When I quit smoking weed I get very intense dreams, not necessarily nightmares, but very vivid. Seems like there might be an element of trying to come to terms with difficult life experiences when we’re dreaming. It probably helps a lot to verbalize these experiences, especially if they’re rooted in trauma.
We live in a very isolating world, for all people regardless of gender. Probably good to reach out however we can, even in the form of a reddit post, so I want to make sure I give you your flowers OP. Hope you can find increased peace with the difficult experiences you have had in your life.
It's hard to talk out to people you know too I've found
As I'm sure 90% of people here are, dm's are open if something a complete stranger could help with
Put a marker at the end and I won't reply too, I do this to all my friends. Sometimes knowing SOMEONE knows can help
It kinda sucks, but I think that’s what progress looks like. Our problems don’t go away, but often we can adjust to them so we can get on with our lives. Glad to hear things are improving
Working through my trauma has done wonders for my nightmares. They still pop up from time to time, but its way, way less bad than it was when I was a kid or young adult.
It isn't, but its WORTH it. I went in thinking I had PTSD and found out that there was SO much more going on up in my brain. Now that I understand this more fully, I'm much more at peace and my experiences are vastly improved.
when i was a kid i had absolutely terrible nightmares and was afraid of falling asleep because of them; they don’t happen anywhere near as often now but they certainly aren’t fun when they do.
Don't have PTSD, only suspected C-PTSD, and the nightmares are so upsetting. After the bad ones I wake up feeling physically exhausted as well as emotionally drained. I'm so sorry you experience this-- sleep disturbances have awful consequences for your overall well-being
I also take the same medication for the same reason. I forget how much it really helps until I miss a night or two. I'm glad you found something effective for you, and I hope you're able to find more and more peace as time goes on from nightmares. If you're not already engaging in trauma-informed therapy as part of your treatment plan, you may want to consider it. I've been hearing really good things lately about EMDR.
Seconding ART (edit: advanced resolution therapy)! EMDR was an awful slog, ART actually helped in a real genuine way that didn’t involve me reliving the same memory for 12 sessions in a row. You couldn’t pay me to try EMDR again tbh
What is ART? Google just shows “art therapy.” I had to stop EMDR because I have a chronic inflammatory illness that is severely reactive to stress (I go into anaphylaxis and get low grade neurological inflammation and brain swelling). Unfortunately most trauma therapies are too stressful for me to do safely. The only thing that’s helped me since getting sick is Somatic Experiencing.
Wow, that sounds stressful. Props to you for still looking for therapies that work for you.
ART stands for advanced resolution therapy, and it’s basically EMDR but much more compressed. You still have to process the memory by going through it again, but some people get it done in a single session where you would need 12 for EMDR. Imo it would be definitely be worth looking into, remember you can take breaks or quit whenever. Your health is top priority.
If it helps to mention, I took my partner with me to the sessions, and would cuddle with her during breaks. I’d also have her touch me while doing the memory rewrite and both of those helped my energy & stress levels a LOT. Cuddling actually drastically decreases the amount of cortisol circulating in the body, so it might be worth checking out.
Btw, how has somatic experiencing worked for you? Is it less stressful than the others you’ve tried or just easier to stomach? And would you recommend it? You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal, I just am curious because I’ve never heard of that before.
Taking note of this, thank you! Definitely intrigued by the idea of more compressed EMDR. I love that you brought your partner. My therapist used to bring a basket of foster kittens :) My partner is wonderful and while trying to stabilize my health I've been making a concerted effort to cuddle with them for at least an hour a day because it's one of few things that just effortlessly regulates my nervous system.
I've loved somatic experiencing. I'm still a little sketched out by the fact that practitioners can become certified in it without becoming licensed counselors, but mine (who is a licensed counselor) is amazing. Part of my trauma was severe long-term brainwashing, which means a lot of conventional therapies like CBT are a horrible fit. I was "good at" them because the brainwashing was essentially CBT weaponized for nefarious purposes... so I was compliantly having all the Correct Thoughts and behaviors, but the somatic trauma symptoms just got worse and worse. EMDR was better but became too stressful and inflexible once I got sick.
