Nightmares - A Fear Of My Existence

[goingonhope]

I just had the most horrific nightmare in some time. Please someone talk about having horrific nightmares. Tell us an excerpt from yours. Whatever. Just something to let me know you'all understand. These things can be terror. Napped for sometime today before picking up my two 6 yrs old's from school. I woke up and absolutely could not believe I was dreaming. Thank you...Thank you...Thank you...I woke up from this yahooo'. Shaken' really bad now. Practically, all out of breath right now. Husband called and I practically couldn't catch my breath. Oh, and I have pain and tension all through the base of my skull, shoulders, upper-back. I sat down and immediately started typing this nightmare. My hope: to learn something from it. Immed. every principle depicted in this nightmare speaks of my trauma. I'll write more later, as I have to pull myself together and pick children up. In a rush. :smoking: Not happy at all as this smiley appears to be, but I've had 3 cigg's since wakening a short time ago. Something to calm me. Thanks all.

 

[Remnarc]

I have a recurring nightmare or terror; not sure what to call it. But it comes from being walked in on while in Iraq. “Walking in” is when an artillery team fires rounds and watches them hit, they make adjustments to the weapon system as they see where the rounds are hitting. They do this to hit their target of choice. They try to hit as close as possible with the first round and then use the next 3 to get a direct hit and then pummel the snot out of it once they are zeroed in on the target. I tend to wake up frozen in place, I have this urge to move and move fast but I am not able to get any part of my body to respond. Sometimes I am able to shoot right out of the whole room nonstop in the flash of an eye.

 

[DesertDweller]

I have a reoccuring dream where I am running through a combat zone and everything is on fire, chaos everywhere, I eventually have a confrontation with the enemy I lift my rifle to defend myself its not their. it probably doesnt sound too bad but it freaks me the hell out...

 

[melody]

Hi goingonhope,
I too have really bad nightmares, not sure I can even tell you the last time I slept without having one. I have one that is recurring and I wake up having to go and check to see that everything is locked up, before I can go back to sleep.
I am always inside a house, most of the time it's the house from my childhood, but last night it was someone else's house. It's always dark outside, so I presume it's night-time and I'm scared. I can feel him out there lurking and waiting to enter once I go to sleep, but when I go to check to make sure the door is locked, it isn't and I can't lock it. Sometimes it's because the door won't latch properly, and sometimes the lock just doesn't work. I try to move furniture in front of the door to stop it from opening, and all the while I'm screaming to my family to come and help, yet no one comes. Worst thing is lately the door not only opens from the inside, the hinges are broken. So when I try to push the door closed, the door opens the other way as well and I end up having to reach outside trying to pull it to. While all this is going on, I can see him. He's there hiding in the bushes, moving closer and closer and if I don't hurry, he's going to get me this time.
Now that I've written this here, I am in a dilemna - to delete or not to delete. Why am I so worried about opening up to you guys? You are all spilling your guts out to me, yet I'm afraid. And I have to stop sitting here crying! My daughter's going to be home soon and although I've told her this site is great for me, I spend most of my time sitting here crying. Not just sad tears, but happy tears, but she doesn't know the difference. Tick, tock, tick, tock... Should I send it, or should I delete it.
Anthony, are you sure I'm not mental? Is all this talking to myself and indecisiveness part of the PTSD or is it something else? I can't seem to make a decision to save my life, but then I did once didn't I - just over a year ago.

Okay, I sat here long enough that my daughter caught me. She walked in and said "Man, you're glued to that thing!" I broke down and told her why I was always seemed to be just sitting here, that I was afraid you guys were going to think I was nuts when I clicked the "submit" button and you know what she did? She leaned over, gave me a hug and said "You're not nuts, you're my mommy." Seventeen and still calls me mommy, but only when she's being affectionate.

