Sleeping Issues – My Personal Nightmare That Wrecked My Sleeping For Years.

Sleeping patterns, sleeping disorders, generally bad sleep – this is a topic I’ve been researching for some time as my sleep quality has deteriorated in the past 5 years especially – until the past six months. The second half of 2017 until the early part of 2018 – has been a time of huge breakthroughs in terms of my sleep.

 

In an earlier post, I outlined a number of issues, many of which I have experienced over numerous months – sometimes years. One of the issues that has haunted me has been nightmares, the worst ones being recurring nightmares. Now we can blame the Friday the 13th movies, the Halloween 2 movie (still the scariest in my book), The Ring, and Dawn of the Dead (another one that still freaks me out on some visceral level) – you get the idea….Well, this is not the stuff that causes recurring nightmares, at least not for me. Maybe when I was younger, I’d freak for a few days after watching Jaws or whatever – but those days are long gone.

 

Anxiety – What I’m talking about is a sense of anxiety that pervades your life, possibly unnoticeable until the stillness of the night starts to settle in around you. Unresolved issues start to sprout like mushrooms in your mind with goblins and trolls of the worst kind skipping along your sheets and messing with your quality of sleep. I imagine this kind of scenario happening before when I’ve woken up from a bad dream. It is amazing how the stillness of one’s surroundings can cause things to manifest themselves that were always there waiting to be witnessed. For me, this may be a partial explanation of this recurring nightmare pattern that I had until recently.

Unaddressed Issues – I am no psychologist, psychiatrist, and have not studied dreams in any seriously academic manner. What I do know is that unaddressed issues from past relationships – whether they are familial, romantic, or purely social – can result in some bad dreams. It is in many ways our self defense mechanisms kicking in to help us cleanse ourselves of our perceived injuries or baggage that we cannot let go. My sleep patterns became noticeably horrible as I got closer to unlocking some past damage that happened when I was much younger – more on this in a second.

Diet – Someone very, very close to me has an exceptionally terrible time staying asleep, but they can fall asleep really easily – quite a talent really. Well, I’m of the same cloth – although my ability to stay asleep has gotten incredibly better recently. This person eats Frosted Flakes before bedtime, and I am convinced that diet is a key component to either a good or a horrible sleeping experience. I’ll expand on this theory in a later post. I’ve seen nightmares get triggered based upon my diet in the past, the times that stand out usually involve some amount of alcohol before bedtime.

So what to do if you have nightmares that are bad enough to jolt you upright in bed? Oh wait, do you have those nightmares where you wake up, but you physically cannot move a muscle due to the sheer terror involved as you regain consciousness? I woke up once from a nightmare where I was laying in bed frozen stiff as a ray from the full moon was blasting through my window onto my face. The moonlight kind of freaked me out – I think I was in my late teens, early 20’s when that happened at my parents’ home. I’ve had a few different flavors of nightmares, if you are reading this still – you likely have too.

Well – my nightmares are gone. Completely gone.

I had two different flavors of the same nightmare, both involving ‘ghosts or demons’ where the scene was set in the home that I grew up in. In both cases, the root cause was the same – here’s the kicker – I did not know this until very, very recently.

 

I believe a number of solutions helped me reach this point – here they are in no particular order:

 

• Meditation – This is a very personal topic, some think meditation is garbage and a waste of time. I used to really look down on this habit. I am now a believer in this habit, and I do not do it enough. Many of the most successful people in the world swear by this habit, so I began to give this mindfulness thing a try. It allowed me to create the space to self reflect on things – this helped jar some things loose in my heart and in my memories.
• Keep a Journal – I’ve expounded on the Self Journal for the positive effects it has had in my waking life, and I imagine journaling the bad dreams/nightmares you experience could be beneficial. I can honestly say that I did this sparingly in the lead up to my breakthrough nightmare. Some swear by this habit for dream management, if that is such a thing. Not me anyway.
• Professional Counseling/Coaching – A recurring nightmare is an indication of an unresolved issue to me. I’m sure I can find studies that prove this out from all sorts of sources, I’m recapping my breakthrough – not trying to prove things in this post – rather conveying some things that may be helpful to you. I worked with a counselor and coach for a solid 18 months intensely before the breakthrough happened. I worked on a slew of things spanning multiple DOLs – sleep quality was an undercurrent but never a focus. Nightmares were never discussed, ironically. I do think that the work I put in on the obvious topics – enabled the courage to break through and break down the recurring nightmare.

 

So what was the recurring nightmare – well – I’ll summarize the story this way:

• I was always a younger version of myself, always ended up being chased / threatened somehow by this amorphous force of a ghost or demon
• I ended up locking myself in the bathroom of the house I grew up in as it was the safest room in the house
• Invariably either the door would get knocked in or the ghost would seep into the room through a vent – causing me to wake up when it got too close.

 

Well something began to shift about 6 months prior to the breakthrough moment, and the person that was with me that night was totally freaked out. That night was the first time I decided not to wake up – to witness the shape of this demon/ghost thing as it came in the vent. For the first time, it formed into something – a black billowing cloud – like that weird demon the the island in the TV series titled LOST. Well, I woke up once I saw the billowing filling the room. In the real world – I was apparently shaking so bad that it was a quasi full body seizure, but it wasn’t – I was doing battle – literally with my demon.

 

The next time the nightmare happened – alcohol/bad diet was had – this time I stayed in the ring of my nightmare until the demon started to make these weird sounds. Instead of just waking up I decided to fight it by punching it, and I woke up again.

 

The third and final time the nightmare happened – about three months after the second time – I decided to go all Neo and jump into the black cloud with a ‘fuck it’ attitude to see what the deal was. I noticed it was feathery and it blew up as I dove in, causing me to wake up. What I recognized in the hour afterwards – when I couldn’t speak was that the feathery sensation of the cloud was reminiscent of the bushes that I hid in of my local church overnight when someone close to me in my hometown tried to injure me in a very real and very scary manner when I was 18 years old.  In re-revising this very personal post – it strikes me how the texture of the demon and bushes in which I hid that fateful night was the unlocking sense.  Full sensory overload and graphic danger inherent in that leafy texture…  I’ll spare the details here, but it unlocked a night that I had truly repressed.

 

Over the course of the next few days, I was able to piece together what happened that fateful night, what didn’t happen, and I ended up forgiving the person that tried to seriously harm me. I had blocked out this exceptionally scary night out, and buried it deep. Well, identifying the issue and the people involved in all facets of the experience enabled me to get VERY CLEAR on what I needed to do.

• I forgave everyone directly involved and those that were indirectly involved.
• I let go of the anxiety related to this individual.
• I let go of the terror and of the self judgement, as I wish I could have been stronger.
• I stopped judging myself most importantly – I was an 18 year old boy – looking back, I did alright for myself at that age – so why beat myself up? So I stopped.

 

Clearly – I had an issue here that needed to be resolved, and I’m so so grateful to have let go of this issue. My nightmares have vanished completely, and the sense of anxiousness that this issue used to induce has never returned. I am confident that it is vanquished.

 

If you have recurring nightmares – be sure to check your diet and do some deep self reflection on the nightmare. Start to meditate, possibly keeping a journal, and if the nightmares are intensifying or your frustration level reaches a point of action – seek some professional help to get it unlocked.

 

I wish you a solid and peaceful night’s sleep – for me, when it happens (even without nightmares anymore – it is rare) it is a gift.