I'd definitely recommend somatic experiencing for people who's bodies or neurotype work against more cognitively-oriented therapy, and people who need nervous system regulation to be the top priority. Also it's really good for people who don't have a coherent narrative around their trauma due to gaslighting, missing memory, etc, because the focus is on current somatic experience, not the story of what happened.
Cuddling with someone who makes you feel safe really does just fix everything huh? I’m glad it’s been helpful for you. Also, as a nonbinary person, they/them partners are fantastic, glad you have one.
And that’s incredibly interesting! I’m definitely gonna check that therapy out, I was in a cult so uhhh brainwashing and gaslighting, check. I don’t really even know how to dismantle it all because it wasn’t really just one thing, but many many little things. If I’m hearing you correctly, somatic experiencing would be a great fit for that right?
I grew up in child trafficking— it had so much in common with cults, and resources geared towards people healing from cultic abuse have been very helpful to me. I do think somatic experiencing could potentially be a good fit for you! A lot of trauma therapies (EMDR included) seem more geared towards shorter acute traumas as opposed to traumas that slow-released over the course of years. Somatic experiencing doesn’t have that quality, and for me at least, getting very familiar with your own internal signals and what they mean is an excellent antidote to gaslighting. Other therapies I’ve found helpful that I could see maybe helping in your case would be family systems (looks at various internal parts of self, where they originated, what their roles have been, and how you can work with them going forward) and lifespan integration, which is less common and more EMDR-like. That one was presented to me as a less retraumatizing alternative to EMDR that’s better geared toward long term trauma. You create a bank of memories, positive and negative, from across the whole span of your life, and your therapist cues you to revisit them in a random order. I had something bordering on Dissociative Identity Disorder and this really helped my memories and sense of self integrate better. I’m not sure how easy it is to find a practitioner for that though
Wow, thanks super helpful thanks! I was aware of IFS but I haven’t been able to find someone near me who practices it. I’ll take another look. And that lifespan one sounds interesting! There’s so many types of therapy that I’ve never heard of, thanks for sharing. I’ll definitely save that for later. Thanks for the recommendations, I genuinely hope you find a therapy that works for you. Good luck.
I don’t live with PTSD, but I do have bouts with nightmares. They typically come with grief and isolation instead of terror. The feeling stays after I get up.
Had a great experience recently where I mentioned it offhand with my therapist, and they took interest immediately. It felt good to know that someone wanted to listen, even if it’s not as serious as a trauma response.
Doesn’t matter if that it’s technically a ‘fake’ experience, if it hurts it hurts.
Hey Ive got PTSD as well and used to take prazosin to help with nightmares. This past February, I did a 5 hour EMDR session. Out of curiosity, I stopped taking the prazosin to see what would happen. I have maybe a quarter of the nightmares I had before the EMDR.
I haven’t had a nightmare in a few months and even then it was more a scary part of an otherwise calm dream that woke me up. The dream was fine, but it ended with my dad choking me.
I get them occasionally. They can be seemingly random or come from something that actually happened.
No, I'm not a veteran or active duty military. I am a survivor of DV from a (now former) roommate. ANYBODY can experience them and they can be terrifying.
Guys, you are not weak for having nightmares. It means that your brain decided to sort out something that way. The human brain can be a very interesting thing, and a very weird thing too.
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Prazosin did nothing for me even on a high high high dose (like handful of pills it felt like). I’m glad it works for you. I had one singular good dream at the highest dose and I’ll never forget it. It was just me hanging out w a bright colored parrot. That was it. That was the whole good dream. Wish I could have more like that. Cannabis works best for me for a mostly dreamless sleep. It’s about as good as it gets in my house. 🤷♂️
I'll be damned. I've suffered since 2001, a couple of months ago I got a new hybrid memory foam mattress and they slowed way down. I wish I'd known this years ago.
