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Military Nightmares/dreams

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CyclePath

MyPTSD Pro
I used to mainly have nightmares that were exact recurring events that I experienced during 27 years in the military. There are many of them, so there was a good supply and they were also the things that could consume me or get triggered out of the blue during the day.

Lately, over the last year, my nightmares have changed. I'm now dreaming of things that never happened: the people are all wrong, the places are wrong, the situations are drastically impossible, but they are in fact spinoffs/worst-case/extreme scenarios of what already bad real experiences could have been.

The physical result of them is very similar to the recurring nightmares in that I wake and cant go back to sleep, but what exactly I was dreaming usually slips away into obscurity in my mind quickly.

Anybody else experience these?
 
Anybody else experience these?
Most of mine are these. Pretty much since having kids the landscape shifted.

I call it too much nightmare fuel.

Blends of fiction and reality and 12 shades of completely f*cked. Worst fears today merged into worst realities of yesterday, or vice versa, and then I spend half my time on waking dissecting what was wrong. Meaning I have to think about shit I’d seriously rather not, just to break apart the timelines, or the pieces. What’s real, what’s not, what’s just out of place. Everyone whole. Or not.
 
Blends of fiction and reality and 12 shades of completely f*cked. Worst fears today merged into worst realities of yesterday, or vice versa, and then I spend half my time on waking

That's is exactly it.

I'm not sure if it's progress or regress or more of a status quo with a twist. What I do know is that when I start having more than three nights a week of them that it's time to consider meds or risk weeks of struggling to get back to "normal".
 
Cycle and Friday, I have alot of varied sources for nightmares. They can come from alot of directions. I have been in hospitals alot, while docs piece me back together. I have spent alot of dreams and nightmares in an "altered state", frozen, unable to move or hellucinating (sometimes with help of morphine) with lots of lines in me for extended periods of time. I have alot of "wide awake" nightmares where scenes from a movie, or a documentary, or real life, shock me back into a previous experience. These can be really intense and put me in an altered state of consciousness, sometimes with paralysis, for a while. I know that it sometimes scares and disturbs folks around me. Sometimes I can prepare myself some, but alot of times it jumps on my ass out of nowhere, totally unexpectedly. "The long and winding road...." :D
 
@SaharaSon - thanks and glad to see you around again.

Maybe you're onto something with the hospital/surgery line of thought. I was under the proverbial knife three times between July and December getting things in my face and knee tightened up a bit. Two of the three surgeries were 4+ hrs in duration. One involved removal of a lot of bone from my upper and lower jaws and some broken teeth, tooth lengthening, and well over 100 stitches. I was jacked up for hours post op pucking up blood uncontrollably and couldn't eat real food for a month. I'll admit that I underestimated the gravity of that one a little bit. Between the three I was on hydrocodone for roughly six weeks. On top of that I have seen the dentist at the VA monthly as I go through a full mouth restoration. So far I've had a few root canals, numerous "build ups", eight crowns, and I'm about to get three implants and a bunch of other stuff done this year, but nothing over the top. Makes me wonder if there's a casual relationship...

Nonetheless, my sleep pattern continues to decline, but for some reason I seem to be more confident/resilient this time. To be entirely honest I think the combination of my bible and therapy is giving me the tools for peace of mind.

As for wide awake nightmares I don't think I've had one. When things hit me out of the blue it's more like a rolodex of pictures that I see like old school slow motion animated cartoons. They're wierd. When they hit, I need to take control or I'm about to have a major anxiety/panic issue. Oh well. "I've seen that road before, it always leads me here...".

Shabbot Shalom
 
Cycle, I can relate to the dental work, bigtime. I have had my mouth rebuilt twice in the last three or four years. I just finished the last one this past Fall. I have to stay on top of it from now on, because dental infections can go to your heart and cause serious problems. My heart was pretty messed up, mainly due to genetics, so I have to do every thing I can to help it along. My heart's ejection fraction got real, real low. Not good. With exercise and massive amounts of CoQ10 I have brought it back from the abyss. It is now looking good. My main cardio doc could not believe the difference. Now I'm a little anal about taking good care of my teeth. That dental chair is no fun. I hate it when they are taking impressions, and they lock your mouth closed with that impression sh*t and walk off and don't come back for a long time. I get into a panic sometimes cause I can start choking. What a way that would be to go, "patas arriva". Hang in there Cycle, it will definitely get better. :tup:
 
Cycle, does it seem like the dreams intensify when you hit a rough patch? Mine do and the mish -mash of events really gets out of hand. There is no sleeping on those nights, even with the meds.
 
@Elmez Yes, but outside of rough patches my nightmares seem totally random in both frequency and intensity. What I do know is that prazosine helps me and so does using my CPAP. I struggle being consistent using either which baffles me more than anything. I know that I have sleep apnea and I know that I have nightmares, but I'm not good at taking measures to prevent them. I guess I'll consider myself lucky because I can go 4 to 5 weeks without a nightmare at all and my sleep apnea is on the low end of moderate. That' probably what makes me wishy-washy on committing to either long term.
 
I have been watching reruns of "survivorman" and in one of them he hadnt eaten. He wakes up the next morning and talks about how he " forgot how vivid dreams can be when you don't eat". It made me think of this group.
 
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