PTSD can bring nightmares and dreams. As scary as some of them are… Rest assured everything about our bodies is on our side, including our subconscious sleeping mind.
PTSD, dreams, nightmares… To sleep, perchance to dream… After these hijackings we look to sleep as a respite from all the daytime whirling thoughts. Our bodies need more sleep. Sleep as much as your bodies desires as you heal and extract them from your bones.
During PTSD we want to sleep and sleep and sleep. And we need to. We aren’t being lazy, or avoiding moving on; we are healing and we are moving on. – All that extra sleep heals PTSD and is purposeful. Not only our our bodies designed to heal us in sleep, those dreams we have are on our side as well.
Our subconscious mind is a powerful thing. Our sleeping mind, our dreams hold the key to unlocking self-doubt, anxiety and fears.
Our sleeping, subconscious mind is on our side. Nightmares aren’t just a horror show, without the popcorn, they show us how amazing and courageous we are, even in the face of fear.
The subconscious mind is a storehouse of our experiences and what they mean to us. They’re housed in the limbic system of our beautiful brain. After trauma, the waking fear can paralyze us in depression and anxiety. Nightmares plague many of us in PTSD. Have no fear, sleep and see what stuff our dreams, and we, are made of.
Nightmares: A Gift From the Subconscious Mind
We really do have all we need inside our selves. One of the most underused resources to our inner life and inspiration and “self-knowingness” is our dreams, the kind we have in bed at night, and housed in the subconscious, limbic brain.
By writing down our dreams the morning after as we wake up we can find many clues and answers to what we want, how we’re doing, and who we are. What we need, what’s going right, what we need to do next.
It may sound absurdly simple, and a little too hippy-dippy, but don’t discount it yet, we don’t want to lose out on something significant and helpful in our recovery, we need real support where ever we find it. The power of our subconscious mind is not to be underestimated… we can reign it in to support us.
“Every time you dream, you are washing upon the shores of your own inner landscape.” ~ Dylan Tuccillo
As we go to bed tell ourselves to remember our dream.
Have a notebook or paper and a pen or pencil nearby.
Sleep, dream. And wake.
Grab that paper and pen and write what we remember of our dream.
Start with whatever’s in our head and keep going.
No worries about the beginning, middle, end. Just write.
Keys to what we were really dreaming about fly from our pen to paper.
The Subconscious Mind at Work
One of my nightmares filled me with awe and appreciation for myself. In the dream, I wake up in the middle of the night and walk into my kitchen. On the way there, those gigantic, outdoor type cockroaches we have so many of in Southern California, tons of them, are crawling along the floor. Nightmare. Horrific. Traumatic.
I had on fear, no anxiety. Instead, I found myself in awe of myself, and of my life, and life itself.
Next, I’m spraying the roaches with a bottle of bleach and water. It’s scary and revolting and I don’t want to do it. It’s gross. I hate them. Then the bugs are gone, but my laptop, the one I write from daily, is in the middle of the kitchen floor in a flood of water. I pick it up and tip it to drain the water out. I’m estimating the damage and thinking of how to get the water out.
The laptop gets smaller in my hands, as things in dreams can. I observe that I”m thinking while dreaming: That I believe it will be okay.
Then, a fire starts inside the computer. I blow the flames out and place it on my desk. It’s very small now and thick, all one piece, like an old, clunky cell phone.
The Podcast: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
Subconscious Mind Revelations
As I’m thinking about how to keep the laptop working, it comes to my dreaming mind that it’s amazing that I do so much on this slow, chugging laptop.
And then, I marvel, still in the dream, at how I took care of the problems of the roaches and rescuing my computer, my life-line. Tgus translates to a conscious mind realization of how well I handled the nightmare escape from a sociopath. My marvelling at myself was a form of gratitude for mtself and for all the hard work this rickety-laptop does for me.
Waking Up from a Nightmare
Once awake, as I sat myself down with my morning French press so-strong-you-need-a-spoon-coffee, I wrote out my dream as it came back to me. As deeper-psyche, unseen-things from the subconscious mind, the stuff behind all the elements and happenings of the dream, fell onto the paper, lo-and-behold!
Keywords describing the real truth of the dream popped out at me, my sleeping, subconscious mind was on my side. I felt better, and better as the ideas and meaning within the dream spilled out of my still-asleep mind, rolled through my hand, and moved my favorite pencil across the clean white paper.
As I wrote down the dream-scenario of killing the bugs, what I had to do to accomplish their slaughter poured out of my subconscious mind. Thoughts I hadn’t had as I was dreaming, like, I had to chase these disgusting roaches down, to really go after these slippery, scavengers in order to win.
And, I observed that, even in fear, I was relentless, aggressive, and persistent. I didn’t give up, or let go of the conviction in what I wanted, not even in challenges that nearly stopped my heart, and filled me with consuming-dread.
And, suddenly, the magic subconscious mind’s message appeared: It wasn’t those nasty bugs I was dreaming about after all: It was me, and how I am in my life.
And the laptop in a puddle and then on fire? My response to that revealed how resilient I am. That, no matter what, I find a way. And that realization led to conscious awe and gratitude I hold for myself, and always, for turning my hideous time with a con maninto a positive.
I had on fear, no anxiety. Instead, I found myself in awe of myself, and of my life, and life itself.
A nightmare-dream reminder that I’m doing okay. And that I handle things well and am resourceful, and I can count on myself. I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t written the dream down. Instead, I woulda been bugged by those bugs all day.
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