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Nightmares - Parents Are In My Nightmares

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bob

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Currently getting a lot of nightmares, about my parents. I moved out ten years ago when I was 18. The typical scenario is that I'm back in their house screaming/yelling at them because they won't listen to me. I wake up feeling scared and angry. They never were able to stop thinking about themselves for long enough to listen to what I have to say, and they wonder why I can't stand them.

Anyone else out there struggling with nightmares?
 
Oops I sound a bit angry there but I can't figure out how to edit my post. I think it's because it's 3 am and I'm wide awake now having had nightmares. I'm feeling a bit calmer now, will go back to bed soon :)
 
bob,
yes, I have also been having nightmares, but I don't know what to do to deal with them. Do you? I just wanted to let you know that if you need to write about your nightmares, I'm here to listen and give feedback (if I am able to help)...

Josh
 
I have nightmares about my parents all the time. Several times a week I dream about being back in my old house in MA... or somewhere that looks alot like it. I can't tell you have many times I wake up screaming, cursing, feeling scared and or hateful. You are not alone.....
 
Bob, can you remind me about your parents please? They abused you?

Yes I was abused. It was not necessarily physical or sexual abuse (although this did happen), but emotional abuse, you know like undermining my self esteem at every opportunity, things like being called a "waste of space" and not being allowed to make any noise whilst eating. Also not being allowed to express myself, I couldn't say anything to my parents without having it rammed back down my throat.

I have nightmares about my parents almost every night. It's horrible and I wish it would stop.

As a side note, Anthony, why do you edit the title of every thread? This is not normal forum behaviour and I find it disconcerting. It doesn't exactly make me want to post here.
 
Sorry, you are feeling like that. Some of the titles are edited to make it more clear what is within the post itself. Quicker, easier reference, or there would be 30 posts that simply say nightmare(s), panic attacks, anxiety, anger... It helps you also get support faster from people who do not have time to go over the whole forum, as it is huge, and when something that relates to them pops out they are more likely to read it. While all may have nightmares, not all involve the parents. No way meant to be offensive. Just helps things move smoothly and get support to you faster.
 
Hey Bob,

Veiled hit it on the head. It helps users find what is relevant to them faster, more accurately, than stuffing about having to look at every post. Editors look at every post, not other members... though editors do not reply to every post, just checking them for correctness. Members make up the bulk of communication, so helping them to find relevant conversations faster, is in eveyone's best interest. Any quality forum with quality editorial guidelines, editors and so forth, edit thread titles, threads, posts, etc etc... I have been in the game a long time to know.

Bob, how long did this occur too you? Was this your entire growing up? Who diagnosed you with PTSD as a result of this? I ask this, because I am wondering whether it is more anxiety than full PTSD, as significant trauma outside of normal life trauma must occur for the mind to chemically imbalance. Basically, the mind must be so terrified, it breaks and neurologically imbalances the right and left hemispheres.

This isn't scaling down your abuse, if anything to me, hopefully you can be healed fully, cured as such, if your issues have stemmed more self esteem, anxiety and depression issues, rather than actual physical abuse to the extent beyond normal growing up smacks and so forth, or sexual abuse would certainly do it.

If you had sexual abuse, which I am not sure if you meant that above or not, then your sexual abuse would actually be what has given you PTSD, not emotional abuse as such. Emotional abuse though, if significant enough, will certainly give you more issues over the sexual abuse, or possibly even hiding the underlying factors of sexual abuse.
 
I have been diagnosed with complex PTSD. This can come about solely from mistreatment from caregivers, including emotional abuse. I was also bullied and beaten a lot at school as I mentioned in previous thread, but my nightmares are mostly about my home life. There was some violence at home as well, but no sexual abuse as I recall. There may also be some things that I can't remember, I recalled part of something the other day that was really horrific, but I can't remember what it was now.

I had a nightmare last night. I had my sister in a headlock and I was smashing her head against a wall until she was unconscious. She used to bully me at home. She was the favourite and used that to her advantage, my parents would always believe her over me. I have a recurring nightmare where I am trapped with my parents in their house, screaming and shouting at them.
 
Hey Bob,

This isn't scaling down your abuse, if anything to me, hopefully you can be healed fully, cured as such, if your issues have stemmed more self esteem, anxiety and depression issues, rather than actual physical abuse to the extent beyond normal growing up smacks and so forth, or sexual abuse would certainly do it.

You're not a doctor and you don't have teh whole story so don't try to diagnose me.
 
Sorry that sounded a bit aggressive. What I meant to say is that I've already received a diagnosis of complex PTSD from a qualified doctor. There is a whole bunch of stuff I haven't mentioned to you like being beaten up, mugged, seeing people killed. I didn't come here for a second diagnosis, I came here to talk.
 
