Is Pain in a Dream Real?

[kerrisan]

I just woke up not too long ago and I dreamed while I slept. In my dream my left knee was in a brace like it was back when I was 16 (I had ACL surgery) and it HURT. I was walking around with it on and everything.

Thing is, in that dream, I felt every stinkin' ounce of that pain. It was like the day after my surgery all over again. I feel fine now that I'm awake (knee is just a tad bit on the sore side, but nothing like in the dream - probably due to the cold and rain). Odd.

I'm just wondering if anybody else has felt real physical pain in their dreams, and if so, if they felt it when they woke up.

I also wonder if I only felt this pain in my dream because it's pain that I've felt before. Was the dream a sign that I should be careful on my knee for the next couple of days because of the weather change (doc said if I messed it up again they'd have to cut into my good knee and then I'd have two bad knees)? I know pain is literally all in my head (sensors and signals and all that), but is it possible to sleepwalk and actually be inflicting the pain/damage you feel in your dream on yourself?

Dreams intrigue me, honestly. If I weren't going into elementary education I think I'd want to study dreams.

[Knightmare]

I've had many dreams where the pain felt real.
In one of my dreams, I was shot in the stomach by automatic rifle fire. (Don't ask. I don't remember anything else from that dream.) I remember my body jerking as the bullets penetrated.
When I woke up, my stomach was on fire. Felt like someone.. well, shot me!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I've felt real physical pain in dreams before, and also "dream" pain that disappeared when I woke up. The latter is more rare for me. Either way, I'd say they are both "real"...something's triggering you to experience pain. It still hurts.

[Trayol]

I remember almost drowning in my dream once. In another dream I was bitten by some large animal. I experienced the pain for a few minutes after I woke up.

My psychology teacher told me before that in dreams, we can only experience pain if we had felt that type of pain before. So Knightmare, who's been shooting at you?

[gunsage]

Fortunately, most of my dreams almost immediately fade when I wake up. Yeah, I know what you mean by "feeling" the dream. The following is a list of things that have happened to me while dreaming that I "felt" that I can remember, anyway:

- Long fall into impalement. You know, Mortal Kombat style.
- Crushed by falling cars. Yeah...I don't know.
- Drowning...but somehow being able to survive, painfully, weighted in the water.
- Attacked by a giant praying mantis.
- Falling...falling...and still falling...

Yeah, needless to say, I'm afraid of heights. The worst part is in falling dreams, I feel like my legs have that cold, tingling feeling like I'm high up and carelessly falling. Terrible stuff.

[Gawdzillers]

Freddy Kreuger did it.
Also, he did WTC.

:)

[Misanthropical]

I had a dream the other night that a nurse was putting a large needle into one of my kidneys, since I was suppose to have some sort of surgery, in the dream.

I woke up with that kidney hurting all day, but the pain went away by the next night.

[LewisLegion]

Yes, dream pain is real, and can be caused by several different things. Just like any other experience gathered by our senses (sight, smell, taste, sound) the sense of touch and self (including pain) can be used to process a memory or symbolize something.

Sometimes our body will use pain in a localized area to tell us something is wrong. I knew one lady who dreamed of pain in her knee though upon waking she had no pain. Shortly after, she did develop real pain as the benign cyst in her joint grew enough to cause it...her body was aware of it before she was and trying to process what was happening.

Also, of course, pain could be a real sensation being translated into a dream state...if you're sleeping awkwardly and putting a limb to sleep, or causing pressure pain on a part of your body, you will start dreaming of pain there as the signals seep through into your unconscious.

[LewisLegion]

And Trayal, your psychology teacher is wrong, alas. :) You do not have to have experienced a type of pain before to experience it. Your brain has an extremely good imagination and a intricate knowledge of its own nervous system. Instinctively, it knows how it reacts in the case of burns, violent invasions, dismemberment. I had a dream once in which I was disembowled, and everything from the pain sensations to the feeling of my intestines literally falling out felt completely real.

Needless to say, I've never been disemboweled before ;)

[Kara]

I can't really recall feeling any intense pain in a dream, although when I was 5 I dreamed I was falling and falling and woke up on the floor. My sis and I had bunk beds at the time and I fell out of the top bunk. I have small scars over my eye and on the side of my nose (not visible, thankfully. The one over my eye is concealed by my eyebrow, and the one on the side of my nose is at the base so I have to push my nostril to the side to see it).

[Knightmare]

So Knightmare, who's been shooting at you?


I can't say. Those years are classified. You need Ultra Super Top Security Clearance to even think about the codeword to access the key to open the lock in the secret safe which is housed in the Impregnable Bunker.

But I can talk about the knife fight in Morocco.

[Rahmota]

In a dream perception is reality and reality is perception. So its kinda hard to say. Like Lewis said dreams are the subconscious trying to get the attention of the conscious mind (or somethign like that according to my psych teacher) and doesnt exactly need to be somethign your body has already experienced. I've had dreams quite a few interesting dreams that felt really real to the point that waking up in the middle of one leads to a bit of disorientation.

Sometimes I feel like kenny in my dreams:
I've been knifed,
shot with a rifle,
shot with a shotgun,
shot with a laser pistol,
shot by a machine gun,
shot by a flichette gun,
shot by the death star,
Had a car dropped on me,
been beheaded by an immortal,
been beheaded by darth vader,
been choked by darth vader,
been at ground zero during an atomic explosion,
had a tree dropped on me,
had a semi crush me into a wall,
had a spaceship land on me,
had a giantess crush me,
had a very big fall off a short building (high gravity world apparently)

Then theres thouse that had real sensations but didnt end in pain/death.
been a female,
been a centaur,
been a toon,
been an astronaut on the moon.
stuff like that.

