I find talking about them with a friend or someone who understands is the best just as you are doing.

Hello Shlay. How are you feeling now? How often do you get them?

I'm feeling better now. Though a little scared I'll get another bad one tonight. I wasn't able to sleep till 4am last night and wasted half a day of my vacation in az, sleeping till 1!

As for how often I have them; almost every night. Some are bearable. Just like, "Oh Yup. Nightmare." Some are horrible and mess me up from anywhere to a day, week or if It's really bad, more.

The worst part is when I get sleep paralysis dreams.

Off to sleep now. With me luck. Lol.

Try not to focus on the nightmares and maybe try and go to sleep with some positive reinforcement CD on and do some deep breathing exercises. It helped me and I have night terrors.

I get up and walk around the house..... ie go to the loo.....get a drink of water......see what's on telly for about 5 mins.....then go back to bed.

I definitely helps to talk about them.

A simple little trick I always use (as I have them quite often) is to once you wake up, get up and go to a different part of your house / apartment and sit on the couch for a little while. if you feel like it go on the computer or watch some mindless tv. Anything to really distract you and get your mind off of what just happened. Then when you feel you are seperated enough emotionally from having this nightmare you can consider going back to bed. A good amount of the time I end up switching between sleeping on my couch and my bed just to vary things so I dont feel stuck. It helps.

I don't have nightmares, but I do have weird dreams. I guess that I might discuss triggers and imagry of the dreams with a therapist and maybe get a med that might help for sleep.Keep a journal as well-a dream journal.

sorry that you are experiencing nightmares. I used to have a lot of nightmares mainly related to my time in the Army. I used to think I'd never get rid of them & they almost consumed me. However I got a good therapist, p.doc. & some tranqulisers which have all helped. I think that with the right support & meds. things will get better for you, I hope they do anyway.

may I ask if you use any kinds of sleeping pills? Sleeping pills often have nightmares as a side effect. I had them in rehab only I couldn't wake up from them it was terrible.

Doorknob, I do not take any sleeping pills. I think some of them may be from the pain pills I have to take.

When I was a child and a few times in my adulthood I experienced night terrors. It has been a few years since we talked about this here and I am always amazed at how many bipolars also have/had the terrors.

Mine would start as a horrid dream like being stuffed into water/sewage pipes while alive, or watching the A-bomb go off, then when I woke up I would still see the dream over and over again. Repeat the damn nightmare for hours.

I would walk around the house and still dream while seeing the inside of the house and my older brother would be trying to calm me down. I thought I had it tough, while he had me and probably got blamed by my parents for my dreaming. He was a kid just like me only a couple of years older.

well I would make sure to let the doctor know about it. There may be an alternative without side effects like night mares. Drug induced night mares can be pretty bad.

I can't say that I have a problem with night mare's now but I agree that doing something to take your mind of off them and talking to friends or loved ones is the best way to deal with them.

Some meds cause bad dreams, when I visited my pdoc he would ask me every time when I was on certain drugs.

WOW!!!! The things you can learn from this community! I have had night terrors all of my life and just suffered for as long as it took for them to go away---days sometimes.

I am going to use all of these suggestions for myself and see if they help me.

Thank you all.

Bump in the road of night terrors.