Boyfriend has terrible nightmares, what to do?

[Anonymous]

So I've boyfriend, we're together for 7 months and this month we started to live together. Everything is wonderful, however I worry about my boyfriend's health. He has very vivid, terrifying nightmares. He's 27 years old now and he says he's been having them since he was a teenager.

At first I didn't worry about that very much, because I've had few nightmares too when I was using certain medication. Sure unpleasant, but nothing too tragic. I thought so until I saw what his nightmares are like. He's screaming and tossing in his sleep and he doesn't wake up immediately when I try to wake him. When he does finally wake up, he's all wet in cold sweat, shaking, his heart is racing as if he had ran a marathon. After that he usually has troubles falling asleep again.

When I asked him to tell me what does he see in his nightmares, he says he sees the same thing every time - black water all around him and some dark figures that approach him and that he can't ran away from. His nightmares also doesn't have any pattern - sometimes he has them every night, sometimes he can go a long time without having them. But anyway they never disappear.

And the worst thing is that I don't know how to help him, because he doesn't want to see a doctor. I don't really know what kind of doctor deals with things like this, but probably psychologist. My boyfriend has always looked down on psychologist's job and he doesn't consider psychologist to be doctor at all. He's always like "every fool can become a psychologist, you just have to talk as much bull*hit as possible". He claims that no one will know what is going on inside his head better then himself.

I don't know what to do then. He says that probably it's a part of him and he has to accept that it'll never go away. However I love him and it worries me. I'm worried to go to sleep, because I don't know whether or not I'll be woken up by his screams and whether or not I'll be able to wake him and help him. I'm afraid that nightmares like this can cause him to lose his mind. But maybe I'm just exaggerating and it's really a part of him?

[ChadCoxRox]

There is a great deal of info on the web about night terrors and resolving them. I suggest you search and read. I've worked with sleep disorders clinically and there are many different approaches and no one definitive method for everyone. It can be as simple as being repeatedly over-tired and disrupting the sleep cycle and the body's natural circadian rhythm to more deep seated emotional or mental matters that contribute to the occurrence.

If in studying you discover effective methods please let us know! This is a natural process that may or may not need serious concern depending on how invasive or disruptive they become. It general is advised to not attempt to disrupt them but to allow the process to happen naturally without external involvement other than agreed upon therapeutic interventions and methods.

Some theories tie the phenomenon to early childhood development and learning to control bodily functions along with the sleep cycle. It happens more with small children than through adulthood, but it is not uncommon even among adults. Lastly, it is always a good idea to review the pattern with your doctor to rule out any biomedical issues that might cause, perpetuate or exacerbate the night terrors.

Hope you'll let us know how it goes!

[TimeSage]

If he refuses to see a therapist, there's nothing much you can do.

[CellarDweller]

I have very vivid dreams as well, but I haven't had a night terror in a very long time. Mine eventually went away, but I can't say that is what will happen for him.

[Wolfpack]

Therapy would be the best idea for him, if you can persuade him to attend.

[swalter]

If he's having persistent, recurring nightmares with physical manifestations (screaming, thrashing around), there's something wrong that needs to be addressed by a professional. The most likely cause is a trauma in his past he has repressed. Get him to a psychiatrist.

[Pix]

Just so you know I read that people who have nightmares like that are statistically likely to become schizophrenic or psychotic later in life. I'm not saying expect it I'm just sharing that as a possible heads up for something to look out for.

As someone who has been plagued by horrible nightmares myself I'll briefly share what I did to overcome them. Mainly two things, I'd write out my dreams in a dream journal and then I'd "rewrite" them with a lot of thought put into them in the hopes that would "train my mind to think of these things" next time I had such nightmares. And the other was self-hypnosis where I'd go into the dream (could scare myself pretty bad) and change it lucidly which added lucid elements to my future nightmares.

Interesting enough I used to have nightmares of fires chasing me (still do once in a blue moon) and worked to learn "I can control fire and make it go out" in self-hypnosis and not only am I better able to fight the fires in my nightmares now but I'm sometimes somewhat pyrokinetic in nightmares so that I can psychically inflict fire on monsters.

I think the biggest breakthrough for me was realizing that in my nightmares I was as helpless as a child. That is I couldn't lock doors, guns were either inert or just didn't work, I was weaker with bigger people (or whatever) an ever present danger that I couldn't hide from for long. So in self-hypnosis I'd go visit my "inner child" and help her "grow up" by imparting my skills and things I take for granted now into her...and after a long, long time it worked. Doors could lock. I could fight back effectively. And all in all the intensity and frequency of my nightmares diminished. However, not only did this take a long time (several months of doing it a lot before I began to see real, consistent results and it was years before I think I overcame my nightmare problem) but I do believe this is because those nightmares were caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (and btw as the nightmares receded my PTSD also got better, I think the PTSD was part of me was "frozen" at certain ages in my brain I "freed" myself by helping that part of me wiggle out from under those psychic scars through the self-hypnosis for the nightmares). If his nightmares are not inspired by psychic trauma then it may not work for him.