Fifteen more minutes went by and she (my daughter) came back into the room to see if I'd sent it. I got a lecture about how this wasn't a resume and that if I sat here and revised it and every other entry, I wouldn't be telling my true feelings and if it didn't, how was the site going to help me?! So for you munchkin... one, two, three!

 

[piglet]

My nightmares are usually variations on a theme. Something bad is about to happen, there is someone who can stop it, but they don't and I am powerless to stop it myself. It either involves danger to me or someone I care about or both. Sucks.

 

[Delita]

I dreamed once that I was surrounded by demons. They were drawn to me because I was "special" inside: all my nerves were exposed and they could hurt me in ways that no one else could be hurt; I had been made the sacrifice for the deepest, most ancient horror and evil, and they knew it. I could not escape from them; the terror and doom captivated me. I knew they were going to destroy me. They began to dance grotesquely around me and the horror became a material, physical thing. I was powerless to save myself. They were slowly dancing my soul out of me. My mind began to crack. I tore myself out of sleep only to find myself outside of my body, looking down and slowly falling upwards, like my mooring had been cut and I was floating away. Then, with an enormous shock--as if I had been electrocuted--I was back in my body.

Normally when I have a nightmare I suffer alone (this goes back as far as my toddler years) because what the f--- can anyone do for you when the very fabric of reality has suddenly turned malignant and threatens to consume you? You feel it, you know what's there and the most elaborate rationalization is like spitting into a typhoon. There is simply no frame of reference to even begin to communicate the experience of having extreme nightmares, in normal social settings. This time was different, I needed human contact or I would "go out" like a candle that had been snuffed. I called my mom at three in the morning and wept on the phone for a quarter of an hour. I couldn't speak.

I have since learned that there is a hell inside me, a demon worse than anything that has ever threatened me, and that if reality isn't what the academic powers-that-be claim, and the darkness or whatever "comes undone" in the real world, that enormous fight response--my answer to the horror---will smash its prison and rise with a triumphant shout and I will fall howling into the abyss to meet the malestrom of hideous forms that have tormented me since the beginning. God, how I long for that day!

I believe I know your fear, and I do feel for you. If I could go there and fight it, I would. That goes for anyone else who has suffered what I have suffered.

 

[reallydown]

I have this memory of being on a ferry and an intoxicated soldier playing around with hand grenades...luckily nothing happened but I've had nightmares where it explodes and there is blood everywhere and injured or dead people and i can't find my family...or sometimes this woman tells him to stop and he takes his rifle and starts shooting everywhere...I'd wake up in a sweat and gasping for air but barely able to move...

 

[goingonhope]

Great response(s)

:smile: What's the good in having a nightmare? We're not the only one having them. Delita you believe right you do know my fear. Melody, glad you chose to press submit. Piglet, just the concept that there is someone in your nightmare who can stop it, but they don’t and your powerless to stop it yourself, strikes immensely home with me. I hear you! That concept sucks. Sorry Piglet. Certainly understand why your nightmare freaks you out, DesertDweller it’s terrifying to stand before an enemy defenseless. Enemies are rigid, reminding me of petrified stone, no matter what they don’t budge. Remnarc, thanks so, so much for writing about your terrifying nightmare. Powerlessly ‘frozen’ is some of the most horrifying parts of nightmares I have had in my life, and hope never return. Wow! reallydown I’m glad you’re here with all of us. I understand all of your Nightmares completely. They all seems to make such perfect sense giving my frame of mind. None of us are alone in this terror/horror. There’s a lot more to be said, hope we all keep it up. luv all'

 

[wildfirewildone]

Dream Change

I have this memory of being on a ferry and an intoxicated soldier playing around with hand grenades...luckily nothing happened but I've had nightmares where it explodes and there is blood everywhere and injured or dead people and i can't find my family...or sometimes this woman tells him to stop and he takes his rifle and starts shooting everywhere...I'd wake up in a sweat and gasping for air but barely able to move...

