Something strange has been happening to me.
I've been having dreams inside of dreams.
I can think of at least two movies on this topic, one is one of my favorites - and if you haven't seen it, it is must see called Waking Life. The other one I think most people have heard of is called Inception.
When I first saw both of these movies, I really liked the ideas about being able to control your dreams and being able to go deeper into dreams. I especially love Waking Life and the thoughts and insights that were brought up around life, metaphysics, and perceptions. But when I saw both of these movies I wasn't sure I had ever experienced this type of sleeping and dreaming before.
Since I've been working on my traumas and therapy around my traumas (specifically the loss of Sunflower) for almost a year now I have had difficulty with nightmares and waking from sleep going directly into panic attacks upon waking. These are not fun experiences and they actually cause a vicious cycle with insomnia, depression, and anxiety.
I guess you could say that my awareness has evolved around these happenings (Which is good. It means that I'm growing and healing.) because last night I was having a lucid dream (not uncommon for me). I don't remember what it was about the dream but I remembered that something scary was about to happen and so (I think to protect myself) I tried to wake myself up.
I thought I had awoken myself but when I "woke up" I was in my bed, in my room and something scary was happening. I can't remember what the scary thing that was happening was but I think that I had a False Awakening.
But because I was attempting to "save" myself from the frightening happenings of the dream, I actually woke up this time (I think from the fear) and was freaking out, trying not to panic.
This has happened to me more times than I can count over the past year or so. I know it has happened before then too but it was not as frequent. My best guess is that the trauma therapy is causing the reprocessing to happen and so these types of occurrences are part of the healing process.
I don't know for sure if that is the case but I will be discussing it with my therapist the next time I see her. It doesn't make it any less scary though.
I do believe that dreams are where we work out our conscious issues sometimes so I guess it's not too surprising to me that I would be working through my trauma healing even in my sleep. It's not the first time I've had a dream that has helped me process my waking life.
I think the thing I need to focus on through this is that I can see the evolution of my awareness with the dreams and the false awakenings.
And that gives me a little bit of hope.
