Nightmares

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They Send Me Back - (Another mental health poem)

Fingernails scraping at coffin walls

Clawing

Breathless

Trying to tell someone I’m still down here

Liquor burning my throat

Numbing the body for the morgue

For when they tear me apart

Tears of blood spill

When I’m worrying alone

A thin string in the dark

I follow it

It leads me off a cliff

Choices that feel holy

Turn out to be the Devil’s whispers

I say I’m okay

But I don’t know what okay means

Smiling while everything feels wrong

Crying when everything is fine

Feeding on chaos

Wondering why it’s always taken away

Life in my hands

Mind floating somewhere above the clouds

Lullabies drift through the air

But they’re sirens by the pond

Pleasant dreams fracture into nightmares

The succubus touches me

The sun disappears

Night cascades over

And my home is revealed

I see the future

My carcass rotting

Vultures tearing at it

Drowning in regret

Wishing to vanish

But death won’t take me

They always send me back

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I'm new here!

Hi, my name is RustyHam. I [M24] have had a past memory that has come back up of my older brother [M27], SAing me. At the time of the memory I was roughly 5-7 years old, but it is difficult for me to find an exact time frame, all I know is that I was too young to understand what was happening. All I recall is that I was coerced into giving him oral. I do not remember what happened before or after, all I recall is that we were in our shared bathroom, with one of us getting ready to shower.
This memory has popped up in my mind throughout the years, but I never really thought about it and assumed it was just a disturbing dream or something I had made up. Recently, I also realized that I had been SA'd in one of my past relationships, which inevitably caused me to fixate on this memory that is now haunting me. I haven't told anyone about this memory and I feel like I am losing my mind. I can't tell if it was some messed up dream or a traumatic experience that my body is trying to reject or disassociate from. For over 10 years I have had vivid, reoccurring nightmares and constantly have intense sleep sweats that drench my bed. Is this my body trying to tell me something about this experience?
My brother is also getting married at the end of this year and asked me to be a groomsman. I do love my brother and want to be apart of this special occasion, but I this memory has made me reluctant to even be apart of it. I do not plan on telling anyone in my family soon as I fear that no one would believe me or that I may be seen as crazy. Seeing pictures of him or even thinking about the memory has brought anxiety attacks and caused me to break down crying.
I am not sure how to digest this memory and how to approach it further without damaging any relationships. This memory heavily affects me but I oftentimes tell myself that I am lying, made it up, or dreamt of it. I feel like I am losing it and I fear that this may affect me in the long run. How do I begin to heal from this even though I am not sure if it happened or not?

#MightyTogether #Anxiety #Depression #Trauma

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Sleep meds in cptsd

Have been taking prazosin because not able to stay asleep, nightmares, and flashbacks. The panic and wake ups decreases but I still waking up early morning feeling very awake for couple hours before waking time. Does anyone have experiences of taking prazosin?

#Prazosin #Nightmares #PTSD #Insomnia

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Another Life Update

I will also keep posting on here, doing free online courses in mental health and psychology and exercising from home while I figure out the new caregiver plan. Oh and watching my youngest brother play sports in the backyard and do legos. Just wish we didn’t have to fight epic food and chore battles with him and my 14 year old sister because they have always been like that, but mom doesn’t want to put them in thepay because she has had nightmares about taking me to all of them when I was growing up because I was a very smart little girl in a wheelchair and a walker but they ignored my emotional outbursts and frequent complaints that my body was burning up with anxiety and unwanted thoughts. I really wished they would have listened because maybe I would have been able to function better. That’s why I wasn’t diagnosed with Autism and ADHD until I was 24 even though everyone knew that I had suffered massive brain bleeds when I was born because of a lack of oxygen to my brain and diagnosed with cerebral palsy shortly after birth.

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Uncomfortable

I am feeling uncomfortable and unsafe this morning. While I was trying to go to sleep last night, I felt extremely uncomfortable in my own skin. My body didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore. I felt someone else’s hands on me. I felt like I was in my 4 year old body again, and I felt disgusting. My weighted blanket didn’t help, my stuffed animals didn’t help, and my music playlist didn’t help. I eventually fell asleep, and I had night terrors all night. I woke up sweating, crying, screaming and I wet the bed also. This happens periodically through my life. I am currently 24, and the nightmares followed with bed wetting started when I was about 6 years old. It’s not near as often, but it does still happen. I would say it happens probably once every few months since I was 6

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The Dirt Room

It wasn’t a bedroom. It was a dirt-floored storage room under the house. No lights. No windows. Just blackness so thick it pressed against her skin like a second body.

The walls were damp. The air was still. And the ground beneath her was cold, uneven earth. The kind that clung to her skin, got in her nails, and never really washed away.

This was where they sent her. Where they came for her. Where silence became a shield and stillness became survival. No one asked. No one checked. Or maybe they knew and chose to look away.

She learned to breathe quietly. To listen for footsteps above. To brace when the door creaked open. And to disappear when it closed again.

