i get nightmares to, and certain times of the year, special events and thing alwasy seem to make them worse, as well as my flashbacks. they can be very scary indeed, and people dont seem to understand that unless they suffer from them.
it must be hard for you have you old you councilor about them getting worse? that might be a start.
i also try relaxation before i go to bed, sometimes it just relaxes my body and i'm calm before.i know what you mean about not wanting meds tho i was like that but if they are going to help you at the moment maybe you should stick with it until they start decreasing again.
have you any other fmaily you can talk 2 at all???
here if yuo need to talk xx

My psychiatrist and my counselor know that my nightmares and flashbacks get bad around this time of year. My psychiatrist talks about more meds and my counselor talks about relaxation exercises and journaling. And I do what they ask and yet I still feel like crap. What I really want is to just talk to others who are feeling these things or experiencing these things. I want to know some one understands. Or I want more time with my counselor. Feels selfish to want that. She has other clients and I should be able to handle myself, but I can't.

I live far away from my family and it is difficult to call them and talk about something like this. My mom treats me as though it has never happened and the few others I talk to make it seem like it was just another thing you have to go through in life. I feel alone. And I don't know what to do when I start the day in tears.

I am so sorry the rape happend. The stress,fear and your dreams must be more then anyone could handel.Maby if your husband held you and told you all well be alright, that he will protect you could help with the dreams, did you have a long talk with him to truly let him know what you go through

I am sorry you have to deal with the nightmares.They can be so real it seams like they just happened.
I have also had those and continue to struggle with them.It has been hard to get my boyfriends to understand the magnitude of those feelings but I suggest that maybe you share things bit by bit in small doses and maybe with a counclers help they can assist you in making sure that your husband can understand what you are trying to say to him.Men sometimes just don't get how we are trying to commuicate our feelings, its not that they don't want to understand or sympathize I just think sometimes we need help to let them know how these events have scared us.He needs help to comfort you instead of the smiling and laughing.
Your nightmares can get better with time.It takes alot of therapy support and medication.I know I am still working on it as are may others here.I hope you can start to rid yourself of them I know it can be a long hard road.Just know friends in here won't run we all know what you're going through.

My husband seems to run screaming from the word counseling. He thinks it is useless which is funny because before my illness I was studying to become a psychologist. I don't know what he thought I was going to do with that degree.

Anyway, I spoke with my counselor today about my nightmare and we agreed on what we thought it meant. At first I didn't think she would get the connection I was making, but she did.

See, in my dream I was several months pregnant and I started having pain. I went to the ER alone and it was my doctor who comforted me and said it would all be ok. He gave me an IV and said there would be pain medicine in there and fluids. He left me alone. Then there was all this bleeding. I stood up screaming trying to get some one to help and there was just this blood gushing out of me. My doctor came to me and hugged me. He said not to worry he would fix it and I should sit back down. I heard him outside my room telling a nurse there was no baby but that they had to do a procedure to stop the bleeding. He came back in the room and I said what do you mean no baby. I woke up vomiting and feeling empty. I felt the rape was there in my mind even though there was nothing in there about the rape.

I asked her if that made sense and she said yes. I have had trouble conceiving because of the rape and because seeing all the blood was traumatic.

This dream has really stuck with me more than any other in a while. Can you see why? Any thoughts on getting it out of my mind? I usually leave the tv on to distract me, but that did not work. Now I am trying my MP3 player.

HELP?

I am so sorry. I take klonopin also. I was a nervous wreck around Christmas this year, afraid to travel across town, because I thought we might be tempting fate, and have another car accident.

I have to take a lot of Klonopin when I go visit my family. They stress me out and they live in the area where I was raped. It seems like everything in that town reminds me of the rape. I can't go up there in the spring. I don't know what I would do if I were there right now.

talk to god. im no religious fanatic. for a long time i felt that i deserved the things that happened to me. then, when i figured out that my existance after all the times i was doing drus or selling my body, and also the suicide attempts, i realized that .....here, but for the grace of god......when im trying to figure out my mi i ask god's help in understanding, and you know, we didnt come with handbooks, you know. so a little help couldnt hurt. ive done it. just say : please dont let me have bad dreams. theyre dreams because we havent been able to face them yet. when were ready to face them without fear of harm, we will.

I take nortryptyline for depression and it makes your dreams very vivid. I have nightmares frequently and I think it is partially due to the med, but also the amount of stress going on in my life. My Dr wants me to keep my dose of Xanax down so I don't get addicted.

It really stinks trying to deal with the nightmares...it affects your whole day sometimes.

I take nortryptyline for depression and it makes your dreams very vivid. I have nightmares frequently and I think it is partially due to the med, but also the amount of stress going on in my life. My Dr wants me to keep my dose of Xanax down so I don't get addicted.

It really stinks trying to deal with the nightmares...it affects your whole day sometimes.

oh my goodness i having dreams too it is very disturbing and i can't get back to sleep. I don't like myself eitherit just remind you of your pain maybe. I try the grounding exerise where you bring yourself to the hear and now like decribing what every thing feels like and what everything looks like in other words use your five senses to bring you back to the hear in now.

i'm sorry i can't really offer any advice, but i can empathize with you. i have the same problem with dreams and it seems to get worse around the anniversary of my rape too.

so many people tell me to just blow it off. they say they're just dreams. this makes me furious! they don't understand how real they can be and how it feels when you wake up from one. i physicall feel like someone has touched me and i'm shaking and sweating. most of the time i am in a full blown panic attack. then i spend the whole day trying to make sense of the dream and comparing the dream to what really happened.

i'm sorry i may not be much help, but if you would like to talk or even just vent i am here for you! monica