How to get rid of nightmares/night terrors?

>light headed
Meant to say light headed and groggy. Takes about an hour after I wake up for it to go away. Coffee helps.

Lucid dreams. Lucid dreams are dreams where you become aware you are dreaming, and you get a variable measure of control over the dream (sometimes, it can be just being aware of the dream as it happens, sometimes it can be full-on control of every aspect in the dream). I believe this has been used in the past to help nightmare problems. Look into it, OP.

You are sure as SHIT not alone, though I feel fortunate that my recurring nightmares aren't nearly as bad. Slightly different in that I repressed memories for over 20 years so there's that so you can get a general guess of what happened, but I got diagnosed with it as well and it sure as shit made me feel isolated. Hell it still does.

I would go into greater detail but i'm only posting this because reading this thread elicted the same feeling in me and hope that my post further returns the favor.

You have bad spirits in your home. Sometimes they travel through and sometimes they stay. Depends on if they have legal grounds to do so. I usually say this aloud and it works "IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH WHO CAME IN THE FLESH, BEGONE". After that I can usually sleep.

You might be sleeping wrong. I frequently got sleep paralysis, because I like to fold over my pillow, which restricted my breathing while asleep. My brain was scaring me into waking up to get enough oxygen

>Slightly different in that I repressed memories for over 20 years so there's that so you can get a general guess of what happened
Ugh I hate that this shit happens to so many people :(
I had some of those kinds of memories come up too actually, trying to heal from the stuff that happened as an adult. I have had a very hard time with minimizing my childhood sexual abuse experiences, which is fucked up because that shit was both illegal to do to me and super duper fucked up.

I don't think I got PTSD from that but I didn't really think about it my whole adulthood, until I started EMDR. I have no idea what to think about my childhood sexual abuse experience and I don't even talk about it with my current therapist >.< I will talk with her about my dads belligerent drunkenness and some of the physical stuff, but not much.

I'm afraid to even open up about it. Fuuuuck. On top of that, I have so much other stuff to work on, from my adulthood :(

>I would go into greater detail but i'm only posting this because reading this thread elicted the same feeling in me and hope that my post further returns the favor.
It's okay, I have a really hard time opening up about stuff and haven't told you guys much either. :(
Just the bare details.
Thank you for posting, you make me feel even less alone.
I wish nobody had to go through that kind of shit, but it's good to not be alone.

From experience, opening up about it to my therapist made me extremely panicked, jittery and feel like I had done something terribly wrong for hours if not days after. I was extremely combative and ready to lash out. Even someone touching me at some points enough to set me off because I was so on edge and it felt like it made no sense for me to be as nothing was forced out of me.

It took months, about half a year actually before that feeling eased up at all, but even now over a year after I began therapy and we've slowed down from once a week to once a month, even now I feel tense, on edge and inexplicably anxious. It ebbs and flows but lately the tide has been up more than down by a large margin. I had to cancel last months appointment because of a schedule conflict, so now i'm behind and well, I can tell.

You will open up about it when you are ready. I'm sorry those things happened to you too, but yeah, remember that you're never alone. I truly wish you only the best from the bottom of my being.

In my case it was mind over matter user.
My night terrors/sleep paralysis became so bad that my wife would be waking me up sometimes ~50 times per night.
Eventually I managed to overcome it and know I was in a dream state and eventually managed to overcome it by telling myself I am in a dream.
Last time I was blasted into space by a daemon and just enjoyed it knowing it was a dream.
Fell from a stupidly high building and didn't wake up. I told myself to hover above the ground and I did.
Then I was at work fighting with a demon and I was 'using the force' punching him around like a play thing.
It took years to manage this but the last 8 times I could control things. (Not immediately, it takes a bit of terror still before I can control things.
I enjoy it now, so if I wake from sleep paralysis I look forward to going back to sleep because I know I can engage boss mode.

>Lucid dreams are dreams where you become aware you are dreaming, and you get a variable measure of control over the dream
I used to be into lucid dreaming for a little before becoming disillusioned with the idea of adventure in dreams (no matter what, when you wake up they just feel like dreams maybe 1 or 2 exceptions, but even then I'm not really sure).

