JAN 5, 2026
Was having a silly dream about 2 IRL friends attempting to "kidnap" me and my husband, along with a busfull of other people. in the dream I wasn't taking it too seriously bc they're our friends. I was being a little fucker and trying to escape in super obvious ways, but kept getting caught.
And then an early alarm woke me up! I was just awake enough to groggily turn it off, but went right back to sleep.
A sliver of reality must have snuck in because i picked the dream right where it left off, but it was a lot darker. They took my husband away and I didn't see him for a while, and it started to sink in that maybe they were going to do something bad to him, or separate us to punish me. at this point i was aware it was a dream, and kept trying to wake up because I didn't want my brain exploring the darker possibilities. But i couldn't wake up! my brain just kept re-starting the scenario at slightly different points, but all with the same grim tone and underlying dread. Eventually I was able to force myself awake, but only after about 10 or so attempts.
NOTES
MENTAL STATE: Stressed. It's my first day back at work after a break!
HEALTH: in good health
SUBSTANCES: N/A
ADDITIONAL DREAM DETAILS: My follow-up dream was a nice dream about hiking with my husband :)
APR 30, 2025
Had a one-two punch where I had an in-dream experience, and an out of dream experience.
IN-DREAM EXPERIENCE: I was responsible for driving some family around on a trip, but found myself completely stiff and unable to move. Like when you're trying to run in a dream and can't, but on sterroids.
OUT OF DREAM EXPERIENCE: Heard distinct voices in our apartment; we often hear people outside very clearly just because of the accoustics, so this in itsself is not unusual. But I hallucinated them talking directly to me about needing to pay rent.
NOTES
MENTAL STATE: slept really poorly. woke up at 5 am, struggled to get back to sleep for 3 hours before this experience.
HEALTH: in good health
SUBSTANCES: N/A
ADDITIONAL DREAM DETAILS: accompanied by standard social anxiety dreams, but fairly comedic and not scary in tone. google maps became a giant open world top-down RPG, but impossible to use practically. that was funny!
JAN 11, 2025
Awoke around 5 AM to the sound of jingling bells and creaking as something moved around in our place. Could hear my husband breathing next to me, so knew definitively it wasn't him. Was completely paralyzed and unable to get up to investigate the sounds.
I wasn't terrified, however, as the sounds were familiar: it's like my brain just ripped existing sound effects from my memory, like some kind of library. The sounds I was hearing were the jingle bells my parents put on their front door during the winter holidays, and my parents' dog's jingling dog tags. I think I heard my dad's voice at some point. It was still freaky, just in a "I know this can't be happening way", since I knew they were both thousands of miles away and not in our apartment.
NOTES
MENTAL STATE: Stressed. This was our first night in a long-term location after driving for 6 days straight, dodging various natural disasters.
HEALTH: Getting over a head cold. Still suffering some residiual discomfort from wisdom teeth removal 5 weeks ago.
SUBSTANCES: Took an extremely expired 10mg edible at 7pm the day before.
ADDITIONAL DREAM DETAILS: This incident was followed by a 3-hour bout of insomnia, then several incredibly vivid and upsetting stress dreams.