Nightmares - Trigger warning

I usually try to keep my own junk out of here, but today has not been a great one and my own dear wife gets triggered if I talk at home. She is also a survivor - but I also know that talking about my childhood causes her great pain - so I try to keep it to myself. Sound familiar guys and girls.

The" egg donor" is now 95. A short stooped overweight woman who shuffles around on her walker while everyone gives her space. NO ONE wants anything to deal with her. She should be an object of pity.

Then why when I dream of her, in that retirement home at her age, can she still cause me great fear. Not as a child, but still more than anything else I have ever experienced in my life. I dreamed of the ranting, squealing monster that I saw as a child and had to call the nurses to restrain her.

Those dreams have come a long way. I don't wake in fright anymore unable to get back (or fearful) of getting back to sleep.

But they are still there. My wife hopes that when she eventually dies I will be better. I had not had one for well over a year and thought maybe never again.

I have just been reading over various fact sheets in the "Blue Knot Foundation" resources area, and I highly recommend them. They go over all sorts of problems we can have. Addiction, health, cognitive development, C-PTSD etc. but this one is sort of shuffled away in a side issue. I am quite okay with all the rest. I am happy with hyper vigilance, no trust, dissociation etc. When this stuff has been with you as long as you can remember it is just "you". Just wish someone could write out a PHD paper on how to deal with this.

Hey Terry,

Do you think the nightmare seems to be the night version of your hyper-vigilance, distrust, and dissociation? The brain never seems to let its guard down even during sleep...

I wonder if, when the old woman dies, your nightmares will go away once and for all?

No it was her. Either her or my brother.
With her it used to be how she would slowly coldly set me up to fail to justify her beatings, Always done with no expression no anger just her "justification" if she could find one or manufacture one. I believe it was something at times she needed to do. Because they did not depend on my actions they were random and unpredictable. It was that moment when I used to realise that it was coming and I could do nothing to stop it - that is when I would wake. She was always around 42 I was always around 12.
Then it changed. She was around 50 I was around 30 and as she was slowly ramping up I grabbed her by the hair took her into my garage put her head in a vice and tried to crush it. When that would not work I hammered 4" nails into her head, slowly as the nails were thin and could bend. All the time she just kept on talking. You would think that was cathartic but I woke sweating and could not sleep. I was deeply shocked, but hoped that was the end of them.
Recently she is in a home and when I visit her (last time she looked straight at me and did not recognize me) she started in her public persona then deteriorated. When her father used to intervene for beating us (my brother would sometimes run the two miles to his house in his pajamas in mid winter barefoot at night) she would object and I could hear her crying and squealing about him telling her to stop beating us that way. That was the voice I heard two nights ago. The squealing.

My brothers nightmares are simple, he is trying to kill me and I fight back trying to kill him. I never can and then I wake.

and yes we never sit around like most families at Christmas but you guys and girls know that, if I told this to anyone else I would never be able to talk to them again. Normal people can never get this stuff. Part of our frustration with life.

Those are terrible nightmares tinged with revenge schemes that make you wake up.

I occasionally have nightmares about a sister who was the family bully. A recurring one was me ending up trying to gouge her eyes out with bare hands--that one always makes me wake with a start. I think it goes back to how I really felt in the moment as a child when she would attack me. Only I didn't have the adult physical strength to do it then, plus I wasn't tall enough to reach her face (she is older than me by several years). It was the direct feeling of how she could never "see" a situation for what it was, it was always all about her. She was in the more powerful position as an older sib as well.

When I was a few years older, participating in the middle school track team, and taller than her, she made the mistake of picking on me in the kitchen one time. We had an all-out cat fight and I had her pinned underneath in a position she couldn't get out of. At the last she demanded that I take back what I called her earlier in the fight, "bitch". I just snort-laughed and walked off.

That was the last time she ever physically tangled with me.

Oh, she continued with her emotional abuse and back-stabbing ways, and everybody else had to walk on eggshells. It wasn't til she was packed off to college that the tension inside the house left on the very first day she was gone. With a cat-fight, I knew exactly what I was dealing with. But I never knew when or what twisted words would come out of her mouth. The emotional damage that resulted is the part that still haunts. That may explain the nightmares for me.

