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I have nightmares about other people being traumatized

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EveHarrington

MyPTSD Pro
I have nightmares, but never about my own trauma.

Now I’m having nightmares about people in my life being traumatized and it’s so much worse than any of my other nightmares in terms of lasting effects. I’ve been crying all day long off/on. These traumas haven’t actually happened.

Has anyone else experienced this?
 
Kind of. I'm so empathetic that it's almost a disorder -- you hear of people getting PTSD from being told that their loved one died violently (that's still true, I think?) but if someone tells me it's happened to literally anyone at all, I end up with similar problems. (I did not get my original PTSD diagnosis for this, but it is disruptive).

I have trillions of examples of this -- something is always suffering -- but the most notable is 9/11. I was 6, but I began having horrible nightmares. I also just before this realized that murderers weren't rare.

So, what my mind does is freak out about things that could have happened to other people, or maybe did. And then I can't get over it, and see it in my dreams.

I have no solutions, but it's nice to not be alone.
 
You know, one of my worst nightmares is for something traumatic to happen to me in the presence of others.

The other one is having something traumatic happen to someone else while I can do little to prevent the original occurrence (nurse training helps with the aftermath... not that I ever finished that training, exactly).

Having trauma happen to me, with no one knowing? No one feeling guilty or sad for me? Easy! Perfect!

I wonder if something like this is affecting you?
 
Hey.
I'm sorry this is happening to you. It happens to me, too.
When I have dreams about my own trauma, I'm almost detached from it, find it difficult to cry about, etc etc because my brain kind of has my back, or it's own (perhaps less than healthy) ways of dealing.
When I have dreams where the same thing happens to my loved ones, I just get bludgeoned with a range of emotions. They tend to be the ones I repress for myself: sadness, shock, horror, despair, grief, outrage, a kind of 'why, how could something like this happen'-ness. (I'm more disposed to blankness and frustration/anger when I feel for myself.
Sometimes I think it's my brain's way of having these feelings in a 'safer' way? Like, a doublethink where I don't have to admit that I feel those kinda scary things about myself.
But yeah, the intrusiveness of the images is just. Whoa. Like, my own nightmares about me aren't nearly as bad the next day.
 
Wow. Nightmares suck, but trauma related ones? I have no advice but I agree with another poster here that it sounds like you have a lot of empathy.

I had the opposite problem. My trauma didn't happen to me (murder witness) and I did not even know the victim. I would frequently have violent nightmares where I was being murdered instead. It felt like I was 'hogging' what was his and his families trauma and making it about me. Even though I have no control over my dreams.

A couple of nights ago I dreamt that he came back to life, reunited with his family and he actually thanked me for saving his life.

First ever dream about the victim and it was an incredible and closure giving experience.

Nothing we can do to control our dreams and trauma nightmares are the worst for it as they can be so unpredictable.
You are empathetic. I hope you can take comfort in that at least.

*trying to save his life
 
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