BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!

Subject: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 02:34 AM

Well they are back. And they are awful. Hardly used and in excellent condition. These are new ones only dreamed once or twice. Proper psychological phantasms for your delectation.

Dreams about your entire family dying of mysterious illness. Dreams of chasing after some unknown thing you can not catch. Wake feeling real sensation of futility and hopelessness.

Pick em up for a song. Give as gifts to people you don't like. That'll teach em.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: ragdall
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:12 AM

Sorry to hear that you're dealing with nightmares again. I hope that you can find some takers and get rid of them for good.

rags

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 09:42 AM

We have not long got rid of a 13 year nightmare!!

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 09:54 AM

Go see the mental health people. They can help. Really!

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 10:14 AM

New medication, no matter how harmless seeming, such as cold medication? I needed coumadin once and had six months of bad dreams.

Alcoholic drink in the evening? Alcohol early can mean trouble late.

Eating dinner late? I'll get them if I eat past 8 pm.

There are probably more causes I don't know about.

(I'm sorry for your trouble.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 10:25 AM

I had a dream that I had somehow become both Rapparee AND Amos! Simultaneously. In one body. Their minds melded into a single, yet perpetually divided miasma of conflicting and concupaciously incomprehensible BS!!!!!

It was horrifying. I was practically beside myself when I woke up out of that one. ;-) I may seek professional advice.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 10:51 AM

>>>>>>>>I was practically beside myself when I woke up out of that one.<<<<<< You can get treatment for schizophrenia too LH!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 10:56 AM

The missing child at the fair dream is fairly awful.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 11:04 AM

I don't seem to have many dreams about children, probably because I haven't had any (in this life).

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 04:40 PM

So sorry to hear about your nightmares VirginiaTam. The worst thing I find is you're scared to go back to sleep in case you dream them again. And you feel so tired the next day, as you haven't had a restful night. Do hope you can find an answer. Eliza

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:35 PM

Not alcohol. I rarely drink. Dinner is at 6:30 7:00ish. Bedtime is 10:30 11:00ish. Off all meds except thyroid replacement.

Andie is haunting thoughts by day more than usual lately.   But it is random bewildering bad dreams at night. I am worried about losing job or being downgraded making visits home farther apart. Maybe coctail of drug detox and anxiety disturbing my sleep.

Last night's had me drench pjs and sheets with cold sweat. Icky.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Will Fly
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:46 PM

Tam - some interesting reading here - might have one or two pointers to show you a way through the horrors.

Just a thought... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 05:58 PM

Check your B-complex vitamins. Increase if needed. Calcium-magnesium also help.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:03 PM

At least that article has a name for the thing I sometimes get - apparently it's called sleep paralysis.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 06:38 PM

Nightmares are a pain. I rarely remember dreams, but I did have the same nightmare a couple of times, which involved me waking up in a dream and being unable to move. Brain just said "Woah there sonny, you aren't actually awake. Fix this".

Speaking of non-sequiturs, dreams are interesting. I've not heard anyone say "A dream is this" and give a decent explanation. I do like the "Brain is just organising" theory though.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: ranger1
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:10 PM

I am a self-taught lucid dreamer. I had terrible nightmares as a young child and somehow figured out how to take control of the dreams. Might want to see if there is a sleep clinic or something somewhere that teaches lucid dreaming near you.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 07:12 PM

Nice going, Ranger1. Very few people master lucid dreaming.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: ranger1
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 08:21 PM

Little Hawk - it was that or go crazy. I didn't even know that it had a name until I took a psychology class in college.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 09:49 PM

2:45am been awake sine 2:00. Changed drenched pjs. Read part of Will Fly's article. Going back to sleep now.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 09:59 PM

Willing to trade... Hey, one man's nightmare is the next guy's wet dream... Ahhhhh, I think that is in the Bible... Maybe not...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jul 11 - 11:01 PM

A dream is the creative power of the soul getting even with entropy.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 11:15 AM

Lucid dreaming can be taught if you keep asking yourself if you're actually awake. I hear.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 12:54 PM

One more mundane possibility - spicy foods, esp (in my experience) members of the red pepper group. Cayenne, etc. Have you taken up new cuisines?

(My view of nightmares is that chemicals are causing your poor brain (which is a very sophisticated chemical plant) to rattle like a freight train. Sometimes (like just after 9/11) the chemicals were caused by stress related to life experience, but often the chemicals come from something we ate, drank, inhaled or took in somehow.)

If spicy food is not it - if I were you, I'd see either a gynecologist or an endocrinologist. I'd suspect menopausal symptoms or I'd suspect that the thyroid medication is not right for you.   

