Incest Nightmares...wtf?

[Sideways]

Don't usually put a lot of stock into trying to interpret my dreams and nightmares. Usually they're watching people get hacked apart of various forms of the apocalypse.

Lately I'm having this recurring nightmare of my brother forcing himself on me and raping me. Urgh-factor is 10/10.

Haven't seen or spoken to him in years. He's an arsehole and we never got along - even as kids. He's 8 years older.

For several years, I've had patchy memories of (what I thought was) my dad sexually abusing me and my sister between 4-8 years old. More recently, I've decided to put it behind me and patch up my relationship with dad, because he isn't the main cause of my issues, and has otherwise been a pretty good dad. And it's going pretty smoothly. Smoother than I'd have thought was possible.

Do I put any stock into these recurring dreams? Try and interpret them? As in, the message is bleedin obvious Ragdoll, your 'patchy' memories haven't been that accurate about 'dad' being the abuser? My brother would have been going into adolescence and the whole "welcome to sexual urges" thing when I was that age.

I want to hit myself on the head and just get over it. They're just bad dreams. But they're real enough that when I wake up, I have to reassure myself about what's reality and what was just nightmare...

Do people get memories through dreams? Or is that just bogus, completely unreliable crap that could mean anything at all???

 

[Heather]

I don't unfortunately have asn answer to your question but I can certainly relate.

I often have dreams of having sex with one of my cousin's who sexually abused me when I was a teenager.

I wake up feeling....gross and yucky, is the best way I know how to describe it.

Ick

 

[Gs172003]

Don't usually put a lot of stock into trying to interpret my dreams and nightmares. Usually the...

I wouldn't put stock into it. I had a dream like that and I know danged good and well that didn't happen. I personally think alot of dreams are symbolic though. I just woke up from one a few minutes ago where I was in a huge group of people and a song came on. Everybody started dancing around me (I don't dance) in unison. I was so awkward and embarrassed. I woke up very quickly.

I took it to mean I feel so...different. Not like everybody else ( even here).

That's just my take on it.

But...I can be wrong :)

 

[Sideways]

Awesome! Nice balanced response - totally could be exactly what happened. Totally could be trippy and unexplainable inner workings of the brain.

*sigh* It would be really nice to just "know". Like, this is exactly what happened, proceed with therapy accordingly.

 

[Ronin]

Some memories can come through dreams (persistent enough), but they still are IME different.

As in not something that just pops by and starts a flood, more like things cropping by through various other dreams & that flip you dissociated when awake, patterns of thoughts that just won't bug off when pretty asked, that kind of a thing: similar as intrusive memories & flashbacks would go, just in a dream time. Not wholly 'the hell that's new' factor to them, in my experience. Familiar, unwanted, pesky, I-want-to-repress-it-again, yes. New & Raw and revealing whoole of the life's different... no.

& I'd take liberty with interpretation of dreams. Forcing can be about other aspects of life? Ditto feeling violated translating to rape. Some times, hyper symbolic gets the message across fast, but it's really all there is, hyper symbolism and functional alert system of what to mind, but not reality.

 

[Gs172003]

The brain is a wacky thing

 

[illusionist]

I've had dreams of things that have actually happened..which I knew about..I've relived them.

I've had terrifying dreams I've known were impossible to have been true. One dream kept coming back to me time and time again...sliding down a toilet and drowning......I'm still here!

I've recently had a dream that I was unsure about until I realised that something that had happened that day has probably set off the dream...it felt real all the same.

I can often fathom out dreams relating to things I'd seen or felt that day...even a glimpse of something I'd seen, can appear in a dream that night.

 

[Sideways]

@Ronin - the pesky thought that won't go away, is my memories of what happened when I was that age are consistent with the way brain stores confusing information when it's that age. Patchy, lots of detail missing, and yeah, totally can see that I could have superimposed my dad over my brother because that somehow makes waaay more sense. Doesn't really, because my dad has otherwise been a pretty great guy, if not a little paranoid about being accused of child abuse. Whereas my brother, at that age and ever since, the very model of a sinister, under-the-counter breed of deviance in a lot of different ways.

Re-evaluating what I actually "remember"...faaaawk! I don't know. When I got it out there a couple of years back that yes, I know me and my sister were sexually abused as little kids, thanks dad, it was a relief. Like, that chapter is over, dealt with, done and dusted, got no major issues with dad but it's icky when he wants to cuddle me.

Of course it's icky. He's the same age roughly as the man who did a real number on me when I was 12.

So many thousands of times I have nightmares, I wake up, and I move on. It was a nightmare, it's gone, how awesome is it that they just disappear like that!?

This one? Won't just friggin disappear. It's sitting in my stomach all day. That's not cool. That's not something I'm used to.

My natural inclination is always (always) to not let my dreams/nightmares mix up with reality when I'm awake. People are not getting their arms and legs hacked off in front of me - nightmare, that's messed up but totally gone and not part of my day.

Maybe it's the messed up content that's making this one linger? And I'm used to recurring themes, but not having the same nightmare many times over.

Maybe I just need to take some valium, toss it in the "messed up stuff I'll never understand" pile and move on.

Can't shake it though. And by the same token, I can't shake the feeling that suddenly, my dad is starting to feel "safe". Like I could totally go and collapse into a ball of tears and let him hug me to make me feel better now.

I don't like uncertainty. I like to know, it's column A, or it's column B. There is no option C. Option C means questionmarks hovering over my head, and I really hate question marks.

 

[Sideways]

've had terrifying dreams I've known were impossible to have been true.

There has been count-them-on-one-hand times where I haven't been sure if it was a dream or real. Mum bought me a microwave once. Only she didn't, and it wasn't till I confronted her about "what happened to that microwave you got me?" that I realised I'd just dreamt it at some point.

And maybe it's hyperanalysing confusion setting in, but when you wake up from dreams or nightmares, there's usually a feeling, and it goes away. When I cottoned on to the microwave myth, it was funny, and then "yeah, that was totes dreamworld - would've liked a new microwave".

Not great with feelings. Bottom of the class in the Name That Emotion quiz. But this feels...best way to describe it is like a ball of yuck stuck in my stomach that won't budge. I don't know what that is, but it's a new one for me.

 

[Sideways]

@Heather - did the knowledge that your cousin sexually abused you come before the dreams? Or were you having dreams about it before you remembered the reality?

 

[illusionist]

When I have relived past abuses I've wakened screaming...like I've been able to let out verbally what I couldn't, at the times they happened. The after effect of these nightmares would be all the things I felt when they happened....shame, sadness, emotional pain, hopelessness, feeling dirty etc etc and I would withdraw into myself. Fear of having another nightmare would stop me from sleeping, as well as all the mixed emotions......so basically a nightmare which I'd actually lived made me quite ill until I learned coping skills......awful, awful times.

 

[Friday]

Sorry in advance for another "balanced" reply :wtf:

One thing about my dreams... They tend to supply solutions to problems I'm having.

Forming a great relationship with dad but afraid he spent 4 years raping you? Why don't we just replace dad with asshole brother? There. Fixed. All better. See? Better, right? Right? <<< Brain. We've talked about this. Ugh. >.< The solutions my sleeping mind comes up with seriously piss me off.

These dreams can be about any number of topics, and are always a blur of fiction and reality. I can usually tell the difference. Mostly because the solutions my brain works out are so f*cking obnoxious. (Missing someone? They're dead. Voila. Problem solved. Better now??? <<< Dammit Brain. Stop that. For true. That is not better. >>> Missinf someone? They're actually evil f*cks, so you should be glad to have them out of your life! Yay! Better? Is that better? Are we happy now?) :banghead:

^^^

That said? And I'm saying it first only because I get suspicious whenever I dream "perfect" solutions to problems I'm having.

- Yep. I also have dreams that are pure flashback style nightmares. 100% reliving shit... But thank f*cking god... I'm laying down in my bed, sleeping, where nightmares belong, instead of in the middle of trying to go about my day.

- I have nightmares that are blends of fiction and reality, or blends of 2 realities creating fiction. (different timelines intersecting, people from place A in place B etc.) . I tend to call these "too much nightmare fuel" dreams, although "solution" dreams are in this category, too.

- I have nightmares that are pure fiction.

***

Sorry. I wish I could be like "Heres an easy answer for you!" But sadly, no answers here. Just, yeah... I've had nightmares that are true, untrue, partly true, mostly true but not, etc.