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Is it beneficial to dwell on the trauma layers (cptsd)

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I'll chime in with those who say it's different for everyone.

My therapist is NOT into dreams/nightmares.. for me, right now. Experiencing the nightmares is enough, going to bed fearfully and waking up scared... and he and I have agreed it's best not to dwell on them. For me personally, this makes sense. While I experience nightmares nearly every night, they are not very revealing - generally me running away from some unspecified danger. Extremely generic and not helpful to dwell on these days. That could change at any time during my unpredictable bouts of PTSD.

There really isn't anything much left to analyze anymore. I'm dealing with the aftershocks more than anything else. For me, that's how it works... But I spent my first couple of years with a great therapist helping me, listening to me through trauma details which did throw some more creative (lucky me!) nightmares in with flashbacks. Dreams had much more meaning to me at that time.

I'm grateful for the more generic danger dreams. The specific weird ones were the worst, for me, though now I feel uncreative! Of all the things to worry about. :facepalm:

Again this is how it is for me. Everyone really is different and it's almost impossible to make a judgement - that would be a discussion with a therapist or other mental health professional you might want to find, to confide in IRL. I'm awfully sorry you're mired in this right now.
 
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Dwelling about my trauma didn't help at all. I did it to try and process but it just made me extremely angry and depressed. Once I stopped things got a little better. Every once and while I'll sit and it pops up in my head. I think about it for a while but try to move on to something else.
 
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