Wednesday, June 4, 2008

   Controversial Advice?
Well my fellow geeks and other weirdos, it's been a while, hasn't it? But fear not, I'll probably post one huge, depressing, sucks-the-joy-out-of-everything, bleak and cynical post about my past... Half a year or so once I get it sorted in my head. However, now you are treated with the fruits of my latest trip to the psychologist.

We got to discussing about how I sleep at nights (I have/had troubles. Alot) and I told her about my dreams and how they react to stress. The more stress I have, the more nightmares I have. Pretty obvious, right? Right. So anyways, when she asked if I had a re-occuring nightmare, I told her about my absolute worst-case, sleep depriving nightmare. That of a zombie apocalypse a lá Resident Evil.

Now, this phobia dates back to my younger days around the time I was 7 years old or so. The first Resident Evil was the bee's knees at the time and the older brother of this guy friend I had bought the game. So, my guy buddy, being a guy, wanted to play it with me and my brother present, and they played it, thrilled out of their little minds. I, on the other hand, was practically hiding behind the couch, trying to block the moans and groans of the living dead from my ears, ended up being frightened for about... One month straight, and the fear of the dead walking has stuck on me ever since. Silly, yeah, I know, right? But scared the bejeebus outta me when I was a kid.

Now, back to my dreams. My re-occuring nightmare, as I mentioned, is the zombie apocalypse dreams. Sometimes I'm in a big city, sometimes I'm on a space station, but all in all, I usually end up dead by either being eaten or ripped to shreds by your friendly neightbourhood corpse patrol. There are two ways in which I wake from these nightmares.

1) The Hollywood-way, in which I shoot up, ready to jump out of my bed at a second's notice, I am consumed by adrenaline and think I cannot sleep for the remainder of the night, only to gonk out around 6 and wake up around 8 to go to school. ... And then I look like death warmed over.
2) The normal way, in which I merely open my eyes, am startled awake and sigh in relief: it was all a dream. Now, this way indicates that the dreams weren't so bad and maybe, maybe I can still get some sleep. Of course, if I wake up like this, there may also be the chance of the dream rewinding itself and I start the same scenario again when I get a hold of sleep again.

So, I have only recently started to influence my dreams consciously, like "finding" a conviniently placed gun and defending myself with it or something, or willing myself awake. However, these things actually working are few and far between.

Now, my psychologist suggested that I write my nightmarish dreams down and write them a better ending for them in an effort to get rid of them. In a way, that is a good advice and actually might help, and hey, I might even sell the stories to the publishers if I make it that far. But, the dreams affect me so badly that I'd rather forget them than remember the haunting images. So I'm torn. On the other hand, It'd help. And on the other hand, it might make me feel frightened and small. I dunno guys. What do you think?
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