I had that, too. I was afraid to go to sleep because of my disturbing dreams.
After I was stressed AND tired, I decided to search for prayers for safety and relaxation in my faith? Practicing the feeling of safety and of peace before I fell asleep allowed me to sleep without giving myself a nightmare. It took a little research and a little effort as I went to bed, but it worked. I hope you can get some good sleep.

Sleep is supposed to be peaceful but when we are not at peace with ourselves....well, those demon creep right in.

I rarely have nightmares but I did have one a few nights ago - really odd too.  I dreamed my nephew broke into my house and I was beating him in the face with both fists - him laughing all the while.  I haven't seen this nephew for several years but found out a few months ago that he had sexually molested both of my children when they were younger - my son 12yo & daughter 9yo - he was 15.  My children kept this dirty secret to themselves for 30 yrs and I'm carrying a lot of anger toward my nephew........needless to say, I have some work to do.

Interesting. Mandy, after you described your recurring nightmare I thought of another one that I had the other day. I dreamed that I was out behind our garage with my 13 year old son. I looked up in the sky and saw the stealth bomber falling to earth, it crashed on top of my garage and while it was crashing I was telling myself that we were going to die. But, it turns out it was just a big plastic fake stealth bomber that didn't hurt anything. In the same dream I went inside my house and noticed that AF was home and was in the bathroom. I went in to check on him and he was in the bathtub under the water and he was blue. I pulled him out to try cpr, but he was mostly dead. And I didn't even know if I should call 911, I actually didn't want to call them. I wasn't sure if I even wanted them to save him.

OK, thanks everyone for your input. I imagine it is from stress. Not only am I going through this breakup, but we are being overworked on my unit at work these days, there are a bunch of nurses out sick and on LOAs and we haven't been staffed properly and it has been stressful. We have had some emergency situations almost daily, postpartum hemorrhage, I had a patient with a placental abruption etc. I also am one of the nurses that get assigned the stillborns and lately that has really been eating me up.

 

 

 

 

I've nightmared pretty regularly most of my life with some pretty serious "mares" along the way.  Like some I've done research and this is what I've found.  All the time it is fantasy...negative fantasy so it cannot really hurt me though my reactions while sleeping can.  I found out also that the dreams are metaphorical...meaning who is there and what is being done speaks to something else from my "sub" conscious.  The nightmares are my sub-conscicous telling me stories.  As I can clearly see what the nightmare is telling me I can look at what it means in my real life.  Most of the times they are telling me about my emotion fear and also how I decided to respond to fearful situations.  In one nightmare I stopped a person (me) from being attacked by another person with a gun (my exwife who wouldn't stop doing what she was doing which was killing me).  I took the gun away and helped the "other" person escape the house while I returned and hid in a closet.  I couldn't/shouldn't leave the killer who would not stop killing me.  The killer found me in the closet and shot me 9 times with the gun in the chest (I was a gunsmith by hobby so I related to the gun).  I felt every bullet which later told me how very serious my situation was and when I fought to come to from the nightmare I finally did and found my body temperature very very cold and my heart beat less than 10 a minute.  I was actually dying (psycosymatically) from the night mare.  I happens all the times with others and was happening to me.  I also had night mare where I killed my addict wife...lots of them and during one doctors visit for another issue I was confronted on being sooo tired and depressed and spoke to the doctor about my dreaming/"mares".  His solutions written on a prescription pad was "get a divorce".  He told me that since I had put up with the addiction for soooo long and my wife was still alive it was me who I would be killing.  I fulfilled the prescription...saved my life.   Talkling it out with others like we do here helps alot.   (((((hugs)))))

 

In support.

Im struggling with nightmares as well. For me, I believe that its my subconscious trying to work things out. I didnt dream for many years in antidepressants. Part of my decision to stop them was when I learned that its a safe and productive place to work some stuff out. It is exhausting and frustrating. (hug)

I have to agree with pinkchip. Your serenity and peace of mind have been under constant attack lately. But then I could be wrong considering I have no formal training in dream interpertation.

I've had a recurring dream for years when in stressful situations: little different but the scenerio is always the same: I'm in a house or building & on my way out but at every turn (and there's lots of them) someone or something blocks my path so I have to take another turn and just never make it to the door. No one is threatening me, I just can't get to where I want to go. When I have this dream, I take a long look at myself & what I'm dealing with at the time.

What helps me to relax before bedtime is a nice warm bath - some aromatherapy type scented candles and I spritz my pillow with lavender essential oil spray. You can even spray some cotton balls with the lavender oil & tuck inside your pillow case.

Dreams are to be taken seriously and listened too. They are big part of our lives (think about how much time we sleep in a life time) and even though our body is quite passive those times, the mind takes its time to work things out, to cope with what we see or live through in our active time, otherwise we would go 'nuts'. So dreaming is a good thing, it's working through, sometimes eliminating, sometimes indicating if something goes wrong. Our sub conscience know always what's good for us. Answers lie within us, see. We just have to learn to listen (that's the hard part). A couple of years ago I have been to a bigger crises in my life due to a huge change that was supposed to happen, but which I couldn't be active for yet. And so came the nightmares along with many other strange dreams. Don't look at actions or actors in themselves, for they are only tools your sub conscience uses, because that's all the material it got to work with. But try to look on a larger meaning, what these actions and actors could represent in your life and how they interact with each other, and your role. I promise, it's training, and needs time, but once you get to know yourself better, they show you a whole map of what is possibly going in relative to your feelings, you get new indications to understand your life with the package you got from family and environment. It's all a puzzle. a tip: write them down from time to time, in a booklet next to your bed, because we tend to forget them quickly, sometimes after 5 minutes, they stay only in our short memory, it's a way we try to cope with them. Then read in that book from time to time, if you don't understand the meaning right away, that's natural I guess, they are complex. But EVERY dream means something, don't ignore them... enjoy them too, they are help, and a thermometer, kind of (and the cheapest therapist you can ever get, lol)
have a beautiful day.

I had a very very hard time sleeping comfortably around alcoholics. There sense of entitlement was always unnerving to me. Learning to detach and not play into it was so so difficult.

I think I've always been expecting an alcoholic to see "me" and they don't.

Getting rest is so critical.  Getting time to myself, time to re-group, time to plan, focus and regroup is essential to living.  I had none of that all the time I was living with an alcoholic/addict.  I got to the point of complete and utter exhaustion. 

The funny thing is that point of complete and utter exhaustion is now the talisman for me when I am around alcoholics.  I am no longer willing to go there so I detach and I detach and I detach some more.  I am no longer willing to put myself in that place day in day out. But I had to go to that place in order to get that.  I had to put myself to a point of absolute no return before I said it was "enough".

Maresie.

He's not a safe person.  Maybe not physically unsafe but perhaps in a lot of other ways. In your dreams you are very unsafe with him.  In your life, you just ended things with him.  It's still fresh and you'll likely be preoccupied with those thoughts and likely until things settle down for you emotionally and the promise of sanity you made to yourself begins to take hold and becomes your daily reality.  This was my experience.  The fears passed with time, faith in a higher power and self love. For myself personally, I'm glad I learned that love isn't desperate.  Hugs! TT

I had this for quite awhile when I walked away from my exAH and I like what Pinkchip had to say about it. Sending you love and support!