Dissociation And Dreaming.

[aria]

When I started therapy, I knew I dissociated in times of stress and I often talked of feeling fragmented. Over the year with my newest therapist we've discovered just how dissociated I actually am most of the time and that there's many parts. It's all new to me and very recent discoveries. But I have lots of questions to ask people who on this forum seem to experience pretty similar things to me.

Something I'm curious to know is about dreaming. Every night I have lots of dreams, it feels like they're racing through my mind and are often fragmented and layered and heavily symbolic and often really scary. Sometimes I wake up from dreams in a dissociated state. (not often but it can happen.) In some of my dreams I am recovering lost memories, seeing a video reel as me as a child doing things that I don't remember at all. But these aren't real life memories, once I wake up I know that none of those things were real memories.

My brain literally hurts sometimes from all the switching states and dreaming and stress.

Does anyone else have these rapid dreams (ie lots of bad dreams all in one night) and is it possible for parts to dream or come out in dreams?

 

[Sideways]

Some neuro-psycho-brain-scientist person might be able to chime in here and offer some insight into the part of the brain that dreams come from and whether dissociative parts could influence our dreams, but my thinking is - why wouldn't they?

I actually read your post and initially thought "phwoar, so that's what's going on", because everything you've just described is totally me, and when I think about the different dreams that I have, I can actually easily link most of them to particular parts - like, that dream is definitely from part A, but these other ones are totally part B junk.

Perhaps none of that is the least bit helpful to you. But I can also offer up that yes, on the odd occasion I do wake up already dissociated, although more often it's that I wake up and then dissociate fairly quickly thereafter. For me, that usually happens when I wake up somewhere other than home (ie when I'm in hospital).

 

[aria]

Thank you Ragdoll Circus for your reply. I haven't been able to find any info online related to dreams and dissociation, so it's good to talk to someone who experiences similar.

 

[Leigh925]

I dissociate quite a bit and have parts. In the beginning before therapy and about a year into therapy I always had a lot of dreams. Many nightmares where I would wake up screaming or sad dreams where I would wake up crying or dreams I couldn't remember but I would wake up dissociated and dizzy as if I was triggered in the dream but also in real life by the dream and sometimes I wouldn't remember the dream but I would wake up with all the symptoms of being triggered.

My parts have their own dreams and actually I have worked through quite a bit by journaling my dreams and sharing them with my therapist.

I did go through a period of time where I was having four and five nightmares a night. It was really interfering with my life and I was traumatizing my husband and children by waking them up to blood curdling screams. The joke around here has always been that one day I could actually be screaming for a reason and no one will come to my aid because they will say....oh that's just mom having a bad dream!

When they were that bad I decided to go on a medication called librax. It actually is a stomach medicine... I think it is for stomach spasms...anyway they found in some of their studies that is helped people who had nightmare from PTSD. So it is an off label use.

But in a very short time I went from having 4 and 5 nightmares every single night to 4 and 5 nightmares a week and now I am down to 1 or 2 nightmares a month.

I have stopped taking it twice for a couple of weeks and each time the nightmares began to recur so I know it is helping.

I do go through particular periods of being quite triggered and I will still have a couple of nightmares days in a row during that time. I don't think anything would stop them! But that only happens every couple of months.

 

[aria]

I dissociate quite a bit and have parts. In the beginning before therapy and about a year into therapy...

That's interesting about the medication. Unfortunately it looks like it might not be available in the U.K . My therapist is always suggesting I write my dreams down. Sometimes I do but rarely. I don't know why. I suppose because some a very dark and I don't want to share them or the dreams are so difficult to describe that I just get overwhelmed and sometimes I don't remember them, sometimes I'm just aware that I've had a lot of dreams and get a sense they weren't good but have no memory of them. The rapid cycling of dreams drives me nits though!

 

[Leigh925]

It can be really frustrating for sure and I find the more switching I do in the dreams the more I wake up feeling like I haven't rested at all. I think getting good sleep is so important for me and my well being but it sure is hard to make it happen sometimes.

 

[aria]

It can be really frustrating for sure and I find the more switching I do in the dreams the more I wake...

I'm just glad to know that switching in dreams is possible cos it felt like that was what was happening but didn't know if it could.

 

[Powder]

Yes, for me parts come out and take more control during sleep. I've read it's because the main personality self is tired and relaxed.

Dream work is very healing.

Dreams is where most of the integrative work for me gets started. During the day I work on sorting it all out.

I've also had one part interview another one about her eating disorder and ability to not feel any hunger at all. When that part comes into action just behind my main personality, I can go days with no hunger and little thirst but have plenty energy. I also have parts that only want to eat and that's it.

I had thought it was a "dream" when they were talking about how she accomplishes the "no hunger" thing. I forgot about it, as one does with dreams, and got on with my life. However, I was unable to eat until after 3 pm, something else that happens to me as well. I didn't notice until the third day, that something did not want me to eat much, and only after 3 pm. ?

I then remembered the parts talking in my dream and that they discussed this and decided this for "us." So, I now am aware more of how these subtle conversations going on are not only real but actually control my behavior and choices more than I am consciously aware.

To be honest, it's a bit well scary and humiliating to admit. I don't like others knowing. But I can't keep this locked up forever. When I talk about my parts, I start choking, feel I'm being choked. I do feel that one part does not want me to share about the system. I need to love her for doing her best to keep me safe, but she doesn't have to keep the secrets anymore.

 

[Bipfroggit]

I don't have nightmares so much anymore, but when i did, it was just like this. I would have sometimes epic nightmares that even when i would wake up in the middle of the night terrified, i would eventually end up falling back asleep into another nightmare. A lot of times in my nightmares objects, people's faces, and situations would morph around. Then there were times where i would have the same kind of nightmare for weeks on end...same themes like cats attacking me, or rats in my bed, or a ghost woman who i never met before haunting me in a house i've never been in before. Sometimes i still have the rats in my bed dream. Recently for a week or so i would wake up almost every morning hallucinating until i realized i was awake and whatever it was, wasn't real...

 

[Sideways]

Oh, wow, I remember now why I avoid talking about dreams:sorry:

Most of the dreams that I remember are either me running away from a terrifying (but unknown) assailant (typical anxiety dream) or, err, more usually, I dream either about endless different versions of armageddon or having to watch people be macabrely killed or tortured (limbs chopped off etc)...

I refer to them as dreams rather than nightmares because a) that's how it's always been, and b) the distress passes pretty quickly most times when I wake up as I let the dream disappear.

Not sure writing them down would be helpful for me...and, um, if that's my brain recovering from the day...
:hungover:

 

[shimmerz]

I think the idea of writing these things down is so that the higher brain can process them, we can tease the symbolism around and perhaps get to a form of resolution for whatever the part is attempting to resolve.

I absolutely agree that dissociated parts have nightmares that are a sharing of their compartmentalized issues. When I look back, every time I moved prior to my knowledge of my PTSD, I would have the most Armageddon style nightmares known to mankind. Moving was a very large issue for me between birth and 2 years old. It all makes sense now. That part of me who had great reasons for being terrified of moving was totally activated and if I had known the language, I would have known that I needed to be particularly kind to myself.

 

[Mr. M]

I totally can relate to you. Look at what I wrote on my page and see if you relate. It's nice to know im not alone.