dream flashbacks...

I've been having nightmares a lot lately. Tonight, it was a really bad nightmare- I dreamed that there was a holocaust type environment and Americans were being put in concentration camps by some other country, which was probably a country I made up in my mind. It didn't happen to me because they chose who has to be put in the concentration camp by randomizing people's birth dates, and mine just hadn't come up. For a while I was completely oblivious to what was happening around me and the people around me who were being put in concentration camps, until I actually went inside one just to see, thinking that they will let me walk away from there...

And what I saw was awful, with extreme detail and I remember just barely slipping away from there and being so scared of being caught and not allowed to leave. I was never more scared in my life than I was in that dream. And later, still in my dream I made the conclusion that as long as I never see the awful things that go on around me, even if I am in some danger, as long as I am unaware and ignorant, I will always take my happiness and sense of security for granted. The way that dawned on me made me think of all those things I see on the news, people who are in harm's way whether it's natural disasters or wars or genocides, and it goes in one ear and out the other and I think to myself "gee that sucks", but I am never actually fully able to comprehend how awful people in those situations feel...

Anyway, that was just a really strange realization to make while dreaming, because most of my dreams are a bunch of nonsense put together, not like this one. But, the majority of my dreams have been just like this lately.

And what is bothering me is when I first wake up, I have already forgotten the dream, but later on in the day I get a flashback of the dream and that scared anxious feeling that I had while dreaming comes back and just creeps me out so much...Today it happened as I was getting ready for class and doing my make up in front of the mirror, and all of a sudden I remember something of what happened in the dream and it makes me all sad, emotional, etc..When I really get to thinking more about why this is happening I start to recall the dream in really good detail.
I'm just really bothered by this lately...Anyone have similar experiences?? I am not sure why that's happening, but I think it definitely indicates something is off with my emotional wellness, in fact I have been sleeping for 14 hours lately and haven't been in the most productive and happy moods...

I definitely have "deja-vu" dreams. I'm not sure it's exactly what you're describing, but there are dreams I'm certain I've had many times, and I tend to think of them at the most random times. Once I had a dream that my sister and BIL split up, and when I woke it honestly took me a few minutes to realize that it wasn't true, that they are still happily married. But the dream was so vivid it took me some time to shake it off.

I'm not a religious person at all, and I don't disbelieve the notion of reincarnation. Sometimes I wonder if our dreams are something that happened to us in a previous life, especially the ones that have such an effect like yours did...

I have vivid dreams, and can remember. Sometimes if something frightened you, or something bothers you, it will come out in a dream. Sometimes I'll have dreams about things I fear. Sometimes even every night.

I do, but mine are seizures. Partial Complex Seizures. I get a sudden feeling of deja-vu and it is always of a dream I've had. But it feels like I'm actually reliving part of the dream (even though I'm really not), and I get anxious and nauseous, cold sweats, heart races, etc. It happens a lot when I'm actually sleeping too, and it wakes me up to those same feelings. I don't like getting them in my sleep b/c I always get multiple seizures in one night, sometimes upwards of 15-20. I don't get any sleep those nights. Sometimes the seizures last only a few seconds, other times they can last for a few minutes. As long as I take all of my medication, all of the time (I tend to forget my pm dose) I don't get them, and it's nice. I don't like them at all.

This is so weird I just had another one of those flashbacks and I started writing down what I remembered and wrote down 2 pages...
It's like a science fiction story I can't believe my mind creates complex things that make perfect sense in my sleep...Everyone had names in my dream and their appearance was so vivid in my mind, like the main guy his name was Drake and there was a girl named Rowena...
It even had an ending, I think it might be lucid dreaming because i think without trying to I was basically deciding what happens next in the dream. I can't believe I'm experiencing all this in a sense it's kinda cool...