:hello: It seems to me that you are having different scenarios in the same basic dream....a trick that I was taught was to change a dream was to take the worst part and write out a positive outcome...then before you go to sleep read it over and over..til it's settled in your thoughts....then when the dream comes the positive outcome comes in...It may seem crazy:crazy-eye ...but it's worked on a couple of repetitive dreams of mine!!!....okay you are on the ferry...the intoxicated soldier appears....than a big wave washes over him and he's gone ......and much to your joy your family as well as everyone else on the ferry are safe and sound....and the ferry continues on to a beautiful paradise island and everyone is dancing jubilantly!!!! This is my example...you can also come up with your own....The Key is to read the new outcome over and over to imprint in your mind before you go to sleep....If it doesn't work the first night....do it again the next night...I know this all may seem impossible....but it really does work!!! :thumbs-up ...KEEPING THE PEACE

 

[anthony]

That is a good process wildfire. I did post on something similar, where trials were done with people in regard to teaching themselves to change the outcome of a dream. Basically, studies found that if you think about something enough before you go to sleep, chances are your going to dream off this exact thing during your sleep. Two options, think about something else, or think about your dream and change the dream before you sleep.

Basically what a study provided, was that the human mind can change what they dream about simply by telling themselves (believing) an outcome or scenario. If your having the same repetitive dream each night, or near enough, then before you go to sleep, just as your closing your eyes basically, your going over and over your constant dream, giving a different outcome or changing the scenario to something more pleasing.

Like wildfire eluded, it may not happen the first time, but if you do it over and over, it most certainly will happen if that is what you believe. This is exactly how people become to believe something that never even happened in the first place, because their mind believes, regardless of reality.

Saying this though, this has some very negative aspects, and dangerous at that, in that if people tell themselves something else, you can end up believing it happened, thus adding to your list of trauma, even though this made up scenario or change never occured, your mind believes it occured, hence the change in trauma. I could only recommend you discuss this with your counsellor, come up with accurate scenario changes that will not impact any off your traumas.

At the end of the day though, this is still a bandaid solution, because the real cause of nightmares comes from your fears. What you fear will haunt you, thats a guarantee. Your trauma is a fear within you, and whilst it remains that way, you will continue to have nightmares, opposed to dreams. The mind dreams whether your remember it or not, it still does it to keep active whilst you sleep. With fear embedded into your mind, chances of that fear surfacing and being replicated within your dreams is high, hence becoming a nightmare instead, because the brain is no longer pleased by the dream, instead it inflicts more fear upon itself. This fear already exists from past trauma / events.

 

[goingonhope]

I never mentioned my horrific nightmare. It was all about a conspiracy with others covering for one another while intentionally trying to cause me to have car accident, end up dead and claim my son. While responsible for trying to run me off the road, cause my van to malfunction with hopes of getting me killed, and then denying it and blaming me for my poor driving. They were secretly responsible for my loss of memory while they enrolled my son in their day care facility without my permission. Later claimed they were doing me a favor. I watched, unable to get to my son quick enough, as they degraded, shoved around, yelled horrible things about him, broke him down, did something to cause him to curl up in terror beside the toilet bowl with feces all over him. In numbers, they insisted they were taken good care of my son, and that perhaps I was crazy for feeling the need to take him home with me. There was the man that appeared as human as anyone else until you noticed the robotics underneath his armpits. He was in charge, and the one these others seemed to take orders from and answer to. He spoke few words and seemed to communicate with the others by signals. A involved man that stole specifically my computer monitor, and nothing more, and when I said I'd report this shouted out get her, kill her and proceeded to chase my son and self for our lives. It all frightened the hell out of me. Not a dream you tell others. Pressing submit anyhow as some of you shared your nightmares.

 

[reallydown]

Wildfire, thanks for the suggestion, greatly appreciate it.
It's a good idea...certainly something to try but, as you say Anthony, I should go over it with my counsellor... so thanks for the heads-up too.

Wow...Going...that is scary....just reading it...let alone thinking that it's actually happening. *shivers*