BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Self Development What helps you to change?

Your dream/sleep situation is a complex one, that's for sure. The reason I asked so many questions is I've had experience with similar situations over the years and been able to help sort them out and find solutions. So I was trying to find out in your case where the root might be in this whole thing so I might be able to point you toward something helpful. Seems like the nightmares are the base of it all--do you agree?

I wasn't clear enough in my comment about applying what you did about overcoming your fear of needles to dealing with your sleep and nightmares situation. I just meant that you found a successful way to work around your needles fear, so with that success under your belt, it just seemed possible that you could find a way to overcome this sleep situation. In a way, you already have--you've employed the best methods you've been able to find that are working for you.

The kind of dreams you have sound more like night terrors than just normal "daily processing." This could be caused by sleep apnea, a food reaction, or any number of other things. Usually journaling only works for sleep avoidance when the cause is "mind racing." Journaling helps to clear the mind, and it will then finally quiet down and let us go to sleep. Terrorizing dreams, on the other hand, can come from a number of different sources, as I said, so that takes a little more detective work. Some people have bad dreams like that when they've eaten a certain food or if they are lacking certain vitamins in their diet, such as magnesium. Sometimes the real cause is a trauma that's so buried in the psyche, the dreams are pointing to it in such a seemingly random way that sorting out the root trauma is very difficult. Suppressing the dreams seems to give you some relief, and I suspect that's simply because when we refuse to acknowledge our dreams, sometimes we stop having them. But at least you've found something that works, even if it's a sometime fix.

If you go to my website (barbarasloan.com), you'll find an email link to contact me, and I'd be happy to talk to you more about this if you'd like either by email or phone. Trying to sort it out in a forum format is, as you say, wearing on the eyes

But anything to do with sleep and dream situations fascinates me, and I'm happy to help. Thanks for sharing your experience.

I forgot I wanted to relate a recurring nightmare I had for many years until the answer was suddenly revealed to me in a conversation with my mother. The dream was about me being trapped in a train tunnel. I started having it as a small child, and I had it regularly until I was in my late 20s. I was in the tunnel, it was dark, and a train was coming. The tunnel was very dark and narrow, so narrow, in fact, that I realized there was no way a train could pass by me without hitting me. But the train kept coming, and I couldn't find a way out, so finally, when the train was bearing down on me, I hugged the wall of the tunnel as tightly as I could, flattening myself against it, and the train would go thundering by.

Well, one day my mom and I were reminiscing, and she mentioned that the tornado that had hit our house when I was four years old happened to sound like a train. It was a "Eureka!" moment for me--I knew my recurring nightmare was my mind responding to something that had happened to me when I was too young to process the experience properly. I did have very specific memories of that day--my dad and me locking the front door before we headed to the basement, the sky getting dark, the aftermath of rain and destruction, cooking in our fireplace since we had no power for a long time afterward. But I didn't know the rest. My mother told me that I just sat on a bench against the wall, and when the tornado was ripping through the front of our house, like a train running over us, I just screamed, continously. One continual long scream. I guess some part of me shut down then, and it held on in the nightmares that began shortly thereafter and haunted me for so many years.

After I identified the tornado as the cause of that recurring nightmare, I never had that dream again.

Wow... so much i want to reply... first though, about your recurring nightmare and it's cause. Quite a coincidence that you were four years old.... when i and my best friend were both four, a tornado went over her house.

I had forgotten the memory until i moved back to my home town, and found myself afraid of storms one spring when i never had been before. I don't recall what finally made me remember the incident.

I remember the morning after the storm, when my mom came to me and said what had happened. I was too young to really understand and perhaps my mom underplayed some of the facts, but i remember clearly my mom asking me if it was okay to take some of my toys to my friend at the hospital. I never saw my friend again, but she herself was okay. Her mother however, was in critical condition and life-flighted to another hospital, and her father and a brother were killed in the storm by bricks from their home. My friend herself, was found buried under several feet of sand... but the neighbors had come running immediately after the tornado to dig them out. My mom went to the hospital and was gone every day all day for some time, because there was no other family to my friend, except for another brother, i think he was only about 7. I have sometimes wondered what happened to her, but i still can't remember her name.

