aah1977

I spend all day trying to stick to my boundaries. I've made up my mind that this crazy life that involves my addicted husband isn't the life I want to live. I try my hardest to detach. Then I go to bed and have amazing dreams about our life together. This week it will be 7 weeks since this whole madness began with him leaving and I would say more nights than not I have very, very vivid dreams about him and us. In every single dream we are how we use to be before addiction took over his life and made me crazy. I wake up from these dreams incredibly sad because I know that it isn't reality. It sucks! I fall asleep easily, but I dread going to bed because I know I don't want to have these dreams. They just leave me feeling hollow and long for something that will never be. I wonder if anyone else has had this sort of thing happen and how you dealt with it. I know I can't control what I dream, but it is making the mornings so hard when all I can think of are these dreams!

Ann

My dreams went the other way...night terrors. It was awful and it lasted for months and months. I was afraid to go to bed.

Both kinds of dreams are disturbing and can affect our sleep and our health.

I don't have any solutions to offer, but hope you get better rest soon.

Hugs

teke

most of my dreams went the other way too. i had nightmares. i think you are right about not being able to control your dreams. what kind of helped me was to first pray for peaceful sleep then when i wake, i purposely wouldn't allow myself to meditate on the dreams at all. i found the more i tried to remember them or meditated on them for any amount of time, the painful they were and for longer periods of the morning. don't know if this makes sense, though.

not only did i have those nightmares about what my ah might have been doing while he was awol and using but i would have using dreams myself. it was all so horrible.

Chino

Well, in a way you are controlling what you dream. What you're consciously suppressing in real life is coming out at night when you have no conscious control, forcing you to face it when you sleep/wake. Whenever we have recurring dreams it's because we haven't gotten the message yet that our subconscious is sending back to us. I know you must feel like crap and it's exhausting, but it will stop when you're done ______. Like teke, I began praying for peaceful sleep and I got it, because I turned it over to my Creator with my last conscious thought.

Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, couldn't figure out how to thread the stitch. He had a dream about cannibals attacking him and their spears had holes in the ends of them.

sofacat

Hey ahh

Are you getting out and doing some fun things for yourself lately?
It'll help.

aah1977

[QUOTE=Chino;2531860]Well, in a way you are controlling what you dream. What you're consciously suppressing in real life is coming out at night when you have no conscious control, forcing you to face it when you sleep/wake. Whenever we have recurring dreams it's because we haven't gotten the message yet that our subconscious is sending back to us. I know you must feel like crap and it's exhausting, but it will stop when you're done ______.QUOTE]

So, do you think that if I'm trying to focus on all the awful stuff he did over the last couple of years during th day and I'm suppressing the good times we had my subconsious it trying to resurface that stuff?

Thankfully I don't remember any dreams this morning and I'm able to feel happy and strong this morning! I hope this continues!

Chino

I can't answer that because it's personal to you and your experience. What I shared came from a few sessions with my therapist. I can tell you that when I've had dreams like that, it's because I wasn't ready to let go of wishful thinking. Same thing for night terrors. I wasn't ready to let go of fear. My subconscious was processing what needed to be faced and I was resisting in reality. It didn't stop until I was done resisting.

I'm glad you slept well and I hope it continues