Nightmares

[Eleanor]

Re: Nightmares

Thank you for all the great advice everyone! I certainly have enough options to try out now.

I prefer sleeping on my side, but I tend to roll to my back in my sleep. So I don't think I could control that. I do have a sturdy mattress, not too soft.

I bought a bullet journal today to write my dreams in as well as other things. Maybe I'll buy one of those salt lamps. Even if they might not work, they look pretty as well.
I'll also try asking myself if I'm dreaming or not. Hopefully I'll be able to ask myself while dreaming.

I'll let you guys know when I've had a nightmare again and how it went

[Eleanor]

Re: Nightmares

A little update. I haven't had any nightmares, but I did wake up tired a few times because my alarm went off just as I was in a deep sleep.

So I started using an app called Sleep Cycle which registers your sleep cycles by listening to the sounds you make. You can set the alarm in a range of 30 minutes, eg between 7 and 7:30 and the app will let the alarm go off once you're in light sleep (or at the end of those 30 minutes.) Before you go to sleep, you can add notes about what you ate/drank that evening or how you feel.

I started using it last night, but I woke up before my alarm went off, which is good. The app will show you an interesting chart of your sleep cycle during the night. I remember waking up one time and I could see that in the chart. It's probably not very scientifically reliable, but I'm curious what it might show me when I have a nightmare.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Nightmares

Sleep Paralysis, The Mare (or the Night Mare) or the Hag are often lumped together whereas they are in fact quite separate things. Did you hear footsteps? Was anything pressing down or sitting on your chest? Did you hear any words spoken?

There is also something known as SUNDS - where people who have been complaining of these attacks (which may well be sleep paralysis, I'm not disputing that) have actually died in their sleep.

It's good, I think that science is beginning to take a proper interest in these things and measure them. I think the app is a great idea. Do let us know how you get on with it.

[Austin.Apollo]

Re: Nightmares

I was once prescribed Minipress when I was being treated for PTSD. They said it takes the nightmares away. I didnt take it though so I couldnt tell you for sure.

[Muramasa]

Re: Nightmares

Can't call it nightmare, but I repeatedly have a dream of receiving IV.

[Sollomyn]

Re: Nightmares

For as long as I can remember, I sometimes have nightmares that are so scary I call myself awake.

The nightmares are different every time, but most of the time in my dream I am lying on the floor completely paralyzed. And there is always something/someone there with me meaning harm. Sometimes it's a scary man standing over me. I once saw a demon like creature. Last night, it was a robed person. I could only see dark under his hood and he slowly walked towards me and I couldn't move. Whoever I see, they never actually harm me, but they have an evil vibe around them.

I start yelling in my sleep when I have a dream like this and I call myself awake. Once I'm awake everything is fine and I just go back to sleep. I scare the hell out of my boyfriend, because my calling sounds like a zombie as he describes it. Which I find a bit funny.

I was wondering if anyone here has any nightmare experiences like this and maybe knows how to deal with them. Is there like a kind of tea I could drink or herbs/stones I could use to reduce the frequency of my nightmares? I don't have them every day, sometimes I don't have any for months. But when I do, I have a few in a row.

I had the same problem when I was younger, and I know exactly how terrifying it can be to have a shadowy figure looming over you in your sleep (see my introduction haha). I was also arrested when I was twelve years old, and consequently incarcerated until the age of seventeen; after being released, I continued to have nightmares, only they were a mixture now; some nightmares were seemingly supernatural in nature, much like the ones you describe; the other half of my nightmares all revolved around the things I saw when I was locked up; lots of blood and violence, yelling, chaos, etc; I had to spend those years looking over my shoulder, fighting for my life on occasion; a lot of horrific things were done to me in there. I never really had any good dreams afterwards; pretty much all my good dreams took place in my early childhood.

Emphasis on the past tense; I no longer have any dreams or nightmares of any kind because I found an herbal remedy that helps block the brain from being able to recall dreams, or even be aware of the fact I'm dreaming while I am dreaming. The efffect is, I don't dream, (in reality though, everyone has dreams of some kind every single night whenever they enter their REM sleep cycle; whether they're aware of it or not).

The herbal remedy I use is a magickal plant called Cannabis; used for thousands of years to treat all sorts of ailments. It also rid me of my childhood anger management problems, in addition to my night terrors, my depression, and my complete lack of appetite. Like any herbal remedy though, it's important to exercise moderation so that your body doesn't start adapting to it too much, forcing you to have to ingest a lot more of it in order to achieve the same effect, and you'll also become depressed if you stop using it all of a sudden, because the natural cannabinoids produced by your brain will stop working to a degree; these natural cannabinoids are what prevents most people from getting so depressed that they kill themselves. If your body is receiving an exterior source of cannabinoids, then your brain doesn't think it needs to keep using the energy to make new cannabinoids, so it diverts it's attention to other functions of your body that are more important, leaving your natural cannabinoid production in a dormant state. When the exterior source stops all of a sudden, it takes a while for your brain to remember how to do what it needs to do to keep you from becoming suicidal. That's what doctors would call, in medical terms, "a bad thing" hahaha.

PS: Be aware that this herbal remedy is prohibited in just a few areas; in some areas, no licensing of any sort is required; in most areas, you need a license, which is fairly easy to obtain, (especially if you suffer from night terrors, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, or even AD/HD), it just takes a little time.

--Sollomyn

[Eleanor]

Re: Nightmares

I live in the Netherlands where use of cannabis is legal up to a certain amount. I have tried it (not for health reasons) but I don't like it. It smells and you'll become less focused. I think the downsides of Cannabis are not worth the possibility of sleeping better with it. I tend to stay away from medicine, or even natural remedies like Cannabis if I don't need it. I always first see what lifestyle changes I can make to improve my health, like the food I eat or exercise. Which has been very rewarding so far.

I don't have enough nightmares that I would try medicine/remedies. They don't bother me enough to try it either. The nightmares are scary, but only until I wake up. Thanks for sharing your experience Sollomyn.

While I'm here, I might as well give a little update. I'm still using the sleep cycle app. It recently got an update that improved recording my movements, so it wakes me up at better times in the morning. The charts show a normal, healthy sleep cycle in general. I haven't had nightmares since using the app yet, so when I do I'm curious what it will tell me.

[Sollomyn]

Re: Nightmares

You're welcome; happy to see you've been doing better; I might look into that Sleep Cycle App for myself; I would like to learn Lucid Dreaming, Dreamwalking, and Astral Projection at some point; gotta be able to manage my dreams first without using herbs.

I've also heard that smoking red Sumac leaves will give one extremely vivid, realistic dreams; I might try that in the future just out of curiosity, but I'd want to wait and do it with someone with experience who knows what they're doing, like a wise Native American spiritual leader or something. Peyote is another thing I have a very mild curiosity about, but is another thing that I'd only want to do with people who are experienced with it and know what they're doing.