Nightmares with PTSD

A common symptom of trauma and PTSD is nightmares. Oftentimes these scary dreams are recurrent and have similar patterns to them. When I first left my abusive relationship I had nightmares very regularly. As time has passed, I experience less of them. They will often pop up after a trigger or in relation to a trauma anniversary. Lately I have been experiencing an increase in nightmares that are different from ones I have had in the past. In this post I want to talk about the patterns I see and how I try to move past them.

Patterns in My Nightmares

When I have bad or very stressful dreams they often have a recurring theme or element to them. It wouldn’t be a nightmare if my ex-husband didn’t pop up in them. I tend to have two types of these recurring bad dreams.

• The first type is the most common and in them I am being chased by my ex-husband or his immediate family. The setting always changes, as do the other people in them. But the consistent piece is that I am running and can’t get away.
• The second type I think of as flashback dreams. In these, I am back in a particularly scary moment of abuse. Most commonly these dreams surround my ex-husband taunting me with guns or him sexually assaulting me.
  

Lately, I have been having a new series of nightmares that have been particularly distressing. This series of recurring dreams have been about the loss of my pupper Gatsby. For those of you who are unaware, I lost custody of Gatsby during an unfair legal battle as part of the divorce process, which happened almost three years ago to the day.

The first of these dreams involved Gatsby running to my car full of excitement and recognition. Before I could pet or hold him, he was ripped away by my ex father in law. When I said that it was unfair, he said, “ I know, he should have been yours. So why did you stop fighting for him?” All the dreams that have come after this one have been of me trying through the whole dream to find him and failing or trying to compete to win him back and failing. No matter what I do in these dreams, I can never get back to him. When talking with my therapist we have decided that these are a manifestation of grief, but also of guilt that I’m wrongfully placing on myself.

How I’m Managing These Dreams

These types of nightmares are not fun to have in the slightest. They leave me unable to get back to sleep and sometimes make me scared to close my eyes because I don’t want to go back to that dream. They also leave my nervous system flared/anxious and make it challenging for me to feel good about myself. Which means there needs to be management to lessen the dreams or make them less impactful.

I have found a couple things to be beneficial in managing these that I want to share in case they may be helpful to any of you who also experience nightmares.

• A calming bedtime routine and going to bed at a regular time.
• Writing the nightmare down and getting it out of my head
• Petting my dog Pierce
• Reaching out to people I trust
• Doing yoga or going for a walk
• Reminding myself of what is real vs a dream. Remembering that I am safe now.
• Letting my EMDR therapist know, so that we can work on the underlying feelings that make the dreams pop up.

There are many things that you can try and different things are helpful for different people and situations. Just know that you are not your nightmares and although they are not fun, you can work past them.