why don't I wake up? (nightmare questions)

[anonymoussssss]

I think I have bad ptsd, but my nightmares don't follow through on the intensity list. Sometimes it feels like I'm deceiving myself because of that. My dreams aren't ever repeating, recurrent, extreme horrors that make you snap awake and cry, so bad you get so sleep deprived.

I very often have dreams around that theme, sometimes (not that often) I dream about that person abusing me like they did or just about them in similar contexts (I usually don't feel much in the dream or when I wake up). And even rarer do I get that true vivid ptsd nightmare where it's essentially f*cking HELL to go through it (it's not the person, the same place, but it's the same actions and the same feelings) and that shakes me up for a day or two, and makes me more sensitive to triggers and to have more intense reactions. Does this all invalidate me?

What are you're thoughts on that (I know weird question)

 

[Tura]

No I don't think it invalidates your experience at all. After all you still have bad nightmares that have a focus on your trauma, which shows what you went through was definitely traumatic. I understand feeling weird about how nightmares don't wake you up though, like in mine they're often these high intensity nightmares that play out just like horror movies, and yet I only wake up when I actually hurt myself because I ended up hitting the wall next to my bed.

 

[Sideways]

Snapping awake from nightmares. Thanks Hollywood for making us all think that’s an essential ingredient to ptsd.

Actually there’s lots of different factors that make us wake up, or keep us asleep, and the degree to which we remember our dreams. Contrary to what horror flicks would have us believe, these are incredibly mundane things like our diet, our resting heart rate, how fit we are, how high our pillow is.

Having ‘snap you awake’ recurrent dreams of the actual traumatic experience? Isn’t a criteria for ptsd. It isn’t even a measure of how traumatic your experience was (so it absolutely isn’t something that we use to validate or invalidate a person’s experience). Dreams/nightmares and sleep cycles are incredibly complex things that, for the most part, we don’t actually understand that well.

It sounds like you’re having distressing dreams (ie nightmares) on a regular basis, and that can make life incredibly tough. It’s worth speaking to your health practitioner about this if you haven’t already.

 

[Tura]

Thank you for pointing that out Sideways, I think I've been sort of judging myself as well for how my nightmares manifest. Like they aren't recurrent nightmares, in fact they're almost always different, but they still have that same high intensity. I don't know if this is a factor, but it might be because my trauma wasn't a singular event, it was a bunch of events that happened over an 8 year span.

 

[Friday]

LMFAO... This is so PTSD

You have trauma related nightmares AND “ptsd nightmares” (I’m not exactly sure what that is) but somehow neither of these -you think- meets the symptom of nightmares? You have your own personal spectrum of nightmares, but are disqualifying them... because why?

(If the answer is “I’m fine.” Or “It’s not that bad.” give yourself a cookie, or hot chocolate/libation of choice, on me.... just because those are my craved in stone answers to things I’m avoiding the f*ck out of)

Something else to consider...

Not only are nightmares NOT required to be of a certain “type” to qualify... you don’t actually have to have nightmares at all. Only ONE intrusion symptom is required.

Criterion B: intrusion symptoms (one required)

The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in the following way(s):

• Unwanted upsetting memories
• Nightmares
• Flashbacks
• Emotional distress after exposure to traumatic reminders
• Physical reactivity after exposure to traumatic reminders

 

[Sideways]

@Friday - cheers for that! Criterion B - soooo immensely helpful when it comes to traumatic nightmares and ptsd. They really do have the issue absolutely crystal clear:

“So, like, someone with ptsd might have, like, a nightmare thing going on, and that, like, might be about their trauma, but like, they might not get nightmares at all...like”.

So helpful to have psychiatrists to clear these things up for us!

 

[blackemerald1]

I wake up or I wake myself with yelling or flinging myself around and even out of bed. My nightmares rarely seem to have any relevance to my trauma (s) but they still feel really personal.

Some are so nonsensical that within my nightmare I am thinking ...wait this is too silly... or wait this doesn't make sense....why am I dreaming something so stupid?"

Does anyone else do this critical analysis of their nightmares whilst they are actually having their dreams/nightmares?

 

[Sideways]

Does anyone else do this critical analysis of their nightmares whilst they are actually having their dreams/nightmares?

Yup, I totally do. It’s actually how I taught myself to stop bedwetting when I was a kid (if a toilet suddenly sprung up in a weird place, then I needed to wake up and use the toilet).

The bad dreams that I have that I know, as they’re happening, “This isn’t real...must be dreaming” I can tolerate quite well. I can wake myself up if I need to, but mostly don’t bother anymore. It’s the bad dreams that are too realistic to tell from reality that really mess me up.

 

[Hayleigh]

I have been a nightmare sufferer ever since I can remember. I slept walk, slept talked and had insomnia sine second grade. In my thirties I started having such vivid nightmares, punching my ex husband, kicking, screaming and crying. A year after my little boy died I began seeing a really nice man. He understood all my traumas. After kicking him and screaming and punching I started to act out the trauma of my little boys fatal accident. I ran into the wall in the bedroom making a hole in the plaster with my face and also hit a stud in the wall. Prazosin has helped and I am up to 5 mgs. By the way most of my nightmares are of being victimized somehow and in different situations.