OK here is some more information, this is something I posted on another forum:

I don't want this to be a "poor me" thread but I'm really struggling and it would help to put some of this down on paper, as it were. I've been diagnosed with PTSD, this is just really about how I got into such a state.

My mum and dad have always been pretty absent. My mum's parents abandoned her when she was in single figures. Her dad left and her mum died, she was left living with her Aunt and felt she had to "look after" her younger sister. Needless to say it left her emotionally scarred. My mum had post natal depression after me and my sister as well as her ongoing problems, so there was probably an attachment problem from the begninning. She was always a bit emotionally absent, although she was there physically it felt like she was elsewhere. My dad used to come home from work and pass out in front of the telly. Mum and dad used to fight a lot and they both used to beat me. They used to banish me to bedroom a lot and sometimes come up and beat me. They also called me names like "useless" and "waste of space" quite often. One time I was sitting on a grass bank outside my friend's house with three friends when my dad came and punched me in the face, giving me a black eye. I don't remember what I'd done to deserve it. There's a huge rift in my family, I haven't spoken to my sister for some years and I can't stand to be around my parents.

At school I was bullied from the age of about 9 to about 15. I was a misfit kind of kid, my appearance was unusual, I didn't have the trendy clothes of my friends and usually had a silly haircut. I was also pretty socially inept. A group of kids used to wait outside the shool gates to kick me off my bike. In school the would surround me and call me names, and take pleasure from humiliating me in whatever possible. I was punched and kicked and held down and beaten, had snow rubbed in my face, chewing gum put in my hair. Sometimes kids who I thought were my friends would join in with the bullies, which hurt more than anything else.

Around the village I lived in older kids would bully me, shouting names at me, surrounding me and beating me up. Nowhere was a safe place for, everywhere I went I was scared and nervous.

I was expelled from school at 16 for drugs and generally misbehaving. It was a good school, my parents were very angry with me. I was then expelled from another school soon after.

When I was 16 my girlfriend left me for one of the kids that used to bully me. I got wrecked on drugs and alcohol one night and her mum found me lying in the road wrecked and took me home. My parents locked me in my bedroom. I jumped out the window and ran away, I was running up a dual carriageway a few miles from home when my sister appeared in a car and took me home.

My best friend at the time messed up on drugs and ended up in hostipal long term with a mental illness, drugged up to the eyeballs. I went to see him and it scared the wotsits out of me, he was really out of it.

When I was 17 or so I was arrested by the police. They drove me 10 miles to the station. There were two policemen. One was driving, the other one was in the back with me. He held my hands up behind my back in cuffs and was punching me repeatly around the back of the head and the back and ribs. They were both mocking and laughing at me while I was crying. One of them was a senior officer and I made a complaint, nothing came of it. The assh*le caught up with me on my bike sometime after, he stopped the car and he threatened me. I don't think I can ever trust police again.

When I was 18 my parents threw me out. I spent a night in january sleeping rough in woodland without a coat and almost got hyperthermia. I went to college the next day trying to hold back the tears, a filthy mess. Then I wandered round the streets for a week or so until they let me back in. I don't remember it much, I was drunk and stoned.

I was sitting outside a pub once when one of the locals thought it would be fun to come out and beat the crap out of me, smashing my head against a wall. Another time my "friends" turned on me and one of them hit me over the head with a big spanner, making a bloody mess. Another time I was drunk and offered a big schoolkid out for a fight, he knocked me out with a single punch and his ring cause a big gash by my eye, then he slammed my head in a door. Another time I saw my friend beaten almost to death by two thugs with a baseball bat. His head was pouring with blood. Then I saw a woman run over and killed by a bus, blood pouring out of her head and her poor kid screaming. I was mugged once and almost a second time. Some of these smaller traumatic events I have somehow been unable to come to terms with.

I have recurring nightmares about my family that have been going on for 20 years or so. The nightmares vary but one theme had remained constant throughout:- I'm trying to communicate with my parents in some way and they are not listening. Typically I am screaming at one or both of them trying to make them understand something. I get more and more upset and sometimes wake up shouting and sweating. I have these nightmares at least once per week, sometimes as much as 3 times per night. In my awake state I also have violent fantasies. They can be brought on by stress, sometimes stress at work, sometimes by drivers cutting me up when I'm on my bike. You get the picture.

And so I have PTSD from a number of traumatic events over some years.

I have ongoing problems with self-esteem. The low self-esteem comes from being bullied and abused and from the memories of bad things I have seen and done. I have used drugs on and off for some years. Sometimes I have a bad day and things get really heavy, I start crying uncontrollably or get very angry or suicidal or have violent fantasies. It's very intrusive and hard to deal with.

Well that's me, warts and all. It's not a very pretty picture but I'm doing my best to make things better in the future, although struggling some in the process.

I would add to that that I very much have PTSD and am struggling with the symptoms daily, please no more doubt about that.
 
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