A nightmare I cannot forget, please help me interpret it

[LunaticinProgress]

I had a disturbing dream (warning this may be triggering for some people).

I got wrongly accused of a crime and sentenced to the death penalty. They gave me the "death" injection, told me i would die within 3-4 hours, and sent me home. I then went home to dh, and my young DCs. I was understandably really distressed. It got to the 4th hour, and I was still alive. I then looked it up online in the dream, and it said in some cases you can survive for 6 hours. I then say nervously, waiting again for another 2-3 hours. I started to feel spaced out on the 5th hour, and then I was panicking it was working, and then I woke up!

Obviously, my dream was very far-fetched, fictional, and not true to life at all! It felt very real though, and was really vivid.

Can anybody interpret what I dreamt? Could this be a side effect of medication? I have been suffering from a great deal of anxiety recently which I think is linked to one of my meds.

I have no idea, but I just want to send you a hug. That is an awful awful thing to have dreamt

I hope someone comes and gives you some useful thoughts soon

Did you have cheese before bedtime? Or amytriptylene?

No amytriptylene. I'm on Lamotrigine, and Brivaracetam. I take them twice a day. I have had absolutely no issues with Lamotrigine, but the Brivaracetam has caused some anxiety. I have been on the second med for a good few months now. This is the first time I have had a dream like this, and I know people get nightmares, but this one just seemed a bit more out of the ordinary.

@AlisonDonut and no cheese! Although I love the stuff.

My initial thought is fairly literal, that your subconscious is worried that you might leave your children motherless (sometimes the details aren't really relevant).

Or maybe that you might fail them in some way, without intending to.

I think it's a fairly normal worry for parents; it's just that your brain dressed it up in what you found a distressing way. When S1 was a toddler I dreamed he drowned in an ornamental pool. I imagine most of us have had some sort of Parent Worry dream at some point.

The details about not going in 4 hours could be your brain pointing out that All Your Terrible Mistakes might not be immediately apparent... or it could just be the brain doodling because it's run out of impetus but you haven't woken up yet!

Allow yourself to notice that you're anxious and worried. Don't dwell on it, but don't ignore it or blame yourself either. Maybe discuss dosage with your prescriber? tell them it's been having this effect.

It doesn't have to mean anything or require interpretation. You had a bad night, try to forget it.

Honestly, it's just a bad dream. It doesn't have any more meaning or significance than that - your brain is just doing what brains do when you sleep. Dreams are how we have literature, art, poetry, music as we try to make sense of the world as our body and conscious thought rest.

Thank you, I do suffer from anxiety about leaving the dcs like a lot of parents (not in an overly needing help sort of way), so this makes a lot of sense. My general daily anxiety has been up like a kite of late, since the new meds. They're so strong i forget how I am supposed to feel, bloody epilepsy!!

I've looked at few dream interpretation sites and they say...

A dream in which you received a death sentence or were being led to your execution or are requesting euthanasia is a rather dramatic way of symbolizing the need to change a certain aspect of your life as soon as possible.

A dream about a syringe could symbolize a desire for relief or a way to cope with emotional pain. It could also reflect unresolved emotions or a need for self-medication.

Dreaming of being jailed for a crime you didn’t commit may be an indication that you feel guilty about something in your waking life. This could be related to a mistake you made, or something you said or did that hurt someone else. It could also be related to feeling guilty about not living up to your own expectations or standards.

Anxiety about the medication or its side effects, I suspect combined with the medication itself.

I don't know what they mean but in the last few months I've had 2-3 dreams where I've been somewhere on holiday and been in the midst of a terrorist gun attack. It's so bloody scary and feels never ending and so real