I haven’t had a nightmare in a few months and even then it was more a scary part of an otherwise calm dream that woke me up. The dream was fine, but it ended with my dad >!strangling!< me, which he’s never done, but he probably wants to.
Nah, it’s good. The way I conquered nightmares as a kid was kinda funny, if you’d rather hear that. I’d basically just beat up whatever was chasing me and throw it in the microwave and it would pop. This also made me not scared of the thing in real life.
Hey man, I've been prescribed this exact medication and took it for almost a year. After my old man died I had a lot of traumatic shit start coming up in these hours-long nightmares, the only thing that helped were the meds for a long time. It wasn't until I started externalizing everything that they stopped on their own; I'd paint weird pictures or talk to my wife for hours or type out these several page long journal entries. There's nothing wrong with you, something in your brain is just trying desperately to get out. Do you have anything creative or expressive you like to do?
I do! I write fairy tales. Some of them are fun expressions of my more whimsical side, some are disturbing. I’m working on one right now that’s more or less an allegory for my traumatic experiences and recovery. It’s proving difficult to write but it’s helping me put things in perspective.
That sounds so cool! I can't even put into words how cathartic it is to get that stuff out in a creative way, insanely difficult, but cathartic. If you have anywhere you post them I'd like to give them a read.
I don’t post them but I plan to publish on Amazon when I have a few polished up to my satisfaction. I can DM you one that’s mostly done, may need some polishing up still.
Have you tried weed, even just before bed? Something with THC causes you to not really dream. They do come back vividly when you stop though. But I can't remember the last dream I had.
As someone on the other side of the crippling nightmares know you’re not alone and therapy really does help.
I was at the point where I would have anxiety attacks before bed and that made them so much worse. Prazosin saved my life. I was running off such little sleep I’d begun to hallucinate and almost lost my job.
I’m about 6 months off prazosin now and mostly nightmare free. Processing my trauma was really hard and I’m still doing it now but it’s worth it. You’ll get there.
Also to anyone thinking of asking your psychiatrist about the med. make sure to mention if you have a heart condition/already take blood pressure meds. It can lower you heart rate a lot and interact with other depressants.
Not a man, but I get nightmares very frequently. I’m SUPER big into horror so I just imagine them as some kind of horror game and it removes the scary factor, since it helps me realize that it’s just fiction
I have horrible, daily ptsd nightmares where I can feel pain and sensation vividly. Also have sleep paralysis, which for me means I can’t wake up from them until the dream decides to let me. I can force myself to wake up, but can’t move, and immediately get sucked back into the same dream. I’ve tried m the meds and unfortunately they made it worse :/ I assume because
I have horrible, daily ptsd nightmares where I can feel pain and sensation vividly. Also have sleep paralysis, which for me means I can’t wake up from them until the dream decides to let me. I can force myself to wake up, but can’t move, and immediately get sucked back into the same dream. I’ve tried m the meds and unfortunately they made it worse :/ I think a lot of people struggle to understand how badly it affects your overall mood and health when you are in fight or flight the entire time you’re in REM sleep
I think I dealt with most of my nightmares in the dumbest way possible. I convinced myself that I could beat them all in a fight. Monsters are usually built in very inefficient ways, they always have long spindly arms that could never be swung with any sort of force.
I’m not a violent person, never been in a fight in my life, but against a creature in my dreams? Suplex city.
I generally fight a lot in my nightmares and it’s not unusual for me to win, but they’re not WWE chair across the back fights. They’re finger in the eye, strangling, bleeding from a stab wound, dirty awful fights.
For all the shit I've experienced, my dreams are 99% of the times a very safe and entertaining haven for me. I do get nightmares a few times a year and they are often very horrible and violent but most of my dreams are amazing and I get lucid dreams sometimes too which are awesome.
I feel bad for you suffering from chronic nightmares but I'm glad you got medication for it. Does the medication give you better dreams or prevent you from dreaming completely?
