Scared to sleep tonight [I Have Nightmares]

@Allelse Oh I have been trying to solve my nightmare problem for years. Therapy doesn't help. I've even tried medication for it and that didn't help. I've suffered from severe nightmares since I was a little kid, bad enough to leave me feeling messed up the whole rest of the day and bad enough to where I still remember and feel disturbed by nightmares I had as early as age 5.

The thing thats helped me best was becoming a lucid dreamer. What I have found is most effective is literally going up to the character trying to torment me and calling it out for being cruel. It stops the nightmare and whatever character it is usually ends up shocked. Once the character giving me grief even cried. However reaching the level of awareness where I am able to do that only happens for me rarely. Usually I just end up reflexively using powers to fight which just escalates things.

@Ananke I used to get chased around by werewolves in my dreams, till I turned on one and tore its fucking snout off!!! Now I dream of being a werewolf and I enjoy that far more. Do you have a creative outlet of some sort?

@Allelse Yes I like to write. My "beast form" I turn into in my dreams when I want to kick serious butt or look scary is a werewolf mixed with a dragon :) kind of dorky i know but it's fun!

@Ananke I think that's really cool!! Yeah when I turn into a werewolf in my dreams it's so much fun!! Well, maybe writing about the things that scare you in your dreams, can help give you some insight into those fears and perhaps how to overcome them. You put some poor bastard in a story against your fears, and because you're no longer in that character's position, you get more of a larger outlook. I dunno I guess I just find from my own experience that alot of the things that scare me in my dreams, have a very simply fear attached to them. And often the fear isn't unfounded. Chased by wolves? Werewolves? Perfectly reasonable thing to be afraid of. Being a child, a young child and having some giant man wolf coming after me, that and my own sexual abuse as a child, you see, so while it lays in the realm of fantasy the fear was not silly at all. And it was inspired by real trauma.

@Allelse The thing is I was never abused or anything as a child....yet the nightmares I had were so, so violent, graphic and disturbing. For an example in one I was lost in a past time period with my little siblings. I was 5 at the time and my brothers were probably 3 and 1. We ran into some of my mom's friends and I trusted they would help us. They had us all hold hands and form a circle and then the women started chanting wildly. The chanting grew more and more feverish until it turned to a sort of wailing and then just plain screaming. A massive glowing green portal opened up in the center of us and it began sucking in the women's flesh, then their muscles, blood, etc as they screamed. They tried to urge me and my brothers into the portal and I was desperately trying to keep my baby brothers out of it. When I woke up for a second I could still hear the women screaming.

How the hell does one even begin to analyze something like that? How is that even a dream a 5 year old has? I was curious if this was normal so I would ask my younger siblings about their nightmares. My brother as a kid had nightmares like forgetting to wear his shoes to the grocery store. My sisters had dreams of being chased by a big mouse. And meanwhile 5 year old me was over here living literal horror movies every night for unknown reasons.

I would try to stay up all night to avoid having them.

@Ananke Sounds like you have an incredibly vivid imagination!!! You should be proud of that, not everybody has that. I have it and I know that dreams can be bloody terrifying!! I mean they're so real and I'm with you there, I know the frustration. I was having dreams like that at a young age too.

When I was not very old I dreamt about a line of children on a beach at sunset, who one after another walked forward with smiles on their faces, to have their throats cut by a tall man in black. :S

Yeah I was staying up all night even as a teenager, I couldn't take it. Though I loved afternoon naps. The thing that has helped me more than anything is sleeping next to my wife at night, so that I'm safe and not wake up scared. And yeah I can lucid dream too, but I've been chased by nasties even when I've known it was a dream.

Do you have a good therapist?

@Allelse Same waking up and having my boyfriend there to comfort me after a bad nightmare has been awesome. Before I had him I used my pets for comfort.

Currently I don't have a great therapist :/ I was out of therapy for a long time because I was doing well and didn't feel I needed it but recently just due to world events and life events I felt the need to get back in. But the lady I'm seeing now hasn't impressed me so far and I didn't schedule our next appointment because I don't think I want to continue seeing her. It is really hard to find good therapists. Most of them are....overwhelmed by what I bring to the table 😓

@Ananke Hahaha! Yeah me too, a bed covered in cats and dogs so I wouldn't be alonne. Now it's a bed with my wife and the cat! :D well, it used to be the wife, the cat AND the dogs, but they've since passed away. But yeah the more animals I had in my room as a kid the better it was.

I've been lucky that I've had the same therapist for 7 years now, and he's grand me and him get on great. But yeah it sucks when you get find a therapist that just isn't for you, that just doesn't get it. Yep!! Overwhelmed and all "I can fix you, BUT YOU BETTER FOLLOW MY PLAN FOR YOUR RECOVERY TO THE LETTER!!!" when really I just want somebody to listen to me, and tell me no, you're not insane, your family treated you like shit. I don't want a plan for recovery, I only ever wanted somebody to listen to me.

@Allelse See for me I start sharing my problems and 9/10 times they just start looking seriously uncomfortable and at a loss for words. Granted my issues are weird and generally non applicable to the general population (i
I suffer with schizoaffective disorder-I have battled mental illness since I was a young child as well as nightmares) but it is still always hurtful and discouraging to see that in someone who is supposedly a professional. Or I get the people who believe my issues are spiritual and not psychological which just ends up confusing me.

But same as you generally what I really just want is for someone to listen. Not act all freaked out or anything just listen and be like "damn that sucks, but how are we gonna cope with that?" I've basically had to act as my own therapist most of the time and I do a way better job than anyone I've seen.

I've never had a therapist i really felt I clicked with and wanted to stick with. Between that and literally being dumped by some therapists I have gone through many. Sigh.

A lot of my experiences actually inspired me to go into the mental health field myself:) someday I want to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner and give therapy and whatnot and be the therapist I always wanted to see.