Image from horrible dream stuck in my head

[Doncarlos]

4 or 5 nights ago I had a horrible dream and I need help to get the image out my head.

So, earlier that day I saw a little boy with chicken pox. Didn’t think much of it. Just noticed and that was it.
That night I had a dream that the boys mum was asking me what she thought it was and when I looked at him it wasn’t just spots. He had big solid lumps protruding from his skin, about the size of a £2 coin but thick (I guess almost like little tree stumps) with the spots in the middle of them. He was trying to pick at these things. It was grim.

It stuck in my head that day but then went. However the day before yesterday I glanced over to DH as he was scrolling Facebook and there was an image on the screen that was awful to me. It was a leaf cutter ant thing. But I have trypophobia and the leaf with all the holes in it, just ahhhhhhhh. Even typing these words gives me a horrible feeling. But for some reason seeing that bought back the image from my dream and now it’s stuck in my head.
At just random moments it will pop up and it really makes me feel horrible.

I know this sounds a bit mental and I hope I’ve explained it so you can understand.
Does anyone else ever have this sort of thing and how do you stop these images creeping in?

I don’t think you can completely stop them. But a “trick” I’ve tried is imagining the image is on a tv screen in the corner of a room. Then playing with the image - turning down the colour. It reminds me that this is my brain making images, it’s not real.

I have the same thing and I agree it’s fucking horrible, the holes 😬😬😬 I used to get one stuck in my head about green chicken, don’t ask ! But it made me feel physically sick!

Yeah I think this is pretty common. About 10 years ago when my sister was about 6 (we have a 14 year age gap), I had a dream that she fell off of a wall in the garden and landed on her neck with her head at a 90° angle and it freaked me out for months, couldn’t get the image out of my head. We don’t live local so I had to FaceTime my parents every day and ‘check’ on her because the image wouldn’t go away. I can still picture it now but it doesn’t bother me the way it did at the time.

That’s a good idea. I’m going to try and remember to do that next time.
It’s so odd how these things come into our mind and have such a powerful impact on how we feel when it is quite literally nothing.

I’ve been through the same thing recently. Horrible dream and disturbing image left over. That was about 3 weeks ago and I’m still getting the image occasionally. It doesn’t have the same effective on me as it did at the start so I’m either getting used to it or it’s fading from memory. You just have to ride it out unfortunately.