The Nightmares Are Back

I mistakenly thought I had moved past this cptsd symptom awhile ago.

I weaned myself off of one of the medications I was taking for preventing migraines, that was also used for ptsd. It helped me sleep at night by making me drowsy and it took away my nightmares by removing the ability to dream.

The catch was, I had to take it a minimum of sixty minutes before I wanted to go to bed, otherwise, without fail, I dreamt about horrible things. It wasn’t always with the ex, it could be my mother and lately one of my kids too.

I wake up, startled and confused, wondering if it was real. The interpretation is usually obvious. One time, he threw hundreds of little balls at me and they turned into bugs. One doesn’t need to be a genius to know what that means.

I had been taking this medication for around five years and decided that I couldn’t be on it forever or have the side effects, so I slowly weaned off of it.

I thought I was healed enough and he had been physically out of my life for over five years, so the nightmares should be over or at least occur less often.

I was right for roughly three months. Maybe, it’s because he’s using a family member to get to me that they have returned. Or, the fact that my eldest is moving away to school in a few months and our relationship is not what I hoped it would be. I’m scared our relationship will never be ok.

Regardless of the reason, they are back every single night. This has been going on for two weeks now. The small amount of energy that came back is gone, because I’m back to losing sleep. My bed is back to being a place of anxiety, now that I know what I will face once I close my eyes.

I’m still waiting to get into the women’s organisation for counselling. I will continue to wait because I don’t feel like having another patchwork therapist to tell my story to all over again.

I will be looking up my previous medication to see if it can be used on a casual basis and will also do research in ways to try to prevent these nightmares.

In addition to the nightmares, I had physical symptoms of my cptsd that occurred at night while I was sleeping. I broke two teeth through my night guard. Each time, I only found out from my dentist. He let me know that I cracked my night guard as well.

I also woke up for over two months with pain in the right side of my forehead as well numbness on the right side of the rest of my face and the back of my neck. I ended up seeing an ent specialist as well as getting a cat scan. Now, I am getting physio for tmj and registered massage therapy on my neck and shoulders.

Who knew you could clench so hard you could break your teeth through a night guard and create so much head pain? I took a lot of migraine pills those two months.

I wish I could control what I dream about. Being attacked while I sleep by people I know and think about during the day, isn’t fun. I can watch thriller and horror movies and I don’t dream about fictional monsters, just the people that hurt me in real life.

I was diagnosed with cptsd when I was still married and was seeing my first therapist before everything blew up. I remember going home and looking it up. I said yes to every box.

Losing sleep is one of the harder symptoms because it affects my whole day with being exhausted and not wanting to go to sleep because of the anxiety of what awaits me creates a continuous cycle.

I hope to find some relief soon.

Thank you for reading.