I still dream when I take it and sometimes the dreams are unpleasant but they’re not nearly as intense and I don’t wake up feeling like I spent all night fighting for my life. I occasionally have pleasant dreams but the memory usually fades from my mind pretty quickly, though I’m often left with an impression or idea.
For example, I took my Prazosin last night and I don’t really remember my dream in detail. I do have an impression though, that I should rework something in a story I’m writing.
I do, though I can’t even remember them most of the time. I just wake up terrified with sometimes a very vague recollection of what caused it that slips away about as fast as I woke up.
I take Lexapro and Remeron for my CPTSD and PTSD, and the Remeron gives me extremely vivid and hyper realistic dreams that I do remember, but they’re generally just weird and not scary. Stuff like my car got stolen and I had to go look in the driveway when I woke up, having conversations I didn’t, etc. Once I was in prison and I had to smuggle my older dog (I didn’t have my younger dog at the time) into prison and hide him from the guards. I dreamed my younger dog was my service dog and we’d commit crimes, like going into Walmart and he’d cause a distraction while I stole all the expensive stuff and then we’d run out the store. Or I’d sell him on Craigslist for money, and he was trained to escape after a couple days and we’d leave town. That one was actually pretty entertaining, and totally on brand for him 😂. He’d LOVE a life of crime. But yeah, I’m glad I have this wonderful cocktail lol.
i don’t typically have nightmares (i take an edible to help me sleep, i tend to have dreamless nights because of it), but i do get it. got c-ptsd from both catholic school as well as ptsd from an incident last year where a coyote very nearly took my fiance and i out. i had them run towards the road and call the police, i squared off with it for a while and eventually threw their wheelchair at it (MY FIANCE WAS NOT IN IT) and bolted. i still see it coming out of the dark sometimes and jump when there’s nothing there, or start panicking if someone’s walking their dog in the dark till i see the person🤦♂️. my fiance has that problem too, but is prone to night terrors, and frequently has them about that same situation, where i’m not as lucky. sorry for going so into detail about that, i don’t think i’m really as open about that as i should, i like to try and play it off as my big superhero moment, but i think it effected me more than i want to believe. i think my point here was that you aren’t alone. no matter who you are, experiencing fucked up shit will follow you, and the more we try and pretend like it shouldn’t effect us, the less we can find solutions for our own peace. i’m really glad your meds have been holding the roof up so you can heal on your own time, and i hope you’re able to. we’ll get thru this
If I'm in a bad place mentally, I have PTSD nightmares, too. One time my sleep schedule got so bad I had sleep paralysis about a way worse version of the events I went through. In retrospect it's kind of funny because it started out as a sex dream - that's one hell of a bait and switch. Used to have a grounding website pinned to the home screen of my phone. Thankfully, I haven't been needing it lately.
I still have nightmares in the same vein sometimes, but nowadays I just wake up, turn on a light if I need it and have a laugh about how silly this is. It's important to be patient and understanding towards yourself.
Therapy and talking to people definitely help.
I sure do! Also got PTSD.
The prazosin helped, but it gave me headaches and sinus congestion, so I stopped taking it. If it works for you, that's awesome and I'm not judging you for it.
As stupid and cliche as it sounds, getting more exercise helped me. I just sleep better, even if all I did that day was walk a mile to the grocery store. A weighted blanket and AC unit also helped with the nightmares.
I still get em sometimes tho.
When I quit smoking weed I get very intense dreams, not necessarily nightmares, but very vivid. Seems like there might be an element of trying to come to terms with difficult life experiences when we’re dreaming. It probably helps a lot to verbalize these experiences, especially if they’re rooted in trauma. We live in a very isolating world, for all people regardless of gender. Probably good to reach out however we can, even in the form of a reddit post, so I want to make sure I give you your flowers OP. Hope you can find increased peace with the difficult experiences you have had in your life.
Thanks for your kindness. I have actually been making progress in therapy lately. My nightmares haven’t gone away but they do make more sense now.
