YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I'm wondering if other people have similar experiences as me with nightmares. For many years I've had horrible nightmares, and they've gotten worse in recent years. Frequent topics include my family/partners/friends killing or raping me, strangers killing/chasing/raping me, being forced to kill my loved ones, being under attack during a mass murder, you get the idea. I occasionally wake up sobbing or thrashing about in bed and have trouble going back to sleep. Trouble is, I don't have any obvious traumas and I don't know why I dream these things. I do have OCD, panic attacks, and depression. Wondering if anybody else has dealt with disturbing, unexplained nightmares like this? Did you ever figure out why it was happening?

Oh those sound horrible! I am sorry to say that I have no answers, but it definitely sounds as if your brain is worrying about these things happening. Something that may help is talking with someone about the rarity of these events, and how your family and situation do not fit the profiles? Sort of like how I watch Air Emergency on NatGeo before flying! So I can understand just how rare it is for a plane to experience a catastrophic failure and crash. A sleep study may be a good idea as you might be experiencing something like sleep apena during your sleep and this is your brain trying to wake you?

good luck with solving this puzzle!

I have the same things happening to me, and have had since I started taking seraquil. Its as if the medicine turned a dream into something happening in 3d imax, or such.

I've found tv to aggravate the dreams, What I watch right before I go to sleep makes a big difference in what dream will happen. I'm in trouble if the show was Law and order.

Talking about it helps. Even a few seconds to a co worker kind-of clears my head for the next night.

You can read books, consult experts, and all you realize is the dream means nothing. Its not predicting a future event. Its just our brain running at 100% getting us ready for the next day. Thank you so much!..yea...

For sure do the sleep study, or whatever it takes to be able to get a good nights sleep if your not, but reassure yourself these are dreams, not reality, even though that line feels like its getting crossed.

Thanks for your responses! I had never thought about doing a sleep study. I'm in college in a small town so that wouldn't work for right now, but maybe in the future. I definitely agree that TV shows greatly affect what I dream, as well as meds - when I first went on citalopram (which later ended up being horrible and not useful for me in other ways), I was having horrible nightmares every single night. Awful! No such thing anymore with sertraline and buspirone, but my psych also added Prazosin, which is a high blood pressure drug that's increasingly used for PTSD-related flashbacks/nightmares and non-PTSD nightmares. So for anybody reading this who deals with awful nightmares, you might ask your prescriber about Prazosin. It's eliminated my violent nightmares. While I still have unpleasant/stressful dreams, they're no longer quite so disturbing, and I haven't experienced any side effects. My doc says she has had a 100% success rate with prazosin. So might be worth checking out for some folks like me (or those with PTSD)!

Anyway, thanks for the responses. Happy dreaming, friends.