I’d love to hear if people are having dreams about the current pandemic or related phenomena. My dream recall has not been great but there have been some nights recently when every time I woke up – I typically wake up briefly after every sleep cycle – I know I’ve just been dreaming explicitly about the pandemic, but I haven’t been able to recall details long enough to get them down and/or choose sleep instead of waking myself up enough to do so.
Last night my wife Liz reported these dreams:
I’m in a big old-fashioned school. There’s a tornado coming. I have to evacuate all the children, along with all the rest of the teachers. This is complicated by all the students and faculty going back to get things they forgot, not taking the tornado seriously enough, trying to rearrange plans, all kinds of things that are slowing down the process of getting them evacuated. I find this frustrating. We have a lot of vans, and the faculty are trying to get students into those vans and get them out of the way of the tornado. We have about 10 minutes to get out of here and get ahead of it.
The tornado itself is gigantic, like a giant cylinder in the sky coming toward us. It’s not gray like a regular tornado, but multicolored. It’s mesmerizingly beautiful, with different swirls that are different colors, kind of like how Jupiter has storms that are different colors in the color spectrum from blue to purple to red. The swirls are moving sort of independently from the main tornado of which they are a part.
My efforts are hampered by students getting phone calls from their parents telling them to stay in place, and I know that the parents will not get here in time.
I wake up with my heart racing.
In another dream last night, someone is trying to get a parent out of a house the roof of which is on fire. The parent won’t leave, says it’s OK and it’ll be fine.
Had a non-lucid dream last night about opening a circus or some type of event to raise money for people who have fallen through the cracks in receiving government aid or who are not eligible for one reason or another. Thought about putting up signs near the highway to direct people to the event. I remember a cute puppy we found and put in a box with a sign that said something like “you can pet the puppy, but please don’t take it.”
I did have several virus dreams - living in barracks, trying to prevent people from looting etc. I never managed to get lucid, and woke up quite tense and unrefreshed several nights in a row.
I decided to do something about it and while falling asleep I visualised myself carrying a bag of vaccines, first giving my dream self an injection and then being prepared to give to anyone that needed it. That night I dreamt that I was with a group of students, planning to move to universities all over the world - the pandemic was clearly over. I have not had any stressful COVID dreams since.
The article mentions that Deirdre Barrett “Deirdre Barrett, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and author of The Committee of Sleep, has started to collect COVID-19 dreams to analyze and compare to dreams before the pandemic; she currently has about 50 dreams.” You can contribute dreams to this survey at this link.
I had a COVID-19 dream several months back - but not anymore since. It was a non-lucid dream…
I was walking into a Target - and right after walking in, I was approached by two people in full hazmat gear (In the dream I was like, wow, this is weird, and even a little scared by them approaching me). They came over to me right away to take my temperature. One of them put the thermometer in my ear - as I stood off to the side of the store with my mask on and shopping cart in hand. I remember seeing the thermometer reading after and oddly enough - my temperature was a very (very) cool 94 degrees .
Alternatively, you could simply choose to follow the advice of [checks notes] every credible expert writing about the pandemic, all of whom suggest as many people getting vaccinated as possible, as quickly as possible.
cloudragon, your post here is deeply off-topic. This thread deals with people having COVID-19 dreams, whereas your reply, despite the allusion to “vax nightmares,” is actually pointing to a harmful and misleading anti-COVID-vaccine piece and has nothing to do with “COVID-19 dreams.”
The Night Club forum guidelines suggest “Don’t start a topic in the wrong category” and “Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.” Please don’t do that.
Also, please consider whether something you post belongs in the Night Club forum at all. What is the relevance of an argument against vaccination in the midst of a deadly pandemic to a forum dedicated to lucid dreaming and dream/sleep/bardo yoga?
to steer back to the topic, just had my second one last night. First one was only several weeks ago and covid was just a small part of it - I was upset (as I often get) that people on the bus I was taking were not wearing masks. Yesterday it was more central to the theme: a social in-person meeting I was getting drawn away from by online meetings I was required to participate it.
And it’s strange because normally my dreams follow what I do/think about when I’m awake pretty closely. (mostly things I’m curious about or fascinated by - positive ones, not the negatives,and oddly enough not LD-related)
Nope… when I get a lucid one it will be all over the post in all caps The thing about choices/decisions I make in dreams (do I make them if it’s not lucid?) is that they always are in line what I would do on a good day when I’m awake. I mean when I lie/hurt others in my dreams it’s typically a white lie, a small way to hurt that can’t easily be avoided (in this particular case prioritizing family over work would be a nice thing to do - exactly the risk that one can take in a dream without worrying about potential consequences). I’ve also had dream where I took things just a bit further than I would while awake (as in being more daring), while all the “impossible” stuff just happens (as in taking a breath in and floating up as a consequence is not a matter of decision more than taking a normal step on the ground).
After I’m awake I often wish I’d taken it further but can’t say I’m entirely displeased with how things went in a dream.
I use dreams in a similar way in that I look to see if my thinking has changed and if I make better decisions and have better, more compassionate reactions than I do in the daytime. This is big for me because I may remember 3-4 dreams a week, but only one or two lucid dreams every month or two (on a roll?). So if I can pay attention to my thinking in my dreams when I’m not lucid, I can mark the progress of my daytime practices because it’s the unconscious mind showing change without social programming and social norms kicking in.
I’m doing my best to benefit from these (non-lucid ones) as well. Long term they influence my daytime behavior pretty much the same way as being aware of typical cognitive distortions (my context is therapy). It’s like seeing a possibility - I just wish I could practice it more.
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The thing about choices/decisions I make in dreams (do I make them if it’s not lucid?) is that they always are in line what I would do on a good day when I’m awake. I mean when I lie/hurt others in my dreams it’s typically a white lie, a small way to hurt that can’t easily be avoided (in this particular case prioritizing family over work would be a nice thing to do - exactly the risk that one can take in a dream without worrying about potential consequences). I’ve also had dream where I took things just a bit further than I would while awake (as in being more daring), while all the “impossible” stuff just happens (as in taking a breath in and floating up as a consequence is not a matter of decision more than taking a normal step on the ground).