For the past 2 to 3 years, ever since discovering or realizing I had the cPTSD disorder, my ever lucid dreams have always been helpful and/or entertaining. My dreams were positively therapeutic (at least the ones I would remember).
Over the past week, this has changed and I don't know why. Now I am having dreams about bad events in my within the past 30 years. They are not dreams of past events, not reliving the events, but they include the people in the places as they existed in those not very good events in my life.
One was the narcissist I knew for a few years who did great damage to me telling me I still had my old problem. I asked what that was and they said "you are still in love with yourself." Really? I have no clue where that came from.
Last night I had a dream about being in a workplace, the scene was a combination of two places of employment over my past 30 years, and involved me and another person being told that the consensus of the company was that in 88% of the things I did, I was found to be or have a negative influence by those I was dealing with while working. The other person was rated at 20% negative.
Both of these had me waking up triggered, not feeling well and questioning what was going on in my dreams. Up until now, I was never criticized in any of my dreams. My dreams were always representations of past events but in a happy, positive and changing for the better script, re-writing my history in a better way than it was. They helped with my recovery.
That seems to have changed now. I'm not looking for an answer to this,, what's going on, just saying I'm not real happy about my dreams turning negative lately and have no idea of where they are going in the future or what effect they will have on me, or my life upon waking. Or my daily life.
If or when they do, I will add to this.
Sorry to hear that your dreams have become worse. That can make everything really difficult if you don't get enough rest. It makes sense though. Now that you're aware of what has happened, it will be in your subconscious mind more. Personally, I find that my bad dreams are worse when I'm suppressing something while I'm awake. Hopefully as you continue to heal, they will improve again. Take care! :)
Thanks, Jazzy. You are right. And I haven't slept well for some time - hard to fall asleep and I wake up tired.
But, sometimes it pays to complain, to write stuff like that down for that alone can cause a change.
Last night I had a simply marvelous dream.
I entered a tall building, got on an elevator. The first person in selected the top floor 9 or 10. The door closed and when it opened, I was standing on the roof of the building. It was a bright, sunshiny day with the sun low on the horizon so it was in my eyes. I shielded my eyes from the sun and discovered the top of the building was rolling hills covered with pure, white snow. The hills blocked my view of the land below so I started to talk up the hill on a path made by someone else. After reaching the top of the nearest hill, no more than 5 or 6 feet high, another hill blocked my view. I headed toward the highest hill and discovered the path ended at a sharp incline, too slippery to climb. Backtracked to where that hill started and took another path that was covered in waist deep, powdery snow. Walked through the snow to the top of the hills to see the landscape below in all directions in bright sun. I noticed a door to a room. Upon entering the room, I saw 3 people working on desks creating things, one was drawing something, another making a collage of 4 inch diameter sparkly covered paper rings, some orange and others silver and another taking a test. All were having difficulty completing their work. And then it began to rain without a cloud in the sky. It rained very hard, so hard that the 3 people decided to leave and the last I saw of them was as they rode their bicycles down a path through the rolling hills, a path surrounded with snow and they were already quite some distance away. I turned back into the room and walked down a curving hallway and when I got to then end, there was an elevator door to go down. I turned to walk back down the hall to the room and woke up.
As I write this, hours after waking up, the dream is still in my memory as clear as when I was dreaming.
Such are my dreams. This one in the more pleasant category. A lot to unpack in that one but at least I woke up with a smile on my face.
Glad to hear you had a more positive dream to balance things Regret :thumbup:
I wonder if it (having some negative dreams) is you taking letting some more of your trauma (seeing/feeling something you haven't quite dealt with yet) surface in your sleep in preparation for re-scripting it? :Idunno:
Kizzie,
I think you are right. I am at a stage in my recovery where my mind knows I am ready to take on more "stuff" in dreams for the re-scripting of my life, the next step to work on. Every dream that I've remembers for months, and even years, without writing it down has ended up having something to do with my life changing. I know the dreams I have that are too much for me as forgotten withing seconds of waking up, if remembered even that long. And, getting a pleasant gift of a dream, the snow cover building top which was quite amazing and remarkable from the moment I stepped on the elevator, seems to be a message to me that the bad dreams aren't taking over, the good stuff, the good times are still there and available to me when needed.
