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Changing My Nightmares - Is This Totally Insane?

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EmmaDancing

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Okay, so you know how when you were a kid, people would tell you not to watch that movie or read that book because it will 'give you nightmares'? I've started watching as many horrible stuff and reading the most disturbing books as I can, because I want those nightmares. Instead of the nightmares I already get - flashbacks mostly, but suicide and cutting stuff too; I wake up terrified. I'm exhausted and triggered all day. I'm so damn tired of this, especially because it's fall - it's always worse in the fall because that's when it started.
So I'm trying to change my nightmares. Trade them in, I guess. Is this in any way logical or am I totally losing it? Has anybody else ever felt this way?
 
There are many techniques you can use to try to change your nightmares and dreams. One approach I use is to flood myself with a specific monoculture of media, but I have never done this to change nightmares I already have into different nightmares. Instead I use media that encourages a nice part of my imagination.

There are other methods to affect your dreams and to lucid dream, as well.
 
Dream journaling is the main tool I used to change my nightmares into something more positive. I am not sure saturating myself with fresh nightmare material would work. Dreams have a profound ability to integrate topics.
 
thank you arfie. How does dream journaling work?
am not sure saturating myself with fresh nightmare material would work. Dreams have a profound ability to integrate topics.
And you're probably right about that. To be honest, my nightmares have been getting worse, but I just chalked that up to it being fall. I guess I should imerse myself in more positive material :)
 
You may wish to ask a psychiatrist about the medication, Minipress (prazosin) for PTSD nightmares.

It is a blood pressure medication given in small doses that the Veterans Administration (US) found to be helpful for combat survivors who suffered with PTSD nightmares.

They give it to me in a 5 mg dose. I no longer have nightmares and I had the kind of disturbing dreams that you have described.
 
I have been keeping a dream journal due to my theraphists requests. Well, there will be a load of written down dreams.

Try watching stuff that makes you feel better. On some people happy scenes work (though not on me, seeing happiness makes me feel bad and abandoned.)
 
I kept a pen and paper by my bed (or wherever I was sleeping) and developed the habit of reaching for that pen and paper immediately after waking, before I got out of bed. I kept a glass of water, also, so that I could rinse the sleep from my mouth as I wrote. I think it was important to write about the dreams, whether they were nightmares, or not. The developmental and resolution dreams are seldom nightmares and they are immensely important to know about. Over the many years I needed to resolve my nightmares, keeping my dream journal gave me a deep awareness of my dreams and I do believe I was even able to put a bit of the lucid dreaming technique @Karen12 alluded to into the development and resolution dreaming phases.
 
Hi Emma,
@Karen12 's suggestion of lucid dreaming is really good if you partially wake up during a dream - when that happens, it's your head and you are in charge - and you have any super power you can think of.

I don't have many nightmares (sleep tends to be one of my safe places) but the few times I have and that I've become lucid, the monsters and bad people in the dream had better run. I've made monsters burn, and, I've turned into a vampire and bitten the bad people.
 
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