• 💖 [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.

I don't know what I'm doing but I need to put this down somewhere

goosegoose

Confident
I've always had really "in my face" trauma nightmares - so graphic and psychologically disturbing. That's not news. But on Friday night leading into Saturday, I had the most obvious flashback nightmares I've ever had. Down to almost the exact anniversary of the trauma I had dreamed about. I can't think of any other dreams that I've had where it was the actual trauma playing out in dream form. Until Friday night, I had only ever had metaphorical dreams, or dreams that I would have to interpret. These flashback dreams were not the same animal at all. They were exact flashbacks to when I was unhoused with my partner last year, and another time when I was yelling at my ex-dad. It had been a few months since I had had any dreams at all, too.

I was telling my partner about my dreams like "haha wow so weird, wonder why that's coming up" and then she reminded me that it's the one year anniversary and...it all made sense.
 
yup, anniversaries will do weird things to the psyche. awareness can make a huge diff in how you manage the whiplash.

gentle support while you ride it out.
Thank you for replying, my own reply pretty late. You were definitely right though, awareness of what was happening did help. I really tried to take everything as slowly as I could. Whiplash is an amazing way of describing what it feels like
 
I keep having nightmares about my dad lately. It's his birthday coming up soon so maybe that's why? But he never celebrated his birthday and it's not for another month so I'm at a loss for why. The first dream I had, I was just screaming at him for being so f*cking annoying. Him, my stepmom, and my brother were all following me and my partner around the grocery store. Acting like a child and ignoring me screaming at him to stop. This one that I had just a day or so ago was even more vivid though.
 
Dream -

Sitting in the backseat of my dad's car, with maybe my estranged sister there? I can't see who's all with us but it's 100% my dad driving. It's nighttime and he's in a bad mood, maybe with a headache. We're driving up the highway towards Lake Arrowhead, just barely past Wildwood park.

It's not raining but the road does look wet. Because of his bad mood, he's driving too fast. There's a car driving in front of us and he's so impatient he nearly drives on the shoulder to get around them. I keep thinking of telling him to slow down, that he's going too fast, but I know he's in a bad mood so I bite my tongue. Two people in the car with us start to get loud, arguing, and my dad starts getting angrier but hasn't really said much yet. He starts raising his own voice in response to the two arguing.

"He's still driving so recklessly" I think to myself as he starts driving a little beyond the shoulder. He then mutters to the person in the front seat "I'm so nervous to see what's on the other side of this road" and the weather snaps into light snowy weather. We're also further into our drive up the mountain, maybe a few miles high by now.

There's a light snow falling and there's snow crusted onto the trees' trunks on the side of the highway. The snow that's falling is just barely sticking to the ground. This all happens in a split second.

Immediately after he says he's nervous and the weather changes, the car loses traction completely and starts free-floating towards the cliff on the side of the highway. There's no railing. We can all feel the car floating us to our death, a drop of at least 1000 ft., down into the black night, with nothing we could do but experience the terror of knowing you were about to die.

We're all screaming, terrified, I'm clinging to the person's arm next to me, pushing my toes against the seat in front of me for dear life as if that will balance out the car enough to save us. It felt like I was trying to slam on brakes but I was in the backseat so I couldn't have, it was beyond my control. The car slams head first into a massive pine tree but the car is still sliding down. The tree is about to give out any second.

I start seeing people trying to climb out of the car and back onto the road and so I start trying to scoot out backwards. The dream ends as I'm trying to escape the car, as one of the last people. I see a smaller person in the front seat, staring down into the abyss, whimpering. My younger brother?

I wake up and I'm whimpering like the person in my dream, pushing my toes against my cat's body like the car. I couldn't vocalize anything other than weak noises. It felt like I was trying to cry (tears) or cry (out) for help.

I was reminded of when I was 3-4, when I would sleep in bed sandwiched between my parents. Almost every night, I would wake up, sit up, and just scream my lungs out. Neither my dad or mom would wake up from their sleep. Because no sound would come out, just a very quiet, tiny wheeze. It was like my body would shut my vocal cords off. I was much too shy (read: traumatized) to shake either of them awake so I would just sit there between the two of them and scream, and scream, and scream. Until I was too exhausted to stay awake and I would fall back asleep. Why was that happening to me? Why couldn't I speak?
 
I keep having nightmares about my dad lately. It's his birthday coming up soon so maybe that's why? But he never celebrated his birthday and it's not for another month so I'm at a loss for why.

i count my own birth family birthdays as ptsd anniversaries. we never had cakes or party streamers, but trying to act like the day was nothing special was far more work than baking cakes and putting up party decorations.

i have often wondered if many of my nightmares are actually flashbacks, intensified and distorted by the creative weirds of dreamscapes. just wondering. . . proof unavailable.
 
i count my own birth family birthdays as ptsd anniversaries. we never had cakes or party streamers, but trying to act like the day was nothing special was far more work than baking cakes and putting up party decorations.

i have often wondered if many of my nightmares are actually flashbacks, intensified and distorted by the creative weirds of dreamscapes. just wondering. . . proof unavailable.
Yes!!! The stupid back and forth of "oh don't get me anything" but then it's a big deal because "nobody got them anything" etc. I'm starting to wonder the same thing, if they're more anniversary dates than just dreams and stuff. It's really weird. I had big birthday parties with my mom, but then if she didn't approve of the gifts I was given, she would make a huge scene in front of literally all of the guests attending. I wasn't allowed to keep a Harry Potter lego set one year because it was "satanic" and "witch craft" and she grabbed the box out of my hands as soon as I finished ripping off the wrapping paper. The year before that, she told everyone "don't bring gifts" because she wanted me to give gifts away to my guests instead. That same birthday, I was told I had "one single super special present waiting for me." It was a pound of deli meat wrapped in deli paper, in a plastic baggie.

There were a lot of Spring/Summer birthdays in my nuclear family, and then Easter is a nightmare hellscape for me on it's own, so from around this time of year until around early August is rough for me. No need to reply to this if you don't have anything, just kind of thinking out loud!
 
"of course fact is stranger than fiction. fiction is obliged to make sense." ~mark twain

"weird" doesn't quite cover my own birth family celebrations/non-celebrations, whatever the event we were celebrating or boycotting. "ptsd anniversaries" is the first name for ^it^ which i've been able to work with. not even god knows what will pop out of ptsd anniversary.

for what it's worth
i had to share my birthday with a heavily traumatized brother who was 4 years older than i. what 6 year old kid wants to share their birthday with a 2 year old? i was terrified of my birthday before i knew what a birthday was.
 
My therapist just terminated through email. It's what I deserved. I feel like I'm just floating around in space. I can't lean on my friends for support. My partner supports me but there's only so much she can do before her own Stress Cup starts overflowing.

I feel so empty and done like I really need a break but at the same time I hate myself so f*cking much - why would such a low life need a break? And I hated myself so much that I couldn't control my anger in session and chased away a really supportive professional.

I'm a f*cking idiot, I deserve this
 
Suicidal internal dialogue: you should just do it, just do it, f*cking do it, why not just do it

At the same time as hearing that in my head over and over I'm hearing The Rhythm of the Night, but also over that song I'm hearing the karaoke version from The Disaster Artist end credits being sung over the original song. Still underneath all the music is "do it, do it, do it"

Everything is too much and I feel like a rabid dog anytime someone tries to get close to me. No other choice but to put the rabid dog down even if you love them
 
Back
Top