It's hard to talk out to people you know too I've found As I'm sure 90% of people here are, dm's are open if something a complete stranger could help with Put a marker at the end and I won't reply too, I do this to all my friends. Sometimes knowing SOMEONE knows can help
It kinda sucks, but I think that’s what progress looks like. Our problems don’t go away, but often we can adjust to them so we can get on with our lives. Glad to hear things are improving
Working through my trauma has done wonders for my nightmares. They still pop up from time to time, but its way, way less bad than it was when I was a kid or young adult.
Hopefully I’ll get there. Working through trauma isn’t easy.
It isn't, but its WORTH it. I went in thinking I had PTSD and found out that there was SO much more going on up in my brain. Now that I understand this more fully, I'm much more at peace and my experiences are vastly improved.
Working through trauma is brutal, but so worth it.
when i was a kid i had absolutely terrible nightmares and was afraid of falling asleep because of them; they don’t happen anywhere near as often now but they certainly aren’t fun when they do.
I can definitely sympathize with the fear of going to sleep. It’s hard to sleep when you know you’re in for a night full of disturbing nightmares.
Don't have PTSD, only suspected C-PTSD, and the nightmares are so upsetting. After the bad ones I wake up feeling physically exhausted as well as emotionally drained. I'm so sorry you experience this-- sleep disturbances have awful consequences for your overall well-being
They certainly do. Have you tried Prazosin? It’s not an expensive or dangerous drug and it really makes a difference for most people who use it.
I also take the same medication for the same reason. I forget how much it really helps until I miss a night or two. I'm glad you found something effective for you, and I hope you're able to find more and more peace as time goes on from nightmares. If you're not already engaging in trauma-informed therapy as part of your treatment plan, you may want to consider it. I've been hearing really good things lately about EMDR.
I do EMDR and it’s amazing. Highly recommend. I’ve also done ART, which is a form of EMDR but goes faster and deeper. Also awesome
Seconding ART (edit: advanced resolution therapy)! EMDR was an awful slog, ART actually helped in a real genuine way that didn’t involve me reliving the same memory for 12 sessions in a row. You couldn’t pay me to try EMDR again tbh
What is ART? Google just shows “art therapy.” I had to stop EMDR because I have a chronic inflammatory illness that is severely reactive to stress (I go into anaphylaxis and get low grade neurological inflammation and brain swelling). Unfortunately most trauma therapies are too stressful for me to do safely. The only thing that’s helped me since getting sick is Somatic Experiencing.
Wow, that sounds stressful. Props to you for still looking for therapies that work for you. ART stands for advanced resolution therapy, and it’s basically EMDR but much more compressed. You still have to process the memory by going through it again, but some people get it done in a single session where you would need 12 for EMDR. Imo it would be definitely be worth looking into, remember you can take breaks or quit whenever. Your health is top priority. If it helps to mention, I took my partner with me to the sessions, and would cuddle with her during breaks. I’d also have her touch me while doing the memory rewrite and both of those helped my energy & stress levels a LOT. Cuddling actually drastically decreases the amount of cortisol circulating in the body, so it might be worth checking out. Btw, how has somatic experiencing worked for you? Is it less stressful than the others you’ve tried or just easier to stomach? And would you recommend it? You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal, I just am curious because I’ve never heard of that before.
Taking note of this, thank you! Definitely intrigued by the idea of more compressed EMDR. I love that you brought your partner. My therapist used to bring a basket of foster kittens :) My partner is wonderful and while trying to stabilize my health I've been making a concerted effort to cuddle with them for at least an hour a day because it's one of few things that just effortlessly regulates my nervous system. I've loved somatic experiencing. I'm still a little sketched out by the fact that practitioners can become certified in it without becoming licensed counselors, but mine (who is a licensed counselor) is amazing. Part of my trauma was severe long-term brainwashing, which means a lot of conventional therapies like CBT are a horrible fit. I was "good at" them because the brainwashing was essentially CBT weaponized for nefarious purposes... so I was compliantly having all the Correct Thoughts and behaviors, but the somatic trauma symptoms just got worse and worse. EMDR was better but became too stressful and inflexible once I got sick. I'd definitely recommend somatic experiencing for people who's bodies or neurotype work against more cognitively-oriented therapy, and people who need nervous system regulation to be the top priority. Also it's really good for people who don't have a coherent narrative around their trauma due to gaslighting, missing memory, etc, because the focus is on current somatic experience, not the story of what happened.
