About Me & What I Struggle With

[venus-]

Hi, I’m Ace and it’s lovely to meet you all.

For some background information about myself, I use any pronouns (he/she/they) with no preference. I also like cats, baking and listening to rock music.

I have rarely talked about what issues plague me but I feel like this is the time.

For as long as I can remember, I have had nightmares. I have rarely had a good dream in my entire life. Recently (since about a year ago), the nightmares have become even worse. They are more graphic, more terrifying and feel more real.

These nightmares I have range from everything from r*pe to violence. Sometimes I am the one committing acts of violence against others but majority of the time I am the victim of this violence.

I am making this post now as two nights ago I had the worst nightmare I’ve ever had. I won’t go into detail of what it was about as it is too graphic but simply put it was just more graphic violence. Sometimes when I wake up from these dreams I am too afraid to go back to sleep, but recently I have started becoming afraid of sleeping.

Last night I cried thinking about the IDEA of going to sleep because that’s how much these nightmares bother me now. I was so afraid of going to sleep that even though I was incredibly tired, I forced myself to stay awake and pull an all nighter. However, I eventually went to sleep and I didn’t dream. Still, as I am typing this I am dreading the idea of sleeping when it is hours away. I feel like my fear of sleeping is impacting my ability to live my day to day life. I know that these dreams are just it, dreams but when I’m asleep they feel so real that even after I awake, they still haunt me.

I would really like to know if anyone else has the problem and how they cope with it. I have additional stress from PTSD which I was diagnosed with last year and exams coming up so I would really like to get 8 hours of sleep a night without dreading it or being haunted by my nightmares.

Thank you for reading this lengthy post and I hope you have a wonderful day :).

[TruBlue]

Hi all. I may have a positive method or tool to contribute here. 

I also suffer anxiety, PTSD and depression, as well as horrific PTSD related dreams or nightmares. Some time ago, these bad dreams escalated to the point where the only time I could sleep was from complete exhaustion and even then, I could only sleep during daylight hours. I'd regularly go 3 or even 4 days with little or no sleep. Then I would sleep like a zombie for a day and the cycle would repeat. This went on for months and I spoke with my psychologist about it several times. In the end, he told me that he'd done some research on bad dreams and asked me to try the following.

I should say here that I was 100%, incredibly sceptical and had zero belief that this would/could work.

He asked me to repeat a simple affirmation or mantra to myself before going to sleep each night. The affirmation is "Tonight I can control my dreams. Tonight I can control my dreams."  Say it over and over and try to believe it.

This worked for me, instantly, the very first night I tried it, and it continues to work for me any and every time the bad dreams begin to return. Just repeat the words over and over to yourself last thing before you go to sleep and I hope my be as effective for you as they have been for me. For me, this has been beyond magic. All the best.