Hi Keira, welcome to the forum 🙂
Just a couple of questions to clarify: do you wake up multiple times during the night, and see the images from your dreams each time you wake up? And: how long (roughly) does it take to realise you're not in the dream anymore (when the images from the dream fade)?
Vivid dreams, like MsPurple and WK have said, can be nothing more than an expression of the mind. Often when we are stressed, and pay a lot of attention to the tasks at hand, we pay little attention to the imaginative or creative functions in our brain. This may be an explanation for why the dreams you are having are recurring and vivid.
If the dreams are making you feel worried or stressed, I recommend: before you go to bed / sleep, write down an idea for a dream you would like to have (it can be anything). When you wake up, check what you wrote the night before, and try and see how similar the dream was to what you wanted. In time, you may find your dreams become more and more similar to what you wanted them to be about.
The reason I asked if you wake up multiple times per night is because there are stages of sleep where our brains are prone to having more vivid and illuminating dreams (like when you see someone's eye rolling under their eyelids while they sleep). If a person wakes up during this time (and interrupt the dream), the images from that dream can resonate quite realistically when they wake up. This is because of the state that the brain is still in, even though we have woken up.
You are definitely not going mad. Lots of people experience similar things to what you described.
Don't stress answering those questions if you're not comfortable! Glad you've shared with us, hope I was able to help.
Best,
- FC
