iamica

I thought this stage of my life was over, but I guess not...for months now, at least once a week, I have a nightmare that wakes me up at about 3 AM on a weeknight and I can't go back to sleep. Sometimes it's just a random, disturbing/frightening nightmare, but often it'll be a flashback to a scary scene from my childhood when my dad was drunk.
I'm not very good at being aware that I'm dreaming when I dream. I can never tell when something is a dream as I'm dreaming it; otherwise I'd try to take charge and run away or get out or fight back, etc. Even though I'm an adult now and Dad hasn't been drunk in years, though, I still am shaken by these dreams and don't know how to cope or how to stop having them. Can anyone relate?

fluer

Yes I can relate. I woke up awhile back at 3:45 am (almost exactly) for nights on end. I am sorry this is happening to you. You say you reconize this as also a flashback..I don't know your specific circumstances or past trauma but I bet you are right. For me, when there is a consistency in what time I am jolted awake in the night it was my body actually reliving what happened to me as a child. It is scary and awful. Often my body and mind experienced great discomfort. I just try really hard to figure out my body is telling me and I often ask God "what is REALLY going on?". Depending on the night I either embrace the emotion and cry it out, or sometimes I get up and turn on all the lights in the house,sit infront of the tv and just try and feel safe again.
It really sucks doesn't it?

If you need help talking it through..shoot me back.
Hang in there.

Eleison

I find I get spurts of nightmares periodically, I have recurring ones centred around several themes related to past traumas that come up now and again.

The way I see it, any dream or nightmare is there to speak to you, to get a message through.
Maybe the father you remember still haunts the you that was in many ways, as traumas do. If so, then it's how you communicate with the you that was in a compassionate and caring way. What did you most need when things were at their worst?

AbsentFriend

I've had recurring nightmares for at least 6 months, and they got worse over the holidays. After the holidays, they remained at a steady every other night, and sometimes every night.

All had the same theme - someone in my family was angry with me for some absurd reason that I had no control over. (Example, my dream mother moved into a new house, end even though I'd never been there before, she yelled at me for not knowing where the silverware went)

My psychiatrist suggested that I might be treating someone the way I used to be treated - so I asked everyone I knew whether I had ever treated them unfairly. Maybe they were just being nice, but none of them had any complaints.

Then I asked a friend of a friend - who is a school psychologist - what to make of them. She suggested that it was ME who simply wasn't letting go of the past.

So then I sent an email to my mother, thanking her for some small thing she had done for me in the past that I appreciated.

And the nightmares started to wane. Not gone completely, but it definitely helped. I obviously have more work to do, though.

Hope this helps.

fultang

Just a suggestion.
But it might help if you educate yourself as to how the mind stores and processes information.
There's alot of insight to be gained by doing that.