The mentally ill and dreams

For those of you who are stricken by a mental illness, you know that dreams can be very real, and have an astounding effect on your psyche.

Last night, I had a nightmare. It involved zombies and mind control and was very vivid with bright colors and damaging images. Well, needless to say, it affected my whole day today. I have been in a sour mood all day with a headache (probably from being awakened for an hour at 4am) and also been in a dark cloud all day. If you happen upon this blog and have had a similar experience to mine, please feel free to comment.

My advice to someone with mental illness in regards to nightmares and their lasting affect on the mind, is that dreams are a sequence of memories and a bit of creativity that the mind puts together in a sequence. Therefore, since there is a memory component, stay away from damaging or upsetting stimuli such as scary movies, thrilling books and/or amusement park hauted houses and the like.

For example, I recently took a vacation and on that vacation I went into not one, but two haunted houses. Now, for someone perfectly normal with an active imagination, this can be damaging. For someone with schizophrenia, like me, it can ruin a whole day from a bad dream. And dreams aren't the only reason to stay away from these stimuli described above. Since people with mental illness generally have unreal fears that the general public would find odd, these images stay with you and causes greater paranoia and depression.