![I logged my nightmares for a year [OC] [TW]](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/hl8dz4tevrje1-735x1024.png "I logged my nightmares for a year [OC] [TW]")
I've had troubles sleeping for a few years now, and even with therapy there's no easy fix. I started logging in late 2023 and I'm not really consistent, but so far I wrote over 10000 words in a word document. I love data visualization and I figured it might be a way to exorcise some bad thoughts. I actually did go a couple days without nightmares after making this. It's obviously not detailed but it's not for a research paper, just for me. In the future I might start logging more metadata and some data about my personal health to see how things correlate
Posted by moodybiatch
32 Comments
**Data:** my own dream diary, but I’m obviously not gonna share it here
**Methods:** Canva, Google Spreadsheets and manual annotation
This is great infography I hope you are better with those nightmares
I recommande you to read Matthew Walker ‘why we sleep’ chapter about them. Their purpose is to forget traumatic experience by reliving them in your head, but a nightmare is when it’s too much for you and you wake up.
I hope you feel better and get some better rest this year. Super pretty visualization.
gore as in “look here is a dead kitten that has been run over by a 40 wheeler” or gore as in “the persons chest is open, while his heart is still beating”
Wow that’s a lot of nightmares, I rarely dream at all I wonder how that must feel.
If you want to reduce the intensity and frequency of your nightmares, Image Reheral Therapy (IRT) is an effeciant method with a ton of clinical support.
Heck, I had like 1 or 2 nightmares in the last 5 years
Lack of quality sleep = user name checks out. Sorry u have to deal with that.
It’s fascinating you remembered what it was about.
Which category did you put the “school presentation in my underwear” dreams in?
Wow! My last nightmare was like 4 years ago. I very rarely have them—maybe a handful since adulthood. I usually just lucid dream out of them when I realize it is a dream. I’ve never woke up out of fear though.
Cool concept. The presentation is a bit redundant and confusing.
Having nightmares for a 3rd of your nights is a little concerning.
If one dreams about a bear before one encounters a bear, one is less likely to simply panic, lose their mind, and suffer harm from the bear. The simulation of a dream allows one to practice hypothetical situations and build implicit reactions from them without any real world risk. This leads to a sense of having done something about the topic — that you are in some sense at least prepared for it. I think it’s a mechanism for reducing stress (even when dreaming about stressful things) and evolved in a time when you didn’t witness anything which wasn’t really a possibility for you. For better or worse, we don’t live in that time anymore and in content on the internet can screw up this mechanism.
If you’re having nightmares for 1/3 of your nights, you should probably stop doing things like browsing thegrittypast. Filling your brain with that kind of content is going to prime it to prepare for those kinds of situations.
Super interesting and concerning
Im surprised “work” aint there
Well this is awful. I don’t think I’ve had 135 nightmares in my life to date and I’m 33.
Geese, this is dark, hahaha. I hope you feel better soon. I have to say, this is very original self-recorded data.
Ever try doses of THC or CBD? Usually will make you sleep like a baby and it subdues the dream-making chemical in the brain so dreams are less frequent and less vivid.
what’s a transformation nightmare? I’m guessing not the mathematical kind?
Dreams are interesting. I’m almost never in my own dreams — whenever I do remember my dreams, they’re almost always about other people and it’s like I’m simply a floating camera.
What an interesting subject, loved to read the plots. Extending my sympathy to you. I had a similar situation when I was a kid, except less gore. A lot of it was lucid dreaming and inception level dreaming where I actually got tricked into thinking I woke up from the nightmare. For me, it gradually reduced from like 5 years old to 13 and now as an adult it happens once a year or less. I don’t remember my dreams much anymore and I haven’t had any more lucid dreams in a decade or more.
I have no idea why I had nightmares almost every day as a young kid and I don’t know how they magically disappeared. I’m guessing the nightmares were tied to trauma, but its strange how it just went away with time.
I can’t know your situation, but I wanted to share mine to let you know that it can get better.
Thanks for sharing! I’d really like to do something like this for myself.
i track my dreams but hadn’t thought to put them into this kind of format. interesting breakdown. thank you for sharing and i hope you have fewer nightmares this year
This makes me curious if there’s any correlation between the movies and TV shows you watch or books you read. Do horror and thriller genres cause more nightmares than say comedies? Very interesting data.
Smoking weed for me gets rid of all dreams and nightmares. Also drinking apple juice before bed causes me very vivid dreams.
Love the presentation, sorry for the sleep trouble. Cannabis helps my insomnia and tends to suppress my dreams.
It’s nice you have dreams I think I had 4 dreams in the last 5 years and probably less than 10 in a decade
What viz tool is this, looks awesome
This is really interesting! (Also sad)
I think it’s good you put them down like this, I guess it reduces their power on you when you reduce them to a data point.
I would imagine if you dream this much and this frequently though it would likely affect your daily life. How do you mitigate the effects the dreams have on practical things e.g. going out in public?
How many “all my teeth are loose and about to fall out” dreams though?
Neat. I find dreams fascinating. Lately all of my nightmares have been of the “I can’t read this note” or “I can’t find the thing in this pile of things” sort. Which have been very upsetting but at least they aren’t traumatizing in the way I presume assault and violent dreams would be. I hope you find some peace.
As someone who has consistent bad sleep and slightly less consistent nightmares I really appreciate this. I think i might try the same. Thanks for the inspiration!
I have nightmares most nights and my psychiatrist said that in adults, it is 100% connected to PTSD. A medication called Prazosin has off-label use to treat nightmares if interested.