Tonight should be interesting.
As a catch up reply, that next night I had a remarkable dream.
During my reverse dreaming after I discovered I had cPTSD, there were time in my life that did not show up in that sequence of dreams that went from my current age to when I was 3 years old. Two of the dreams I did not have were about a person I had a 2 year relationship with about 1970 and another person I had a 3 year relationship in the early '80s. The remarkable dream I had was about both people at the same time. In the late '80s, I discovered that they by chance crossed paths and in their conversations discovered they both dated me. Had I not been suffering from the disorder, either one of the two would or could have been a fine, life long relationship but thanks to my issues, my baggage,, they both left my life because they were not willing or able to deal with me.
Well, in the dream, I saw them both but only talked to the '80s person who told me the first person really didn't want me and I would be better off with the second person. It was a touching, tender and very gentle dream conversation and I woke up with a smile on my face. Nothing sexual in the dream, just hugging, and closure on two parts of my life that were not dealt with in my backwards dreaming sequence that ended up with grown up me talking to my 3 year old self in front of my childhood home.
The next night, two more bad dreams dealing with my last job and an issue I had with my last landlord. Woke up triggered and anxious. The following night, a peaceful, friendly dream. Such is how my sleeping time is spent.
Writing today, a week after starting this topic, because I had a dream last night that was unlike anything before or any place I was ever in or knew. I was reading along with Just Hatched dream topic
https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=12289.0
dealing with dreaming about things that were "about things I've never actually experienced" and that is what last night was to me. During this dream, I was laying in the fetal position on a couch or bed shaking uncontrollably. There was another person there, a thin, small oriental man. The man was comforting me with words and hugs for what seemed like an hour. I have never done T but this seemed like a T session. He calmed me down to the point I was no longer shaking and I woke up.
My current life for the past few months has had me in a deeply hostile interaction with a person on another forum. That person did a lot of real harm to me with criticism and libel and my hatred and anger toward him turned me into a very bitter person with just the thought of him. I quit that forum months ago but the deep feelings toward him persisted. This morning, after that dream last night, I woke up and laughed at him, the thought of him, the person that he truly is. That dream "exorcised" him from my mind and today I could care less about him, what he did to me or what happened on that other forum. What caused that dream? I got an email from a friend yesterday "preaching" to me that the circumstances of that event made me a very bitter person and I needed to get over my unhealthy feelings toward him. I've known this for months but it wasn't until someone finally and pointedly told me what was happening to me that the dream occurred.
Strange how dreams work, are created, what they can mean, what they are telling us or doing for us while we sleep be they good scenes or very bad nightmares. I've had dreams, even recurring dreams that made no sense to me and had no effect on my daily life, at least, none that I noticed, but maybe even those are the mind, the brain doing natural neuroplastic redevelopment of new connections to replace those destroyed by the soup of chemicals released into our brains during our times of great trauma. Just my opinion based on what Robert Sapolsky said about chemical imbalance and chronic depression
https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc
and the many, many dreams I've had over my lifetime, especially those since realizing I was suffering from cPTSD caused by a traumatic few years when I was 3 and stopped my social development growth a that time. Nothing like now realizing I live all of my life as a 3 year old with a fawn (please) cPTSD typology until about 3 years ago when I came to know cPTSD. Since then, I've grown up a bit and I think I am now in my early teens.
Can't wait until tonight to see what's next on the playbill.
Wow Regret you are really working on recovery in your sleep in one way or another! I love that you are having healing type dreams alongside dealing with trauma ones :thumbup:
It's been awhile and I always wondered when dreaming my life backwards to age 3, some years or events in years did not appear in my dream life reversal.
Within the past two weeks, I think I discovered the answer to my question. During that time, I've had 2 dreams of someone I dated for 2 years in the late 80's, a friend who I worked with a few years in the early 60's and I've had a few dreams similar to my last job but in or as pleasant conditions.
