I don't, I have stress dreams A LOT, but I haven't had a nightmare in a long, long time. My little sister has nightmares a lot, though. Which kinda makes me worry because she's not 7 and people typically outgrow having nightmares like, every night. But she's told me about this re-occurring one where she's being hunted down by some of my brothers friends before and this morning she sent me these texts talking about how she's legit scared and wants to go to a church and get prayed over.

This is her dream, if anyone is interested, I'm just copying her text here.

It's always about me getting this little gremlin looking plush doll and it can talk and all that stuff and not like ted but kinda like big hero 6 like automatic and me taking him to this wedding and dressing it to look like a real person and I got caught so me and it run back to the house and I put it in my room to hide it dad is like questioning me and the cops are outside so I finally give in and go get him and we go in my room and it's like pitch black so dad says "it behind the pillow" so I walk in there and I'm like "hey where are you!" Like trying to act like nothing's wrong and finally I lift up the pillow and I grab it and it was asleep so it like jumps which scares me and I just and we land on the ground and I'm "like wanna go play?" And in every dream it says "yeah sure!" In a regular voice but in the middle of saying sure it goes to like a automatic voice and says "discomfort" and I'm usually just like "what?" And then dad takes him and they go to the police and it's over but this time I like looked in it pupil or whatever and I see me and this girl with blood running out of her eyes behind me, getting closer to me. So I scream and throw the doll and das goes and gets the doll and it has blood running out of its eyes too and he's like "wtf" but I run out and look to the right of the room and the girl is like right there with the bloody eyes and she's like "hi my name is" but I run away so I go have to hear it so I run to the living room and Corbin is in there and he's like "is everything okay" and then I look up to him and blood started running out of his eyes too so I just fell to the ground and was like screaming and hitting the ground But I'm every dream I have of the gremlin doll thing it always says "ok su- discomfort" and now that I'm thinking about it I keep thinking that it was like getting closer to me in every dream

That certainly is scary.

I haven't been able to dream since I was 12, that is a nightmare.

I didn't have a reoccurring nightmare, per say, but it was a terrible dream. My dad died when I was 17 and I've always had this terrible guilt over it, like I always felt so bad that he was so full of life and it just ended so suddenly. I don't really want to go into too much detail of the dream because I don't want to risk getting upset over it...but he would be in the dream and my guilt would just manifest through this dream and it would be so agonizing for me. I would wake up feeling absolutely terrible. Nothing in particular would trigger it, that I could notice anyway.

One night it was so bad I woke up crying and woke my boyfriend up. The next day he asked me what had happened and I finally put the dream into words. It was upsetting, and I wouldn't say it was a relief to talk about it, but to this day I haven't had that dream since. I hope I never do. Remembering my dad through happy memories is so much of a better way to remember him by.

So if you have a reoccurring nightmare, maybe all you need to do is talk about it to someone you trust and won't judge you. Just venting a little bit can make it so much better. There are some "tribute" pets on here actually that users have created as a manifestation of their nightmares and that has helped them recover.

Edit: Last night I had a dream about my dad and I think writing this post triggered it. It was still very sad, the dream was painful and I cried in it, but it wasn't over feeling guilty, it was looking at pictures of him throughout his life and going down memory lane. I miss him so much.

I used to get really bad nightmares as a kid. Normally I would just crawl into my parents bed and try to fall back asleep but one time it was so bad that I couldn't stop crying. My dad grabbed some ice cream and we sat in the kitchen eating as we talked through it. I had severally reoccurring nightmares and this one happened to be about a clown chasing me through the woods. My dad said because the dream always ended the same (with the clown stabbing me) that I should come up with a better ending, so we spent a long time creating a new storyline for the dream. I forget exactly what it was but I remember laughing a lot as my dad and I practiced fight moves at 3am. Eventually I went back to sleep and sure enough I started to have the same dream. This time however I remember thinking about the fight moves and just when I was about to fight back my dad came tearing through the woods and attacked the clown for me before carrying me out of the woods. I remember waking up feeling so relieved and I never had that particular dream again.

I still had nightmares but I was able to get through the reoccurring dreams or the particularly scary ones by creating a new ending/story and playing them out before I went back to sleep.

