Nightmares

[Ivo]

I have from time to time nightmares. In most cases I do not remember facts from my bad dreams. I just wake up totally frightened, my heart is pumping like crazy and I feel almost unmanageable panic. I know that his sounds crazy but my body is signaling me that panic is so huge that I would stop breathing and I have to concentrate all my energy on it.
My first nightmare like this happened at age of 6, couple of days after the abuse. I still remember how frightened I was. I couldn't sleep and spent all night silently crying.
Over years I become familiar with nightmares. Sometimes I do not have them for month or two and sometimes I have them almost everyday. Sometimes they would start very soon after I feel in sleep and sometimes they would start in deep night. Seems that there is no rules.
These couple of days I was feeling very low and last night I had two nightmares.
From my earliest ages I developed different approaches what to do when I couldn't sleep. But I never find way to successfully cope with nightmares.

Do you have nightmares?
What do you do to fight them?
Are medications helpful for them (I never used any)?

Ivo

 

[reality2k4]

Ivo,

I can remember my biggest nightmares from the past, with the first being the most terrifying one imaginable, it got me to stay awake all night, until maybe the early hours, that is how afraid I was on it coming back, I really thought it was out to kill me.

Apparently a nightmare only lasts a few seconds, but you wake up in a state of shock, sweating and heart pounding, probably a mind thing dealing with what went on.

I used to scream in silence for it to go away, and that I wasn't scared of it, and it worked eventually, but there were others to follow.

I had a nightmare a couple of weeks ago, think about the time of the breslan school, I found again I cannot get back to sleep after them, so I lay there and just go to work tired.

Funny thing though, I find that I don't have so many dreams, and I certainly can't work that one out.

Maybe I am dead and only dreaming???

ste

 

[running4life]

Reality2k4,

interensting you mention the school, I have had the images stuck in my head and wondered if others can feel the same compassion and disbelief I felt towards those innocent children. Only a week before the attack on that school, I was telling my wife that I don't think our children's elementary school was very safe from terrorism. I was able to walk right in and down halls, even passing teachers who did'nt ask who I was or why I was there. My wife dismissed the thought as an overactive imagination telling me that there are not such people in the world to perpetrate such a heinous crime, I and most of the posters on these boards know there are, we know them well. Scary thing is, that I feel like I know how a terrorist would operate and find the easiest targets to operate on.

 

[ecb]

I am somewhat lucky that I can only recall two of my nightmares. However, I have, from time to time, been awakened out of a dead sleep utterly terrified. Just like you describe, heart beating, sweating, the works.

Unfortunately I don't know any successful ways to cope with them. I just drink a lot of coffee to get through the next day since I didn't get a lot of sleep. Eventually you get used to operating on minimal sleep.

-Eric

 

[reality2k4]

Eric,

getting used to working on minimal sleep, trouble is I never really know how tired I am, I have broken sleep patterns, I have nights when I really feel so tired but just cannot rest to sleep, can't turn off from the day!!!

The tiredest I ever got, was when I worked in a job, so demanding on hours, I got through the door and could not climb the stairs, I woke about 4am at the bottom of the stairs absolutely freezing, got to the bed and felt like I was back in my mothers womb just to get the rest I so badly needed.

Problem with constant tiredness is that you never know if it is just the tiredness, or an underlying medical problem causing it.

Even if I get or think I get a good nights' sleep, I am so tired some days, just tired of being tired???

ste

 

[reality2k4]

running4life,
not trying to hijack the thread,

I do agree with you that we know there are perps out there, but not many would enter a school, but other lunatics can, but do you want your kids in a prison like school? I certainly would not.

I wish the World was safe for kids, but sadly it is not. Why should any parent have to fear the safety of their children? I would have done, that is why I chose not to have any.

Must be that I was so fearful of them coming to me and saying something happened to them!!! Don't even want to venture down that road.

I really think though, that most schools are safe, we can't wrap kids up in cotton wool, I wish these things never happen again, I really do, it really would be so great if kids could walk the streets without harm, I can only wish!!!

ste

 

[Leosha]

Ivo,

I am not so much plagued by nightmares. I do have bad dreams at times. But more, my problem, is to just not be able to go to sleep at all. I still fight it and have great fear of 'letting guard down' enough to even do that. I have tried several sleeping pills (Restoril, Ambien, Trazadone, Halcion and Prosom). None of them worked for me, other then Prosom, which will work on occasion. Mentally, I still fight it too much. From what I have heard, sleeping pills can help, because it can put you in a deep enough sleep that you do not really dream, or remember them if you do. It may be worth looking at.

leosha