Okay, there's actually a speculated reason for this: while you're dreaming, your body is paralyzed but your brain is not. When you go into fight-or-flight when you're dreaming, your brain starts trying to take sensory input from both your dream self and your real self. As a result, your brain is receiving mixed signals: your arm is moving and it's not moving; you're successfully controlling your arm but you can't control your arm. The result is that it feels like it takes a significant amount of effort to move your arm, and your arm moves slowly.
My own personal experience seems to support this: if I casually run or hit something in a dream, then it happens as expected. If I'm in fight-or-flight mode, then my actions occur in slow motion. However, I got lucky and became lucid during one such moment, and decided to try consciously focus on just moving my dream arm, and I was no longer moving in slow motion.
Exactly so! Also, dreams can also be PTSD "practice". For me, my guns always jam or weirdly fall apart.
"Oh shit! I'm in serious danger!"
Perfectly reliable Colt .45: "Nah. Jammed. Just because."
Same here but for me it's my vape falling apart or my phone glitching out making me panic that I've been hacked.
Damn that’s wild but it makes a lot of sense
My brain has turned that “floaty” feeling of being unable to properly control limbs into creative input for further sections of dreams. It’s interpreted it as the pull of a black hole, and also as somehow the ability to fly
Dreaming is such a poorly understood yet incredibly creative process
It’s always interested me that I don’t experience this.
I used to have dreams all the time that I was being attacked or chased and could not fight back effectively. In some, they were full on night terror territory, where I’d be crying out, and others could not wake me.
Then the weirdest thing happened – for a very brief period I did boxing as fitness (instead of like, actually boxing). And I discovered that I can actually throw a hard punch (you know, when I’m prepared for it and have my hands wrapped and am wearing boxing gloves).
But for some reason that knowledge broke my suspension of disbelief as it relates to dreams. If something attacks me in my dreams, I know that the inability to punch means I’m dreaming, so I semi-lucidly just wake up now. If something seems too shitty to be to true, my brain just pulls the escape hatch and I wake up.
That's amazing! Where did you come across this info? I'd love to read more!
I had a fascination with dreams, especially lucid dreaming, several years ago. I don't have a specific article about it anymore, just some info I came across a while back.
What does it mean when you can punch hard BC I can
For me it's running. Any time I need to run I feel like I'm trying to sprint though a pool of molasses.
I get this too, also when I try to talk and it feels like my mouth is full of cotton wool.
I can never scream or dial 911…so frustrating.
Be glad you can't, and that you don't have the super power of moving in your sleep to a large degree.
I can punch full speed in my dreams, and then hit things in the waking world. Luckily, I've also got some kind of "radar" that excludes people that sleep with me on a regular basis, and animals that do the same. I've never punched a dog or cat, nor my chicken when we fall asleep together for a nap.
Never punched a partner unless they tried to grab me when that's going on.
It's not a fun thing. I also don't talk about it much outside of support groups because some ninny usually has to offer advice like I never thought to look into ways of fixing it. Don't be that ninny, if you're thinking of it.
I have broken some shit over the years, including wall paneling, a headboard, multiple lamps, a window, plus stuff that falls off of headboards and shelves close enough to get shaken by the impact.
Ain't PTSD fun?
my chicken when we fall asleep together for a nap
Let's begin with this... go on..
Oh, she's a little cutie pie. Pad trained (mostly) and she loves cuddles when she's sleepy.
She'll hop up on the bed, where her pad is laid out, then preen a little. Then she comes over to me and nestles in to my side, wiggling her little butt, then she'll take a nap. That's if I'm already asleep. My wife has watched it happen a goodly number of times lol
Sometimes, she'll see and hear me yawning and start trilling and do the same little routine, but she'll also peck lightly at my arm or whatever to get me into position. When she was younger, she'd want my arm over her; not touching, but over.
When I'm not showing signs of being sleepy, she will.
She paces back and forth a little, fluffing up and trilling until I pay her attention. Then she'll waggle her tail and bok at me until I settle into position so that she can either lay up against my side, or against my arm. Then she'll purr a bit. If I don't lay my head down, she'll peck at my arm until I do. But once my head's down, she settles in and drops off. Since my old ass can usually nap at any time, I tend to drowse a little even when I'm not tired, just because it's easier than doing stuff that might wake her up.
This damn bird lol. Between her and the rooster, who is not allowed on the bed when he's inside the house, there's always something going on.
Lmao! I'm writing this, and she's in the living room with my kid. I hear a loud pweep! that is a chicken sneeze, followed by my kid going "awwwwwuuughh! She sneezed in my mouth!" Well, if you didn't keep trying to kiss her, your face wouldn't get hit.
I can't say I'd recommend chickens as pets across the board; they're messy and more expensive than you'd think, and they take a good bit of work. But mine are worth it. If you'd told me at this time in 2023 that by this time in 2025, I'd allow a chicken in my house at all, I'd have told you you were crazy. But a few months later, the hen that was actually a rooster had come along, and then the actual hen, and here we are, creeping up on two years of chickening, and happy with it.
Friend of mine had to divorce her husband when he came home from Iraq. Violent as hell in his sleep, doesn't remember a thing. And then there were all the other PTSD things.
Seems a jihadi ambushed him with a machete. Next thing he remembered was his superior officer, and a few other dudes, pulling him off the mutilated corpse. Took some doing to identify the remains, as in, not sure of the nationality, or gender.