So, my reverse chronological sequence appears to have been neuroplastic healing or constructing new, healthy pathways by going backwards through traumatic events but altering them to make them a positive experience that should have occurred had it not been for cPTSD getting in the way. A neurological healing of sorts.
The next "type" of dreams I had over the past 18 months were situational dreams helping me get over any remnants missed in my reverse dreaming or helped me deal with new events that triggered me, helping to free me from the trauma of the recent event in but a few days instead of suffering for months.
The most recent dreams have been pleasant in that I enjoyed the relationship and miss my work friend who tragically died in the late 60's. And, the work dreams are just fun, the way work should have been had I not been hampered by the disorder or working for a boss who made the last 5 years in that job so emotionally stressful that I developed PTSD on top of my lifelong cPTSD.
Bottom line, I am very fortunate to have this take place while I sleep and the effects of my "dreams" have indeed dramatically helped with my ongoing recovery.
It's still two steps forward and one backward and probably will be for the rest of my life in that I know I have to accept who I am, where I came from, deal well with all of my regrets and outright embarrassment of past actions, realize I don't have the time to be reparented, understand I will repeat mistakes made in the past when my guard is weak, own each minute of my life going forward and not beat myself up for errors I make in the future. I think doing that will bring some level of stability and happiness to my daily life.
How it works for me these days.
Many times a day, usually when doing something that I had done in the past with disorder caused awkwardness, I am filled with embarrassment and regret for not having had the emotional development and social tools to having it have been how it would have been had I been a real person, my true self.
Even a song, smell, taste or memory can trigger this sad type of wasted life moment, and I wish I could go back to do it over right but am left with the stark reality that that instance to have and enjoy that moment so many years ago was stolen from me.
Tonight I woke from a lucid dream in which I was happily looking forward to going to my high school graduation party, a party that never took place. I was going to buy a bound tablet so I could have others write something good about knowing me in school. I had the tablet in hand when I caught myself realizing that could not be done since I had no friends in high school, not one thanks to my disorder created needless, and then thought, in the dream, I would go to the party and explain to everyone,one at a time, why I was not normal for those four years.
Woke up after that thought filled with sadness and regret for those four years of wasted time. The legacy of my recovery process. And this happens all of the time - lot of awkward moments to resolve in 60+ years of living with the disorder.
My dreams continue to be a nightly adventure never knowing what I will dream next or how it will affect me.
I was wondering if anyone ever had a dream in which they became extremely agitated, mad at someone in the dream (for good cause) and yelled at that person for, in dream time, a long period of time. After I stopped yelling, I got into my car to go somewhere and woke up.
That happened to me last night and I woke up, after 8 hours of sleep, totally exhausted, as if I did not sleep at all. I didn't want to get out of bed to make a morning appointment. After the appointment, I went home and slept for another 5 hours. I feel better now but I am still tired.
Has anyone else ever been affected by a dream in this or a similar way?
I'm not sure I've argued with anyone for hours in a dream. A lot of my night terrors involved me fighting for my life, or being killed. It wasn't uncommon for me to wake up throwing punches, or diving across the room... so yes, I would say extremely agitated and more. It also often felt like I got no sleep at all.
Hope you get some rest soon, and your dreams don't get too bad. Take care! :)
Jazzy,
Thanks for the reply. I remember some of your posts talking about your dreams. I've had night terror dreams and it is terrible waking up after one of those.
In this dream, I didn't argue with the other person, I didn't let them get a word in edgewise. It was a non-stop tirade from me to him and anyone else who came into sight. It was nothing more than yelling at the top of my voice at him for what seemed like an hour in dream time. He would walk away and I would track him down to start yelling at him again. I think I quit yelling and left the building when I became hoarse, lost my voice.
Over the past few years, I woken from sleep happy, sad, smiling, scared and anxious but never so physically exhausted. that's why I asked if anyone was so affected by their dreams.
Sounds like you really needed to get it out. Hopefully it helped! Maybe there's something in the waking world you need to get out?
Quote from: Regret on November 16, 2019, 11:52:02 PM
That happened to me last night and I woke up, after 8 hours of sleep, totally exhausted, as if I did not sleep at all. I didn't want to get out of bed to make a morning appointment. After the appointment, I went home and slept for another 5 hours. I feel better now but I am still tired.
Just wanted to say it took me a full 7 days to recover from that dream, to get out of the fog it put me into and to get back to normal energy. I had dreams every night since then, most I can't remember, and only one was on the terror side. I did have a new one dealing with my brother-in-law, a person who has not talked to me in 20 years including at my mother's funeral a few years go and at his son's wedding this past summer. That was the first time he's showed up in one of my dreams and no, that was not the terror dream.
I don't wake up as exhausted as it sounds like you do Regret, but I have been having more dreams about telling people off that I ever used to. I think of it as being ready finally to address some of the issues I stayed quiet over to keep the peace, avoid confrontation, etc., and the feelings I avoided. Anyway, there's a lot of pent up frustration/anger in my dreams (which are fairly short), so if your dreams are long ones I would imagine you would be quite tired. It's a major letting go of sorts.
I haven't posted about my dreams in that they have been changing (content) so quickly, by the time I could write something, they had already moved on.
After dreaming about meeting a few friends who died long ago, my dreams now take on the content and context of what I experienced that day. Stuff in my waking life and shows that I watch on TV end up being the life I experience when dreaming that evening. It's gotten to the point that I no longer watch violent TV shows in that I end up playing one of the roles, being in some sort of difficult situation in my dreams and that borders on a mild nightmare.
I've even had dreams now that were of things that then happened a day or so later. My dreams seem to be showing me future events and they seem to be accurate, what I dream in the future seems to come true. Doesn't happen a lot but upon waking I say to myself, what was that about only to find it occurring my my waking life the next day or so later.
A few weeks ago someone ( sanmagic7 ) posted
( found it: https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=12959.msg96326#msg96326 )
that structures in dreams are our true selves. I agree with that. My dreams have had structure in them for decades. It was only after I discovered cPTSD that the structures in my dream began to be remodeled, a minor cosmetic change at first to reconstruction of the entire building and when that happened, no more structures in my dreams.
I would like to add that I think I figured out what cars have been in my dreams. I've had many dreams where I drove somewhere, parked the car and found it missing, stolen or towed, anywhere from a few minutes to a few hour in my dream. I've had some where I parked the car and after crossing the street, turning around and it was gone. The dream was me driving somewhere to meet with or be with a few or a large group of people. The last dream I had like this was driving to my high school class reunion and parking it next to a car owned by a long dead friend. I went into the building to find my classmates in old age, not as they were way back then. I didn't say much to them and went outside to find my car was gone. I woke up from that dream with a realization of what the car meant to me. It was the almost empty social tool box I was given in my youth, had enough tools in it to get me to a social function but then it was gone. In my dream, one the car was gone, I was left with no other tools to interact with people. I didn't know how to be my genuine self, couldn't be my genuine self because the ability to do that was stolen from me long ago and I ended up standing apart from the groups. That is the story of my life living the please/fawn typology. The car represented my minimal social skills that disappeared once those few tools got me to and into a social event.
And these "car" dreams occurred so much that in my more recent car dreams, I was looking for a place to park where my car would be safe, would not be taken, but in every dream it disappeared. I even felt bad in those dreams knowing I had remembered by car was often stolen, I looked for a safe place but failed to put it in a place where it would not be stolen. They were amazing dreams in my trying to protect my car, failing to do so and feeling bad in my dream when it was stolen. I realize that's a lot to unpack or understand but it really did happen to me like that. The mind is a vast and varied land to visit in ones sleep.
I had this dream several weeks ago and it is still in my memory as if I had it last night. And I've not had any car dreams since then. Just like I never had any more dreams with structures in them after seeing the building I worked in for many years totally gutted and reconstructed.
