Did Your Nightmares Start Gradually Or Right After You Had Trauma?

[sonicwhite]

Prazosin also helps me to dream lucid and when I have obtained lucidity there very fun. They don't go to hell in a hand basket.

 

[PTSD NON VETERAN mom]

My nightmares began immediately after my trauma and were always reliving the trauma and waking and scaring my family with my terrible screams. Still having the night terrors and up walking/running and getting occasional injuries during the night terrors. The nightmares have changed somewhat from seeing my son after i kicked in his door to fighting the people who dragged me off him while doing CPR and trying anything possible to get back to him. Crazy fights with people/not the cops i really fought with that day but unknown faces blocking me from my son and me using weapons or crazy moves to get past them and to get to my son to continue CPR. I take a handful of pills at night to keep me in bed at night but still am living with this.

 

[seedling]

My nightmares didn't start right after my adult trauma that caused the PTSD. At that point what sleep I was getting was like blacking out. It seemed I had no dreams.
I think my nightmares started after I started therapy 6 months after the trauma.

Sometimes I get nightmares that are dramatic and emotional with the physical response that wakes me up. Other times my dreams seem to start out normal but then take a creepy, scary or negative turn until it builds into a nightmare.

 

[Steffy2389]

@seedling I can relate to the blackouts maybe after three months after my trauma.

For the first three months, I had vivid nightmares that shocked me awake in cold sweats. After three months, either it was odd dreams or I couldn't remember (the blackouts).

After four years I'm having nightmares again, but I almost never remember them when I wake.

 

[mamachick]

During the trauma, I think I started to dissociate as toward the end of the events, I seemed blank. Following the traumatic event, I seemed to vacilate between dissociation and tears. The nightmares began immediately. I was given so many white pills such as vicodin, muscle relaxer, 800 mg IBProfin, and percoset I think, then xanax. I was confused about the meds. But when I awoke from a nightmare, it was in a panic state and I recall thinking to take a xanax. But there were many mornings my daughter found me on the floor with the bottle spilled and we did not know how many I took. Over the course of days, I think the meds accumulated until one day she could not get me up and I was admitted for overdose. It was unintentional. They were mostly the same dream about my daughter being assaulted. Yet I know there were other ones too, I cant recall the singles, just the repeated.

 

[sonicwhite]

I'm sorry @brat17 , that you went thru all that.....That is a lot of addictive pills not counting the IP 800.......I mean I would have a lot of temptation going on if I had all those. But please treat this disorder delicately because It would hurt so bad to hear that something happened to you.

 

[Eternum]

I started having nightmares at the age of 4. But my life was the kind where I hit the ground running pretty much. My nightmares have never been about anything real, so it stumped my therapist. I had all manner of nightmares then. Like @seedling, sometimes they were normal and built up into something bad. Sometimes I could semi-lucid dream and see that an area went to a "bad" place so I could walk away from it. But most of my nightmares played out as horror action movies, in chronological order. I'm talking epic aerial battles with epic super powers fighting epic monsters, or trying to escape epic disasters. (Apparently, my brain likes epic.) I've actually written a lot of them down because they'd make amazing disaster movies.

Then I had a life-threatening illness, got medication for that, and the way I dream now is completely different. I don't remember them anymore except for distant fragments that I quickly lose after I've been up long enough.

I had a series of events recently that sparked a relapse. I didn't know it since I'm already so used to managing my symptoms on a daily basis. But after the last event that sparked panic, I had 3 nights of nightmares, again nothing about what really happened. I still only remembered fragments, but I vividly remembered those fragments with strong attachments of emotion: anger, frustration, extremely aggressive (I am never like this in my waking world). I still remember them over a week later.

The nightmares were actually the thing that caused me to start paying attention to my emotional state and ultimately brought me here.

