Have you ever dissociated the next day because of a bad nightmare?

[Luna_Moth]

I (30F) had a dream a few days ago about being sexually harassed by a woman before I killed her. The next day I’ve been dissociating around blonde woman. My mother is a blonde and abused me throughout my life, but I don’t have a direct memory of CSA by her. I just think the connection is uncanny. I keep asking myself if I’m making things up, but the fact I’ve been dissociating around blonde women is concerning to me.

 

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

dissociation or being more symptomatic often follows nightmares for me, if they’re trauma-themed in some way.
I used to be really bad around certain demographics of women (white, brown straight hair, around my age, certain styles of clothing).
It’s ok to be shaken up over a nightmare, regardless of if it’s a reflection of lived experience or not.

 

[Luna_Moth]

dissociation or being more symptomatic often follows nightmares for me, if they’re trauma-themed in some way.
I used to be really bad around certain demographics of women (white, brown straight hair, around my age, certain styles of clothing).
It’s ok to be shaken up over a nightmare, regardless of if it’s a reflection of lived experience or not.

I think the reason why I wonder I was sexually abused is because I’ve always been inhibited and felt traumatized around my mother. I’ve had a dissociative disorder and PTSD pretty much my whole life. Plus I had dreams about being molested by my parents. I also had nightmares about being taken to strange places while in the back seat of someone’s car before I wake up feeling terrified. This was when my symptoms started showing up at age 4.

It wasn’t until I turned 28 that I was diagnosed with C-PTSD. My symptoms started showing up after opening up sexually to someone. I kept have non-visual flashbacks until I started regressing. It was horrible.

I have no visual memory though, so it’s still up in the air. This leaves me feeling really frustrated at times, because I just want to know what transpired for me to have this disorder.

 

[Friday]

Oh I’ve lost hours, days, and at least once shut my emotions off entirely (the same way I was in the dream, which was all flashback style, rather than a mix of reality & fiction), for several months.

Most of the time I have enough coping mechanisms & tricks that my dreams & nightmares don’t affect/affect me -or my sleep- much. Sometimes, though? <low whistle>

 

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

I think the reason why I wonder I was sexually abused is because I’ve always been inhibited and felt traumatized around my mother. I’ve had a dissociative disorder and PTSD pretty much my whole life. Plus I had dreams about being molested by my parents. I also had nightmares about being taken to strange places while in the back seat of someone’s car before I wake up feeling terrified. This was when my symptoms started showing up at age 4.

It wasn’t until I turned 28 that I was diagnosed with C-PTSD. My symptoms started showing up after opening up sexually to someone. I kept have non-visual flashbacks until I started regressing. It was horrible.

I have no visual memory though, so it’s still up in the air. This leaves me feeling really frustrated at times, because I just want to know what transpired for me to have this disorder.

Sorry you’re in this position, pretty horrible stuff. Have you been DXed with your dissociative disorder?

I have no visual memory though, so it’s still up in the air. This leaves me feeling really frustrated at times, because I just want to know what transpired for me to have this disorder.

I have no memory of my big trauma, had access to it once which set off a 4yr long spiral into the depths, but I don’t actually remember after the glimpse. Maybe I will one day, maybe I won’t, maybe I don’t need to. My system has other things to face at the moment.
I understand the fear and uncertainty of not knowing while having the proof that something bad has happened.
I try not to fall into it but I wonder what all I don’t remember, too, also struggle to feel validated in being as traumatised as I am (dissociative disorder) given I feel relatively little happened to me as a child. But that’s a warped and incomplete perspective; I can’t have this disorder without something “bad enough” happening to facilitate it. Proof is in the pudding.

My therapist says “trauma, is trauma, is trauma” stay curious buy try not to force things, you may not be ready yet to open that box. And trust me they do open. Maybe there’s more childhood trauma I’ve been through, maybe not, it’ll come out when it’s ready if true.

Try to stay empathetic to yourself, clearly it’s a hard time at the moment. What can you do to have a more compassionate stance towards yourself in this position? You don’t need the memories as permission to tend to your emotions kindly.

 

[Luna_Moth]

Sorry you’re in this position, pretty horrible stuff. Have you been DXed with your dissociative disorder?

Yes, I was diagnosed with DPDR (Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder) when I was hospitalized. I was at a psych ward and the psychiatrist DXed me with that along with PTSD. It wasn’t until I was hospitalized that I finally got the diagnosis I needed.

A few years before that, I had a therapist say I show signs of C-PTSD with symptoms of derealization and depersonalization. I didn’t take in what he said because I didn’t want to believe it. I should have listened to him.

