I read somewhere that you can tell your state of mind from the nightmares and dreams you have. It says that when you have nightmares, two things may occur. You may either get caught by the monsters or escape everytime they get too close.

I realized that just weeks before my final year exams last year, I had nightmares every night which I remembered very clearly. I was in alot of stress that time and in my nightmares I would always get eaten or killed by the zombie teachers chasing me around the school, or I would find the classroom infested with alien parasites that would crawl into my mouth, ears, any other hole on my body.

But after my exams were over, all my stress had gone, and I although I still had nightmares, I would always manage to survive, like I realized I could suddenly fly before the zombie teachers reached me, which I was unable to do during the period of stress during my exams.

Does this mean that our stress affects whether we survive or die in our dreams?

Well certainly our state of mind affects what we dream about, hence the term "Anxiety dreams" And there is a very widely held belief that our dreams tell us about ourselves.

If our dreams are our subconsious's way of dealing with our fears, and if you were particularly worried about your exams, then your dreams would likely portray that, likewise, once the preassure was taken off you slightly, and you were able to stop stressing so much about the exams, your subconsious would interpret that in your dreams as well.

I'm sure someone else can explain this much more clearly, but basically, my answer to your question is yes.

Someone has some unresolved issues...

when I was about 16, someone told me that if you eat chocolate before bed, you'd have f-up'd dreams, so I went ahead and ate an entire container of duncan heinz instant chocolate icing, and sure enough, I had what could only be described as some sort of yellow submarine acid trip set of dreams that night that almost put me off sleeping for good, never wanted to repeat that again, but I still get my fair share of nightmares, mostly about spiders, but I've had this reoccuring nightmare for about 8 years now, real freaky, I'm in an old bungolow house, old furniture, probably circa 1975 (orange shag carpet and smoked mirrors on the walls - dead give away), and it's dimly lit of course, I'm moving from room to room in a vey slow pace, the rooms and hallways are endless it seems, I always come to the same room, large room, maybe a master bedroom, and there is a very large man at the other end of the room, standing over a bed, there is a body on the bed, but I don't know who it is, suddenly he spins around and sees me and starts running after me, I run out into the hallway, and of course it elongates into the length of a football field, I start cruising, but don't move, and I can hear the man come after me, and thats where I wake up screaming. I don't like that dream.

"any other hole on my body" I sure hope not

Your mindset and external factors most definantly effect your dreams...

As someone else metioned I think dreams and nigtmares offer us a way of coping. I think if the problem that you face in real life seems 'really bad' then the nightmare is likely to be worse... so that when you wake up you see that the real life problem isnt as bad as you thought, or at least its not as bad as the situation you faced in the dream.