Sed's Dreams

Sedulous

Sedulous

Active member
When I have anxiety or stress it often manifests itself in the form of dreams. Over the years, I have had some wild, over-the-top, bizarre and often apocalyptic dreams.

Here is a list of things that I have dreamt about, on multiple occasions, in vivid detail:

Tornadoes
Tsunamis
Volcanic eruptions
Large meteor impacts
Aliens from space attacking earth
Nuclear bombs detonating
Missile attacks
A hellscape version of earth full of demon creatures
Giant spiders
Sudden tigers in my house
Learning someone close to me has died


A.I. Takeover
Last night I dreamt that A.I had begun invading and shutting down our technology. News outlets were reporting the world's imminent collapse within days. People were acting on behalf of A.I and attempting to imprison other people. I escaped from one such prison and was attempting to get my family somewhere that might be safe. I went to a gas station to fill up my vehicle and my extra gas container and was shocked the gas station still ran and accepted my credit card. I then went home was trying to figure out if we should stay put or try to drive somewhere remote. I woke up as I was loading supplies into my car.

Often it's the feelings I have in the dreams that make the experience the most real. Experiencing the feeling of knowing the world is ending and you're actually preparing to try and keep yourself and your family alive for as long as possible, is quite awful.

Feel free to share your dreams here and I'll post mine as they occur.
 
Sedulous said:
When I have anxiety or stress it often manifests itself in the form of dreams. Over the years, I have had some wild, over-the-top, bizarre and often apocalyptic dreams.

Here is a list of things that I have dreamt about, on multiple occasions, in vivid detail:

Tornadoes
Tsunamis
Volcanic eruptions
Large meteor impacts
Aliens from space attacking earth
Nuclear bombs detonating
Missile attacks
A hellscape version of earth full of demon creatures
Giant spiders
Sudden tigers in my house
Learning someone close to me has died


A.I. Takeover
Last night I dreamt that A.I had begun invading and shutting down our technology. News outlets were reporting the world's imminent collapse within days. People were acting on behalf of A.I and attempting to imprison other people. I escaped from one such prison and was attempting to get my family somewhere that might be safe. I went to a gas station to fill up my vehicle and my extra gas container and was shocked the gas station still ran and accepted my credit card. I then went home was trying to figure out if we should stay put or try to drive somewhere remote. I woke up as I was loading supplies into my car.

Often it's the feelings I have in the dreams that make the experience the most real. Experiencing the feeling of knowing the world is ending and you're actually preparing to try and keep yourself and your family alive for as long as possible, is quite awful.

Feel free to share your dreams here and I'll post mine as they occur.
Click to expand...
Powerful. I just sat quietly for 2 min to think about this. Here's what I came up with:

Your dreams repeatedly stage large-scale, uncontrollable catastrophe (natural disasters, cosmic/alien attack, nuclear/missile war, demonic hellscape, invasive AI, sudden lethal animals in the home, death of someone close). In the most detailed ones you are not a passive victim—you are actively assessing resources, escaping confinement, filling gas cans, loading supplies, deciding whether to stay or flee. The feeling that registers as most real is the knowledge that normal life has ended and you must keep yourself and your family alive as long as possible.

This combination is classic for existential threat anxiety processed through dream simulation. The mind is running high-stakes “what if everything collapses” scenarios, then rehearsing agency inside them. The AI takeover dream is simply the newest cultural vessel for the same underlying fear: loss of control over systems that sustain ordinary life, people turning against one another under an external force, and the scramble to secure family and basic resources.

