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

When I was 16 my mother died. She had a brain aneurism at home with me, though I was in another part of the house. I got to witness her stumbling around and then the ride in the ambulance. She died a few days later in the hospital from brain swelling post-surgery. At some point I started having really mundane, ordinary dreams of every day occurances. Except my mom was still alive. I would dream that I woke up, smelled breakfast and got ready for school then went to school and football practice and came home and went to bed. Then I would wake up again and be in reality this time. I would go downstairs expecting my mom to be there but then I'd realize I was at home alone (my dad worked out of town during the week). I would have to go upstairs and check my parents' room and see if she was there. I would check the date on the TV news. I would have to find a way to figure out what was real and what wasn't. This went on for weeks and weeks. Dreaming about a normal day as if things were the way they used to be. Each morning I would realize my mom was dead and I'd be right back emotionally where I was the day she died. Eventually I stopped sleeping. That made me even more depressed and irritable. I tried sleeping in other rooms so that I could try and figure out which was real by what bed or room I woke up in.

After a few months the dreams came less frequently but I had them for years until I finally went to college and I would know for sure because I'd wake up in my dorm room. That's about the time they really stopped. Until my partner committed suicide and I started having similar dreams involving her. The dreams and sensations weren't as intense because she wasn't as integral a part of my life as my mother obviously had been and the amount of time we'd known each other wasn't nearly as long but it would remind me of the dreams I had about my mom and they would reoccur as well.

She died in early 2010. When I went to see Inception that Summer- I had no real idea what it was about other than dreams and a heist- it devastated me. I got triggered so hard. I don't know how I made it through the movie but I wept after it was over and I went into a deep depression for a few weeks. Also Summer was when we broke for the final time and it just added to the memory. I have never met anyone else who had the same kind of dreams I had, where it's just reliving some echo of a memory and losing track of reality. That movie was as close as I've come. Even sharing this in support groups I've never had anyone say they know what it was like. It's kind of scary actually.

I'm so sorry! That sounds brutal. Personally, i think of my dreams as a huge part of my life, so hearing that yours practically haunt and deceive you sounds absolutely terrifying. I hope you can get help and let out those feelings about your whole situation somehow! Much love

Mister_Man, I'm so sorry for the losses you've experienced. I can't imagine how devastating it would be to lose your mom the way you did, at such a young age. I've had many dreams of the type you describe, about people I loved who died. I'm not a believer in an afterlife, but the dreams were so intense and so detailed that for a while they almost made me believe because it felt like the person was actually there with me again, in such a real way. I sometimes would realize during the dream, or sometimes after I woke up, that the person was actually gone and I remember the feeling of re-experiencing grief at that point. Now when I have the dreams occasionally it makes me feel sad, but there's also a feeling of love and remembrance that is sometimes positive. It seems like this may be one of the ways that our minds process loss and grief. I hope you can find some healing and peace moving forward. I don't believe that there is really such a thing as "closure" from intense trauma and loss, but I think sometimes these things get easier to bear over time especially if you can find a way to keep sharing your feelings and allow other people to support you and love you.

p.s. I forgot to mention, about having dreams about your mom return with your partner's suicide, that I think it's really common for a new loss to trigger re-experiencing grief from previous losses. I experienced some of this recently with a relationship ending. Along with feeling grief over that, I was also experiencing grief about previous relationships ending and also the deaths years ago of my best friend, dad, & a really beloved grandparent. I even had dreams where people were interacting who never actually knew each other, since they were from different parts of my life.

I wish life wasn't so horribly painful sometimes & teenage boys didn't lose their mothers and go through traumas like the ones you described. Sending you hopes for better days ahead for you and a big hug.