#c ptsd
Seriously, sleep is not for the weak though. Sleep is very important and it should be a priority if possible. Naps are good and important. Sleep, when you have mental health issues, is often a difficult thing, but don’t fear sleep. Sleep doesn’t make you weak, it helps your brain be strong and it helps you regulate your emotions and process the events around you better.
Best of luck sleeping to anyone reading this! I hope you sleep well tonight! May good dreams come your way!
traumatic memories, especially traumatic memories from when you were a child, are notoriously difficult to access in their entirety. there are a lot of reasons for this- dissociation, injury, and memory deteriorating over time to name a few- and this can present a challenging question to survivors: how do i know i’m not lying?
people who are faking trauma or mental illness in general know they’re faking it. if you didn’t wake up one day and plan out what a fake traumatic memory you were going to have, and all the triggers you wanted to have, then you’re not faking.
processing trauma memories is difficult and frightening and confusing, but you are not a liar or a faker.
To those who are reading this, it is alright that you didn’t get to learn what you should have been able to as a child and as a teen.
It is alright if you weren’t taught what healthy boundaries are.
It is alright if you weren’t taught what love was.
It is alright if your ability to understand your sexuality was ruined.
It is alright if you never learned to understand and read your emotions.
It is alright if you never learned to care for yourself.
It is alright if you never learned how to be a “normal” adult due to what was going on in your life and any abuse that may or may not have happened.
It is alright to “be behind”. It isn’t your fault and it is never too late to learn.
Anon asked:
First I want to say I hope you’re doing well, and this blog is quite helpful (thank you for running it)!
Second, I saw you put a post covering nightmares in relation to ptsd and c-ptsd, and I was wondering if I could ask a further question on that? Firstly, what’s the difference between nightmares and night terrors? Secondly, would a dream still be categorized if it had nightmare stuff in it (gore or other upsetting things) but you don’t get super stressed over it?
I ask this because I was curious if having a ton of nightmares over years could desensitize someone to them, and therefore make what could otherwise be categorized as nightmares only dreams (if that makes sense?)
There’s no pressure to answer, and please take care of yourself! I hope life is treating you well and to anyone else who may (or may not) read this. Thanks
Thank you! I’m glad you’re finding it helpful. :)
Question 1:
Here’s what I found on the difference:
Nightmares are coherent and vividly realistic dreams that become increasingly disturbing as they progress and result in waking from sleep. Nightmares commonly involve impending danger or distressing themes and provoke emotions such as fear, embarrassment or anxiety upon waking.
Night terrors are episodes of screaming and agitated movement such as flailing or thrashing, accompanied by intense fear. They typically last between seconds and a few minutes and begin whilst still asleep.
A person who experiences a night terror may be mobile, leading to episodes of sleepwalking, and provoke aggressive behavior if restrained. Upon waking, the person may be confused, disoriented unable to recall the night terror episode when fully awake. (source)
Question 2:
So my opinion is that you can have nightmares and not feel (or not realize you feel) distressed by them. There’s a phenomenon called alexithymia, which is an inability to “feel your feelings” or to recognize and put a name to your feelings. It’s very common in situations of complex trauma beginning in childhood, partly because if you don’t have someone in your life teaching you how to identify and deal with your emotions, you tend to not be very good at it, and partly because traumatized children find that their feelings are too overwhelming, so they stuff them down and learn to ignore them rather than dealing with them.
For example, I have had a habit since childhood of bouncing my knee when I’m sitting. For YEARS, people would say to me, “Oh, you’re bouncing your leg. Are you anxious?” And I’d go, “No, no, I’m just naturally fidgety.” It was only once I started to learn to recognize when I was feeling anxious that I realized: when I bounce my knee, it’s because I’m anxious! Those people were right after all! I was anxious, and my body knew it and responded accordingly, but I didn’t consciously realize I was feeling anxious.
I think the same thing can happen with nightmares. I wake up a lot in the middle of the night, and I also tend to remember my dreams really well. So I’d wake up from dreams at like 2 am and lie awake for two hours, and then go back to sleep. In the morning I’d start telling somebody about the dream I had, and they’d go O_O because the story I was telling them was so creepy or disturbing. And I’d say, “But it wasn’t a nightmare, because it didn’t scare me.” Only in the last couple of years have I realized that I wake up in the middle of the night because those ARE nightmares and my heart rate goes up and my adrenaline starts pumping, and it wakes me up. My body responds to the anxiety that my conscious mind isn’t feeling.
So I don’t have any scientific proof for this answer, but that’s my belief, based on my personal experiences: alexithymia can lead to people experiencing nightmares, and their bodies even responding to the fear of the nightmare, while they don’t FEEL like it’s a nightmare because they aren’t consciously scared.
By the way, if you think you might be having difficulties with alexithymia, I recommend the book Being in My Body by Toni Rahman. It’s about how alexithymia and such problems develop and how to learn to feel your body and your feelings more.