I've had "PTSD light", no use telling the stories involving robbers and bears, but I shudder to think what the real thing is like.
What do you do? Fuck I know. It does fade over the years. Many, many years.
Being real, even "light" PTSD is no joke. Compared to some combat PTSD survivors I've known, my version is a cake walk. Like, support group meetings can get real because folks can trigger each other, and the vets, they can sometimes totally dissociate from the world around them because the trauma is just that deeply ingrained and suffused into their system. But that doesn't mean your trimmed traumas amd symptoms aren't absolute hell too. A different area of hell, yeah, but still
Me, it took years of group therapy, 1 on 1 therapy, and support groups to get to the point where I was stable enough to return to life on a realistic level. Time helps for sure, but I'd not be here without the external support to get that time.
When much younger, I read the Odd Thomas series. In the first or maybe second book of the series, the titular protagonist encounters some coyotes. The protagonist suggests, when being hunted by them, the survival strategy of making loud, sudden and bold movements and sounds to startle the coyotes into fleeing.
I can't say whether this would be effective or not, but apparently I took it to heart at the time. Very soon thereafter I was having a nightmare about being chased by coyotes through my dad's backyard (at the time probably the wildest place I'd been). I took the book's advice and threw myself forward, yelling. Unfortunately, that was apparently the moment my brain released me from my dream, resulting in me thrusting myself in my then-girlfriend's then-sleeping face, yelling.
For what it's worth, I now would recommend avoiding that approach unless actually imperiled in waking hours.
edit: Not to diminish the impact of PTSD. My hope was that the ideally humorous story would raise your spirits. Apologies if it did otherwise. However, I laughed at myself several times while typing the above. Hopefully you enjoyed the anecdote, too.
Have you tried actually following random strangers with no identifiable credentials unsolicited advice on your health and well-being? Like have you really tried?
Personally, I think you can get rid of this behavior by punching yourself in your dreams as hard as you can. I don't see anyway that this could harm you and it will instantly solve your problems because I'm a super genius and you should listen to me.
Don't be that ninny
I'll do what I want! Lol cheers, PTSD fucking blows. I'm not violent but I always wake up in a panic, no matter what the situation is. Jolt up with a sharp breath every morning and then sit there doing breathing exercises for 20 minutes
I feel you :)
I've had this. I wonder if it's a dream reaction to the way our conscious muscular control turns off in our sleep. Otherwise we might just punch shit full force while dreaming.
You have it exactly right.
I do know a way around this but you have to be at least mildly aware you are in a dream. I once punched a cement wall in a lucid dream expecting it to crumble to pieces. It did not, because I was expecting a reaction from the environment to the forces I was exerting on it. But there is no environment, and thus no reaction. The wall you arm everything is just the dream. The trick is to visualize the wall exploding when you punch it and then it happens. Or to take it a step further realize that you only need to visualize the wall exploding and it will.
There is no spoon.
You’re supposed to be using your powers
I've never had this issue. I beat the shit outta people in my dreams all the time lol.
Now I do have this one reoccurring dream where I'm peddling s bicycle and I can't stop not matter how hard a try.... Not a fan of that one.
Wow, that would have changed quite a few dreams for me!
I also had some recurring stuff, the theme of 'getting away' from something, away from a house, going on vacay or.. evading dark followers. And my fav: teeth falling out or disintegrating teeth, verrry cool stressdream 😩.
I had a partner who dreamt that unsavory followers were climbing towards them with the intention of stabbing them, and everyone was holding on to an "Atomium" style one layer lattice , which you could hardly, barely hold on to. Nature 😅🤣
Flying also felt kind of slowmo to me in a lot of dreams, like I had to balance on the air or I would lose lift?
Did you have anything else recurring??
Wild! I would love to know what it feels like.
This one is on my phone because I used to fight Muay Thai and sent it to my best friend who fought out of the same gym and we had a good laugh about it.
I don't need to punch hard in my dreams if I dream that I have a BFG.
Why can I fly in my dreams but it takes so much damn effort?!?
Try using a kickboard. Like from learning to swim.
Just gotta learn to glide bro, you're trying too hard. Hit a good updraft and off you go
60% of the time, it works every time
I actually had a nightmare recently where i got jumpscared enough to punch in the dream, woke up because of that, and reflexively continued my punch and hit the wall
What a wack dream that was
You can definitely kick hard in dreams as I found out by kicking the wall real hard in my sleep.
One time I woke up slamming the mattress with my fist, scaring my then-boyfriend now-husband half to death.
I have night terrors occasionally.
The other night I was dreaming of stomping on someone, and I woke up just smacking the wall with my foot. Had a limp for the day lol... Happens occasionally.
I can’t either. But at some point I stopped punching in dreams and started tearing things in half like they’re made of paper. No gore involved.
Huh, this made realise I don't think I've ever dreamed about punching something. And I've had many decades of quite vivid and varied dreams.
Because your arms are shite
Dream fight. See you in two hours.
Cash me outside!
Bcs you arent lucid dreaming.
But nothing is stopping you to falcon-punch that Vaporeon you keep dreaming about. Just do it.
Why are you dreaming about Vaporeon, specifically 🤨
I don't know how to lucid dream but I fight in my dreams without any issues.
Skill issue. I once one-punched a tsunami
Because then there would be nothing to be anxious about.
