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Anxiety from Dreams

I just woke up from the most vivid and stressful dreams.  I woke up with my heart actually hurting.  It's an hour later and my heart (chest) still hurts and is still beating fast.  They were such horrible dreams.  The dreams were feelings of dread and torture and over and over the same theme even though the dreams changed.  I had to pretend i was dead to stop the torture but each time my torturer found out i was faking and the torture got worse - horrible.  My question is - why would dreams cause anxiety to linger once you are awake.  Can this pose health issues? Meaning can a prolonged anxious feeling cause long term effects?  I'm not anxious about the long term effects i just can't believe i've been up an hour and still feel so horrible.  It's happened before and i never know what provokes the horrid dreams but i hate them.  I'd rather not remember them.  I read somewhere that it helps to write them down and look over them later but last night was so bad i don't want to relive it to write it down and i don't want to remember it later.
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Avatar universal
Consider your dreams as like your mind / brain sorting out a filing cabinet. There are things we need to keep. These would be placed in the long term memory section. There are things we don't need to keep. These are placed in the short term memory section. Everything you do during a day gets sorted out at night. In the form of a dream. Part of our dreams has nothing at all got to do with us. It is just there to make the dream play out like a movie ( as sorts ). The latent dream content. It's just the rubbish part of our dreams. But we can also dream about things that are on our minds. We can dream about our fears. Because they are all sitting there in the subconscious area of the mind. So they will get thrown into the average nightly dream too. Lord knows how many times I dream about my fears. Lucky for me I understand dreams and don't fear them. Could be a little something for you to do. Get to know your dreams. Diary format. And see can you pick out your fears in the dreams. See can you strip away the latent content. That rubbish that has nothing to do with anything. The more you get to understand the full make up of dreams the less you will fear them. It would be easy to view your dream and see the toture as what you are going through in life. And the death side of it as the only result you see of stopping the toture. But death is not an option. You don't want that and the torture begins again. Do you know your torturer in the dreams? Or is it just one of those invisible faces? Never see the person. Just curious. But I don't see any health risk as such. I see your dreams sitting in your subconscious mind as you are awake. Still there with you. There they will sit and no doubt play out again as you sleep again. We can have triggers in dreams too. Things that once they enter a dream spring to life the old nightmares we might have had a few times before. Any roads. Enough of me harping on here. Don't want to bore you to tears.
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Avatar universal
I wake up several times during the night - completely drenched in sweat even thought i have a 15,000 BTU 2 feet from my bed blowing directly on me.  The sweat is concentrated around my neck and between my breasts up and down my chest.  Last night - i woke up 4 times with an extremely bad headache and racing heart.  During the day i have no anxiety, it is during the night.  I also have an undiagnosed adrenal problem meaning i don't make cortisol and i don't take any (which i'm suppose to) either.  I am trying to wait to get a diagnosis before i take steriods again.  As of now, i have fibromyalgia pain, extreme pain in my hips and knees during the night only, migraines and a spine issue in my neck that causes a knot of tension in my muscles at the base of my head/upper neck area - hurts like hell and i believe starts the headaches at night.  I would love to know what is wrong with me but have given up on seeing doctors as i feel like they don't care and listening to myself talk is annoying.  I have irregular periods - for instance - i bleed for a month - have two weeks off and bleed heavy again for another month.  I gained 80 pounds from the steriod use then when i stopped taking them dropped 30 right away - i think if i was able to be active i would drop the rest as i believe the weight is from inactivity more than food issues.  But i'm too tired to get out of bed so i stay in bed all day every day - only get out of bed to eat or shower or use the restroom - i hate leaving the house because it makes me tired.  I thought the sweating at night might be lack of iodine so i started making sure i had a teaspoon of salt in my diet every day but haven't noticed the sweating at night to stop.  The sweating used to be after i showered everyday - now that has stopped and it's only during the night.  I'm still 80 pounds overweight but before all this started in Jan 2007 i wasn't overweight, had energy, worked and even though my personal life wasn't happy - i was doing alright.  Now, i have given up  - keep hoping someone will just walk in my life that cares but i know the likelyhood of that is zero so i wait - for whatever this is to manifests itself into a life threatening situation and then maybe i will get answers but even then i doubt it - i'm not diabetic but am thirsty all the time and urinate frequently - i am anemic - but i imagine that is from the excessive bleeding - i hope to get this all resolved before i'm too old to have more children but feel that is unlikely too as my 40th birthday will be here next month :(
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Avatar universal
Actually, I think it's the other way around, dreams are the brain doing housekeeping.  Remember they're only dreams, and other than making for interesting conversation and an occasional good short story, they don't necessarily mean anything unless you intentionally make them important through spiritual practice.  So relax, it's just some random thoughts being expelled from your crowded storage centers.
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358304 tn?1409709492
I don't know how to answer this question, b/c I'm kind of wondering the same thing. I recently got over an anxiety spell about 2 weeks ago... I'm having NO anxiety during the day... and I fall asleep fine at night... but I can count on having vivid dreams almost every night it seems now... I wake up early early in the morning... clammy all over... and i wont even have to have a scary dream... just a vivid one... then as i lay in bed trying to fall back asleep... my mind just RACES with CRAZY images and thoughts that dont even make sense.... almost as if I'm dreaming before falling back to sleep.. It's so strange... but once I wake up.. get my day going... I'm 100%. I just want my normal sleep back. lol. Just a couple of months ago... I could go to bed at midnight and sleep until 12pm the next day if I wanted too... now I wake up in the early morning... and its just too early for me to get up on my days off...

Good luck to you... dreams are one of those things I don't think there is much information out about them...

I do know that our brain gathers information and puts it together while we are sleeping... when probably causes the dreams.
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