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Nightmare after being triggered…

dsf95
dsf95

Really thought I was over the 2015 assault. I stopped dancing after the old dance studio closed and some of the dancers joined the dance group. I had joined the group because it was a different kind of dance and far away from the dance studio. Then, they opened a new location in a bar complex I frequent, which I wasn't too thrilled about. Because my ex-dance teacher assaulted me at the studio, seeing people I remember from the studio still feels scary.


I'd kind of known some of my friends were also friends with a couple from the dance studio, but I didn't expect to see them at the birthday party last night. The woman was walking behind me and I think she said something mean, but I didn't hear what it was. I just ignored them and talked to people I knew. I used to feel angry at everyone from the dance studio, but the woman had gained a lot of weight and I know what that's like, so it just seemed sad. 


I had a good time and the couple didn't join the pub crawl. I drank lighter beer so I wouldn't get too sick the next day. Everything seemed okay and I went to sleep after getting home. But I did have a nightmare last night of a priest trying to break in my house to hurt me. He was a shadowy figure in black. He had opened the door and was coming in the house, but my husband heard me screaming in my sleep and woke me up. 


I just haven't had an incident like that in years. It's hard to avoid a local group completely, but this was unexpected. 

arfie
arfie
Steadying support while you heal the effects of the nightmare. I don't believe we ever **get over** any of our life experiences. Good, bad or indifferent, every experience is woven into the fabric of our lives, no matter how hard we work to repress the memories.

I confess to being relieved when COVID shut down my foster daughter's dance lessons. They resumed masked and socially distant lessons since then, but I already felt socially distant enough from the competitive nature of dance studios, even for 5 year old classes. The thought of adding the masked social distances to the pre-COVID social distances was more than I could bear. My foster daughter still asks about her dance lessons from time-to-time. Thank you for the inspiration to continue dodging the subject. Those dance studios really are brutal places. Meaner than military boot camp?

Perhaps your trigger lady's weight gain is a clue that she, too, has abandoned that brutal environment? Dance studios be a mean scene. . .
Community Leadermujicaptsd
mujicaptsd
As someone who got PTSD as a missionary kid, it got my attention that in your nightmare you have someone who was specifically a priest in it. That sounds like the kind of nightmare I would have, dsf95. Any idea why specifically that character would show up in your nightmare like that? The rest of what you mention has more to do with dance than church.
mtd
mtd
A dream is just that, a dream. It was not real. We all know that our emotions can cause undesirable dreams. But they only reflect what is going on inside of us, our fears, desires, emotions. One lady said a really simple thing, “I look at dreams as a free trip to the movies.” So I try to look at them in that manner, to stop worrying about dreams.
dsf95
dsf95
Thanks for the kind replies! To answer the question about the priest, i think it has to do with the priest from my parish that was getting ordained among much hullabaloo around 2015 (the ladies of the choir, including me, learned a Latin song he requested for the service where he was ordained as a temporary deacon before becoming a full priest). his sister loves dance and his mother is heavily involved in the local theater scene.
Community Leadermujicaptsd
mujicaptsd
Ah, so the priest was connected via his sister to dance. That makes sense for you, dsf95. Got it.
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