Stress Dreams

[BeautifulBlue]

I'll make this brief,

I've been having really disturbing reoccuring stress dreams for about four months. I believe they were triggered by my recent visit to see my family back in Idaho (which happened in May.)

Now... my stress dreams usually involve one of three things:

- College
- My medication
- My abuse as a child

Examples of college dreams are: I can't get help from various sources because I haven't 'filled out the proper paperwork,' I'm stuck in classes in which my psychology teacher is ranting about anti-medication treatments (which triggered me horribly,) or I'm trapped in my English class with my psycho English professor. Some of these dreams also deal with paying them back or the inability to pay them back.

Examples of medication dreams: Inability to get my medication for one reason or another, them trying to put me on medications that make me miserable, telling me there's 'nothing they can do for me' or telling me I need to check myself into a psychiatric hospital because I 'obviously need help.' (I'm Bipolar and have been in an emergency psychiatric clinic three separate times in the past yea.r)

Examples of abuse dreams: I have dreams in which my father and I are getting into physical confrontations (the most recent one resulted in a physical jerking reaction which made me hit the wall and tear a gash in my shoulder open from where my sunburn was,) where he's carrying guns around the house, yelling at the top of his lungs, calling me names, telling me I'll never be worth anything/make it anywhere/accusing me of being a 'dirty faggot,' that sort of thing, or him beating on my mother. I will also sometimes have stress dreams about the emotional abuse my mother put me through in which she tells me I can't go anywhere, I can't do something for a particular reason, she 'cries' as she tries to tell me she's been a good mother, or the worst: a play-by-play repeat of the day she told me she was 'only keeping herself alive because of my little brother and I' when I was twelve.

The two I just had (that woke me up and inspired me to make this post) were not being able to pay my student loans and another in which my mother had died from a heart attack and at the hearing (I think that's where you call it) the priest/pastor was completely disrespecting her memory by going off about his personal life, aliens and 'sperm' particles.

The most obvious explanation would be to talk to my therapist about this. I plan on doing that specifically, but my only problem is I only see my therapist every other week and I see him on the 21rst the next time.

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with stress dreams? Any experience/techniques? My roommate (who's a lucid dreamer) suggested I try to learn how to lucid dream in order to control the outcomes of my dreams, but I'm not sure I can influence my brain enough to do that due to the antipsychotics/depressants I am on.

Let me know if you have any advice.

Thanks,

- Blue