Are You Tired Of The Nightmares Too?

[Kaii]

My nightmares are filled with scenarios where I am unable to do anything to help. I am helpless in my dreams and I hate it.

Just this past week, I dreamt that my daughter died in my arms, that I was frantically trying to help a child on fire and that my house was destroyed.

I feel so horrible when I wake up from these dreams. The one about my daughter had me crying hysterically and I had to go check on her to make sure she was really alive and safe in bed.

I don't tend to dream about the day we found Sarah's murdered body, but I feel the same sense of horror and helplessness in my nightmares that I felt the day we found her.

Why do people with PTSD have so many nightmares?

 

[Heather]

Ugh! I hate those kinds of nightmares. When I have them I wake up and I feel all "creepy" and "yucky" inside. It's an awful feeling.

I definitely feel for you ((((Kai)))).

 

[Panda]

Nightmares, sweats, what I can only assume feels something like a heart attack... that taste in your mouth. It's largely due to the walls we put up, our conscious coping mechanisms we put in place to survive. When asleep it's no longer our concious state, the subconcious (no such thing as unconcious - brain is always up to something) take over when we goto sleep. The dreams we experience is the subconcious trying it's best to unbottle all the shit we're stopping from coming out, to re-establish some sort of emotion - even if it is terrifying, this is the brain trying to heal.

<Edited for basic punctuation.>

 

[Anna]

I dunno why we have so many nightmares. Some of mine are so bad they are worse than horror films. Over the years I have kind of become numb to them. I wake up in terror than feel strangely happy that it was only a nightmare and not reality. That kind of helps me cope.

 

[NIKI]

I used to cry before going to sleep because I knew I would once again become entangled in a horror nightmare. I have been taking a med that has helped with this problem GREATLY! It's called MINIPRESS.

 

[Airplane789]

I too used to have nightmares more graphic and horrible than horror films. Now that I live with my bf I feel like I have a body guard or something so the nightmares have gone away, amazingly. Before my bf, I switched off between valerian root capsules, melatonin tablets, sleeping pills generic for Sonata, and thc, depending on the night. Be careful with sleeping pills though.

Best wishes, everyone.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I used to have horrifying nightmares. I called it my night life. It went on for years. Now I'm on a medication called Risperdone. It stops the memory of the nightmares and thigs have vastly improved for me since being on it. I still get the occasional dream, but it is nohing compared to what I endured. I highly recommend it. it has been a lifesaver for me.

 

[angel2write]

I don't tend to dream about the day we found Sarah's murdered body, but I feel the same sense of horror and helplessness in my nightmares that I felt the day we found her.

I do this, too. I don't so much re-enact the event as re-experience the emotions I felt during the event. Mostly helplessness, terror, and horror of what I knew was going to happen and couldn't prevent.

I don't know why the nightmares are so intense. So vivid. So real. I don't know why.

Do you ever have them where you are sort of conscious, and stuck in this situation and trying to problem-solve in the dream? Only everything you do backfires somehow and you end up in the same old horrible situation like always?

This happens to me a lot. I wake up soaked in sweat, tangled up in the bedclothes or with all the bedclothes ripped off the bed. And it takes me a long time to figure out that it wasn't real. There's a sticky miasma of horror that kind of clings for hours. Or even the whole day.

One thing that helps me a little now. I keep a glass of water by my bed. It's my test water. I can never drink in my dreams. So if I wake up half in and half out of a nightmare, I sit up and have a drink. It's like a grounding thing I guess. And then sometimes I can lay back down and sleep without sliding right back into the same $^%&ing dream again. (Which also happens a lot.)

 

[TSG]

I have never known a night without nightmares...at least not that I can recall. I still vividly recall a horrific nightmare that I had when I was in Kindergarten, when I was alone and a werewolf was trying to get in to eat me and so I shot it with my dads shotgun and when I looked out the window, it was my dad laying there and I woke up screaming. Many of my nightmares are never forgotten, like that one. I'm 43 so there are a lot of them in my head now.

I have nightmares of being murdered/killed by monsters, animals and humans, dying, my mother jumping off a building to her death, my children each dying, even just random people I don't know in dream scenes dying like just night before last a little girl was playing with a gun and I told her to stop playing with it as it was dangerous but she would not listen so I told her I was going to find her parents and when I turned around I heard the gun go off. I don't need to paint a picture of what I saw when I turned back around. It's worse for me when I dream of the death of others where I am helpless to do anything. Some of them are horrendously traumatic in and of themselves. I hate them worse than anything which is why I avoid sleep as long as I can.

 

[angel2write]

It's worse for me when I dream of the death of others where I am helpless to do anything. Some of them are horrendously traumatic in and of themselves.

Yes. Yes to all of this, actually. I have the same thing- watching people I care for get hurt or killed or tortured in front of me, and I'm helpless to stop it. And it's horrible.

I remember many of the nightmares I've had since I was a kid, too.

(((TSG)))

 

[Lizzie]

Interesting what Panda said. So yes I agree its our subconscious dealing with things because of the walls but whats the solution. Yep I relate to everyone hear especially my loved ones being hurt. Some are gruesome too. I dreamt my son had his legs blown off at he knee's the other night. I was so glad to wake up like often to look around and realize it wasn't real
A prayer for peace to all when you sleep
:)

 

[Powder]

Angel, yes, I want to say I read your post and have the exact same history with nightmares that half wake me and I feel compelled to try to alter the dream, but it goes right back into the nightmare, everything backfires, and it ends even worse than I had thought possible. :( I finally decided I was torturing myself. When I half wake from these, I either get up and go to the bathroom and get a drink or I somehow have learned to decide to end the dream then and there without getting lost in trying to fix it. I just surrender it as a worthless nightmare.

I think the meds I have been taking help but I think I learned this prior to meds and then they kept it stable? Who knows? The point it to stop doing this any way you can. I was having this regularly and it left me very worn out, mentally and emotionally. I'll bet this is taking a toll on your body and mind. Somehow, it is something we can turn away from, but I'm not sure how I did it.

And, I still have tons of other things to work on, like dissociation when triggered, that I still don't seem to have a hold on. One day at a time. One aspect of PTSD at a time. Progress is slow but better than nothing, I guess.

(((Angel))) I want all the best for you, healing thoughts your way, friend. You are amazing.

Muse