• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Havent slept in 6 years. The nightmares have startup up nightly again. Barely functioning. Help

  • Thread starter Stubborn survivor
  • Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

Stubborn survivor

My dad abused me a my siblings. Mom did too. We were homeschooled. And weren't allowed outside the house or to have friends. 18 years of my life was spent in he'll prison. Isolated from the world. And being beaten for any minor mistake deemed unsuitable by our parents. Stict rules for how we had to live day by day. Bored out of our minds and alone in our free time. Cannibalizing and throwing our other siblings under the bus to get out of punishments.

Sometimes it didn't matter who did the bad thing. Our dad would beat all 5 of us untill somebody willfully took the blame and an extra beating and let the others go.

There's so much more. My brother sexyally abused me. I guess that's what you get when you keep your three boys alone in there bedroom garage away from the others in the house. And the older one reaches puberty and has only seen a few girls. I was the younger one and just went along with it. I was 8 when it started. Lasted for about a year before he stopped and we both tried to forget it.

The parenting abuse continued untill I was 18. And I moved in with my uncle 11 days after my freedom day. Nothing like being rushed into a world completely alien to you after 18 years of abuse and being expected to have everything figured out. Like how to talk to people. Shop at a store. Or feed yourself. I could go on and on and on but for this. My first thread.

I'll get to the point. I'm 22 years old and have come a long way since I moved out. But I'm still not doing great. I have a job and am a functioning member of society. But barely. I haven't slept well since of was 16. That's when the nightmares came with full force. And for the last 6 years they have been vivid and demented. I question my own sanity for what my brain shows me. Things I've never seen before. That torment me in way impossible to imagine. The dreams are so vivid and real.

And I can feel pain. Lately they have become a nightly trial. Last night there was a venomous spider. And he bit my hand. It was so painful. Burned like any real bite. I the fear and trauma of seeing this feeling it. And being unable to escape from it until the dream decides to let me go is unimaginable. I'm already to go to sleep. And what little sleep I get is just filled with yet more suffering.

I'm afraid of what torture I will experience tonight. My life barely feels worth living. I have no peace. And I have no way to achieve peace. I just want the pain to stop.

Thanks for listening. Sorry for the downer mood. I feel like I sound pathetic I want to be strong. But I've been strong for 22 years. I am tired. Enough should just be enough. It's bedtime for me now. My hearts already racing with anxiety. Time to take my 20 mgs melatonin. And max strength zzzquil. I started taking them 2 weeks ago because when shit starting picking up it was the only thing putting me down. Probably gonna be a problem for my liver if I keep it up haha. f*ck it. Thanks again. Goodnight
 
I can definitely relate to a lot of this. Early-life isolation tends to have a very specific constellation of symptoms. Myself && others who can relate have all described similar things to you, especially your circumstances regarding night terrors & tactile hallucinations. I have a lot of tactile and auditory hallucinations & sometimes delusions as well.

Sleep is fairly elusive to me. If I can get to sleep which is rare. I tend to remain awake for days at a time, and when I do fall asleep -- I am usually "awake" and "asleep" at the same time. I can hear things going on around me && know where everyone is in the house, if someone's left or entered, footsteps. A lot of my dreams, when I can even get to the point of sleep where one does dream, are f*cked up as well.

Mostly because my life and my experiences were f*cked up and that stuff lives in my brain. Rather than indicating insanity it is very likely a result of your brain attempting to process your real experiences and conflating them with fantasy/dreamland bullshit. I expect it's similar for you, that what may assist is traumatic processing. It seems your symptoms with nightmares are signifying the real issue.

Therapy tends to get this one backwards, but medication can help.

Rather than Nyquil and melatonin I'd recommend trying prazosin. It's an alpha channel blocker that helps to lower your physiological responses (heart rate, blood pressure) && has success in treating nightmares. It's also safer for your body as many preparations of Nyquil have acetaminophen in them of which 4% gets converted to NAPQI (a hepatotoxin). This is what causes liver failure.
 
Last edited:
I can definitely relate to a lot of this. Early-life isolation tends to have a very specific constellation of symptoms. Myself && others who can relate have all described similar things to you, especially your circumstances regarding night terrors & tactile hallucinations. I have a lot of tactile and auditory hallucinations & sometimes delusions as well.

Sleep is fairly elusive to me. If I can get to sleep which is rare. I tend to remain awake for days at a time, and when I do fall asleep -- I am usually "awake" and "asleep" at the same time. I can hear things going on around me && know where everyone is in the house, if someone's left or entered, footsteps. A lot of my dreams, when I can even get to the point of sleep where one does dream, are f*cked up as well.

