Nightmares about one of my abusers TRIGGER WARNING

Hello. This is the first time I've ever posted in this forum, but I've been on Psychforums for months. Is it ok if I post this here even if it happened a few years in the past and I'm 19 now?

Basically, for several months when I was 10 and 11, my mom was going out with this guy with two sons. When she broke up with him, he hit her. He tried to force her to remain his girlfriend. Scared my mom so badly that we left our hiuse to stay in a hotel for a few days, so he wouldn't know where we were. I had no idea back thrn that he had hit her or that we were leaving the house because of him. I think it was a few weeks later that my family went on vacation and left our car at my grandma's house. We came back and, from what I remember, our car wouldn't start and when we looked to see what was wrong, our trunk and tailpipe had a sand-like substance in them. I'm told that there was a resulting court case in which he admitted to putting it in there, and I'm not really sure if he was trying to hurt someone or kill someone (but we know he was trying to do one or the other). I wasn't upset by this because I was too young to understand. Now it upsets me that he tried to hurt my mom and might've been trying to hurt my brother, and probably at least emotionally hurt his sons. He can do whatever he wants to me, but he tried to hurt all of them. His sons were two of my very good friends back then. I'm also told that he was sentenced to a year of court-ordered therapy, which I think was probably a better idea than prison.

Onto the nightmares. In the past several months, I've had a few nightmares about him trying to get back into our lives. A few nights ago was the worst one. In the nightmare, my mom completely lost her mind and called him out of the blue, then he posted on my timeline on Facebook. I know none of that would ever happen in real life, but it was scary.

I won't go into the details of the other nightmares because this already a really long post.

Plenty of nights, I have paranoia about this dude. I'm prone to paranoia, anyway, but I have a lot about him.

I was just wondering if anyone else deals with any of this because of their abuser(s) and if anybody has some advice or kind words for me. Thank you for listening. Best wishes to you all for a very happy new year.

-TCD

You're very much welcome here xx


Abuse and trauma can have long reaching effects and they often surface many years after the original events.. I've spoken to people in 3D that have only just begun to think about and process abuse that happened 20-40 years ago..

Can you think of anything that could have triggered off the nightmares and paranoia about him coming back.?

This stuff is really really awful to go through and when I was at my worst, i was having nightmares every night and i was scared to go to sleep.. imagining my abuser coming in.
(it does get easier I promise..)
I understand a little bit and i'm really sorry that you're going through this atm, i know you probably can't even begin to explain how scary it feels to you when it's happening.

You sound like you're feeling really little and unable to do anything in your dreams about him.. i'm wondering, what were you told was happening when you were little and had to leave the house..?
It must have been a really confusing time and you probably would have been worried and picking up on the tension and emotions of everyone around you.. if you didn't understand what was happening, it's likely that you just pushed everything to one side and tried to forget about it.
Now you do understand properly, you have that new knowledge to help you make sense of a difficult and traumatic memory.

Have you talked about this with anyone in 3D at all.? it might be helpful to have a talk with your mom about things and see if talking it through can help a little bit..
Is your mom easy to talk to.?

xx

seabreezeblue wrote:You're very much welcome here xx


Abuse and trauma can have long reaching effects and they often surface many years after the original events.. I've spoken to people in 3D that have only just begun to think about and process abuse that happened 20-40 years ago..

Can you think of anything that could have triggered off the nightmares and paranoia about him coming back.?

This stuff is really really awful to go through and when I was at my worst, i was having nightmares every night and i was scared to go to sleep.. imagining my abuser coming in.
(it does get easier I promise..)
I understand a little bit and i'm really sorry that you're going through this atm, i know you probably can't even begin to explain how scary it feels to you when it's happening.

You sound like you're feeling really little and unable to do anything in your dreams about him.. i'm wondering, what were you told was happening when you were little and had to leave the house..?
It must have been a really confusing time and you probably would have been worried and picking up on the tension and emotions of everyone around you.. if you didn't understand what was happening, it's likely that you just pushed everything to one side and tried to forget about it.
Now you do understand properly, you have that new knowledge to help you make sense of a difficult and traumatic memory.

Have you talked about this with anyone in 3D at all.? it might be helpful to have a talk with your mom about things and see if talking it through can help a little bit..
Is your mom easy to talk to.?

xx

I can't think of anything that could've triggered me.

