The last few days, I've had a lot of nightmares. Nightmares is a common symptom of PTSD. I've had nightmares for years and years; sometimes I go for up to several weeks without one, sometimes I have them almost every night. The nightmares usually seem to get worse whenever there is a lot of stress going on in my life, but sometimes they get worse for no reason that I can determine.
I used to wake up screaming from nightmares a lot. Sometimes the screaming would wake me up. Sometimes I would scream but I guess I was still asleep. In the morning, Mike would tell me I had been screaming during the night. When I lived in an apartment, I used to wonder what my upstairs neighbors thought about all the screaming in the middle of the night. I don't wake up screaming very often anymore, so I guess that's an improvement.
Sometimes the nightmares are about things that happened to me as a child, the things that caused the PTSD. Sometimes they are about other things, but I think the feelings are still related to the PTSD.
One of the things I am really hoping my service dog can help with are the nightmares. When I wake up from a nightmare, my dog will be able to turn on a light for me. That's supposing the lights are off to begin with, that is; it's actually been a while since I've been able to fall asleep with the lights off. But if needed, my dog can turn on a light for me. And I'm hoping that just the presence of the dog will be comforting and reassuring and help me feel safe. And the dog will be trained to get my anxiety medication for me, if I need it, and to distract me if I'm getting too far withdrawn into myself.
I don't think having a service dog will keep me from having nightmares. I'm just hoping the dog will make it easier to deal with them.
Wow that is so awful. I've woken up from nightmares only once in a while and it's traumatic. Brian has them too but they're from general life anxiety and aren't as frequent or severe as what you have. I've never woken up screaming and can only imagein how stressful and traumatic that is. I hope your service dog's presence will be like an angel protecting you from fear and nightmares and waking up screaming. It would be great if the dog can turn lights on and bring your meds but it would be even better if you felt peace and calm every night just knowing that your loving canine buddy is looking out for you.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping that just having the dog with me will cut down on the nightmares. I want the dog to sleep in bed with me. I do think that if my dog makes life in general less difficult and stressful for me, that should reduce the frequency of the nightmares because stress makes them worse.
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