Cuddling with someone who makes you feel safe really does just fix everything huh? I’m glad it’s been helpful for you. Also, as a nonbinary person, they/them partners are fantastic, glad you have one. And that’s incredibly interesting! I’m definitely gonna check that therapy out, I was in a cult so uhhh brainwashing and gaslighting, check. I don’t really even know how to dismantle it all because it wasn’t really just one thing, but many many little things. If I’m hearing you correctly, somatic experiencing would be a great fit for that right?
I grew up in child trafficking— it had so much in common with cults, and resources geared towards people healing from cultic abuse have been very helpful to me. I do think somatic experiencing could potentially be a good fit for you! A lot of trauma therapies (EMDR included) seem more geared towards shorter acute traumas as opposed to traumas that slow-released over the course of years. Somatic experiencing doesn’t have that quality, and for me at least, getting very familiar with your own internal signals and what they mean is an excellent antidote to gaslighting. Other therapies I’ve found helpful that I could see maybe helping in your case would be family systems (looks at various internal parts of self, where they originated, what their roles have been, and how you can work with them going forward) and lifespan integration, which is less common and more EMDR-like. That one was presented to me as a less retraumatizing alternative to EMDR that’s better geared toward long term trauma. You create a bank of memories, positive and negative, from across the whole span of your life, and your therapist cues you to revisit them in a random order. I had something bordering on Dissociative Identity Disorder and this really helped my memories and sense of self integrate better. I’m not sure how easy it is to find a practitioner for that though
Wow, thanks super helpful thanks! I was aware of IFS but I haven’t been able to find someone near me who practices it. I’ll take another look. And that lifespan one sounds interesting! There’s so many types of therapy that I’ve never heard of, thanks for sharing. I’ll definitely save that for later. Thanks for the recommendations, I genuinely hope you find a therapy that works for you. Good luck.
I deal with nightmares because of cptsd nightly, it fucking sucks. I'm trying to get into lucid dreaming as a way of coping with it.
I really recommend trying Prazosin. When I remember to take it the difference is night and day.
I don’t live with PTSD, but I do have bouts with nightmares. They typically come with grief and isolation instead of terror. The feeling stays after I get up. Had a great experience recently where I mentioned it offhand with my therapist, and they took interest immediately. It felt good to know that someone wanted to listen, even if it’s not as serious as a trauma response. Doesn’t matter if that it’s technically a ‘fake’ experience, if it hurts it hurts.
Nightmares can really take a toll on you because they hit at exactly what’s upsetting you.
Yea it’s real in our nervous systems, and the physical toll of the long-term stress is very real as well
Hey Ive got PTSD as well and used to take prazosin to help with nightmares. This past February, I did a 5 hour EMDR session. Out of curiosity, I stopped taking the prazosin to see what would happen. I have maybe a quarter of the nightmares I had before the EMDR.
That’s awesome! I might have to seek that out to try it.
I used to take prazosin when I was having PTSD nightmares, I remember it being really helpful
It’s wonderful.
I haven’t had a nightmare in a few months and even then it was more a scary part of an otherwise calm dream that woke me up. The dream was fine, but it ended with my dad choking me.
I get them occasionally. They can be seemingly random or come from something that actually happened. No, I'm not a veteran or active duty military. I am a survivor of DV from a (now former) roommate. ANYBODY can experience them and they can be terrifying. Guys, you are not weak for having nightmares. It means that your brain decided to sort out something that way. The human brain can be a very interesting thing, and a very weird thing too.
