Nightmares, Obes Or Flashbacks?

[Omnia vincit amor]

I have seen several threads about nightmares and I would very much appreciate your opinion concerning my experiences.

I have regular uncontrollable flashbacks while awake and dissociations in the range of being absent up to collapsing suddenly like a rugdoll.

On the other hand, my nightmares never reach my actual trauma, I mean anything in my dreams that is somewhat associated with my traumatic experience causing me to loose my consciousness in my dream. Then I wake up and often the flashbacks are coming only after.

I wonder what this means. May be my subconscious blocks me? My therapist is on vacation so I am lost with it.

My other new 'symptom' (?) is that lately I had more out of body experiences eg seeing myself from high up sleeping in my bed or I was floating above my bed, while my hands could go through the ceiling.

The later phenomens are more positive experiences. It is difficult to describe, but I feel somehow free and whole without my body. I am curious if others are having similar changes in their sleep patterns.

 

[anthony]

Dreams and nightmares are not necessarily representative of your trauma, or even trauma not remembered. They are typically just that, dreams and nightmares. Unless you clearly remember the event, and are simply having a nightmare about a known.

People concentrate too much on symptoms, when they are the affect from the cause. Focus on the cause to remove the symptom. The cause is the trauma, not dreams or nightmares.

 

[Omnia vincit amor]

Thanks, Anthony
You are right, I am not able to focus on my trauma, I am still far from that. That was also the reason I thought that there is a mechanism also in my dreams that blocks my memories at that level as well and may be it is providing a way out in 'dream dissociations'.

I have not seen similar comments, but I am very limited in the amount of information I can read at once.

I am not able to sleep at all without medications for more than I year now, so often I do not remember of my dreams. If I remember, they have a very strong effect on me. Months ago I had a crisis and had to be rehospitalised, when actualy the trigger or rather the first signal was a dream, that did not let me go.