I've got generalized anxiety disorder so I tend to have a lot of nightmares. I especially hate the ones about church. Usually I'm "stuck" in the ward house, wandering the endless hallway that circles the sacrament hall while stern-faced people in their Sunday Best look at me with intense judgment. Often I simply can't find the exit, so I'm doomed to roam the halls forever. Sometimes my parents find me and ask me why I'm not in Sunday School/Priesthood meeting, and get angry when I tell them I don't want to go. Sometimes I run into the kids who bullied me at church when I was a teen -- those never end well; usually I just end up locking myself in an empty room and crying. Sometimes I make a break for the doors if I can find them, just wanting to get out of there more than anything else, but I'm always dragged back in by my parents, or church authorities like the bishopric. It feels like a dismal prison that I cannot escape from no matter what I do. And this despite the fact that I haven't set foot in an LDS building in 7 years. I wonder if I will ever get over it...

I was BIC but always hated it. I never wanted to go to church but of course my parents made me, damn near every Sunday. We were super active. We'd almost always stay the full 3 hours, and it felt like such a waste of my weekend. Between meetings I'd hang out by the doors, looking wistfully outside and wishing I could just leave. I think I did leave, once, after sacrament meeting when I was a teen. Walked all the way home. My parents were so pissed when they found out.

Does anyone else get recurring nightmares about church? Feel free to share.

Thankfully not. I don't ever remember church images entering my dreams.

RB

We tend to fear that which we don't have as much control over as we'd like. Your dreams about church likely result in uncomfortable social situations that didn't go well. I never cared enough about mormonism to have a bad dream about it.

For me bad dreams are based on things that didn't go well in my past that I needed to go well, usually job related. I had a job at one time that no matter how hard I worked at it I couldn't figure how to improve it and make it work. My boss didn't like that, management tends to kick you when your down in some places. It caused me unbelievable amounts of stress. Especially since my survival and financial dignity depended on it.

I tend to regret that which I couldn't fix. Where was god in all of this? I couldn't say?

I haven't had a dream of being "lost in church" for many years - but since I've now discovered RfM these past few months, I've been wondering if or when they might return?

Hope not!

My dreams weren't exactly nightmares, but they were of my going in circles through the church building, like it was a maze. I'd go in one door and end up in the chapel where a sacrament meeting was in progress, to go through the other side of the chapel door and find myself going down long halls and corridors - sometimes into classrooms, and other times ending up in the cultural hall, or going across the stage, or the gymnasium - where banquet tables were spread, and all kinds of food on display.

When I would venture outside (finally,) to go to my car parked on the street corner... something would turn me around and I'd end up back inside the church again for another go around.

Or the ones where it was stake conference, held at a high school auditorium, like the one my family used to attend when I was a child.

Those dreams were long and dreadful, come to think of it. I couldn't wait for them to be over. There was one meeting where I went from a Mormon church house into a Baptist or some other Christian meeting place - and the people were different - not totally unlike real life.

So maybe not all of them were just run of the mill dreams. And some probably were like nightmares. I really hated the ones where I'd go into the women's bathroom, only to find that not all the stalls were the same, and I had to keep looking for the "cleanest" one lol.

Most of them were such a maze being in the church house that although I wanted the dream to end, it kept on going and going and going.

I think recurring dreams for people in situations in which they have no control is a common theme. For me, I'm back in the army, and invariably late for something, or need to be somewhere and don't know how to get there, or what time it is, etc. Or I'm in a training environment, like basic training, where you have even less control or autonomy. Another theme for me is being back in school, and not having an assignment done, or missing an exam or something.

It sound like you didn't like church, but as a child you were forced against your will to go, so this is a similar theme: you can't get out or away.

I occasionally have them, but after a few minutes into the dream, I realize I can get up and walk out (or fly) and go somewhere else. Usually right before this happens, I start swearing at the congregation and flipping off the leaders.

I think nomonomo is onto something- It's a feeling of lack of control or autonomy.

If you want to change the dreams, tell yourself before you fall asleep that if you find yourself in a church, you'll get out somehow.

Finally, I turned around and faced them and realized they'd all been hacked up badly and were deformed while I was still whole. I yelled at them and said they had to leave me alone and they shrank back. After that, I never attended their church again. I was free. They were pathetic and dependent on each other for a pitiful existence.

I once dreamt that our Mormon church house was being invaded by Muslim extremists. The dream was as long ago as 1978, so not anything recent like that.

But they were rampaging through our community and came into the ward meeting house where we were hiding for cover, and they came with machetes and bayonets to rip us into pieces.

Yep, that was most definitely a nightmare. There were no winners or losers because I woke up before getting ripped to shreds in my dream.