It's not so much how scary the nightmares are that bothers me, it's that if he really wanted to, he could easily get to our house or our car. If he still lives where he used to, then he only lives an hour away and he could look us up online. In the dreams, I feel little because I can't control my dream enough to help the situation. In real life, I wouldn't feel little if he were to find us. Because I could probably eventually get to a phone to call the police or do something like that.

When we left the house, I was just told we were going to go somewhere and stay at a hotel for a bit. I thought it was just for fun and my family felt it was best to just let me think that, I guess. I had never thought that he might try to harm us again (don't worry, he didn't). I figured it was all just over, somehow. But now I realize that we did need to leave our house for a few days so he could cool down before he would know where we were.

Our dog must've stayed for one night or two at the kennel (I can't remember if we were gone for one night or two), which would cost, like, $100 and the hotel cost, probably, like, $100 or $150, and then there were probably court fees, so this dude owes my mom some money, too, in my opinion. But that doesn't matter nearly as much as the emotional problems he's caused. But I've forgiven him. After all, he's a human being. Still upset with him sometimes, but I wish him well, I suppose, and I don't think this necessarily means he's a bad person, just one who did two horrible things. But still, no one in my family will ever voluntarily see him again, thank god.

It's been a long time since I've talked to anyone about this in person. I don't want to cause anyone any emotional harm.

I can understand not wanting to talk to anyone if it could cause pain for them..
makes it really difficult for you though to carry on trying to process all of this on your own..

Have you had any therapy for anything at all..?
I've not had much but i had a few sessions of trauma work done and that really helped settle my nightmares down a bit..
do you think therapy might be worth a try for these dreams and everything for you.?
it took a while for them to ease off but the first thing i noticed was that in the dreams, instead of feeling little and helpless, i started standing up for myself..
that was actually really difficult because i'd wake up crying after arguments with people in my dreams but over time that eased as well..

I don't have very many bad dreams now - i have no idea what a normal amount is but i'm on probably 1 bad dream every 2 weeks or so here..

xx

seabreezeblue wrote:I can understand not wanting to talk to anyone if it could cause pain for them..
makes it really difficult for you though to carry on trying to process all of this on your own..

Have you had any therapy for anything at all..?
I've not had much but i had a few sessions of trauma work done and that really helped settle my nightmares down a bit..
do you think therapy might be worth a try for these dreams and everything for you.?
it took a while for them to ease off but the first thing i noticed was that in the dreams, instead of feeling little and helpless, i started standing up for myself..
that was actually really difficult because i'd wake up crying after arguments with people in my dreams but over time that eased as well..

I don't have very many bad dreams now - i have no idea what a normal amount is but i'm on probably 1 bad dream every 2 weeks or so here..

xx

Yeah, I once talked to my psychologist about the dude. She was supportive and nice.

I hope I gain better control of my dreams before I start standing up for myself in them. The dude would probably at least injure me in my dream if I were to stand up to him. It would all be a dream of course, but still no fun to go through.

I'm glad your bad dreams have eased up. I know what it's like to be afraid to go to sleep. When I was little, I used to have such terrible nightmares that for a long time, I was afraid to go to sleep. Those nightmares weren't related to abuse, though. They involved monsters, witches, murderers, ghosts and in the worst dreams, dead people (like zombies and dead bodies). In other words, things a little kid should never have to think about. So it bothers me a lot to hear that someone else has had to go through being afraid to go to sleep, too.

When you do reach that point of confronting him and it is a dream remember not life, so it may not be like it is in life. It is however part of your healing process.

Terry E. wrote:When you do reach that point of confronting him and it is a dream remember not life, so it may not be like it is in life. It is however part of your healing process.

Hi. I'm just... pretty sure that he would end up hurting somebody in my dream(s) if I were to do that now. I just don't have good control over my dreams anymore. I used to, but my sleeping medication stopped it, I guess.

If someone had told me years ago that I would stop my abuser in a very spectacular "die hard" sort of way, I would have laughed.

It will not help you right now but know that it should end

Thanks. Next time I have a dream about him, I'm going to try standing up to him, if I can.

I hope standing up to him in your dreams goes okay.. I know it was quite traumatic for me at first because i'd wake up feeling like the argument had actually happened and i'd feel guilty for it.

I also got re-abused quite a few times before standing up to my abusers..
Over time though, it did really help because i felt quite confident in my dreams from time to time ad i'd never felt that before.

I'm intrigued.. you had fairly good control over your dreams before.?

Kind of a lucid dreaming thing.?