zengar

I had a dream last night with some situations and imagery that I'm finding quite disturbing now that I'm looking back on it. However, while in the dream I didn't have any sort of "fear" or "disgust" reaction to it. There wasn't a complete lack of emotions, but the ones that were present should have been over-ridden by shock/horror/something given the context.

Thinking back, it's been well over a decade since I last had a dream that had a negative emotional impact on me upon my awakening. On the other hand, this is the first one that I remember in that time that ought to have. In fact, if I hadn't thought "I'm glad I don't get nightmares any more," while considering the content of the dream, it probably would have faded from my mind and wouldn't be disturbing me now. And this is despite the fact that it was so vivid I was somewhat surprised to look at my left hand and not see a bloody stump.

....

Good lord, I just realized what happened. It didn't bother me because it wasn't my dream. It was one of Chaz's (cvillette) nightmares, and my subconscious was comforted by the fact that he doesn't really exist. Even though I was watching from his perspective as he did some horrible things and had some terrible things happen to him, I wasn't bothered because this was just a TV show. By analogy, a dream about cutting the skin off your hand and finding robotics under there rather than bones should be the sort of thing that you'd want to wake up from, but it's not that big of a deal when the Terminator does it.

The main thing I found disturbing about the dream was that it apparently came completely out of nowhere. I have had nothing happen to me that would have reason to prompt such a dream. Now that I have an idea why it occurred, I can start to calm down.

Edit: And further, the lack of being bothered in the dream is one of the things that would make it really disturbing for Chaz. Far beyond the level that it would be for a normal person, because of what his job entails. Why my brain chose to do this I do not know, but I am in awe of how accurately it generated almost precisely the sort of dream he might have had last night.