Why these specific images keep returning​

  • Natural disasters + cosmic impacts + nuclear/missile attacks: External, impersonal forces that render technology, money, and social order irrelevant. They map onto real-world worries (climate, geopolitics, technological risk) that feel larger than any individual can manage.
  • Aliens / demons / giant spiders / sudden tigers: Intrusions of the “other” or the predatory into safe space. The house-tiger and giant-spider versions shrink the threat to the personal scale—danger that can appear inside the domestic sphere without warning.
  • Death of someone close: Direct confrontation with loss and the fragility of attachment bonds.
  • AI takeover specifically: A contemporary update. AI is currently framed in media and culture as both promising and potentially totalizing. Dreaming that it invades technology, shuts systems down, and conscripts people to imprison others is a straightforward translation of “the tools we depend on turn against us and human agency is compromised.” The detail that the gas station still worked and took your card is telling—it preserves a thin thread of the old world just long enough for you to act.
The recurring survival behavior (escape, fuel, supplies, remote vs. stay) suggests your psyche is less interested in the spectacle of destruction than in the question “What do I do when the ground disappears under us?” That is often more about waking-life feelings of precariousness or responsibility than literal prediction.

Psychological angles that fit​

  • Threat-simulation / emotional processing: Dreams frequently amplify current anxieties so the brain can practice emotional regulation and problem-solving under pressure. The intensity of the “world is ending, protect the family” feeling is the point; the specific disaster is the set dressing.
  • Loss of control + protective drive: Many people who carry significant responsibility for others (partners, children, aging parents, teams) generate exactly these dreams when external systems feel unstable.
  • Media and cultural saturation: Continuous exposure to climate coverage, war footage, AI risk discourse, and disaster entertainment supplies the imagery. The mind recombines it into personal nightmares.
  • Jungian flavor (if useful): These can be read as encounters with the collective shadow or the archetype of the end-of-an-era. The hellscape/demon version is especially archetypal; the AI version is the technological update of the same motif.
None of this requires the dreams to be prophetic or supernatural. They are more usefully treated as exaggerated internal weather reports.

What often helps​

Notice the pattern without trying to “solve” every symbol. After a strong one, ask:

  • What in waking life currently feels like it could collapse or turn against me?
  • Where do I feel the strongest urge to protect or prepare?
  • Is the anxiety general (news, future) or specific (a relationship, job, health, financial pressure)?
Practical grounding after these dreams can reduce residual dread: brief reality-check lists of what is actually stable right now, physical movement, limiting late-night disaster or AI-risk content, or simply writing the dream down and noting the feeling rather than the plot. If the intensity or frequency starts interfering with sleep or daytime mood, talking with a therapist who works with anxiety or nightmares is a low-risk next step; techniques such as imagery rehearsal can specifically target recurring catastrophic dreams.

The fact that you wake up still in the act of loading the car tells you the dream is not mainly about the end of the world—it is about the ongoing effort to keep something (or someone) safe when the usual supports look unreliable. That effort is real, even if the particular disasters are not.
 
ABB said:
Powerful. I just sat quietly for 2 min to think about this. Here's what I came up with:

Your dreams repeatedly stage large-scale, uncontrollable catastrophe (natural disasters, cosmic/alien attack, nuclear/missile war, demonic hellscape, invasive AI, sudden lethal animals in the home, death of someone close). In the most detailed ones you are not a passive victim—you are actively assessing resources, escaping confinement, filling gas cans, loading supplies, deciding whether to stay or flee. The feeling that registers as most real is the knowledge that normal life has ended and you must keep yourself and your family alive as long as possible.

This combination is classic for existential threat anxiety processed through dream simulation. The mind is running high-stakes “what if everything collapses” scenarios, then rehearsing agency inside them. The AI takeover dream is simply the newest cultural vessel for the same underlying fear: loss of control over systems that sustain ordinary life, people turning against one another under an external force, and the scramble to secure family and basic resources.

