horrific nightmares

horrific nightmares
Y

yolester

Registrant
i need to talk to someone immeadiately. just woke up screaming from a freakish abuse nightmare directly involving dear old daddy my perpetrator. no need for graphic details. suffice to say a few things though. how do you put humpty dumpty back together after being so badly damaged???? how to be a viable legitamate person when reduced to such a pathetic state of humiliuation and having manhood completely stolen away forever???? and what about forgiveness??? i suspect my dad was himself abused and i feel for HIS suffering but he hurt me so bad!!!! will i be a helpless eunich all my life???
 
you put him together one piece at a time. you face your fears, your pain and your confusion, and you keep digging and probing until you understand you. your manhood is there, your sexuality is inside you, even forgiveness is there. you just have to figure out what you need to feel, say and do to put it all in place.

dont make excuses for your dad. i used to do that. you dont have to hate him or stay angry with him forever, but you do have to call what he did wrong, and you have to realize there are no excuses. i am certain many of our abusers had issues in thier past. it still doesnt excuse them.

dont think you are damaged beyond all hope, because your not. you just have to figure out how to reach a balanced life. unfortunately, that means something different for each person, so there is no formula to reach it. you have to find it within yourself, and you have to find what it takes for you to reach it.

will you be a helpless eunich? that is largely up to you. i know now, coming from a weak, depressed, powerless place, you dont think you can change, but you can, and you came to a good place to start.
 
Hi yolester, are you seeing a T by chance? Talking about nightmares is important. I never have them myself, but when I talk with guys here that do have them, their events are minimized by sharing the experience and knowing that others understand and care about them.
 
Yolester,

I'm glad you came here with your questions and fears. We all have them, and when they come up the best thing to do is just talk about them and get them out in the open. Then they aren't terrible secrets anymore, but rather problems we can work on and solve.

All those questions you ask refer to feelings you have, but they come from a devastated childhood and such feelings can be WAY off the mark. For example, you may feel that your manhood has been stolen away from you forever, but in reality it's only like that if you allow that feeling to dominate you. You also ask about being a viable legitimate person. You have ALWAYS been that, my friend! Abuse makes you feel otherwise, but the feeling isn't accurate. The abuse reflects on your father, not you.

As for forgiveness, I would not let that distract you for the time being. One thing survivors have to learn is to focus on themselves, to make their own recovery their priority. Your father may have been abused himself, but the fact of the matter is that HE is the one who is responsible for the abuse of his own son. Forgiveness for him can wait, unless for some reason this is vital to your own healing.

We are not helpless bro, nor are we eunuchs. We often look at ourselves and that's what we see, but there too we are carrying into the present a lot of our fears and cunfusion as boys.

Hauser asks a good question. Are you in therapy? I don't mean to push you, and I will say for myself that getting into therapy was one of the most difficult things I have done in my own recovery. But it really is worth it, and now I can say I wouldn't give it up for the world!

Much love,
Larry
 
yolester if you find an answer to the nightmares please let me know k?everynight for over a month now ,i am afraid to sleep it sucks adam
 
Ive said this before on another thread, its not politically correct but.....

Marijuana helped keep my nightmares at bay for many years until I was able to deal with them.

Weed affects your short term memory so when you dream in R.E.M. sleep, you wont remember it which amounts to the same thing.

When I posted this advice before I thought that people would shout me down and say "dont promote drug use" and the like but actually some guys here said the same thing.

One actually moved to the Netherlands so he could legally smoke weed.
 
Replay of abuse, as we experience during our nightmares - the real ones or those we go thru in our sleep, have the same origin. Residual energy of abuse, trapped in our system. The best way to flush this energy is to learn from it, that is to get empower thru it.

A recurring pattern can be weeded out by simply allowing that memory to push us towards growth.

Once healed it will not repeat itself, till we provoke it again inadverdently or by refusing to let go the past. The choice remains ours, to let go or to repeat.

The important thing to remember here is to remember that you no longer need to go thru it again.

Once you start believing that you are NOT worthy of it, standing up for yourself will come easy.

You can start the empowerment process by responding to situations in your dreams, in an empowered way.

Once you wake up from your dream go back to it immediately and change the dream in your favour, knowing that you are no longer alone, you have God power on your side, as always. Allow Him to do it, for you. Soon you will be able to apply the same courage in real life too. As the changes within will start showing without as well.
 
I empathize with you comepletely.Nightmares for me awhile ago(almost a yr ago x-mas)regarding the abuse i suffered were so unbearable i thought as though i was going insane.I don't have the words to express to you enough how important it is to be gentle with yourself and do your best to go to therapy.My therapist saved my life and still does today.I talk about the abuse ALL THE TIME only with those i trust.You're going to be okay even though you may think otherwise.Dealing with the emotions that surface for me (and you) surrounding the trauma you and i both faced is not something that will go away any time soon however so long as you're gentle with yourself and at least give therapy a chance then the process WE go through will be that much more difficult.My suggestion to you is also try journaling that which saved my mental health and helped in my ongoing process of recovery from abuse that is now my asset not my failure or shame.Once again you will be okay,reach out to others and let them know how you're feeling therefore this will be vital to your process of the unfortunate circumstances you faced as a child.May god bless you and the peace you certainly deserve will come.
 
yolester, and everybody,

Did you have another "type" of nightmares not visually connected to the abuse? I have experienced from time to time awful nightmares in which I either had my eyes open or the scenes were very much like reality.