Mostly because my life and my experiences were f*cked up and that stuff lives in my brain. Rather than indicating insanity it is very likely a result of your brain attempting to process your real experiences and conflating them with fantasy/dreamland bullshit. I expect it's similar for you, that what may assist is traumatic processing. It seems your symptoms with nightmares are signifying the real issue.

Therapy tends to get this one backwards, but medication can help.

Rather than Nyquil and melatonin I'd recommend trying prazosin. It's an alpha channel blocker that helps to lower your physiological responses (heart rate, blood pressure) && has success in treating nightmares. It's also safer for your body as many preparations of Nyquil have acetaminophen in them of which 4% gets converted to NAPQI (a hepatotoxin). This is what causes liver failure.
Read. And heard. Thanks for the words. Working on getting a Dr. As next step for me.
 
prazozin and trazedone have worked wonders for me, for trams nightmares.

im Five years sober because pounding just enough booze til I had low memory sleep worked until it didn’t. I dint recommend that route.
 
Melatonin always made my nightmares far worse and way more vivid. The therapist I was seeing at that time said other PTSD patients of hers reported the same thing. Might be something to consider. I ended up on Lunesta to help me sleep when things were bad, and still take it occasionally.

Please do see a doctor who can properly diagnose you, and help chart a course for treatment, both addressing acute symptoms and long-term goals.
 
Melatonin always made my nightmares far worse and way more vivid. The therapist I was seeing at that time said other PTSD patients of hers reported the same thing. Might be something to consider.
Ditto. But with me also add waaaaay worse insomnia, increased anxiety/panic, and becoming a snappy-bitchy-rage-monster. Shudder. Melatonin is horrid stuff for my system.

Works wonders for many, but individual neurochem always varies.
 
I get it. My time in my parents house was very short-lived compared and there wasn't any sexual abuse, but the commonality is the inescapable nature of it. I was in a more normal home until 11 and subjected to the kinds of things you talk about for about 3 yrs until I got a work permit at 14 and left home. I cannot forget the horror of waking up in their basement knowing my only escape would be going to sleep in that same basement that night.
The nightmares came about later, the whole being trapped in my parents home thing just primed me for an inability to cope with later traumatic experiences that finally brought on PTSD. My nightmares range from the kind of vivid painful ones that make me wonder whats wrong with my brain that they came out of it to more subtle (and frequent) bad wake-ups where I am thrust into that horror of thinking my day is going to be one more day in the inescapable wrongness of my parents basement again.
the Prazozin mentioned above was a change but not a fix, I cant say anything bad about it and I hear from some that it works for them. My best chance at a peaceful night comes with a combination of grounding things near my bed, like a light and a radio and an almost nutso insistence on never moving the furniture or making big changes in my sleep space.
As far as drugs go I have one that works and history with many many that didn't. I am 60 years old, I have experienced a lot of life, and I can feel comfortable with my choice to use the drug I use even though it carries side effects and isn't widely prescribed because of them.
At 22, you have a wide variety of options that may work and a lot of time to try them, I think you should seek help from a reputable prescriber and find a good fit hopefully without having to compromise with negatives because of a lack of time and a long history of trials and mis matches like me. But I did find a better path and I think you will too.
Keep working at it, it took forced changes to push you to where you were, but now it's your turn to steer the changes to get you where you want to go. Congratulations on a successful survival of a hell I know is hard to describe, I get it, just a glimpse in comparison but I have seen it too.
 
I tried to love my mother but she never thought I was "good euff". I had a polio as a child, she was a crowned Beauty Queen and professional singer and model. She used to bind my ugly legs and feet thinking that she could straighten them which caused me severe pain and terrible repercussion in my adult years. She was always groomed and manicured...pearls, fancy dresses, high heels, make-up each day and in a total fantasy world...And she hated the relationship I had with my Dad. She was neurotic, dramatic and and and..I never spoke to her much in the last 20 years...and was never told when she died or how she died...I have terrible nightmares of TRUE experiences of her...and they are very prominant lately. I don't know why because there is no love lost between us. She hated me because I wasn't "perfect"...I couldn't go to dance classes like the rest of my friends...there was a lot I couldn't do...and she was always embarrassed and blamed me. I am 72 now...she passed apparently 3 years ago...and now I am having nightmares...and I MEAN Steven King nightmares of her.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top