I think you dream about those thoughts that are on your mind during waking hours, but the dreams are not rational since the cognitive and reasoning centers of your brain are off-line during sleep. It's just a flood of images that relate to various thoughts and concerns you've had. If you suffer sufficient trauma, then those particular thoughts are imprinted more thoroughly, as memory is designed to remember what threatens your well-being. So not surprising that they would appear in recurrent dreams.

I don't know if they ever truly go away, I think they may reduce in frequency if those events become less important to you, so they are not as much on your mind, or are crowded out by other things. Some people use substances to help blot them out. I think staying busy and involving yourself in other things really helps.

I also think we get better at handling and processing them, over time. I can wake up in a state of total upset, but then I realize it was a dream and can be calmed down in 10 or 15 minutes, even go back to sleep most of the time. But that's after many years. Still, you remember the dream and think about it when awake, which may perpetuate the cycle. It's hard to break out of it completely. So maybe be gentle with yourself and realize it's just another aspect of abuse that you have to deal with, somehow.

I am a survivor as well with my own type of dreams too, Terry. I sometimes dream about others, mainly memories of being physically hurt and unable to do anything about it, so all I do is cry and I literally wake up crying. I am comforted by my husband. In my past, I was such a 'good' girl that I always blamed myself for doing 'something' wrong. I always felt like it was my fault and she was the one who was hurt by me. That's what she brainwashed me with. Somewhere deep in me I believed it for a long time. I recently was asked by my sister if my mom could come to my home and sleep overnight just to be able to accompany her on the drive (2 1/2 hour drive). I said no. She is not welcome in my home. She has to realize there are consequences to her actions and words. She said I had done some things which weren't true and she mocked me, so guess what you can't visit me ever again, no matter if you say sorry. It's too little too late, mother dear...

and yes we never sit around like most families at Christmas but you guys and girls know that, if I told this to anyone else I would never be able to talk to them again. Normal people can never get this stuff. Part of our frustration with life.

Christmases, no matter how good it may appear with the tree, the decorations and the giving of gifts to each other, it's all like this fake $#%^ we put a front with. The damage is there and she will never own up to it or even believe she ever did wrong, so it will never have those good feelings that it brings to others in their own home. We didn't have Christmases. We didn't decorate or bake cookies or cook or anything. It was just another day for us, not a holiday. We didn't get presents. My kids can't quite understand why at times, I can't get in the mood for the season. It's because it's not something I ever experienced. I lived without it and I can still do without it. Oh, yes, I want to decorate, enjoy friendships but when I get depressed, I'm just not in a caring mood. I make myself do it for them, my kids. I fake it till I make it. My friends have no heart or pity for me. For the truth I am telling them. Their faces and their words say it all. It's like they take their side. I just keep quiet about my mom most days. Other's can't understand what we've lived through, through no fault of their own. Lucky them. They are indeed lucky and blessed.

I think for me being more and more honest with my mom has made me feel more and more in control. It's like I can stand up to her. If she could she'd let me have it verbally and I'd come right back with my retort and kick her out of my house no matter if she is my mom. That's what she knows will happen. So she stays away. I won't even speak to her. I had to see her for a few minutes on my daughter's graduation party and then they left. I was so relieved. I had to fake it for the sake of my family, but otherwise I won't go out of my way to have her around. If she would say, "Do you really hate me this much?" I'd say, "Yes, I do hate you very much. You deserve it." That's my honest me talking. I can write it here truthfully.

The violence one with your mother to me seems like a subconscious desire which is naturally upsetting to the conscious brain. You can't kill your mother off from your own mind. It's a battle with self maybe?

The one with your brother could maybe also be like a self battle?

I don't remember dreaming ever of my parents or any absers. I used to have alot flying dreams. I'd have chasing dreams where I'd start flying. I had sleep paralysis type dreams - those I used to get alot.

Reading this makes me wonder why I don't have dreams with them in... Not since I was a child anyway. But those dreams tended to be happy - like my Dad was James Bond dreams, delusional I was lol.

These dreams do sound really distressing and I wish you strength in finding a way to be free of them. Much luck.