Any way, it is a misunderstanding that lucid dreaming begets control of dreams. You can be in control during a dream and not be lucid or be lucid and not have control.

However, some of the things you incidentally learn are relevant to different situations.

In this case OP, what you want to do every night before you drift off to sleep is try and repeat to yourself over and over "I will have a good dream" or something to that affect. Your dreams are a part of you,so you do get a significant measure of control over what you dreamf regardless of lucidity.
So you just gotta try and tell yourself what you want to dream and hopefully, that will work out. Dreams are basically whatever you are thinking at the moment. Its a strange thing, to be sure.

That's pretty much what you would get out of learning lucid dreaming.Maybe knowing you are dreaming could also offer comfort and sometimes depending on your "confidence" in a dream, you can affect what kind of dream you are getitng. If you do go for lucid, try not fade to black or fade out; that's mildly annoying and my experience its a bit hard to come back to dreamland from that. You also want to start spinning around once you realize you are dreaming, otherwise the excitement could wake you up.

Also if its trauma or whatever... you can learn in dreams, so I do kind of wonder if there is something you could do there, but I don't know.

Ive always had issues opening up to therapists. Luckily my new one isnt forcing me to talk about the abuse that has happened. My parents used to be alcoholics and abusive and so i think when this all happened to me, it kinda opened old wounds. I think its like a snowball effect. I wake up, im anxious. I go to bed, im anxious. I sleep, im still anxious. Even in my dreams im not free. Its not fair. No one deserves this feeling.

I think i might try doing that. It would help me to get control over the situation because a lot of me is me not being in control and being hurt again. I think it would be theraputic to be able to fight back and stand my ground even if it is only a dream.

>Last time I was blasted into space by a daemon and just enjoyed it knowing it was a dream.
>just enjoyed it
>After all that time with lucid dreaming
I call bullshit. Lucid dreaming is to ethereal to have much entertainment value.
Its a little fun at first when you're just excited to have accomplished it, but sooner or later, you notice that all they are is dreams.
Getting excited about lucid dreaming as a form of adventure or entertainment can end up just depressing you and I'd advice against setting your expectations this way.

Also, doubtful about it taking years to just go lucid every once and a while and have some mental control over your non-lucid dreams from incidental learning about dream recall etc. unless I'm some sort of weird prodigy.

Pretty sure I stated it was only the 8th time I had achieved it.
Also it so much more surreal so it's truly memorable.
Also I don't have to prove shit to you user. Gfys.

>Gfys.
Just saying...

Alright, maybe I should've just left it at don't get your expectations up. Obviously its impossible for you to prove and personal experience can differ. I guess I'm still a bit bitter about my experience with lucidity.
>Pretty sure I stated it was only the 8th time I had achieved it.
Perhaps as a result of sleep deprivation, I read this line
>It took years to manage this but the last 8 times I could control things.
to mean that it took years to get to the level you are about to mention, but you have now managed to have 8 lucid dreams in row.
Whatever. My post quality is going down from sleep deprivation and possibly a bad therapy session so I'll see myself out.

Still, try not to get your expectations too high, OP. You can try it out and it could help, but please just don't be disappointed if they start feeling like "just dreams" when you wake up. You can try and get more out of them which something I didn't really manage I guess, but have a balanced perspective.

I sound negative, but I think it can work in your case provided you don't go in with the perspective I went in with where I thought I could basically play a whole game of BoTW inside my mind or rule the world or whatever. Its not really like that, but maybe if you set yourself to see something more surreal and dreamlike I bet it could work.
Learning about dreaming certainly did do something for me in that I am no longer afraid of nightmares. Its just random things running through my head that don't really hold to much meaning on their own.

I'm not saying they were my last 8 dreams so it's slightly my bad.
I have had nights with regular unmemorable dreams in between and my lucid dreams I always semi-wake from but quickly fall back to sleep into either another lucid dream or best case scenario, the same dream. That's when I can really go boss mode and 'use the force' against the demon.

It has honestly gotten to the stage where I get lifted and thrown around the room by the demon, and whilst scary at first I quickly realise this is the same as the other many hundred+ times and just enjoy the exhilaration. Then I turn the tables and blast them away.

