Monday 23 March 2009

Nightmares

Does anyone have a good solution for stopping nightmares?

I've suffered from nightmares for years and years. It's pretty normal for me to have 3 or 4 nightmares a week at least. In the few weeks run up to Christmas it had gone down to about 1 a week and I thought I'd solved all my problems, but yet again it's getting silly.

In the past 2 weeks I haven't had one night without a nightmare and for the 6 weeks before that I'd started having them pretty frequently again. In fact my nightmare on Saturday night was so bad that I made the boy get out of bed and turn all the lights in the flat on while I just sat in bed panicking and crying. Thankfully the nightmares the last couple of nights haven't been that bad. The main problem is not how I feel immediately afterwards, but how tired it makes me in the long run.

I've tried not eating hours before bed, cutting out dairy products, cutting out caffeine. None of this has made a difference. Does anyone have any nightmare stopping tips? For the next week I'm going to try timing when my nightmares are and if there's a pattern setting the alarm for 20mins or so before to see if briefly waking up sorts me out.

Lily xXx

2 comments:

Alice said...

Have you tried eating foods high in potassium, Ca, and Mg? Or taking a multi-vitamin that doesn't contain vit B (Vit. B I have found actually gives me a burst of energy--I take CaMg supplements) a couple hours prior to bed.

Also dimming the lights 1 hour prior to sleep also might help.

I hope that you find a solution to your problems soon. No sleep, or not so good sleep is never fun.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. Freud would have had a lot to say about it. But that's not much use.

Are you on any meds that may cause them as a side effect?

I have very wierd and disturbing dreams, usually centred around reality and it can take me some time to convince myself what is dream and what is reality on waking up. I don't know whether these are termed nightmares.

Allie above has some good ideas, I wish I could offer more. Take care, and silly though it may sound, think about whether you have any unresolved issues floating about your sub (un?)conscious