Nightmares And Night Terrors

[BlackbirdSinging]

The past week or two I've had frequent nightmares. And this past week it was pretty bad. I saw my therapist tonight and we discussed my nightmares. She told me I've been having night terrors. That's great. Now I'm even more apprehensive about going to sleep. Do they stop? When? How? I've been doing this nocturnal like thing for a long time and it's starting to catch up to me. The only thing is.. going to bed earlier means being asleep longer which means.. more time for dreams. Do you have either? How do you deal with them?

 

[Loveneverfails]

I used to have pretty bad night terrors that involved a specific set of conditions to have them. Sharing a bed with a man and sleeping in total darkness. I'd always wake up convinced there was someone in the room and I'd be out of the bed screaming. They got a lot better once I started therapy, I think I had one after I shared a bed with a man again. Usually repetitive nightmares, if they aren't caused by drugs(ssri's apparently can cause some intense ones), are a sign of underlying anxiety. I still take precautions to keep myself from having them, I make sure the doors are locked, that I'm in line of sight to the main door and I keep a light on. Sometimes talking in detail about the dreams can help too. If I have a bad nightmare, I analyze the heck out of it, find what is scaring me and try to resolve it. I know though with night terrors, it's really hard to pinpoint the cause sometimes. Took me a year of therapy to even admit I had them.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

I'm glad you're getting some relief and that you have tools to use that help. Mine aren't reoccurring. I just have them frequently. They're different but, they have a similar theme. Most of them anyway. I don't always know what's going to cause them.Sometimes it's just a surprise in the middle of the night.

All of these dreams and night terrors have me staying up until past midnight all the time. That way I'm too exhausted and maybe I can dodge the bad dreams. Hopefully. Sleep this week was awful. I'd have night terrors which would wake me up and then I'd have to be up at 6am. I feel like I could sleep for days. That's not really helpful at trying to keep them away though.

 

[Loveneverfails]

I hope you catch rest during the day when you can, even just short cat naps. Lack of sleep will drive you insane, literally. So whenever you can catch a little sleep and however, do it and don't feel guilty if it means taking a nap like a 4 year old. Keep a dream journal, what your thoughts were, the conditions of your room and what the dream was about. Maybe they are random, but maybe you'll catch a pattern you can change. It's worth a shot. I really do hope you find a way to sleep, I've suffered from chronic insomnia before and it was absolute torture.

 

[Anne2013]

The problem I get is that when I have a nightmare and wake up in the morning, the feeling used to stay with me all day and didn't go until the next day, so I'd have this feeling of being retraumatised. Didn't want to get out of bed, found it hard to face things. But I realised I was just being at the effect of the nightmares and have a choice not to be.. so now when I am being like this I choose not to be and it it works...I can let the feeling go and be myself again, get on with my day and allow positive feelings in, if that makes any sense?