Nightmares after trauma

[Mada]

Hello again ...

I've never had very realistic nightmares before, at least not ones that wake me up gasping for breath and feeling like I'm actually living it. No, these only started happening after my mother was murdered. I ever so frequently have nightmares in which I am being stabbed or friends and family are. And I feel it. My mind- my body- thinks the nightmare was real and I'm confused and disorientated for a couple minutes. If I am the one being stabbed I often wake up with pain in my stomach as if I am or did experience getting stabbed.

Sometimes I have dreams about my mom that aren't nightmares- that she is still alive in some alternate/parallel universe. She's either a ghost telling me she is alright, or that she actually survived. But I still feel like absolute crap when I wake up from these dreams because they feel so real. Basically any dream with my mom makes me feel disorientated when I wake up, regardless if it is good or bad.

And here I am still questioning whether or not they are a symptom of ptsd. Anyone diagnosed with ptsd who have nightmare like this?

 

[littleoc]

Absolutely. Won't give you details, but I can wake up confused about where I am and what year it is, and believing odd things like my hand was just cut off, and even after finding I have two hands, still feeling the pain anyway.

I've heard that medications are the way to go for this, and as someone with just enough success to be able to sleep at night, I'd mostly agree. Therapy also helped.

By the way, welcome to the forums. I'm sorry anything brought you here, but happy you found us :)

 

[EveHarrington]

Have you been diagnosed with ptsd? Your nightmares could be a part of ptsd, but in and of themselves don’t determine if you have the disorder. PTSD nightmares aren’t necessarily different than normal nightmares. I’ve seen a number of posts about this lately. There is no criteria defining a ptsd nightmare VS a “normal” nightmare.