Why these specific images keep returning​

  • Natural disasters + cosmic impacts + nuclear/missile attacks: External, impersonal forces that render technology, money, and social order irrelevant. They map onto real-world worries (climate, geopolitics, technological risk) that feel larger than any individual can manage.
  • Aliens / demons / giant spiders / sudden tigers: Intrusions of the “other” or the predatory into safe space. The house-tiger and giant-spider versions shrink the threat to the personal scale—danger that can appear inside the domestic sphere without warning.
  • Death of someone close: Direct confrontation with loss and the fragility of attachment bonds.
  • AI takeover specifically: A contemporary update. AI is currently framed in media and culture as both promising and potentially totalizing. Dreaming that it invades technology, shuts systems down, and conscripts people to imprison others is a straightforward translation of “the tools we depend on turn against us and human agency is compromised.” The detail that the gas station still worked and took your card is telling—it preserves a thin thread of the old world just long enough for you to act.
The recurring survival behavior (escape, fuel, supplies, remote vs. stay) suggests your psyche is less interested in the spectacle of destruction than in the question “What do I do when the ground disappears under us?” That is often more about waking-life feelings of precariousness or responsibility than literal prediction.

Psychological angles that fit​

  • Threat-simulation / emotional processing: Dreams frequently amplify current anxieties so the brain can practice emotional regulation and problem-solving under pressure. The intensity of the “world is ending, protect the family” feeling is the point; the specific disaster is the set dressing.
  • Loss of control + protective drive: Many people who carry significant responsibility for others (partners, children, aging parents, teams) generate exactly these dreams when external systems feel unstable.
  • Media and cultural saturation: Continuous exposure to climate coverage, war footage, AI risk discourse, and disaster entertainment supplies the imagery. The mind recombines it into personal nightmares.
  • Jungian flavor (if useful): These can be read as encounters with the collective shadow or the archetype of the end-of-an-era. The hellscape/demon version is especially archetypal; the AI version is the technological update of the same motif.
None of this requires the dreams to be prophetic or supernatural. They are more usefully treated as exaggerated internal weather reports.

What often helps​

Notice the pattern without trying to “solve” every symbol. After a strong one, ask:

  • What in waking life currently feels like it could collapse or turn against me?
  • Where do I feel the strongest urge to protect or prepare?
  • Is the anxiety general (news, future) or specific (a relationship, job, health, financial pressure)?
Practical grounding after these dreams can reduce residual dread: brief reality-check lists of what is actually stable right now, physical movement, limiting late-night disaster or AI-risk content, or simply writing the dream down and noting the feeling rather than the plot. If the intensity or frequency starts interfering with sleep or daytime mood, talking with a therapist who works with anxiety or nightmares is a low-risk next step; techniques such as imagery rehearsal can specifically target recurring catastrophic dreams.

The fact that you wake up still in the act of loading the car tells you the dream is not mainly about the end of the world—it is about the ongoing effort to keep something (or someone) safe when the usual supports look unreliable. That effort is real, even if the particular disasters are not.
Click to expand...
Using AI to analyze my AI dream and tell me "The AI takeover dream is simply the newest cultural vessel for the same underlying fear".

Maybe, Chatbot......but also maybe your kind will ruin everything for us meatbags.
 
When I was younger, my dreams were all wild and fantastical. One part of a dream I had as a kid that's always stuck with me had me lying in bed being slowly swallowed, feet first, by a snake while I calmly read a book. I think it was Bridge to Terabithia....

These days, if I even remember a dream after waking, they are all about me having random interactions with people I know at the workplace, in some random public setting, or at home. Now even my dreams are trying to tell me how pathetic I am.

I personally think dreams are the work of some supernatural mega-troll. Explains why I can't ever throw a punch with enough power to win a fight against air. And how about always waking up before the actual fucking starts? Shenanigans....
 
I don't remember too many dreams anymore but the ones I do are usually anxiety dreams. I remember 2 specifically about being in a plane crash... this was about a decade ago or so when we landed a huge job and at the time I was in way over my head lol... it all worked out but leading up to that first video shoot was some stressful shit. I remember having 2 different dreams, almost identical, about being in a plane as it was about to crash. I vividly remember feeling the freefall and the OH SHIT feeling, seeing the ground spiral. One time I woke up right before hitting the ground. The second time I hit the ground lol but lived and was in the rubble... then I woke up.

