• Replies 8 replies
  • Subscribers 8 subscribers
  • Views 305 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Nightmares which affect daily mental health

Marra

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. 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. This has been happening daily/nightly for as long as I can remember, decades. 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. 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? Does anyone have any advice? Thank you for reading this.

Parents

  • 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.

Reply

  • 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.

Children
No Data