cry hysterically. (When I get nightmares, they are very gruesome...) I'm not sure if this is related, but when I get nightmares they tend to be in clusters, but the worst time was when I once went over 2 months with a nightmare every single time I fell asleep. It got so bad that I went to live with my friend (but that didn't stop them) and I got scared of falling asleep.

I don't thing thats weird at all, I often had the same experience when I was a child so I can understand your point of view

The nightmare thing sounds like "sleep terrors" which is common in children, you should try looking it up..

I can totally empathize with the dream-reality thing, I can't say if it's normal or not but I often had dreams in which I was me and my family was my rl family and something happened and I totally thought it happened and sometimes it was something stupid and I'd get really mad at them (irl) and they'd be hella confused and later I'd explain why I was mad and they deny ever having done it, lol. Sometimes, I imagine stuff in my head too, and years later will talk about it like it actually happened. O_o I don't think it's "weird" though, just a coping mechanism. Plus it's fun to make up new happenings for yourself xD

Maybe you should start a dream journal? That way you would remember I-dreamed-this-last-night and might not confuse it with reality. Just looking at my dreams helped me feel better about them, even the nightmares, as they gave me clues of things that were bothering me. Are you in therapy at all? I use to talk over my dreams with my therapist and that helped a whole lot too. My dreams felt like they were being listened to and so they started working harder to help me. They are our dreams so we are making them up in our own head/unconscious and I think we should pay attention to them. Just last night I had one that is similar to ones I use to have often 10+ years ago so I'm working on that, seeing what is happening in my life now that might be causing that.

Hi Minkle, I'm really sorry that you have to fear going to sleep and that you experience nightmares. I can't imagine living every day with that awful fear. I think Perna's suggestion abut keeping a journal is an excellent one. Even though you might think that you just want to forget it when you wake up, please consider that suggestion. I have a kind of a theory that sometimes we have nightmares as a sign that we feel we don't have enough control in our lives. I think that writing down all that you remember, the moment you wake up, might give you a sense of POWER. Your subconscious is "running the show" inside of your mind way beyond what it has any right to do. So - by letting your awake, conscious mind grab ahold of that stuff and kind of "stare it down" would, I am betting, allow your conscious mind to get back more in the "drivers seat" and have more of the power that sort of has been bullied out of it. Yes, I do believe that something inside of us can become a true "bully" that we have to statagize how to push back against.

Regarding other issues you raise, I, too, have sometimes been unable to figure out if I dreamed something, or it really happened. I don't think that is real uncommon, though may be uncommonly frequent for you.

There are drugs that reduce the amount of time that we spend in REM sleep, which is when we dream. You might want to ask a doctor about that. Sounds like you need some relief.