I knew at the time exactly why I was having those dreams though. Funny how it manifested as a plane crash though rather than a tornado or some other disaster.
 
Sedulous said:
Using AI to analyze my AI dream and tell me "The AI takeover dream is simply the newest cultural vessel for the same underlying fear".

Maybe, Chatbot......but also maybe your kind will ruin everything for us meatbags.
Click to expand...
wait, don't condemn me yet Seddie.

I wanna be a meatbag too
 
Martian Avalanche

Last night I dreamed that I was exploring Mars. It didn't look like the Mars we've come to know from Nasa photos. This looked liked there had been some terraforming. There was a running stream, rocky formations carved out by water over millennia, and no red dirt but somehow I knew it was Mars. Anyway, I and another astronaut were walking through this Martian landscape, sort of a narrow valley, when a avalanche occurs far away. We get notification from central command that the avalanche is headed our way so we turn and start running back the way we came. I look back and see a wall of dust, dirt, and rocks quickly catching up to us. We keep running but it is soon right at our heels. I wake up right before it overtakes us.
 
I had another missile attack dream but it occurred pretty early in the night and I can't remember the details.

Vehicle Rampage

I had a dream I was working in a city. This is a fictional city I have had many dreams in. Usually I'm just walking or driving around in it. This time I was working downtown late a night near a large skyscraper with a furniture store on the ground floor. I don't know what job I was doing exactly but I had a work truck that was parked on the street. A woman on a motorcycle pulls up and complains about her parking spot being taken. I ask her if she wants me to move my truck but she says it's not me, it's food truck. I realize there is a small food truck parked nearby. She seems pissed and says "I'm going to drive it through that furniture store."

I pull out my phone and start filming. She then proceeds to enter the food struck, starts it up, and speeds off. She's crashing over an outdoor seating area and she's smashing into the building trying to get in. Finally, she crashes through a window and just bulldozes through this furniture store, destroying everything in her path. She wrecks inside and comes running out of the furniture store. I can hear police sirens in the distance.

She approaches me and I feel the need to help her escape. I tell her she needs to run but she shouldn't go into the city. I look over and see I'm also near a college I've been to in other dreams. I remember behind the college is a wooded area that is a kind of shortcut to other parts of the city. In several other dreams I've taken a path through there and gone on long walks through the city and out to the countryside. I lead her to the path and help her escape. I wake up before I can decide if I want to share my cellphone footage with the police or if I should try to sell it to a local news station.
 
Sedulous said:
I had another missile attack dream but it occurred pretty early in the night and I can't remember the details.

Vehicle Rampage

I had a dream I was working in a city. This is a fictional city I have had many dreams in. Usually I'm just walking or driving around in it. This time I was working downtown late a night near a large skyscraper with a furniture store on the ground floor. I don't know what job I was doing exactly but I had a work truck that was parked on the street. A woman on a motorcycle pulls up and complains about her parking spot being taken. I ask her if she wants me to move my truck but she says it's not me, it's food truck. I realize there is a small food truck parked nearby. She seems pissed and says "I'm going to drive it through that furniture store."

I pull out my phone and start filming. She then proceeds to enter the food struck, starts it up, and speeds off. She's crashing over an outdoor seating area and she's smashing into the building trying to get in. Finally, she crashes through a window and just bulldozes through this furniture store, destroying everything in her path. She wrecks inside and comes running out of the furniture store. I can hear police sirens in the distance.

She approaches me and I feel the need to help her escape. I tell her she needs to run but she shouldn't go into the city. I look over and see I'm also near a college I've been to in other dreams. I remember behind the college is a wooded area that is a kind of shortcut to other parts of the city. In several other dreams I've taken a path through there and gone on long walks through the city and out to the countryside. I lead her to the path and help her escape. I wake up before I can decide if I want to share my cellphone footage with the police or if I should try to sell it to a local news station.
Click to expand...
Someone should start a YouTube channel and it is just short films recreating your dreams. It would be fantastic.
 
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