But hey, worth a try...though be aware that hypnotizing to deal with nightmares can actually cause them to happen at first, too. It actually got creepy at first because one of the first exercises I did was try to use the song in mental exercises of becoming stronger than the nightmares and then listening to the radio after as I got ready for bed the first song to come on (first time I heard it on that station in years) was by Switchblade Symphony!

...Your dreams are filled
With blood and gore
Now they're right outside your door
They're gonna get you

A spider's love bite
May find you tonight
Monsters, they eat
Your kind of meat

And they're moving as far as they can
And as fast as they can
Now it's getting hot, hot
Now it's getting hot, hot
Run for water
Now it's getting too hot
Nee, nee, nee, nee, nee, nee, ha ha ha

It felt as if my nightmares were letting me know they weren't going to give up without a fight. I was majorly creeped out by it (as it seemed as if my nightmares weren't just in my head, and if they could make a song come on the radio then what else could they do? ), but instead of staying awake all night as I thought of doing I instead quoted Emily Dickinson (a poem that helped me through a traumatic event before) in preparation for defiantly going to sleep:

An awful tempest mashed the air,
The clouds were gaunt and few;
A black, as of a spectre's cloak,
Hid heaven and earth from view.

The creatures chuckled on the roofs
And whistled in the air,
And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth,
And swung their frenzied hair.

The morning lit, the birds arose;
The monster's faded eyes
Turned slowly to his native coast,
And peace was Paradise!

And as soon as I fell asleep I was in a weird, disturbing dream where I was partially in my room, partially somewhere else, and hearing frightening voices talking to me but I couldn't make sense out of what was being said (though I felt like it SHOULD make sense). And then I realized I was asleep but got scared that a burglar had broken in and was slowly coming to my sleeping form.

Yet as I realized it was a dream (I asked myself "Am I dreaming?") I used an act of will--though this did take some effort--to pull up the sun until the sun was shining in everywhere. Encouraged, I continued to make changes, and fairly soon I was skating in the bike lane by the beach. I think the dream went into something else from that point, but it was no longer a nightmare.

Encouraged, I continued to work to overcome it and I eventually did.

[Tulloni]

I have nasty vivid nightmares too. In one of them, I ended up gouging someone's eyes out which was pretty scary. I used to have vivid nightmares as a child too. Sometimes I don't remember them and sleep pretty uneventfully, but sometimes the nightmares can be immersive, it's pretty terrifying. I remember sleeping with my first bf once, waking up with him next to me and me forgetting who he was for a moment and where I was and even what was actually happening. But that was just for a second. It's still pretty scary though.

And this morning my brother was playing music whilst I was still asleep on his laptop. The sound percolated through to my dream which was unusual. But I guess the subconscious and the conscious do sometimes 'interface' with one another am I right?

[sillyboy86]

Therapy.
I had nightmares for many years and they've influenced my lifestyle, and the opposite.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

27 is pretty old to be having night terrors. Night terrors are a different thing and usually are resolved by adulthood - late teens, very early 20's - it has been suggested that puberty and the hormones and chemical changes of that stage of life are the underlying cause of night terrors and once the person is through that the night terrors stop.

Dreams are tricky... Why we dream is still not understood - heck why we need to sleep is not understood. We need it, and it does things for us - but still we do not understand WHY the brain needs sleep. Trying to understand or read or interpret dreams has very long history of study. There are many books out there dedicated to attempting to discern the meaning of dreams.

There are a couple things you have said that make me wonder if these nightmares are not a symptom of PTSD.



My own experiences with nightmares and my minor habit of waking the household in the middle of the night with my screams (and not necessarily myself) might apply here in some way.

I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

That is a link to WebMD and a short list of symptoms. I strongly suggest that you Google PTSD and check other lists and then think a bit about your BF's other behaviors. Understand that it may be difficult to figure out if he does or does not have PTSD - not all cases are 'textbook' - meaning not all cases present all symptoms.

I fear that if he does have PTSD and is hiding it, it may be difficult to ferret it out. However assuming for the moment he does have PTSD: perhaps one of these sites: https://www.google.com/#q=Does+my+partner+have+PTSD may help.

The checklist here: http://at-ease.dva.gov.au/professionals/...12/PCL.pdf is supposed to be self administered because it does rely a lot on what the patient feels when _________________(fill in the blank) happens. Perhaps in the course of conversation your BF has said stuff that may relate to some of those questions.

