Dreams and Nightmares

[M.Grimm]

Hi there. I've been lurking for a little bit and reading a lot of posts. That alone has been enormously helpful. I think part of it is just the relief of thinking 'wow, I'm not weird/alone'. Even so, it's difficult to post this at all since I'm used to being so secretive.

I had an increase of nightmares in the last year where I'd be out with people, and suddenly I was unmistakeably female and in a panic about this. It's hard to explain since it's kind of abstracted in the dream, but it always feels terrible. Mostly, I wanted to thank you guys for posting your thoughts and experiences here, because reading them has helped me a lot. I'm not great at sharing my feelings, but I wanted to get that out there.

[miniangel]

Welcome, M. Grimm! It's good that you've overcome your worries enough to make this first post. I'm sure it will get easier.

[Arch]

Hello, and welcome. Please feel free to post an intro in the Introductions forum.

We're all weird here, but we're never alone.

It's funny. I was expecting to have weird nightmares after my top surgery--you know, the kind in which the surgery never happened and I was bouncing all over the place--but I never did. Either that, or I didn't remembered the dreams. Which would be a big blessing, come to think of it...

[M.Grimm]

Thank you, Minnie. I still feel pretty nervous, but I'll get over it.

Arch: The breasts seem to be pretty central to the nightmares. Mine are really large and refuse to be bound. I could appreciate them if they were on anyone else's body other than my own. It's not that they are bad, I just don't really want them on ME. No one seemed to understand this so I stopped trying to explain it to them. All I ever got told was how 'lucky' I was, which only made me feel worse.

[Walter]

Ever since I became more open about being FtM er Male, I sometimes have dreams where I'm physically Male

They always turn out to be sex dreams though. I just want to have a normal, non sexual Male dream >_<

[Arch]

As a small child, I was male when I dreamed because I thought of myself as a little boy and didn't quite understand that I...well, that other people didn't always see me that way. Then I got older and my legal sex was pushed on me by other people. I was still a boy when I dreamed, but less and less often. More and more, I had to resort to waking fantasies in which I was male. Eventually, the boy-dreams all but stopped.

Now (a year into transition and nine months after top surgery) when I dream, I'm just me--not consciously male, apparently not female. I know that I've been aware of gender in a couple of dreams in the past six months, but I don't remember the particulars.

When I have nightmares, they are about my parents or my therapist or the usual nameless threat who is chasing or attacking me. Not gender.

[Devin87]

I'm a guy a lot in my dreams, but I tend not to be me.  I tend to be another guy-- someone I know or a famous person or character from a book or movie or something.  I'm very rarely me in my dreams and when I am me sometimes I'm male and sometimes I'm female.  It wasn't until I started considering that I might be FtM that I started realizing how often I'm male in my dreams.

[M.Grimm]

I'm either male or gender-neutral in my dreams the majority of the time. Sometimes I'm female, but often in those cases I'm just another person who happens to be female. Unless it's one of those nightmares I'd mentioned.

I think it's when I kept having dreams where I discovered I had a penis and was delighted by it (not always sexual dreams, either), that I realized this was my inclination. For a while I tried to go hyper-feminine to 'get over' it, but it never went away.

At this point I think I could be comfortable being female ONLY if I could also be male. Being 'female only' feels very wrong for me and I think that's why I keep having the nightmares.

[Silver]

Hmm, the stress about unmistakable femininity- that's just real life there.

I don't know, I don't have real nightmares that frequently or remember dreams. I do have dreams where I get to destroy the feminine parts though and male dreams. And sexual male dreams, those are entertaining.

Welcome to Susan's, that was probably TMI but anyway. We're probably in a similar boat to yours so feel free to rant/ask questions/PM/soul search/let things out/tell your life story here because that's what we're for. Support.

[zombiesarepeaceful]

I have male and female dreams. There are ones where I'm meeting someone, and they find out that I'm trans...and there are ones where I'm lucid dreaming and suddenly find that I'm not in a male body...very alarming to say the least.

[Parker Lane]

That's so crazy, I have nightmares like that all the time.
But the thing is, I have great dreams as well.

I've been dreaming that I've been on T for two years,
have already had my chest surgery,
and am the man I want to be.

Then I look at myself in the morning and realize something has to change.

Just be glad that you have gotten as far as you've come.

[Radar]

I'll have dreams where I'm having top surgery done or have had it done and I'm so happy. Then I wake up.

[Arch]

Boy, I just had one of my weird ones last night. I was in sixth grade, but I had my male name. I don't remember any gendering; I think I was just me. But I'm not sure. I might have actually been a girl.

And of course I was doing all sorts of strange things and the whole dream didn't make any sense. I wonder why so many dreams are so illogical and disjointed?

When I was tapering up on Wellbutrin, I had the most amazing dreams. They were incredibly vivid and realistic, and they actually had a logical story line with a beginning, middle, and end. And when I missed a couple of pills over a couple of days (it was twice daily), it would happen again. Anybody else have this kind of experience on antidepressants, or any other med, for that matter?

[M.Grimm]

When I was treated for depression years ago, I was on meds and it actually made my sleep seem dreamless. Either my dreaming was greatly reduced or I was simply unable to remember any of it. This was great with regards to nightmares, but I really missed the cool, fun dreams.

I've been thinking about this more since broaching this discussion. When I'm male in my dreams I'm almost always happy, when I'm female I'm usually having an anxiety dream or nightmare. This is not 100% but it's a very distinctive trend.

[Devin87]

Last night I dreamed that the DHEA I'm taking made me grow a penis.  Doesn't it suck to wake up from dreams like that?

[Arch]

Last night I dreamed that the DHEA I'm taking made me grow a penis.  Doesn't it suck to wake up from dreams like that?

Yuck.

[Dante]

I swear, one day I'll actually come on-time to the welcoming threads!

Hello, M. Grimm! Great to have another person here to join the conversations.

I've had nightmares before that were like this. My dreams are always a bit weird, in each dream I'm either female or androgynous or male, but for some reason, I almost always accept the state I'm in. I've had nightmares where my breasts grew until they looked like watermelons to me, and I was scared as hell.

I wouldn't worry about these dreams too much. It does suck when they keep happening, though.