Stress Dreams

[Pix]

I used to be plagued by nightmares that often involved elements of past abuse & trauma, especially in October when many of these things happened in the past (it was a vicious circle, I'd go without sleep because of nightmares of past trauma and thus be stressed out and more confrontational as well as less prepared to avoid future abuse & trauma as I was so worn out and dazed leading to more nightmare material to haunt me next October). Of course I had these nightmares throughout the year, but most were focused right about October.

A common theme was that I was helpless again. For example, doors couldn't lock (just as I couldn't use locked doors to protect myself as a child), I was slow & weak and thus unable to resist physical aggression, and even if I had a gun (which I never did as a child) it wouldn't work (either wouldn't fire or had no effect). So I started to use self-hypnosis to find my "inner child" and tutor her in all the ways of taking care of herself and envisioned her growing up into me who had all kinds of ways to take care of herself. I did this frequently for about a year and it changed. Doors started staying locked in my dreams, I was able to resist, and if I had a gun it worked. This made them less nightmares (distressing still, but an improvement) and I also started having less of these nightmares. I believe this contributed to why my October nightmares are almost nonexistent now.

Another thing I would do is use self-hypnosis to rewrite the dreams. Again, it takes awhile, but within a year the repeating dreams did start to change to conform to the new model.

I even got a little creative. For example, I get plagued by vampire & zombie dreams so I programmed a little pyrokinesis and ability to fly into me, and even years later when the hungry undead show up I automatically start burning them and say levitating to a roof (though oddly I can only do it a few times before I have to recharge...so it's more of an emergency measure to get away).

Where it's most effective is when I try programming good dream elements into the nightmares. For some reason Giles (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) often showed up as a father figure in my dream (in one dream he was my dad and my real dad wasn't and when it was time for me to go home I left with Giles instead of either of my real parents who were also in the dream) so I visualized him as "Good lord, she needs help," and he's shown up in more than one nightmare since then...and sometimes he even brings Buffy (in other dreams I become Buffy). Those are some cool dreams. mile: