Bipolar Disorder Support Group
Bipolar disorder is not just a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders marked by periods of abnormally high energy and euphoria, often accompanied by bouts of clinical depression. This is the place to talk about your experience with bipolar disorder, learn from others' experiences, and find support.
I wake up every night/morning/whenever feeling like the world is ending and I've been dead for a very long time. As in... I'm just residual anger/loneliness, the incarnate of a negative energy.
But my dreams are cool. SOMETIMES. Animal death is an extremely common theme in my dreams, I'm usually the savior, or, more commonly, it's up to me to save a bunch of animals in daunting situations where rescue is logically pretty unlikely.
[When my empathy is not impacted by dissociation] I love animals to a degree that's actually detrimental to my well-being and nightmares of animal torture/death always get a very VISCERAL, raw reaction out of me.
So maybe it's an incarnation of my phobia of animals being harmed at the hands of a monstrous person? I dunno...
The other theme is catastrophic phenomena relating to space and weather. "Natural disasters" but with an end-of-the-world twist. They're almost sci-fi-esque in that they pertain to astrophysics, but all of the events are extremely unlikely?
I've seen meteors a number of times, in dreams. Sometimes I'll be standing on the edge of the earth (which is also impossible because of gravity, but dreams don't play by the rules) directly underneath huge galaxies.
Google "Milky Way long exposure" (long exposure is a photographic technique that shows how natural phenomena would look without light pollution and other stuff in the way, which, I'm lol'ing at my layman's explanation). You'll be glad you did!!! It's breath-takingly, heart-stoppingly incredible to see. But yea. Looks more or less like that.
And very vivid, I might add. Also causes a visceral reaction, but it's more of an intense thrill than sheer terror, although honestly, a mix of both, because I'd get vertigo if I were under a sky like that, it fucks with your perspective. Fascinating stuff.
Other than that, just real boring fears o' mine that aren't even worth mentioning really, like fear of heights (acrophobia) and fear of fireworks/loud noises, whatever the technical term for that is. Vertigo as well, and perceptional fuckery.
Like I had one where I had to climb multiple flights of stairs outside while the loudest fireworks I've ever experienced were going off en masse outside. I was frozen with fear, but had to make a quick escape, so I had to force myself to do it.
Later in the dream, I was in a New York penthouse, y'know, those fancy little furnished apartments on the 100th floor of wherever rich people may afford to live, and fireworks were going off. Noticing a theme here? Well, because of some degree of actual physics, the height of my/our apartment was slightly above the height that the fireworks exploded at. So I peered out've the window (giant glass windows for walls, typical of a 'penthouse'), and freaked the ever-living fuck out because it looked like a firework was going to blow up the building. But it "BOOM"ed and fizzled out right underneath.
So it created an optical illusion of getting shot. Scary stuff.
Less commonly I'll have gross dreams where there's p*ss or whatever everywhere, loooool. Those don't bother me a bit. Kind of awkward though, just random disgusting scenery, or I'll be p*ssing in front of everybody. Uhhhhh.... Can't think of why. Haha. (Sorry if that's tmi)
So yeeeeap. My average vivid dream is 50% phobia and 50% 'optical illusion increasing the terror'.
Have any of you gotten any really strange recurring dreams, whether they're fantastical, the stuff of fairytales, nightmares, or straight-up Lovecraftian?
But my dreams are cool. SOMETIMES. Animal death is an extremely common theme in my dreams, I'm usually the savior, or, more commonly, it's up to me to save a bunch of animals in daunting situations where rescue is logically pretty unlikely.
[When my empathy is not impacted by dissociation] I love animals to a degree that's actually detrimental to my well-being and nightmares of animal torture/death always get a very VISCERAL, raw reaction out of me.
So maybe it's an incarnation of my phobia of animals being harmed at the hands of a monstrous person? I dunno...
The other theme is catastrophic phenomena relating to space and weather. "Natural disasters" but with an end-of-the-world twist. They're almost sci-fi-esque in that they pertain to astrophysics, but all of the events are extremely unlikely?
I've seen meteors a number of times, in dreams. Sometimes I'll be standing on the edge of the earth (which is also impossible because of gravity, but dreams don't play by the rules) directly underneath huge galaxies.
Google "Milky Way long exposure" (long exposure is a photographic technique that shows how natural phenomena would look without light pollution and other stuff in the way, which, I'm lol'ing at my layman's explanation). You'll be glad you did!!! It's breath-takingly, heart-stoppingly incredible to see. But yea. Looks more or less like that.
And very vivid, I might add. Also causes a visceral reaction, but it's more of an intense thrill than sheer terror, although honestly, a mix of both, because I'd get vertigo if I were under a sky like that, it fucks with your perspective. Fascinating stuff.
Other than that, just real boring fears o' mine that aren't even worth mentioning really, like fear of heights (acrophobia) and fear of fireworks/loud noises, whatever the technical term for that is. Vertigo as well, and perceptional fuckery.
Like I had one where I had to climb multiple flights of stairs outside while the loudest fireworks I've ever experienced were going off en masse outside. I was frozen with fear, but had to make a quick escape, so I had to force myself to do it.
Later in the dream, I was in a New York penthouse, y'know, those fancy little furnished apartments on the 100th floor of wherever rich people may afford to live, and fireworks were going off. Noticing a theme here? Well, because of some degree of actual physics, the height of my/our apartment was slightly above the height that the fireworks exploded at. So I peered out've the window (giant glass windows for walls, typical of a 'penthouse'), and freaked the ever-living fuck out because it looked like a firework was going to blow up the building. But it "BOOM"ed and fizzled out right underneath.
So it created an optical illusion of getting shot. Scary stuff.
Less commonly I'll have gross dreams where there's p*ss or whatever everywhere, loooool. Those don't bother me a bit. Kind of awkward though, just random disgusting scenery, or I'll be p*ssing in front of everybody. Uhhhhh.... Can't think of why. Haha. (Sorry if that's tmi)
So yeeeeap. My average vivid dream is 50% phobia and 50% 'optical illusion increasing the terror'.
Have any of you gotten any really strange recurring dreams, whether they're fantastical, the stuff of fairytales, nightmares, or straight-up Lovecraftian?
My dreams often involve wild animals chasing me. I'm lost in a strange town.. running from street to street. A lot of the time while running through towns I pass houses where vicious dogs are tied up outside... they bark and growl at me and sometimes break their chains and come running after me. Then there are forests along the way that I end up running through where lions or tigers and sometimes bears are chasing me. I get so frigging scared in my dreams that I wake up myself up with my blood rushing and heart pumping 'til it hurts.
Two basic thoughts about this - one, that you may be identifying Yourself as the animal in your dream, as well as the rescuer - we do that, in dreams - become "more than one player" in the dream, if that makes sense. (You can be the whole Team of players, in your dreams)
...so you are feeling in your Waking life, like life is torture and has no way out, etc - but you wish to be rescued somehow....in your dream, you Make it happen by rescuing Yourself. Does that make sense?
Any time we experience houses, apartments, most buildings, etc they are a symbol for Us, our minds, so when your building is in trouble, you might be playing out how You feel about your Life....
(I know in my dreams my 'house' is always in some sort of disrepair, haha - so am I, and I'm working on it! lol)
Doe you see how that might work? Many times in dreams, our 'waking life' is being addressed, like your dream is your Counselor, giving your symbolic explanations of how you Feel, even what you Want to have happen sometimes. So you can "work things out" in your dreams and decide what to try in your Waking life.
HUGS - :)