Nightmares are one of my 'symptoms'.
I have three forms of dreams:

1. Vivid reliving of the events that lead to PTSD.

2. 'Based on a true story' type dreams - where my brain tries different scenarios to work through the event without actually replaying the event (thus being trapped in many different places is attempting to deal with being locked in the closet for days at a time).

3. I also have vivid emotional recall, where even immediately upon waking up I cannot recall the dream itself, but I do recall the emotions that dream put me through.

Connecting the dreams I had in my early and mid 20's to 'those events' of my childhood was hard to do - I honestly had 'troubling' fantastic nightmares which didn't readily connect to real-life events. Dreams which are quit similar to the one you described, dark water, dark figures - being trapped...

My dreams started in my mid to late teens. Early on I had the dreams, without waking up screaming (which may actually have been self preserving no doubt I would have been punished severely if I woke the household up with screaming - my childhood wasn't the happiest of times)

20/20 hindsight being what it is (plus a lot of study of self and the subject) I now clearly see the relationship between those fantastic 'based on a a true story' dreams I have and real-life events which triggered them. The 'based on a true story' ones are attempts of my brain to resolve the emotional aspect of the trauma's I went through. Thus being surrounding by dark waters, or dark people, or feelings of being trapped were connected to real-life events where I was actually trapped and surrounded by metaphorical 'dark people'.

Later on when I started having vivid recall type dreams of the situations I had been put through, I actually lied and told asking partner(s) the earlier versions. Even though I wasn't putting two and two together, I relied heavily on the 'based on a true story' type dreams to lie my way out of having to talk about what was really disturbing me.

I fear lying is pretty typical of PTSD. It is part of the avoidance behavior, where not taking about what is disturbing one feels safer than talking about it.... or for that matter seeking help.....

My boyfriend has always looked down on psychologist's job and he doesn't consider psychologist to be doctor at all.

It is this reluctance that makes me to wonder if the real story here is that he is hiding something.

I was opposed to seeking professional health in my 20's because I was terrified that my little secret would be found out. I staunchly stood by the opinion that Headshrinkers were a bunch of quacks, that psychology as a whole was a make-believe science only existing to really fuck up the brains of people while charging lots of money for the privilege of really messing things up.

What I am trying to say here is that these dreams may be but a symptom of a more serious issue. If so and he is reluctant to seek help there is nothing you can do to help.

Even if you can pinpoint various other symptoms that scream 'PTSD', he may fight you on this and flat refuse to seek help. I fear fighting it and not seeking help is way to typical, especially in the earlier stages of PTSD where the patient is slowly presenting more and more symptoms.

My Third partner, Leroy, put two and two together. He was a very observant person, besides which an early partner of his had PTSD. Thus Leroy often said he thought I had PTSD and I flat refused to accept that and fought his attempts to 'help'.

PTSD is one of those things that can be progressive - meaning it starts out with one symptom days, weeks, months even years after the initial trauma - and the patient them self may not make the connection between the trauma(s)/event(s) and what is happening to them now.

Ideally your BF needs a psychologist - a therapist. A psychologist rarely has an MD, thus are not going to throw drugs at a problem. They use talking through - to get to the bottom of an issue and try to help with 'tools' to deal with and cope with issues and try to get the patient to work through whatever perturbs them. Psychiatrists have an MD and typically (which is really bad) listen to the patient for about 15 minutes, make a diagnoses and throw pills at the patient. I fear that this method rarely ends well for the patient, and leads to many misdiagnosis and leads to greater problems.

Your BF needs to get a real diagnoses, and explore what these dreams really mean for him. He has to be both willing and able to face the conflict inside of him leading to these nightmares. Willingness and ability are two different things. If he has PTSD or similar going on, it may be he is very willing to seek help, but is unable to do so.

The best you can do is be supportive. And occasionally (do not harp on the subject) but occasionally suggest he seeks out the help of a therapist. And no not right after he wakes up from one of those nightmares... say the next morning after he has had time to attempt to process the dream. Perhaps saying something like 'That dream you had last night was particularly a bad one, are you sure you don't want to see a therapist?'

He says no, you drop the subject for a month. If you nag him he will resolve to fight you on the issue as a matter of principle.

If there are other issues in your relationship you may want to try the route of suggesting couples counseling. Its a sneaky way to get him some individual counseling. If you do this route you totally have to focus on 'I need' vs 'You need' - meaning you make it sound like you desperately need the couples therapy in order to feel good. Yes its sneaky, and no doubt feels 'wrong' however this is one of those cases where the ends really is justified by the means.

I fear that if he has PTSD or similar going on, even a therapist won't cause it to end. Not completely. He may learn sufficient tools to ease the dreams, may actually escape for longer periods of times from those nightmares, however once a person starts having issues they typically have to learn how to live with it and cope for their lives.