I’m sure this must have been mentioned before – I have untreatable insomnia? No types of drugs or vitamins/herbal suppliments do anything…
Please share your favourite meditations or techniques and any helpful hints about horrific vivid dreams crossing over to hallucinations?
I’m sorry… I just thought someone might know what I was talking about???
The things in my vivid nightmares make me avoid sleep— Cuz if that’s the way it’s gonna be, to hell with sleeping…
It’s just too horrid
My suggestion is try to make your room as comfortable as possible and try to meditate before sleep. Idk what your nightmares are about but I find when I wake up from a very bad one that if i try to think of what I could have done in the dream differently to fight back or survive it makes me feel better. And the thing is it doesn’t have to make sense cause it’s a dream so whatever scenario you can dream up to escape is Ok! Also try to keep something like a bottle of water nearby cause eating/drinking something will help you calm down a bit. Also of course deep breaths and try to focus on yourself and your surroundings remind yourself you are safe.
Sorry to hear that. I had extremely vivid nightmares for a while as well, that turned half delusional. It was horrible.
For me, what helps me the most to calm down is to turn off the lights, put on candles, drink sleepytime tea and listen to relaxing music with a very soothing and positive melody and lyrics. I listen to the same songs repeatedly and i also use them to calm down by day on happy moments. My mind has learned to respond with pleace on them. In my case it is religious music (my delusions are religious as well), but that might not be your thing.
Sometimes talking about happy things with a friend on the phone helps as well.
Oh and I am just starting a very gentle and relaxing form of yoga, might help as well.
Oh and when my brother had the same type of nightmare over and over as a child, they taught him a technique to change the course of the nightmare into something less frightening. It was an alternative health person who did that.
Perhaps sharing the plot of your nightmare might alleviate it.
I used to have a recurring nightmare. In my nightmare I would be approaching a pendulum in a white landscape such that I could not see how big the pendulum was. The pendulum appeared to be moving very slowly, with a swing to swing rate of more than a second. But as I approached I realised that the reason why the pendulum appeared to be moving so slowly was because the pendulum was massive, something the size of a car hanging by a 100 metre rope, and the weight, the car, at the end of the rope of the pendulum was moving at an extremely fast rate. So instead slowness, my nightmare developed into a crescendo of a feeling of speed. I had the nightmare many times.
For other reasons, when I had money and time to spare 15 years ago, I paid for online psychoanalysis. It was quite expensive at about 80 dollars an hour. Not a lot changed in me other than when I told the shrink about my dream. The shrink asked me if I had ever had an accident. As it happens I have had a road traffic accident when I was a kid. And come to think of it my nightmare started after that accident, which I can not consciously remember. The shrink said that in his experience, traffic accidents can result in dreams or horrific feelings of “quick-slow.” Accidents are quick, but we slow down time. Sometimes we even blot them out. In such case they can come back to haunt us.
But since I realised (?) that my slow-quick nightmare was a representation of my traffic accident, I have never hand the nightmare again. Of if I have, I guess I was not scared enough to remember it.
I take 3mg. melatonin. I got myself some extra soft bedding in a soothing minty color. I used to get nightmares more often until I eventually learned to control them and overcome adversity in them(I became stronger than the monsters, learned to fly over them and such). It helps me to watch a happy or interesting show or read a good book before falling asleep so I don’t focus on the sleep so much.
I’m sorry that you’re having difficulties with the nightmares carrying over to your waking time. That’s awful, it’s hard to shake that terrible feeling. For me it used to stick with me and cause me much distress. It was causing me to not get enough sleep ever. I started a new type of medicine which helps a lot. It isn’t a sleeping pill, it doesn’t help you fall asleep or help you stay asleep it just makes you not remember your nightmares. The nightmares don’t wake me up at all anymore. I’m so thankful my doctor thought about this med for me. Maybe you could ask your doctor about it for you. It’s called prazosyn. It’s actually a blood pressure medicine but from what I heard the folks at the VA discovered that the Vets with PTSD who took this medicine for high blood pressure also stopped having nightmares. I don’t know why it works, but believe me it works. I only have to take 5mg and I’m not bothered by any dreams at all. Let me know if this helps you. Good luck.
I’ve heard someone else say Prazosin (sp?) does the same for her
I wanna try it!
Can’t get back to sleep after horrific imagery; I go to the garage and smoke-- that’s not helpful, though…
I sleep with the tv on, so it helps me focus on trying to wake up from nightmares/night terrors. If it gets too bad, it helps to make your feet cold by ice or cement floor, I’ve found
Thanks
My nightmares are all-encompassing, but much preferable to the hallucinations; I just have to keep that in mind…
Nightmares have never stopped me from sleeping. Maybe an antipsychotic could help your mental state if you don’t take one.
I’ve found that when I sleep more, the dreams get more irritating, as opposed to horrific… Though I do not sleep a lot at a time (maybe an hour), it adds up, if you have a chance. I used to get up after a nightmare, but (this is unhealthy) I smoke a cigarette or tend to chores, then try to get on with the sleeping…
Does anyone else have trouble differentiating between vivid dreams and reality? What actually happened/ what was a figment of the dream world?
I’ve heard about Prazosin but I haven’t been able to have it prescribed, even though my bp keeps rising, is it a schedule 2?
At the office, it’s $110-$130, so you got a bargain… And that’s only for a half-hour
I did have a traffic incident as a kid, and at the time, it was “oh, she’s just trying to get attention”, however, as an adult, the x-rays speak for themselves.
It’s pathetic how adults don’t believe it when a child’s hurting…
But also, what was wrong was that my father rushed off to see if the jackasses that wrecked into us were ok; nevermind me…
I am sorry to hear that your dad did not check up on you. But it is very kind of him to go and check up on others, that wrecked into you.
What is your nightmare like, if you can say it without feeling bad? I don’t charge a penny!
Awwww, I get into trouble with cops, fly off of cliffs, drive into buildings, get lost on old country roads— wind up in hilly fields where aliens are landing; there’s no telling.
However, I do not drive – I can’t stand the anxiety…
I guess to classify as a classic nightmare; running off the road from a rocky embankment into a river
But thas many variations