Nightmares which affect daily mental health

I would advise against using A.I for psychological or any other type of medical help as A.I. is presenting you with information it has found online which may or may not be correct - I've stopped using Google as I often search for detailed technical information and the A.I. results are sometimes complete garbage and are clearly  based on information that it has picked up from the internet equivalent of some bloke at the pub.  The phrase garbage in, garbage out definitely applies to A.I.

edit: I would not include A.I. systems designed and approved for medical or psychological use in what I have said above.

Dreams are strange. I've struggled to sleep properly for decades. I can get to sleep but not stay asleep, something wakes me up, I have no dreams.

Since being diagnosed in June, I have spent hundreds of hours trying to make sense of my life, going through all the memories and behaviours, using AI to advise, as it knows lots of psychology. It took a while to figure out how best to use it but now I have a narrative that pulls everything together. Having resolved the things that I couldn't understand, including relationships, having some supplements and breathing exercises, and working on being calm, I am finally starting to sleep better. I was never not stressed and the rest and digest mode was never really taking over. I even had a dream the other night, albeit a bad one, but at least there was some REM sleep and my brain is processing things again.

The point is that I suspect you have things your mind is stuck on. You probably need to work out what they are and how to resolve them or make peace with them. There are probably some themes, as others have mentioned.

Try to get another opinion. Write down your dreams, whatever you can remember. There may be patterns, assuming it is not the same dream every night.

Thank you as well. I did read others suggest interesting paths:

• taking control of dreams / lucid dreaming (Iain),
• priming so that dreams follow our plans (Deepthought)
• therapies to release stress (Deepthought)
• Possible treatments with medication (Lotus)

I am unsure any of these has worked for me; I sometimes realise it is a dream, and I seem to think / conclude I should suffer, which I guess doesn't help. Therapies have not worked for me either. Medication may help, but I'm already on some, and would still fight for some other med-free solution.

Marra said:

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new here & not great at communicating so here goes.. I'm 60yrs old, diagnosed autistic 8yrs ago and also diagnosed with Complex PTSD. I care for my two autistic adult children at home. I dream every time I sleep, even if I dose off for a moment I dream- it sounds impossible but it's a fact.

Everybody dreams whilst their body sleeps, with some remembering more or less of them than others, and some with more or less intensity than others. There are of course those who recall nothing of their dreams, and those who recall seemingly everything ~ just as you do.

Marra said:

At night when I sleep I have huge epic dreams which are complicated, emotional, distressing and when i wake up every morning I am distressed, shocked, frightened. It takes until mid afternoon or evening for these feelings to ease and then when I sleep again the dreams happen and it's like a reset' in my mind & on waking I'm back to being very distressed etc.

Would it be incorrect or correct of me to assume that you have done analysis work in respect of your dream life, such as for instance on repeating or variable themes, or those that are more or less troubling, and so on and so forth.

Marra said:

This has been happening daily/nightly for as long as I can remember, decades.

Do you perhaps have a cut off point to your memory, such as like some people cannot remember before their third, fourth or fifth year or even later in some cases?

Marra said:

I've been seen by 2 psychiatrists and a psychologis have tried different therapy methods to try and control my sleep and 'influence' my dreaming, and have even tried prescribed Prazosin at various strenths to try and ease the dreams but nothing has had any effect.

In terms of influencing your dreams, would this have included Priming (whereby you imagine what you would like to dream about or subjectively insert as a narrative structure into your dreams) as you go to sleep, and or playing music whilst you sleep?

Marra said:

I understand why the dreams are happening- my mind has alot to pricess and this is happening while i sleep- but what i need is fir the dreams to ease off in intensity or even just stop. As you can imagine I'm beyond exhausted every day. Does any of this sound familiar to anyobe else?

To some extent yes, for a period in the mid nineties, which started intermittently increasing until it became almost incessant. I also went through stages where my dreams were more real than my hours awake, which was as fascinating as it was confusing.

Marra said:

Does anyone have any advice?

What worked for me involved in part dream analysis where each person of the dream represents an aspect of your self or selves, with buildings representing your relationship with your body and so on and so forth. I drew and discussed aspects of my dreams in this format with my shrink to begin with, and got into regression therapy and transcendental meditation, which altogether resolved the issue ~ along with a bit of Acupuncture also (nearly forgot that one).

One thing that really helped to begin with in respect of the intensity was ‘grounding’ work, which in the first instance involved going to the local Spiritualist Church and then onto Reiki and Crystal therapists, and doing a bit of ‘Primal Scream’ therapy, which involved firstly going out into the wilderness and yelling off my stress until I could yell no more (made my throat sore too!). Thereafter I yelled into a pillow on my sofa so as not to disturb others, and because I didn’t and still don’t like going out and about all that much.

A possible consideration also perhaps, is that your feelings may have been as it were trapped in the confines of neurotypical narratives, so communicating with neurologically divergent people may help you to decompress better come to terms with how you feel, so as to be more adequately and appropriately facilitated, identified and affirmed in respect of your individuality ~ rather than so much your role as mother and so on and so forth, as is more or less standard procedure in the neurotypical ‘whirled’.

Marra said:

Thank you for reading this.

Thank you for writing it. 

Hi and welcome to the community, I'm sorry to hear how you are feeling.

We are not allowed to give medical advice, but from my own experience living with someone who has had distressing dreams and also suffered PTSD, they were helped by a combination of antidepressant drugs - in that case it was Mirtazapine and Sertraline. I'm wondering if you need something like that to help lower your anxiety, which might reduce the dreams, and to help you cope with the distress the dreams cause. If I was you I would discuss with your own GP what medication might help you with this, as what you've been prescribed so far obviously hasn't helped.

Looking after two autistic adult children will be demanding - is there any way you could have a short break away from them to rest and recharge?

I.wish you all the best.

Hello Marra, I'm sorry to hear you are suffering from this.

Marra said:

I've been seen by 2 psychiatrists and a psychologis have tried different therapy methods to try and control my sleep and 'influence' my dreaming, and have even tried prescribed Prazosin at various strenths to try and ease the dreams but nothing has had any effect.

An important thing to ask here is whether those therapists were experienced with helping autists as we need a quite different approach to "normal" people because of the way our brains are wired.

Since these dreams are onmipresent for you then my thoughts are that finding a way to take control within the dream is the probable best route to finding some calm. I'm not a medical specialist so this is only my opinion, not medica advice.

I've experiemented with licid dreaming in the past to take concious control back in a dream which is quite effective but it takes a lot of patience and effort to get to the stage where you can take control, especially if you are not used to being assertive.

A good therapist who understands autism well and has guided others through this would be the approach I would choose in your shoes.

There is an interesting article here on the subject - it is a few decades old as it references Aspergers that is now part of the autism spectrum:

https://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/ask-the-experts-6-asperger-syndrome-and-dreams.html

A lot of patience and practice will be needed but I believe the end result to be well worth it - taking back control so you define the narrative and can make choices in the dream rather than just be a passanger.

Thank you for replying, and I empathise with you- we've been told what is causing our nightmares and been offered some conventional 'self help' but not offered a solid or focused treatment, if that even exists. 

I also wake up drenched in sweat, shaking, sometimes vocally calling out or grasping at something that isn't there. I can cope with those aspects of my dreaming/waking but it's the emotional affects that i can't cope with and which impact my mental health daily.

I do.

My psychologist gave me this answer for my case:

• past traumatic experiences
• and unprocessed daily stuff that gives me very high anxiety.

These would be causes of my daily nightmares *I wake up covered in sweat almost every night*.

For me, it's been decades as well, no one has helped me that much to reduce it though. 

I think it would require me to feel safe and understood, which does not happen.