I've had vivid dreams of wars where I see the airplanes and bombers overhead dropping their bombs, and I've been on the ground watching them exploding all around us. I'm usually in a foreign country in my dreams when I've had this type of a dream. They're very realistic, and the war isn't isolated in some of them. In one such dream I was standing somewhere it seemed in Israel. Others more common has been when the US is at war, on our homeland.

I hope they aren't prophetic!

I had nightmares during church.

Good job Cheryl!

I've had nightmares where I'm back in the abusive situations of childhood. I used to suffer a lot in these dreams, and dealt with a lot of anxiety in daily life, too. But since getting older and taking advantage of counseling, now like Cheryl I do turn and face the bad guy but unlike her it doesn't stop there. I become the aggressor and attack him, usually screaming "I hate you, HATE YOU!"

The really creepy bit is that the methods I use to destroy the person are always small objects, like stabbing with a pen, or a similar sized stick from the yard, a dinner fork, etc, or biting him over and over.

His face is always very clearly identifiable. I have had this dream about the old ward a few times but the people are just blob faced generic Mormons, not real people from my past or TBM in laws, which is a relief. I tend to feel pretty bad when I wake up. Fortunately they don't happen that often.

Like others have said my therapist agrees it all has to do with being placed in a situation where we have no control, and the emotions that result when someone who is supposed to love and protect us instead takes our personhood and stomps on it.

My spouse is a lot more direct about how I should feel:
"Dreams are brain vomit. Put the lid down, flush, walk away."

Think about how you would like that dream to end. Rewrite the ending. Decide that next time you have the dream it will have your new ending where you are taking charge of the situation.

Let us know if that works.

After being gone for 18 years, I stii have a nightmare in which I'm dependent on tscc for a place to live. I'M jumping through hoops to talk with a certain HP about it and never find out in the dream if he will help me or not. It'S a terrible dream of fear and powerlessness.

The only nightmare I still have is the occasion dream of me being back in church and I'm thinking the whole time "I don't want to be here. How did I get back here?"

Yes, I had plenty of nightmares

The actual ward building I went to as a kid scared the crap out of me when I was awake! There was this creepy hallway that never had any lights on (well hardly ever) and they had SS classes in that hallway. The classrooms had lights but not the hallway. About 75 feet down the hallway was the bathroom and it had a communal shower in it with no lights in the shower. I never could figure out why someone would want to take a shower at church in the dark and with others in the same room with no shower stalls.

At the time, I didn't know what gay and lesbian even was, but now I wonder........why did they want people of the same sex to shower at church together? Why shower at church at all? I always took a bath before getting ready for church.

Reading this post reminds me of when our ward house was turned into a spook alley, one Halloween.

It was fun for the kids. My mother of blessed memory dressed up as a witch, and took out her dentures along with full makeup and dress; she had natural long black hair down to her waist 'already.' She was perfect for the role.

She had a black cauldron she was stirring from, with dry ice for special effects.

And a cackle for a witch's laugh.

My mother had been Stake Drama Director where I grew up. She attended acting school in New York City on a full scholarship prior to meeting my dad and getting married. She was a very talented character actress.

Some of my nightmares as a child were of my mother being a witch. And my neighbor friends would tell me they were terrified of her when coming over to my house to visit because she reminded them of one. My mom was scary!

I loved her, but we did not have a loving relationship. An aunt on my father's side told me after I'd grown up that my mom hated me because I was a very sweet child, and she resented that about me. When her and dad would get into fights like they usually did, I was always "his" daughter. Never hers.

It's true I was a daddy's girl. My mom favored my brothers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2015 12:49PM by amyjo.

It's funny how one memory reminds us of another associated memory.

Re-reading this about my mother reminded me of when I used to pal around with Chris Wing during my years in Palo Alto as a late adolescent.

Chris was the younger brother of rock singer Grace Slick. He was eight years her junior. (Slick was Grace's stage name.)

When they were still kids living at home, Chris shared, his big sister Grace would stand in the doorway of their house dressed as a witch in full costume to scare the daylights out of him. And it worked.

Their father had been an investment banker. Chris didn't have to work a day in his life, and was literally waiting around for his father to die so he could inherit his trust.

You can't make this stuff up.

:)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2015 09:21AM by amyjo.

I have dreams like that quite often. Usually it's a dream where I've been assigned a talk, but I haven't prepared anything. Sometimes it's a dream where I walk through the hallways at church and am required to explain to everyone I see why I left the church. I don't remember that I ever had church dreams until after I left the church.

I also have school dreams all the time too. They're usually dreams where I can't remember my locker combination or I've forgotten to go to a class all semester. Sometimes I have a dream where I learn that I didn't actually graduate from college because I am one credit short.

Dreams like that are stressful and sometimes the stress follows me into the next day. I'll feel on edge for no particular reason and then remember I had a school or church dream the night before.