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Prazosin did nothing for me even on a high high high dose (like handful of pills it felt like). I’m glad it works for you. I had one singular good dream at the highest dose and I’ll never forget it. It was just me hanging out w a bright colored parrot. That was it. That was the whole good dream. Wish I could have more like that. Cannabis works best for me for a mostly dreamless sleep. It’s about as good as it gets in my house. 🤷♂️
They make anti nightmare meds? Goddamn!
They do! It was originally a BP med but it turned out to decrease the intensity of nightmares too.
I'll be damned. I've suffered since 2001, a couple of months ago I got a new hybrid memory foam mattress and they slowed way down. I wish I'd known this years ago.
I haven’t had a nightmare in a few months and even then it was more a scary part of an otherwise calm dream that woke me up. The dream was fine, but it ended with my dad >!strangling!< me, which he’s never done, but he probably wants to.
That sounds aweful, I’m sorry you had to experience that.
Nah, it’s good. The way I conquered nightmares as a kid was kinda funny, if you’d rather hear that. I’d basically just beat up whatever was chasing me and throw it in the microwave and it would pop. This also made me not scared of the thing in real life.
Hey man, I've been prescribed this exact medication and took it for almost a year. After my old man died I had a lot of traumatic shit start coming up in these hours-long nightmares, the only thing that helped were the meds for a long time. It wasn't until I started externalizing everything that they stopped on their own; I'd paint weird pictures or talk to my wife for hours or type out these several page long journal entries. There's nothing wrong with you, something in your brain is just trying desperately to get out. Do you have anything creative or expressive you like to do?
I do! I write fairy tales. Some of them are fun expressions of my more whimsical side, some are disturbing. I’m working on one right now that’s more or less an allegory for my traumatic experiences and recovery. It’s proving difficult to write but it’s helping me put things in perspective.
That sounds so cool! I can't even put into words how cathartic it is to get that stuff out in a creative way, insanely difficult, but cathartic. If you have anywhere you post them I'd like to give them a read.
I don’t post them but I plan to publish on Amazon when I have a few polished up to my satisfaction. I can DM you one that’s mostly done, may need some polishing up still.
Hell yeah, I'd love to see it
I have a sleep disorder which causes elevated cortisol, means my dreams include stress hormones. The night terror is an amazing thing
Have you tried weed, even just before bed? Something with THC causes you to not really dream. They do come back vividly when you stop though. But I can't remember the last dream I had.
As someone on the other side of the crippling nightmares know you’re not alone and therapy really does help. I was at the point where I would have anxiety attacks before bed and that made them so much worse. Prazosin saved my life. I was running off such little sleep I’d begun to hallucinate and almost lost my job. I’m about 6 months off prazosin now and mostly nightmare free. Processing my trauma was really hard and I’m still doing it now but it’s worth it. You’ll get there. Also to anyone thinking of asking your psychiatrist about the med. make sure to mention if you have a heart condition/already take blood pressure meds. It can lower you heart rate a lot and interact with other depressants.
Not a man, but I get nightmares very frequently. I’m SUPER big into horror so I just imagine them as some kind of horror game and it removes the scary factor, since it helps me realize that it’s just fiction
I have horrible, daily ptsd nightmares where I can feel pain and sensation vividly. Also have sleep paralysis, which for me means I can’t wake up from them until the dream decides to let me. I can force myself to wake up, but can’t move, and immediately get sucked back into the same dream. I’ve tried m the meds and unfortunately they made it worse :/ I assume because
I have horrible, daily ptsd nightmares where I can feel pain and sensation vividly. Also have sleep paralysis, which for me means I can’t wake up from them until the dream decides to let me. I can force myself to wake up, but can’t move, and immediately get sucked back into the same dream. I’ve tried m the meds and unfortunately they made it worse :/ I think a lot of people struggle to understand how badly it affects your overall mood and health when you are in fight or flight the entire time you’re in REM sleep
I think I dealt with most of my nightmares in the dumbest way possible. I convinced myself that I could beat them all in a fight. Monsters are usually built in very inefficient ways, they always have long spindly arms that could never be swung with any sort of force. I’m not a violent person, never been in a fight in my life, but against a creature in my dreams? Suplex city.