In these nightmares I've seen some creatures or people (and even the dark forces) and I could physically feel their precense. For example, I FELT spiders sitting on the wall, or snakes in my bed, and so on.

This awful experience started when I was 12, a year after the abuse, and my parents were so alerted that they took me to the healing man. He wasn't a therapist, but he helped me.

In times when I feel very anxious I steel have these "pseudohallucinations." I hope they'll go away when I'll live an emotionally comfortable life.

Any advice, if it is possible, would be much help.

Alexey
 
Adam,

if you find an answer to the nightmares please let me know k? everynight for over a month now, i am afraid to sleep it sucks
Click to expand...
This might be a good issue to take up with a T, but in the meantime I can tell you a few things that help me.

If I am alone I keep my stuffed dog in bed with me; or if my wife is away, then Bruno, our Shepherd, joins me and hogs 3/4 of the bed. Hey man, whatever works!! :) I also keep a dim nightlight on, and before I go to bed I try to avoid stressful things like heavy films, worrying about problems and so on. I find that if I read a bit with some music on that I like, I rest better.

If you do have a nightmare don't lay there staring into the dark. I think it's better to just say okay, that was a bad one, turn on the lights, get up, walk around a bit, perhaps get a glass of water or make some tea, and then go back to bed when you feel better. Whatever you need to do to assure yourself, just do it; a lot of the fear will probably be Little Adam. If you wonder what's in the closet, get up and check for him. If you fear that something's under the bed, have a look. You may feel silly, okay, but you will be reassured and the next time this one is less likely to bother you.

Much love,
Larry
 
alexey you said
I FELT spiders sitting on the wall
Click to expand...
This is somethign I can relate to. I dreamed of my abuser. My wife woke me because I was screaming in my sleep.

She couldnt understand when I said I had dreamed of spiders.

I was in bed and a spider was walking up the covers towards my face. If this wasnt scary enough when the spider got to my neck I could see my abusers face reflected in its eyes.

Dreams come from our subconsious, all I can say that even if I am calm and together on the outside my subconsious must still be in a mess if I am having dreams like that. :(

Edited because of bed spelling
 
I had dreams of being chased, I would fall down and have a hard time getting back up. A dark figure of a tall man would be chasing me in every dream. I woke up most nights afraid and at some point as I got older the man changed to a failure, I could not run the football all the way to the end zone, I kept falling down, I could not get up and run, I never made a touchdown in my dream, I would drop a pass anything that was a reflection of failure I dreamed about it. I never put this together with the molestation until about 6 years ago and now that you have posted I know that I am not alone. Thanks for posting.
 
JapanZen,

I was in bed and a spider was walking up the covers towards my face.
Click to expand...
This is very familiar to me. I've seen several spiders at a time.

What desturbs me is that these dreams are so real, and I often think that I do have my eyes open and just see what my subconscious side adds to the visible. Sometmes I simply feel insects running in my bed and their motion.

I agree with you that it's the subconscious that creates these feelings.

Alexey
 
One step at a time... that may sound too simplistic but it is the only way I've found so far to heal... And I so badly want to rush it through and just be "healed" but I keep finding that it is a one step at a time process. Just to recognize what you have learned right now sounds like you've taken many steps already. It isn't hard but it gets better with time.

Don
 
yolester.....your post brings up so much for me...i do not get nighmares much....but nighttime is horrific for me......my mind refuses to understand that it's time to shut down for a while......and all the negative thoughts i can muster spring up.....when my partner is away and i am alone it is even worse....i have to sleep with the lights on.......i am a 53 year old man who has an irrational fear that a "monster" will come out if i turn the lights out.....even after years of therapy to try to sort my life out and move forward, i can't seem to let go of this one.....steve
 
I know its a week after the last posting on this thread. However, from a young kid, as much as I can remember timed around my abuse I used to have nightmares (night terors), talking in my sleep and sleep walking. The night terrors are horrible experiences. I would be screaming in my sleep, which my wife told me were quiet moans, and I'd be kicking. Early on in our marriage, I asked her to wake me if she ever heard me in stress during sleep.

My nightmares got to the point where I would be screaming in my sleep so that she would wake me up. The night terrors usually came right at the beginning of my sleep. She would tell me that I was only asleep for a few minutes, but the dream seemed to have lasted forever.

Interestingly, after I disclosed to her (3yrs ago) about my abuse, and some acting out I have not had one nightmare. This has been such a surprise to me that keeping in these horrible experiences had such an effect on me that was out of my control. And, has been such a confirmation of how important it is to not shove things down into what I call the vault.

I know I still haven't got it all out yet, and know that I know there is more to come. There is still a lot of shame and guilt and rage. However, the initial disclosure was so dramatic and relieving (even though it didn't seem releiving at the time and still doesn't).

I've read how sleeping disorders (like night terrors) are common among survivors. However, until this posting (i.e. spiders and terror), I haven't felt that anyone could understand the level of horror involved with those associated nightmares. Thank you for your post and the posting of others.

Jim

Jim
 
Jim and others,

I won't comment again here as it would repeat a "creating safety" thread I just did today. It's about nightmares and you might want to have a look and see if there's anything useful there for you.

Much love,
Larry
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top