PTSD nightmares

Yes, of course. Who? You can PM me if it's a sensitive issue.

 

Yes very sensitive.
I will need to ask the member first.
I am so worried about him.

 

Ok.

I hope something can help

 

Me too. I think you can.
I must ask first. X

 

Yes, I would appreciate it, thanks. There aren't any acupuncturists in this area, and in any event, it isn't covered by Medicare.

 

I think it's covered by Medicare for lower back pain, but not anything else.

 

I think you should see a doctor or therapist. Maybe you will be prescribed antidepressants or the therapist will help you find the cause of your nightmares. My friend was often stressed after work and at home, he sometimes had problems because of this. Once, he smoked marijuana from Cannabis Brands and liked it. He smokes once or twice a week to relax and gets some space for a while without thinking about anything. I don't think you should try smoking weed but sometimes it really helps. Anyway, before deciding to smoke , you have to talk with your doctor and tell him about your mental problems and nightmares. I think it's the best solution.

 

I've in therapy for PTSD, and my therapist & doctor are considering antidepressants since Prozosin doesn't seem to work on me. Nowadays, weed does a real negative mindfuck on me; besides, it's now prohibitively expensive (what the hell happened to a lid of Columbian for $15?) Mate says I've been howling in my sleep several times this week. Last night, I dreamed my mate & I were sitting in the back seat of a parked car, waiting for someone. The sound of screams and full-auto gunfire close behind us. I threw her to the floorboards, laid down on the bench seat, then rolled over on top of her...but of course, I wasn't lying on the edge of a seat, but the edge of the bed.
Not my preferred awakening in the early hours.

 

Spent the last fifty years plus with nightmares, flashbacks and intrusive thoughts about my participation in combat. I spent all of 1968 in Vietnam during a time of the heaviest combat of that war. The many forms man can kill someone in war left me stunned and depersonalized just to survive. The fact that my moral compass was totally overturned and I could become a killer was deeply disturbing but it was about surviving as an 18 year old entering the war and a 19 year old going on sixty leaving the war.
I went 12 years without the PTSD diagnosis existing. I knew vets were being seen for what I was experiencing and they were being diagnosed as schizophrenics and given large doses of antipsychotics. I have never set foot in a VA facility. But I did finally go into treatment and learned how to cope with the symptoms, recognize the triggers and learn how to offset them. Meds have played a small part.
I've become an expert on my PTSD. Each person's trauma is uniquely their own. One thing I always tell someone who asks me about PTSD is to think of themselves as survivors. Not victims.
I can't give advice as to what helps but their are many unique therapies being used ....for some veterans they're using yoga to calm their anxiety. Others use EMDR. And I will tell you, for me it's like being an addict or alcoholic....relapses are quite likely to occur but using my coping skills and my support of family and some friends helps pull me out of things.
Have the nightmares gone away? NO. For me it was like the images were seared into my memories and there is this endless video loop that can appear at anytime taking me back in great detail to things I saw or things I did. I just don't react like I used to react.
Good luck to all who have to endure a replay of their traumas. Don't give up.

 

Fuckin'hell. Beautifully said cohikr68. I'm one that fortunately missed combat. I can imagine what you veterans have been through---but I can't KNOW.

 

PTSD is related to your immune system, which frequently causes unnecessary inflammation in particular, precisely because its memories are too strong. Your brain cells sometimes don't believe a word you say, and fallback on their own default decision making process. In chronic PTSD they will even shrink the hypothalamus, denying the conscious mind some of its control over how the brain accesses memory. Having PTSD myself, I've had to find ways around the issue. Once for several years I suffered from what I call existentialist nightmares, which would make me bolt out of bed altogether, such as a nightmare where I cut my hand off on a table saw. Such nightmares leave you little choice but to wake up, and the fact you stay asleep is an indication that your subconscious is attempting to make more sense out of its memories.

The subconscious uses simple Monty Carlo statistics and pattern matching to decide how to blunt your memories, or scrap them altogether. In the case of my existentialist nightmares, all I had to do was to tell myself over and over before falling asleep, "Finish the dream". In the case of the table saw dream, eventually I stopped waking up, and finished the dream by running around the table saw in circles screaming bloody murder, then picked up my hand, and went in search of someone to take me to the emergency room. The nightmares stopped, because I gave my subconscious mind feedback on how to place it context, and reassurance there's still somebody home to deal with such issues.