The dark didn’t scare her anymore. It was safer than people.

Years passed. She left the house, but the dirt came with her. It followed her in memories, in nightmares, in the way she sometimes curled into herself without knowing why. She never called it “childhood.” She never called it “home.”

But she was still here. Still breathing.

One day, she stood barefoot in her own room. Light poured through the window. The floor was solid beneath her. And she whispered, “That was real. And I survived.”

No one rescued her. She rescued herself.

She doesn’t owe anyone her story. But if she tells it, it will not be for pity. It will be for truth. For the girl who slept on dirt in the dark and made it out anyway.

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What PTSD symptom do you want to learn to manage better?

Coping with and managing PTSD triggers and symptoms is a personal journey—one that takes time, patience, care, and intentional effort.

For me, trauma anniversaries and nightmares can really throw off my nervous system. Sometimes it takes days to feel better again, and that can be exhausting. I've found that self-soothing techniques and watching my favorite TV shows help, but I’m also working on developing more long-term strategies so I can recover more quickly.

What PTSD symptom are you focusing on managing better?
What coping tools or strategies have been most effective for you? What has treatment looked like in your experience?

Share in the comments below. ⬇️

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When the Lights Went Out

At night, the world changed.

The sun would set, and with it, any sense of safety I had managed to gather during the day would fade. I remember the way the darkness seemed to settle in my chest before it filled the room. I knew what was coming. I always knew.

I was just a child, but I learned how to lie with my face. I smiled at breakfast. I made my bed. I got good grades. I played the part. But my body held the truth. It remembered the silence, the weight, the fear that crept in after everyone else had gone to sleep.

No one noticed. Or maybe they did and chose not to ask. I became very good at disappearing while standing right in front of people.

I tried to pray it away. I thought if I were good enough, faithful enough, obedient enough, it would stop. I read scriptures under my blanket. I begged God to make it end. But the nights kept coming.

And then one day, they didn’t.

Eventually, life changed. I grew older, moved away, and tried to forget. I built walls so high I couldn’t hear myself think. For a while, I believed I was fine. Strong, even. But the body doesn’t forget. It speaks in panic attacks, nightmares, sudden tears, numbness. I didn’t understand at first. I only knew I was tired in a way sleep couldn’t fix.

It took years before I could even begin to say it aloud—to name what happened without shrinking under the weight of shame. In therapy, I learned to sit with the girl I used to be. I told her I believed her. That it wasn’t her fault. That she didn’t do anything wrong.

The truth didn’t break me. Hiding it did.

Now, when the lights go out, I am no longer afraid of the dark. It’s taken time, and work, and softness I never thought I deserved. But I am healing. I am here. And every day I reclaim a little more of the peace that was stolen.

I don’t need to whisper anymore.

What happened to me matters.

And I am finally learning that I do too.

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Dreams

Lately, my sleep has been compromised by dreams that keep me from really resting. They’re not nightmares, thank goodness. But they’re about events that happen in a frustrating loop with no resolution. For example, I lose my shoes and keep looking and looking in the same places to no avail. I wake up exhausted.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Recently, though, my Dream Bosses threw me a bone. A really fun dream. We took in three stray cats; an adult orange tabby, an orange tabby kitten, and a black kitten. The big cat decided to play with the kittens. The black one responded by rolling over and over, laughing hysterically. A part of my brain went “But cats can’t…..” and then my Dream Brain went, “Oh yeah! This happens all the time!”

Have you noticed your Dream Brain creating its own history like this?

Something else: I’ve noticed that my Dream Bosses, stingy creeps that they are, will reuse a set from one dream in another. I’ll be in a school, say, and I’ll recognize it as the same place passed off as a store in a different dream. When I told my husband about this cheap practice, he answered, reasonably, “So who are you going to complain to about this?”

A favorite recurring dream I have employs the theme of unused spaces in a house where I’m living. The extra rooms are always a complete surprise; not rundown exactly, but outdated and needing some TLC. The rooms’ need for a facelift is part of the allure. In the latest installment of this type of dream, I counted twelve bonus bedrooms that took up a whole floor of my house.

I never complain about the Bonus Room Dreams to my Dream Bosses. I’m sure it symbolizes an intriguing reality in my waking life, like undiscovered potential.

Do you remember your dreams? Have you noticed any patterns or “rules” in them? This topic fascinates me endlessly.

Just wish those frustrating dreams would stop!

#Bipolar #Depression #GAD #OCD #PTSD

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Going the Distance: Eclipsing Milestones

We measure our recovery not only in functionality, but in time and distance. Every mile between Now and Then is precious, every passing calendar page a victory.

Distance, both geographical and temporal, brought deliverance. Measuring the time between major events in our life helps anchor us within our personal timeline, into how far we've come, and how long we've been here.

Our survival is surpassing its source, and our success is outlasting all our prior nightmares. What once felt impossible and impassable is now just pages in an old journal stashed in a storage trunk.

#ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #Trauma

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