I have no memory of my big trauma, had access to it once which set off a 4yr long spiral into the depths, but I don’t actually remember after the glimpse. Maybe I will one day, maybe I won’t, maybe I don’t need to. My system has other things to face at the moment.

I’m so sorry you had to go through that. That sounds really scary.

I also have issues with my nervous system. It’s led to a lot of health and pain issues that I’m trying to address. I’m supposed to be seeing a Pain Reprocessing Therapist for neuroplastic pain, but now I’m in denial of that lol.

I understand the fear and uncertainty of not knowing while having the proof that something bad has happened.
I try not to fall into it but I wonder what all I don’t remember, too, also struggle to feel validated in being as traumatised as I am (dissociative disorder) given I feel relatively little happened to me as a child. But that’s a warped and incomplete perspective; I can’t have this disorder without something “bad enough” happening to facilitate it. Proof is in the pudding.

My therapist says “trauma, is trauma, is trauma” stay curious buy try not to force things, you may not be ready yet to open that box. And trust me they do open. Maybe there’s more childhood trauma I’ve been through, maybe not, it’ll come out when it’s ready if true.

Try to stay empathetic to yourself, clearly it’s a hard time at the moment. What can you do to have a more compassionate stance towards yourself in this position? You don’t need the memories as permission to tend to your emotions kindly.

At first I was terrified of the thought that something might have happened. Now I’m at a place of acceptance without fear. I’m mostly just frustrated now, because a part of me wants to remember so I can process it and move on.

I actually know someone with OCD and trauma and they constantly obsess and beat themself up over the fact that they can’t remember. It’s getting to the point where they are engaging in self-harm. As someone who has self-harmed occasionally, that is not what I want to do. Part of me wants to start giving her tough love because she keeps going backwards and not forward with her healing journey because of this. That’s beside the point; I just don’t want to be like that so I choose to accept that I don’t remember instead of being lost in the past so deeply.

 

[K Uniquely.Fab]

I (30F) had a dream a few days ago about being sexually harassed by a woman before I killed her. The next day I’ve been dissociating around blonde woman. My mother is a blonde and abused me throughout my life, but I don’t have a direct memory of CSA by her. I just think the connection is uncanny. I keep asking myself if I’m making things up, but the fact I’ve been dissociating around blonde women is concerning to me.

Nightmares most definitely have caused the same thing to me a few times over the years

 

[user56652]

I dont know about dissociation as such but there are days when I wake up from dreams/nightmares that are so vivid it takes a few minutes when I wake up to realise that it was a dream.

 

[captain jigglypuff]

I’ve disassociated after dreams before but not because they were nightmares. I oddly have never gotta nightmare in my life. I’ve had unpleasant and unhappy dreams but never a nightmare. And I once fell asleep a horror movie marathon full of slashers and still had no nightmare. The dreams that make me disassociate for awhile after waking up are extremely lucid dreams that are too real and I’m unsure if they happened in real life or not. Or I know that I’m definitely in a dream but keep waking up to still find myself in a different dream. I will hear my alarm going off and get up to turn it off but then I can’t stop it and I am getting frustrated because I can’t turn off the alarm.

 

[arfie]

dissociating after nightmares is normal for me, as is the mixing of characters and events during nightmares and the phobic reactions to people, places and things which remind me of the nightmare.

because I just want to know what transpired for me to have this disorder.

to the best of my knowledge, why one person develops ptsd and another doesn't remains a medical mystery.

I choose to accept that I don’t remember instead of being lost in the past so deeply.

same here. i started my recovery from child sex trafficking with full trauma induced amnesia. choosing to accept the memory damage without detailed fact sheets has been a cornerstone of my recovery. ^it^ is what ^it^ is, whether i understand ^it^ or knot. understanding how a bone was broken has never healed the bone.

 

[Luna_Moth]

I’ve disassociated after dreams before but not because they were nightmares. I oddly have never gotta nightmare in my life. I’ve had unpleasant and unhappy dreams but never a nightmare. And I once fell asleep a horror movie marathon full of slashers and still had no nightmare. The dreams that make me disassociate for awhile after waking up are extremely lucid dreams that are too real and I’m unsure if they happened in real life or not. Or I know that I’m definitely in a dream but keep waking up to still find myself in a different dream. I will hear my alarm going off and get up to turn it off but then I can’t stop it and I am getting frustrated because I can’t turn off the alarm.

This has been my experience when I was a small child. I remember having dreams at one point that felt too real to be dreams, but too peculiar to be memories.

I question if I was going through derealization at the time. Whether or not these were foggy, repressed memories; if I was just dissociating from a bad dream again; if the memories showed up in a nightmare; or all three of the above. I had to be around 4 years old.