So in a dream your body is at the mercy of your mind and imagination and the better your imagination is the more real your dreams can be. So when you dream you are actually experienceing another form of reality just inside your own body/mind. At least the way it seems to me and what I learned in psych class.

[Broomjockey]

I think the pain during the dream is as real as anything else, since a dream is a purely mental creation. Of course, there's no physiological component, so it fades on waking. If it doesn't fade, then likely something happened while you were asleep. You're unlikely to start sleepwalking spontaneously at your age, unless there's serious issues starting, but tossing and turning? That can do it, especially to a knee. Twist a bit, tuck a knee under your leg, flop over and hyper-extend it, when it's already your bad knee, and BAM lingering pain.

I have hit bottom in a falling dream, and lemme tell you, that stuff HURTS. Woke up instantly and felt like every joint had a firecracker set off in it. Both times.

[Amethyst Hunter]

I've dreamed of having hunger pains, thirst that needs slaking, urges to urinate...pain-dreams are no different. The mind is a funky, funky thing.

[blas]

I've felt both pain and pleasure (not going into that one, though) in dreams. It's very possible to feel all types of feelings in dreams and wake up thinking "WTFBBQ?"

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Sometimes I have dreams where I really really have to pee, and just can't let it out for some reason.

I think it's for the best.

[crazylegs]

The pain itself is real, as it is merely neurones firing in the correct sequence that creates pain in your dream (the same as any other dream sensation) however there is no physical damage (which is what pain alerts us to). Unless o course you do something silly like below.

When I was kid had a cabin bed, with wooden beams both sides to stop me from falling out. I had a dream I was a goalkeeper in football and made a fantastic dive to stop a goal and swung my arm down to stop the ball, unfortunately I actually *was* swinging my arm in my sleep with quite a force and the pain that awoke me when I clobbered the wooden beam (I was also sat bolt upright) was substantial.

[CaroPhoenix]

Sometimes I have dreams where I really really have to pee, and just can't let it out for some reason.

I think it's for the best.

I get those too. When the sensation is bad enough, I wake up and realize it's my body telling me to go potty!

[Jester]

My psychology teacher told me before that in dreams, we can only experience pain if we had felt that type of pain before.

Your teacher was wrong. I speak from personal experience.

In a dream, I once fell off a very high cliff. Despite what a lot of people say about you not being able to die in your dreams, I hit the bottom hard, and died. Painfully. I assure you I have never falled off a high cliff and hit the ground to die painfully.

Closest I've come to that is jumping off a 25 foot high cliff. Into water.

In a dream perception is reality and reality is perception.

No doubt. Some of my dreams get scary real sometimes, and I don't always know what is and what isn't real. Sometimes for months. Seriously.

Two of the notable ones: I recently had a dream where my female friend D-Rod was actually my girlfriend (never happened), and we were living together (never happened) and we were basically at each other's throats (almost never happened). It was very very strange, but in the dream, it was absolutely real and perfectly believable.

One that I had repeatedly for a long time was about me going back, as an adult, to high school to finish.

In my life I only ever failed two classes (one in junior high, one in high school), and I graduated high school in the normal four years, with no summer school or anything, and attended Arizona State University for several years. So I have no idea why I would dream that I went back to high school. For those into details, in the dream it was actually my third and final high school. Probably because that one was my favorite, but who knows?

...shot by the death star...

Talk about overkill!!!! :lol:

[Kusanagi]

The body cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined, AKA, being in tune with a dream.

It happens with me once in a while - I experience lucid dreaming, and when you lose control of a dream it frikin hurts.

[Rahmota]

Jester: heheh Yeah. But then if you're goign to kill overkilll! I'm not real sure about the rest of that dream the details are a bit fuzzy.

[Princess-Snake]

I remember having this dream where I'm in some sort of Mortal Kombat fight to the death. There was pain and there was a lot of it. My chest felt so unbearable when my opponent dug his claws inside me. I woke up after he threw me off a cliff. During my stay in the hospital, I would constantly have these dreams where I knew I was dreaming and that I really wasn't at home but in my hospital room with all the jungle animals from the wallpaper looking at me. I would try to wake up but would end up in another dream. One night, I fell asleep listening to my iPod. In my dream, I knew I was dreaming and was trying to wake up. In the next scene, I'm in my hospital room, but I keep hearing this music playing even though I wasn't wearing any headphones. I remembered the iPod and knew I was still dreaming. A few minutes later, I woke up for real with the headphones in my ears and a tray of some nasty looking fishsticks on the table in front of me. I ate ketchup for dinner that night along with a brownie for desert. The only edible looking things on my tray. Later that night, I dreamed that someone was throwing fish at me. The pain I received from the fish slapping my face felt real and painful. And somewhere in the background Achy Breaky Heart was playing followed by Little Bitty, My Hump, and Devil Went Down to Georgia. I then remembered that I was listening to my iPod again and figured that I was dreaming. Why do I get the bizarre dreams?

[XCashier]

Sometimes our body will use pain in a localized area to tell us something is wrong. I knew one lady who dreamed of pain in her knee though upon waking she had no pain. Shortly after, she did develop real pain as the benign cyst in her joint grew enough to cause it...her body was aware of it before she was and trying to process what was happening.
From http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/p.htm
Pain

To dream that you are in pain, signifies that you are being too hard on yourself with regards to a situation that was out of your control. It may also be a true reflection of real pain that exists somewhere in your body. Dreams can reveal and warn about health problems.

To dream that you are inflicting pain to yourself, indicates that you are experiencing some overwhelming turmoil or problems in your waking life. You are trying to disconnect yourself from your reality by concentrating on the pain that you inflicted to yourself.