I realize everyone's dreams are personal to them but want to share my "car" realization in case anyone has had similar experience or reasonably good knowledge of what a car is in a dream.
My dreams keep changin' and to what end, I don't know. It's been an interesting 3 years since I discovered my cPTSD disorder.
My dreams continue to be of current and future content. I no longer dream of things from the past. I dream about what happened or what I saw on TV during the day. And some seem to be predictive in that they have content of future events, of being at work the next day for example. I guess the past is now in the past and my goal or task is to work on things going forward. The mind is a curious and interesting realm when asleep.
:thumbup: :grouphug:
Dreams have been the source of deep personal insights and revelations for me. (They've also been the product of too much pizza, too soon before bed! :rofl:)
It's great to hear from someone else how they interpret dreams. It's all about what stands out as significant to you. Dreams are highly personal and each person's imagery is unique to them.
An update on my dreams as they evolve.
While I had stopped dreaming of the past and only of the current and predictive future, within the past week I've had a few dreams from the past. One dealing with an ex-spouse and the other with a toxic relationship I had in the early 90's. A couple of dreams of each and none of them painful or scary. They were friendly and calming, almost apologetic toward me, being nice to me, accepting me. Guess the back rooms of my mind still have some baggage to unpack. Dreams that if they had happened in real life way back then, life would have been pleasant for me in both relationships.
Funny dream I had last night was of riding in a car with a guy driving, me and a woman. I didn't recognize anyone but as we were going along, the steering wheel came off into the drivers lap and he had to stop the car. I got into the drivers seat, put the steering wheel back on the post and while holding it down, started to drive the car slowly trying to get it off the busy street into a ground covered empty lot. I kept missing the driveway into the lot and had to make 4 or 5 U-turns to try again and finally finding the turn to get the car off the road and safely parked. I can still picture the center of the steering wheel and the metal part that "broke" allowing the wheel to come off. It was quite a complex mechanism. Now, that is a dream to interpret and could be done so in many ways.
The dreams come randomly and many are in current time, things that happened that day or things I might do the next day, after I wake, that were based on what I did before going to sleep. And it seems I start to dream as soon as I fall asleep. I never looked into when and why dreams happen, I just have them and remember some 10% of all I've had. I can still remember vividly the dream in which I walked up to my parents country house to meet myself when I was 3 years old, the dream that turned my life around.
It probably can be said that I no longer go to bed at night, I go to the movies without needing a ticket (although I paid a heavy price to get this far in life so it's only right that what I missed out on is now being re-lived for free).
I know these are boring or not much help to anyone, but I just have to post the dreams I had 2 nights ago and last night. Still remember them.
Two nights ago, I was just rehired to a company I worked for in the 80's for 10 years. It no longer exists. As I was walking down a hall to my office, I spotted someone who I did not like, someone who used me and cheated the company. He looked as he did back then and as I saw him, I said his name and just kept walking past him. He said "Don't you wan to talk to me?" and I said no and kept going. For some reason, a red metal door came into the dream. I was told not to enter. I found the door, opened it and discovered it was a large, unfinished (under construction) room with building debris on the floor. Just an empty room. Closed the door and kept walking down the hallway and woke up.
Last night I went back to school, a 70 year old sitting with teenagers, others my age and all ages in between. It was a class on psychology and the professor was lecturing but I had nothing to follow along with in that I just drove down to the school that day and did not have time to get books, etc. Toward the end of the class, he took a half dozen 3-ring binders (blue and white and other colors and types) out of a cabinet and passed them around as examples of how to make one for myself. One that I opened was filled with writing in blue ink that was written by a left handed person. I actually read a few lines but the writing was so small and so much on each page that a few lines did not make sense. Can still remember see "one can not" in the middle of a paragraph. Passed it on and woke up.
What this means is unknown to me other than I seem to still be processing people who did me harm when I was under the spells of cPTSD and it seems my brain is telling me there is more to get done or do in my life, what's left of it.
Just two curious dreams on two consecutive nights.