Yeah you sound a lot like me. I also have school dreams often, usually about completely forgetting I was even taking a class in college. That happened to me once -- a tiny 0.5-credit seminar class with just one attendance per week, but I totally forgot it even existed and that was the ONLY class I ever "failed" in my life, even though it was purely pass/fail, no grades.

I used to have the mission PTSD dreams. I would dream that I'm either back on or on another mission.

They stopped about a decade ago, but I suffered with them for over 13 years.

Yep, same recurring nightmare here. That for some reason that I didn't know or understand I was back, or forced to be back, on my mission.

Never thought of it has PTSD, but actually don't think you're that far off indeed.

This is not uncommon for someone with GAD and the hellish experience that is TSCC. Are you getting professional help to cope with your GAD? That's what keeps my nightmares in check.

Hans Mattsson said that he had nightmares for a week following his Endowment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePU4oYisTP0

Marlin K Jensen said it all depends on your culture like it is your fault you found the Endowment creepy.

I 've had the same dream, almost identical !!!. i'm roaming the hallway looking for a way out, and men in suits and ties are trying to stop me and tell me the bishop needs to interview me. and I tell them to fuck off.

Before I outed my disbelief to my wife I have having nightmares with a recurring theme.

They were set in a dystopian like society setting. They would fast forward to my wife and kids eventually being taken away from me and I was doing all I could to protect them from the "government" that was tracking us down. Eventually they were caught and taken from me.

I'd wake up in a cold sweat from these. After I outed my disbelief and my wife assured me she wasn't going to leave me I stopped having them.

I could only assume they were the way my mind was trying to deal with the prospect of my wife divorcing me and me not getting to be around my kids every day.

I never dreamed about anything to do with church, until last night. It must have been because I read this post yesterday.

I dreamed I was handing out the programs at church (not possible, you have to have the PH to do that)except they weren't programs. When you opened them up it was the CES letter.

Now how can I make that one come true?

Ah, next time the OP has a church nightmare, he/she should dream of throwing fliers of the CES letter at everyone who stops him/her from leaving. Turn around and face the abusers and say, "You're nothing but a hoax!" Remember Alice in Wonderland, when she said, "You're nothing but a deck of cards!"

I did that to end a recurring nightmare, that my ex-husband was abusing me, and I faced him and said, "You can't appear out of nowhere!"


I used to have nightmares that I was back in BYU, and they were combination church nightmares and school nightmares--people staring at me, judging me, telling me I would not graduate, showing up to class in my pajamas, and being unprepared for a final exam. These lasted only a few years, fortunately.

I don't know if I'd call them nightmares, but I do have unsettling dreams that involve the LDS Church.

The closest one to a nightmare was that I was getting set to go on another mission--yikes! It usually takes my subconscious a little while to catch up and realize I don't believe in Mormonism anymore, and I start to resist it in the dream.

A similar thing happened, when I had a more recent dream about sitting in a sacrament meeting. I was sitting in the front rows with the deacons ready to pass the sacrament, but during the sustaining votes I voted no with everyone looking sternly at me and I walked out--end dream.

I was probably 4-5 years out of the church when the first of those two dreams took place, and about 7.5 years out when the second one took place.

I've had other dreams that involved Mormonism, but those two I remember most vividly. If we grew up in Mormonism it's burrowed pretty deep in our minds, it's not surprising to me that it continues to come up.

Thanks to everyone for sharing. I have bad dreams involving Mormonism at least a few times a month and usually they're in the same vein -- as you said, no control, situations that made me uncomfortable, etc.

I really wish I could make them stop. I've read about lucid dreaming and even tried it but somehow I can't quite manage it. And writing things down actually seems to make it worse. I guess I just have to live with them.

Being pursued by the bishop as I'm walking quickly out a side door of the chapel in CA.

Calling my first name sternly as I try to get away.

Forgetting about an Accounting class and never attending only to receive an F and losing my scholarship at byu.

Ugh....thankfully the nightmares have stopped.

I Had A Nightmare About A Church I've Never Went To Before When I Was Younger But I Still Remember It To This Day, But Now I Know What The Church Is Called And It Exists Not Too Far From Me.

I was brutally honest when I called the phone number (a letter arrived with their standard gold lettering). It was my former mission president and he kept saying "It doesn't matter, the lord needs you..." I was brutally forward when telling him that I neither believed nor attended. It didn't faze him one bit.

And as many of you know, my MP and I did not get along. While I did the missionary schtick of following most rules, knocking on doors and baptizing people, it was never enough. He was the one who told me that I had wasted everyone's time. So why would he want a non-believing Messy to go do missionary work for LDS Corp?

Makes no sense. I think I was more upset with my spouse who had packed me a suit. She wasn't even upset with the letter or phone call, where a normal person would be incensed that a church was demanding to interupt one's life (and others).