Not sure how helpful that is but I definitely think just talking it out and knowing someone was there for me was really comforting.

unfortunately yes ; - ; i have ridiculously vivid dreams in general (and remember them clearly) so my nightmares are also insane sometimes i actually wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall asleep again because i don't want to go back to the nightmare ugh also worth mentioning that i lucid dream often and sometimes the lucid dreams kinda turn into lucid nightmares

as far as the recurring ones go though, they tend to revolve around bad things that happened to me and come in cycles (don't feel super comfortable going into details but) so for instance, something awful will happen and i'll have nightmares about it for anywhere from a month to a year afterwards sometimes it stops and starts again at random too which is bloody annoying

and aside from those i have nightmares about missing trains/buses/planes/appointments/etc. so often by now that like, half the time it happens i realize it's a dream and wake myself up lmao

Not really a nightmare but I often dreamt about an old and dusty attic with a large standing mirror. Nothing bad actually happened, I just felt uneasy there. Talked with about it and strangely she dreamt of the very same place. Since then we have planned that, should either of us be there again, that we are going to leave a message for the other one in the dust on the mirror but until this day none of us has dreamt of the attic again. XD

Omg yes, this is so creepy. Really. :o I mean... we even knew the very same details, about the table and so many other things. So no one can tell me that there isn't something like "shared brain". :o

I would've loved to send you a message there, though. Some in-joke probably. To confuse anyone who trapped us there.

On topic. I had this special re-occuring nightmare for YEARS. I often had it more than once per night. I felt so sick and tired then. Even couldn't get this smell out of my mind for days. Things have changed since then... it suddenly stopped when it had a different "ending" one night. Since that day I've never dreamed this again. But until today the basement in our house scares me a lot. :x

One that I can remember is walking home at night with my mother, instead of a moon there were two sinister eyes leering at me the whole way. The worst part is I transitioned from the nightmare to being awake at home seamlessly. I don't know if it was a nightmare or one of my first hallucinations. This was when I was maybe under five.

omg the creepiest part of that dream to be is definitely "discomfort" for some reason...

I don't have recurring nightmares usually, just a lot of recurring places (buildings, specific forests, etc., which can show up in nightmares). I used to have nightmares so bad they would startle me awake every night and then I stopped sleeping when it was dark out because I wouldn't get them during the day. It sucked big time lmao.

Nightmares are extremely rare for me and I only remember one time I was actually startled by a dream. Considering how strange my dreams can be, I'm sure to someone else some of them could be perceived as nightmares.

On the other hand, while I don't have nightmares I see vivid hallucinations at night which can freak me out a bit if I'm caught off guard by them.

I wish I could help you out here. I'm certainly familiar with nightmares, but in my case these are clearly linked to PTSD. I don't know your sister's mental health background, but if she has other symptoms of PTSD or another mental illness I think that's definitely worth checking out. Most of the time things can be done about it (I'm just quite an unlucky loser in this department tbh)

Also, if she's into spiritual stuff: Have her make or buy a dreamcatcher. Sounds dumb but I've heard about it really working for people who are into that kind of things and/or sensitive to it. Might be a placebo effect kind of thing, but if it works it works, right?

When I was younger, I'd have recurring dreams about having to walk through abandoned dark buildings alone by myself which would stress me out and scare me. Nowadays it's more about wandering through dark empty schools and things chasing me. Usually the schools are the schools I actually went to growing up. Needless to say, I'm not keen on dark, empty buildings!

I have frequent, reoccurring dreams about falling elevators - it got to the point late last year where every time I saw an elevator in my dream, I knew it would fall. I'm not sure that your little sister would be able to do this, but I personally go so fed up with my brain serving up elevators to terrify me that I got a little... meta. I yelled at the dream to cut it out, and surprisingly, that worked. The elevator came to a stop (a rough one, but I'll take it), and I very nearly stopped having falling elevator dreams. (I still have one now or then, but they aren't waking me up like they used to.) Again... I don't know if your little sister can manage that, but being semi-aware in your dreams does help you have control over them if you're having a rough time with a particular nightmare ; v;

The other reoccurring bad dream I have, I only have every few years - I'm running from something, I never know what, and I run into a cliff that's too tall and too sheer to climb, but right in front of me, there's a set of locked double doors buried up to the doorknobs in the dirt. The key is hanging on the wall on a little ribbon that's stiff with age and exposure to the elements. As quick as I can, I dig the doors free, unlock them, and scoop the dirt back into the hole before stepping inside; the doors close, leaving me in darkness, and I know I won't be able to get back out. I'm trapped with whatever's behind the door. Forever.

What's behind the door is different each time. Last time I had it, it was full of people who had stitched themselves together from spare parts. I was glad to wake up :v

The only nightmares I have nowadays are being late to work. One of my pet peeves, I guess, but they still jolt me awake.

Well over half of my dreams are nightmares. Getting "prayed over" isn't going to help her, she needs therapy (actual, non-religious, therapy). Reoccurring ones of mine are of being in the passenger side of a car, the driver gets out, the car starts moving, and I have to drive it (I don't drive irl because of anxiety/panic problems). Another one is swallowing living fish whole.