Anyway, this was the storm, and it was Pittsfield, OH:
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Well that's a little cryptic.

Welcome to the forum dj, care to explain?

For me, the catalyst for change is consciously choosing to believe I can.

Once I believe in myself, everything just gets a whole lot easier!

Holly, I was so focused on your nightmares issue, I completely overlooked answering this question. You're right: How to stop emotionally reacting IS something we can learn. The learning process starts with awareness and grows on that. So you are aware now, and that's a good first step. Moving from emotional to logical is the trick, so let's talk about that some more.

Barbara

Holly, I think that we have genes that decide whether we will be heart people or mind people. I have always been a heart person and despite lots of heart breaks, my heart still rules my mind.

I have just read through this thread for the first time, and can identify with so much that has been said here.

There are always new challenges to face, but I hope some of the experiences I mention now might be of some help to others who have had similar things going on.

First of all, - nightmares!

We went through a stage of being scared to go to sleep because of the bad dreams. We found, as I'm sure many of you have, that medications only 'blotted out' the problem, so we tried to write down the dreams on waking, and then look at them in the light of day. We discussed them with our therapist.

We found that most of them were actually either flashbacks, or our minds trying to draw our attention to something that needed to be 'worked through' emotionally and logically. For example, one of the worst was of being chased by a man in black without a face. So, we tackled it as a possible memory. It turned out to be just that. Once we recognized where it was coming from, (and who the missing face belonged to!)it went away and we never had that dream again.

Another one where we were always in a vehicle which went over a cliff, was an indication of our fear of failing. (you know those 'kind' people who tell you that if you do this, or that, you will crash and burn!)

We were always rather rebellious, and would aim for things which we wanted, regardless of the opposition ( and perhaps because of it!)

I can remember being told we'd 'never amount to anything'. "Don't think you can do that because you don't have the brains". Stuff like that. Well, it was like a red flag to a bull! We set out to prove them all wrong - and we did!

So I think that for us, it was determination to be the best that we could be at everything we did.

The negative criticism came again in the form of:

"You'll just end up a 'jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none!"

So we proved them wrong again, by succeeding in what we did, and in reaching the heights we aimed for. In singing, we were once told that we would never be more than a 'drawing-room' soloist. Well, we traied hard, and went on to be a concert singer and performed in the City Hall before hundreds of people. We won competitions and today our piano is covered with trophies. Mind you, we had the talent to begin with, but if we hadn't put all our effort into that talent, we'd never have made it to the local church hall, let alone the City Hall!

So I'd say that it boils down to having faith in yourslef, and believing in yourself. You have to believe in your abilities to be able to make the most of them.

Anger has its value, and it was often anger that made us push forward. We had heaps of fears, but our determination to succeed was stronger than the fears.

We got plenty of 'knock-downs' and came up against a lot of doors that were slammed in our face, but we always got back on our feet and looked for, and found ourselves an open window.

We are still fighting to 'beat the odds' - but so is everyone.

If you lose your self respect, you lose your motivation, and without that you are crippled.

There are things in our life we cannot change, and this quote is one we live by:

"Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference".

Ann.

Sometimes i have gone from the emotional to the logical to disarm a reaction, but not always.

Sometimes what calms is not logical or rational, but still works. Sometimes what is logical and rational, doesn't work... for example, i've never had a fear of flying but i've known people who do. And no amount of explaining how safe flying is compared to being in a car can ease their fear of flying. Sometimes holding someone's hand will make them less afraid, and that's not rational. That won't keep a plane from falling.

I have a hunch that some of the fears i have need to be disarmed emotionally, not rationally. I just don't know what i might try.