 

[mamachick]

I have a history of repeated dreams. When my girls were small, I had this repeated dream that I was on a bicycle with both my little girls on the back and bags of groceries, I was coming up a 7 mile hill from the store and it was dusk. Cars were passing me and I was peddling my butt off. My therapist said that it was symbolic of my feeling lack of help from my husband and carrying the burden. That sounded right to me. I think there is something to dreams. I think our mind is very complex and can do things to the body that seem to be a mystery.

This is off the subject, but after not having a period in nearly a year, a cop (who I have a lawsuit against) called it an arrest but it was an assault and kidnapping from my home. After realizing he injured me the took me to an alley and I was facedown. He got out and was laughing with some other me. I was sure I was going to get raped. I think I went into that flight response. Turned out the other men were paramedics and when they were done chatting and laughing, they took me to hospital. I had abnormal vaginal bleeding for over a month. The only explaination that I have is that I was raped previously and bleed a lot afterwards. Rapists are not often the most gentle.

My dreams have always had a root that I could point out or hypothesis about, not that Im necessarily right.

@sonicwhite-thank you for your concerns. I am very careful now. I think that I was in a state of shock at that time, or best I can describe. I still have to take the pain meds and xanax 6 yrs later. I have bouts of nightmares.Pain keeps me awake and wakes me and NSAIDS tore my stomach up., causing me to go down to 105 pounds.

 

[sonicwhite]

@brat17 when I was going thru the psychosis I was in jail.....I was at a store high on ecstasy and a cop comes and tries to beat me up. He had no chance against someone on five X pills thinking they where God.....So another cop pins me down and in a gentle voice said stay down while the police officer was kicking me. The cop that tried to beat me up threw me in the back of his unit. They took me to jail.


They ask what I was on and how many. I said five so two Guards threw me into a cell and pull my pants down and either they where raping me or trying to find drugs.....I remember looking behind me and seeing the other guard unzip his pants and I screamed that I had HIV and they went UGH. Either they where disgusted by what I thought they where doing or they where proceeding to rape me. They throw me into a stretcher. Put a catheter in me and pulled it out with the balloon opened......They tried to put a needle in both my forearms I guess to sedate me because when I gave up fighting this warm sense of euphoria came over me. I looked thru the skylight in the ambulance and said Please Father forgive me of my sins in Jesus name amen. I wake up in detox and go thru the psychosis for seven moths. I thought ppl where going to chop me up or murder me.



I was trapped in a body that was truly scared,.that's what started all of this.

 

[Eternum]

@sonicwhite and @brat17... I'm not sure if I want to "like" your posts. I appreciate your openness, yes. And yet I have mixed feelings. I feel shocked and upset by the intensity of what you have gone through, and yet I'm relieved that the terror I feel isn't out of place here like it feels in the rest of the world. I'm not even sure how I feel about being relieved by that. Both of your situations are very different from mine, but the resulting feelings are the same.

Either way, I do appreciate both of you being willing to share so much about yourselves. I read stuff like this and I truly wish there was something I could do to make the world less horrible.

 

[mamachick]

@sonicwhite-I am so sorry that this happened to you. Never used the drug so I only know that I have heard that on it you have incredible strenght. Restraining is one thing, what happened to you is quite another. Police need training in mental illness and persons on drugs as well. Our country is so out of control with the mentality of 'us againt all".

@Eternum-before this happened, I have had plenty of adversity in my life, however, my beliefs that the majority of people are good was maintained. That is not true anymore, I believe that most people are not good. My therapist tries to help me to challenge my beliefs but not working so well. I have some good people, but am changed for what seems permenantly.
I also use to believe that I control my world, now I believe the world controls me. I always expected good to come out of things, now I expect nothing but more grief. I understand my beliefs are skewed, but they are not so easy to change as others might think I have worked so hard to change them and it seems impossible. Our terror is very real in the world we live. Trauma seems to change our entire brain make up.

 

[sonicwhite]

BTW I don't have HIV, it was my tactic to get them to stop.