Anybody know if it does any good to analyze nightmares. Really strange ones you can't get a handle on. ?

I wrote them down. I'm not sure if I analyzed them in the sense you mean, but I certainly wrote them down. Overall, most have the same theme. I'm helpless, someone's either scaring me or hurting me, and the people I love are clueless to the danger around...that kind of thing. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on what is happening in the dreams but more on how you feel about them. For me, the content is not usually as correct as my feelings were during the dream, in relation to the trauma.

I keep a dream journal. If it's really bad, I write it down after awaking, but if I can get back to sleep, I take advantage of the that and go back to sleep. Sometimes I forget, which is great. If I don't, then I write it down the next morning. In any case, I think it does some good just to write some of it down. I had a thread a while back about nightmares; but I felt it hard to share. It's almost more private than the trauma itself....

Terry I was having a bout of some truly bizzare nightmares. I mean they made zero sense.

I had posted the list of them as they were ones I could actually remember. Most I just wake in panic and so consumed by the panic attack I had no clue what I was dreaming.

But when I posted them Boo and Anthony were amazing at helping me figure out what they represented when I put down details. I pulled them apart and once I had been asked a hundred (seemed like that many) questions to things picked out we figure out what the dreams were related to and it was unresolved issues with my dad. In a million years I would have not come up with that on my own. They all had a common theme that was not apparent to me, but from someone else looking in they found them.

I worked through emotions and discussed and lo and behold that round of nightmares ceased.

My other nightmares are weird but representations of my traumas. Pulling the same emotions out of me and some close to like my trauma but I rarely have a nightmare of my actual trauma. In my nightmares things don't go like I remember.

Shit rambling. Simply put yes, it helps to pull the apart and analyze them as they are carring emotions that are not resolved.

I have been nightmare free for a while now and not waking in panic, then last night I was bombarded with every frigging trauma represented in nightmares that did not end it seemed all night. I am so sick today and wiped out it is not even funny. But I see my shrink today (oh joy) and well I will be firing her today before I move. So I can work through some it with her.

Me, I don't write down every single nightmare I have, as I have about 5 or more a day on average... and most of them are recurring and self-explanatory... mostly revolving around my father and him trying to kill me, or me trying to kill him, and the funerals of my family. But I do have a dream journal like Nam mentioned, and I will write down the more bizarre ones. I think analyzing them would be helpful, especially if it helps you to figure stuff out about yourself.

Terry,
I have also been having nightmares. I don't want to take the focus off of your question, so i will post a new thread concerning this new experience for me of having nightmares... But I will be listening to the responses that you get because i also have the same question!! Hang in there, buddy!!

Thanks guys this one was soo much different than the regular nightmares. It was like a long progression of events. From being in control of myself all the way to everybody kicking me out on the street because I had gone crazy. Really screwed up. I would wake up almost screaming, go back to sleep at the same point in the nightmare that I woke up at. Did that 6 or 7 times but could not wake up enough to get out of bed. Kinda like I was trapped. Scared the hell out of me.

Do you feel you are being judged or are going to be for your condition? That you are making it more "public" here making you more vunerable?

Again some really weird nightmares represent our emotional state.

Kinda what the doc said today. "Your nightmares really only have meaning to you". I don't think being on this forum has much to do with it. I'm opening "Pandora's Box" again and alot of people know about it B/C I had to pick a psychologist or the PD would pick one for me. Been through this several times and the city docs don't have the guts to stand up and tell admin. they can't have access to my records. I got a good doc now that I trust so I think I am being more open and honest than the last times. Nightmares still suck. Do I use too many "I" statements. I think I do.

Don't worry...I do too....:redface:

"I" statements are a positive sign of self recognition. You can never use too many off them IMHO.