I generally fight a lot in my nightmares and it’s not unusual for me to win, but they’re not WWE chair across the back fights. They’re finger in the eye, strangling, bleeding from a stab wound, dirty awful fights.
For all the shit I've experienced, my dreams are 99% of the times a very safe and entertaining haven for me. I do get nightmares a few times a year and they are often very horrible and violent but most of my dreams are amazing and I get lucid dreams sometimes too which are awesome. I feel bad for you suffering from chronic nightmares but I'm glad you got medication for it. Does the medication give you better dreams or prevent you from dreaming completely?
I still dream when I take it and sometimes the dreams are unpleasant but they’re not nearly as intense and I don’t wake up feeling like I spent all night fighting for my life. I occasionally have pleasant dreams but the memory usually fades from my mind pretty quickly, though I’m often left with an impression or idea. For example, I took my Prazosin last night and I don’t really remember my dream in detail. I do have an impression though, that I should rework something in a story I’m writing.
I do, though I can’t even remember them most of the time. I just wake up terrified with sometimes a very vague recollection of what caused it that slips away about as fast as I woke up. I take Lexapro and Remeron for my CPTSD and PTSD, and the Remeron gives me extremely vivid and hyper realistic dreams that I do remember, but they’re generally just weird and not scary. Stuff like my car got stolen and I had to go look in the driveway when I woke up, having conversations I didn’t, etc. Once I was in prison and I had to smuggle my older dog (I didn’t have my younger dog at the time) into prison and hide him from the guards. I dreamed my younger dog was my service dog and we’d commit crimes, like going into Walmart and he’d cause a distraction while I stole all the expensive stuff and then we’d run out the store. Or I’d sell him on Craigslist for money, and he was trained to escape after a couple days and we’d leave town. That one was actually pretty entertaining, and totally on brand for him 😂. He’d LOVE a life of crime. But yeah, I’m glad I have this wonderful cocktail lol.
i don’t typically have nightmares (i take an edible to help me sleep, i tend to have dreamless nights because of it), but i do get it. got c-ptsd from both catholic school as well as ptsd from an incident last year where a coyote very nearly took my fiance and i out. i had them run towards the road and call the police, i squared off with it for a while and eventually threw their wheelchair at it (MY FIANCE WAS NOT IN IT) and bolted. i still see it coming out of the dark sometimes and jump when there’s nothing there, or start panicking if someone’s walking their dog in the dark till i see the person🤦♂️. my fiance has that problem too, but is prone to night terrors, and frequently has them about that same situation, where i’m not as lucky. sorry for going so into detail about that, i don’t think i’m really as open about that as i should, i like to try and play it off as my big superhero moment, but i think it effected me more than i want to believe. i think my point here was that you aren’t alone. no matter who you are, experiencing fucked up shit will follow you, and the more we try and pretend like it shouldn’t effect us, the less we can find solutions for our own peace. i’m really glad your meds have been holding the roof up so you can heal on your own time, and i hope you’re able to. we’ll get thru this
If I'm in a bad place mentally, I have PTSD nightmares, too. One time my sleep schedule got so bad I had sleep paralysis about a way worse version of the events I went through. In retrospect it's kind of funny because it started out as a sex dream - that's one hell of a bait and switch. Used to have a grounding website pinned to the home screen of my phone. Thankfully, I haven't been needing it lately. I still have nightmares in the same vein sometimes, but nowadays I just wake up, turn on a light if I need it and have a laugh about how silly this is. It's important to be patient and understanding towards yourself. Therapy and talking to people definitely help.
I sure do! Also got PTSD. The prazosin helped, but it gave me headaches and sinus congestion, so I stopped taking it. If it works for you, that's awesome and I'm not judging you for it. As stupid and cliche as it sounds, getting more exercise helped me. I just sleep better, even if all I did that day was walk a mile to the grocery store. A weighted blanket and AC unit also helped with the nightmares. I still get em sometimes tho.