system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can You Suffer in Your Dreams?

The phrase "pinch me I must be dreaming" is common enough. Common sense seems to posit that inside of a dream pain can't actually be felt.

You may have a nightmare in which a monster proceeds to gnaw into you. In your dream you scream but the sensation of pain is absent. This may be the typical scenario, but several psychological studies have suggested that when pain is induced in the body during REM sleep, a painful experience is accompanied within the dream. Whether or not perceived pain in a dream has anything to do with actual pain in the body is a topic for debate.

What I am interested is whether or not dream ***suffering*** is real suffering.

I once had a dreadful dream in which I died and went to heaven. Sitting in heaven I saw God pick up and throw away all my non-Christian friends. The implication was, now that I was in Heaven I'd never be able to see these "sinners" (who were so dear to me) again. I woke up in tears.

This nightmare suggested a problem that would have been equally distressing in waking life: Whether or not the people I loved would go to Heaven, Often times though, the thing we are afraid of in our dreams can be perfectly ridiculous. I once had a dream were a small robot was walking towards me, completely non-threateningly, yet in the dream I was terrified.

Was I *really* terrified?

Even if the thing would never really terrify me in my waking state?

Can you think that you are afraid but not actually be? Think you are suffering and not actually be suffering? Does whether or not you are dreaming matter?
gpt
Suffering does not have to have any “real,” material basis for its occurrence. You can look no further than mental illness and psychosis to see this for yourself. Suffering experienced while dreaming is still valid suffering—you wouldn’t want to be trapped in a dream made of prolonged suffering, right?