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Does it help you to talk about your nightmares?

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Fadeaway

MyPTSD Pro
It helps me. As a kid I was told not to dwell on them, and was not allowed to say what my nightmare was about. They more I tried that, the worse they got.

I find talking about them to be the best way to stop becoming preoccupied by them, and not being able to shake them the next day is by talking about them. Dream diaries don't help, but telling another person out loud helps.
 
If I talk about them they become fairly perm. I'll most likely always remember them, in exquisite detail. (Given that I can recall nightmares I talked about from about age 4 onward, and I'm in my 30s.) So unless it's something I want to remember, I try very hard to neither talk about them, nor write, nor think about them. If I can blank my mind & distract myself upon waking first the images, then the sensations & emotions, slowly sink back into the Styx.

If they're actual memories, then I usually can't talk about them, which is different.

Interestingly enough, my sister is very much the opposite. Talking about her dreams helps chase them away. We spent a lot of our childhood arguing about who was "right", and each of us trying to get the other to do it the "right" way. :facepalm: As sometimes roommates as adults we've spent a lot of mornings eyeballs deep in coffee with her talking to dispel hers, and my listening to banish mine.
 
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I have never really tried to talk about them other than in therapy. I did not feel better after talking about them. I do know people who talk about their dreams and say it helps.
 
I don't know, I have had the same nightmare every night since the night before I posted this, and is consuming me. Even last night I was aware it was a nightmare and my dream self was screaming "This is a nightmare, I wanna wake up" over and over. I just wish I didn't remember my dreams more clearly than I do waking memories.
 
It helps me to talk about it after I've had a little bit of time to digest it myself. If I talk about it right when I wake up it only stresses me out more. If I have a bad one I usually would just cuddle extra close to my significant other and then talk about it later when I'm ready.
 
I write mine down. Then I can just forget them. I know that if I ever "want" to refer back to them, then they are there. (I usually don't) But, knowing that they are there if I ever "did" want to remember them - I can.
By doing this, I can just forget them. Usually, forever.
 
Yes, it generally helps me to tell my therapist about my nightmares and intense dreams. I think it takes some of the sting out of them if I can give it to her to hold with me so I’m not just holding it all myself.

Like you, when I was younger I was encouraged not to dwell on them and to think of nicer things. I understand where they were coming from and that they had good intentions. But dreams/nightmares are our psyche’s way of processing things, I think, so by shutting down further talk/exploration when we wanted to share them, I guess that maybe impacts the processing in some way?

I’ve just seen this thread is a few months old - I do hope you are to still stuck having that same nightmare @Fadeaway
 
Greetings
Not so much in nightmares but I did shout out in my sleep usually within 10 minutes of going to bed.

This had gone on for bout a year, then one night I had a complete dialogue with my self, and I was loud, scared the Mrs and the dog.

Turned out it was a replay of a shooting event from 1984.

After that, nothing, just sleep, deep deep sleep.

Guess I exercised that trauma memory.
G
 
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