You might be able to call the doctor that prescribed the thyroid medication and report the night sweats. They might just prescribe a new kind to try.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 01:18 PM

That entropy thing - so true

When I was writing (creatively and critically) my dreams went away.

Sadly I have not been in any state to be creative with words since Andie passed. The idea of attempting to write a new poem or story terrifies me.

The thyroid thing seems plausible. I used to have night sweats in my mid to late 30's when I was first diagnosed with low thyroid. But they were not attached to dreams. That was my most fertile writing period.

I hit menopause 7+ years ago. Bit late for sweats to be hormonal I think.

I hate hate hate going to the doc. All any of them do at my local surgery is prescribe drugs. I hate taking medicine. I will suffer for days with terrible migraine before I face swallowing a pill.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 01:32 PM

On a site called wrongdiagnosis.com they have a list of over 200 medications which can cause nightmares. Perhaps if you are taking medicine, you might find it on this list and be able to change it for one which doesn't give you bad dreams. A check-up might be a good idea, just to ensure your BP isn't high, and your thyroid med. is of correct strength etc. No-one likes going to the doc. but nightmares are horrible, I'm sure it's pulling you down. Hope you can sort it out. Best wishes!

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:16 PM

Eliza - I am off all meds except thyroid replacement.   On the meds I felt so poisoned. I woke several times a night with racing heart and in the morning felt hungover or like a flu coming on. Every flipping day. It would take nearly 2 hours to feel somewhat normal.

I will see how things go over next few weeks (holidays dotted here and there). I usually sleep much better during and after break from work.

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: Penny S.
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 06:38 PM

I did find two books which it helped to have by the bed in case I woke up from that sort of thing. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love on the one hand. And on the other, one of Antony Buckeridge's Jennings books. I expect Wodehouse would work as well. Laughter does help to break the pattern. Actually having the books there almost made it unnecessary to use them. But stopping trying to sleep and choosing to do something else was helpful.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: CapriUni
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 07:53 PM

VirginiaTam --

After my mother died, I had a similar experience of not being able to write anything (and I also remember the sense of panic that induced); I'd get to the first turning point of a story (often, simple statement of the conflict), and my brain would automatically reboot and go back to the beginning, no matter how hard I tried, consciously, to force it to the next. The problem was: I was in the middle of my studies for a Masters in Creative Writing at the time. I managed, somehow, to get satisfactory enough grades in my classes to earn credit for a degree. But the actual joy of writing did not come back to me for many years.

The good news is: the Joy eventually did come back.

I've also had occasional success with lucid dreaming, and it's been especially helpful in "Turning around" nightmares. Here's the exercise I learned to help me get to that point (it took several weeks of practicing, while awake, before it "clicked on" during sleep):

While awake:

Step One: read a short bit of text -- just a word or two is enough -- doesn't matter what it is: the back of your cereal box, newspaper, street sign, book, this paragraph (or one of the bedside books that Penny recommended).

Step Two: Look away for a moment.

Step Three: Look back at your text. If it's the same as before, that's proof that you are awake; if it has changed, that means you're asleep (and, personally speaking, once I started priming my mind to notice these things, my dreams were full of changeable text: tee-shirts that other people were wearing would have writing on them, scraps of letters found in desk drawers, having dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and cracking open a fortune cookie, etc.). The fact is, once your subconscious has 'read' something, it doesn't need to read it again, so the words change into the next related idea.

Step Four: Tell yourself that you are awake, and that this is what "awake" feels like. Remind yourself to notice how it feels different when you're dreaming.

Step Five: Repeat several times during the day.

After several days, eventually, you'll notice that you're dreaming, and that the terror you're feeling is not a real threat. When that moment comes, turn around and speak to whatever entity / person / thing is tormenting you, and ask who they are, or what they want. They'll tell you.

(I remember one nightmare I had where I was being chased by a young man who wanted to stab me with a fork. When the moment came that I realized it was a dream, I turned around and faced him, and put my hands in the air to show that I meant him no harm. He threw the fork away, and it drifted off like a paper airplane, and we spent the rest of the dream talking about his [my] concerns for the future, and how he [I] wanted to teach, and help people; it was a really nice dream, after that).

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Jul 11 - 09:25 PM

(((VT)))

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Nightmares for sale. Real cheap!
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 15 Jul 11 - 12:57 AM

Ha! Take that dream monster. I slept from 11:30pm to 4:50am with never a tweak. No sweats either. Only woke for a bathroom break. Still awake now, but going back to bed now. BTW   holiday / vacation started yesterday afternoon.