I remember a time when I was ~10 and I felt a presence enter my room and entered my body. Fuck was that traumatic. When it finally got bored and left my body, I went quickly to my mothers room to sleep with her.
That's the only time I recall ever needing her to make me feel safe from the time I was 2 or 3, which I can't remember.
They didn't return until my late teens and only maybe once a year until my early 20's. Now at 30 it's a guaranteed monthly or even bi-weekly occurrence this year.
I love it but demons (I believe are real) have read all of this so maybe now they will put me into hard mode and I'll curse the day I ever explained this to you in this thread.

Attached: image.png (462x526, 348K)

>From experience, opening up about it to my therapist made me extremely panicked, jittery and feel like I had done something terribly wrong for hours if not days after
Yeah that's how it is for me >.< for a lot of things.
Every time I am in there I am a panicky, shaking mess. Sweaty palms and everything. I dissociate in there, too. Ugh.
>My parents used to be alcoholics and abusive and so i think when this all happened to me, it kinda opened old wounds. I think its like a snowball effect. I wake up, im anxious. I go to bed, im anxious. I sleep, im still anxious. Even in my dreams im not free. Its not fair. No one deserves this feeling.

I relate to how you feel so much, fuck. I feel the same way. The shit that happened opened old wounds, and it's just all snowballing into a big fat fuckin blob of shit I don't want to talk about and wish never happened, I wish it would all just go away.

It isn't fair, you got that right. I wanted to move on so badly, I wanted to just forget about all the shit that happened and go about life and just be normal again. But normal never came, shit just got worse.

I could never afford enough shrink sessions so I just endure.
I tried once but the guy just entered the stuff into a computer which gave him the answer as to my mental health. Jesus Christ, I have done that at home for free. It made me so dissolutions do that I've never even tried with another shrink.
I wish I could fix the mess that is my head. Turning 37 soon and I'm more of a mess than ever.

One of my professors had these. Basically need to confront your trauma. Hers didn't stop until she did; was abuse from her father, didn't hit until like 10-20 years after she moved out.

>I could never afford enough shrink sessions so I just endure.
I have medicaid, can't even fucking work right now >.< probably going to apply for disability soon.
I see a psychiatric nurse practitioner who is also certified to do EMDR, so she gives me counseling services, EMDR sessions, and provides me with my meds and stuff.

She's really great, really knows what she's doing. The only time she's on her computer is when she's sending in my prescriptions.

>It made me so dissolutions do that I've never even tried with another shrink. I wish I could fix the mess that is my head. Turning 37 soon and I'm more of a mess than ever.

There are good shrinks out there user. Look through trauma specialized ones in your area, I know first hand how damaging it can be to your healing, to have a shitty care provider. My difficulty in therapy almost completely stems from my bad therapist, but with time I'm opening up more, and feeling safer in there. Not having as many trust issues with her.

Give it another shot, nobody deserves to go through life with their past bothering them so much, without any help.

It is exactly the past that is bothering me.
Also a good chunk is the future and not wanting to live it.
I'm doing a bit better this year. I'm on two drugs, from my GP, so at least I'm sleeping better in general. Thanks for the advice and support user. My doctor keeps asking if I want to try another shrink, but after my first experience I've always said Nooope

> but after my first experience I've always said Nooope

You really should give it another shot, user :(

Maybe it's a good shrink your doc is recommending. You could discuss your fears with them, fears of the next shrink sucking too.

I've had two shrinks, and both of them were really great. They can really help you out. My only bad care experience so far really, is my old therapist.

You made me think of both times I admitted myself to the ER. I was honest with both mental health carers, and both times they were almost identical, not even trying to hide the fact they couldn't understand my mental condition. One even said something very negative to me as if what I told her was nothing.

They'll eventually go away on their own but sometimes they'll be triggered by an event. In my case just 10 minutes ago another dream caused an old nightmare to return.

Yeah, that's how ER and psych ward care always is, just shitty as fuck.

You're not gonna just spontaneously get better though *shrug*

Go see someone trauma specialized, they won't be like the shitty ER docs and stuff.