Coping With Nightmares

[SargeantCuddles]

I was curious as to how others cope with nightmares. How does your Daddy help you with them? How do you cope with them when you're in little space? Out of little space?

 

 

I know when I have nightmares in little space, I keep my favorite stuffy close by along with my paci. If my Daddy is there he holds me and lulls me to sleep along with giving me my sippy cup with milk in it. If he isn't there, I would usually call him and he would talk to me till I calmed down and fell asleep.

 

 

[Guest Sae]

I have a nightmare protocol posted in my coping thread. It should be in my siggy. 

[special-blackbitkitten]

If I do have nightmares I usually fall asleep straight after but in the morning I tell daddy and he tells me its alright. My nightmares are very traumatic though.. lots of yelling and grossness (yelling makes me very upset)

[PeppermintBatty]

I don't have problems with nightmares, but if my pills get low I can see "demons." Which are extremely errant, hard to deal with thoughts that trouble me greatly.

 

When this happens, I usually have my family keep watch over me and I try to talk things out with them.

[Pastel]

Since I stopped watching scary movies two years ago, I haven't had many nightmares, but sometimes my little girl will have terrible dreams, and we have a policy that she can call me any time, even if I'm sleeping, and we'll skype until she feels better. We'll talk about the dream once, just so that we both know what happened, and then we put the topic away and focus on happy and calming things until she feels safe and sleepy again. If your Daddy is comfortable with it, (I know it can be a little embarrassing) I find that singing lullabies can be impossibly comforting at times like that.

[BH_Bambi]

If I'm asleep and Sir's awake and I have a nightmare, he'll ask me if I want to tell him about it, and reassure me about how what I dreamed can't/won't happen. If I don't want to go into detail, he'll just settle me back down.

If he's asleep, though, I rarely wake him with my nightmares. I don't like him missing sleep for me. It's something I need to get better at, though - he says it is fine to wake him up.

[Guest LavanderRabbit]

Daddy lives far away so I usually end up calling him and crying no matter what time of the night it is. Nightmares for me can be really common and I normally wake up 3-4 times a night daily, but I always fall back asleep. If it is a super bad one I'll open my window and smoke my Vape till daddy picks up the phone, then he talks me down from it and I make a nest with all my pillows and stuffies till I fall asleep on the phone with him.

[princessandthesailor]

Because of our time difference, I'll only wake Daddy up if it was a flashback nightmare about being abused as a child. And sometimes even then I won't.

My normal procedure for nightmares is:

1. Locate binky and Beary. Redistribute to proper places if needed.

2. Change the TV to the Disney Junior channel on just low enough to hear to ensure no scary commercials or dialogues from the TV.

3. Text Daddy to let him know I had a nightmare.

4. Plug in headphones.

5. Set recording of Daddy singing my lullaby to repeat.

 

And if it's a particularly bad dream or a flashback one:

6. Place hand on the wall right next to my bed and go through the grounding technique my acting teacher taught me for in between takes of intense scenes.

 

I'd be happy to teach anyone the grounding technique if they feel it would benefit them. It's also good for anxiety attacks.

[Baby_Bows_]

I don't have problems with nightmares, but if my pills get low I can see "demons." Which are extremely errant, hard to deal with thoughts that trouble me greatly.

 

When this happens, I usually have my family keep watch over me and I try to talk things out with them.

I struggle with this too if I'm low on medication.

[KelseyKarebear]

I only have nightmares rarely but there are nights where I feel like it's gonna be hard to sleep or I'll have nightmares. On those nights, I take two Tylenol PMs that usually knock me out or keep me from dreaming (sometimes, they keep the bad dreams away if I do dream but I barely dream when I take them). If I do have them anyways, I just lie in bed and think about happy things. I used to have them severely and I used to wake up shaking but as my life calmed down, it's all fine now. 

[Guest harlequinkid]

I have been having nightmares a lot recently, & have struggled with finding coping mechanisms that work for me. Using a nightlight & talking to friends (if they're awake) seem to help a lot. Also, I've stopped watching scary movies (& anything that I think can act as a trigger for bad dreams). 

 

Sometimes, putting on one of my favorite (non scary) shows, such as a favorite cartoon, really helps me too. If it's a show/episode that I've seen before, it can act as background noise while I try to calm down. 

 

If the nightmares are really bad, & I'm super scared, I usually use breathing techniques to calm myself down.

[LittleGlenn]

Been having nightmares since i was 5 years old and very frequent as well.

I dream very vivdly every night and I still remember most of them to this day.

If they are really bad i wake up in the middle of the night in such fear i'm just too scared to move.

Most of the time it's a dream where i am being hurt in very gruesome ways i don't really want to list here.

 

Now on top of that i have something else that can be listed as nightmare i guess.

Sometimes before i go to sleep i see a face that appears whenever I go to bed.

( yes i've heard of sleep paralysis, but i've confirmed i'm still awake when this happens.

if anything it keeps me from sleeping at all )

I just freeze in fear ( cold sweat ) and i can't seem to get rid of it. The result is usually me staying up all night.

It's a pale white face of a woman, also noticeable is that her mouth is always open as if she was screaming something?

Now since i've been in therapy for about a year I haven't seen the face that frequent and i can sleep much better.

 

I don't really have a coping way with these things except trying to move if i wake up a nightmare.. 

It seems to help if i push myself to move around, that way you can confirm the nightmare is over i guess.

[Guest Charlie]

Usually, I keep a small bottle of water and my favorite picture books next to my bed to help me cope after a nightmare.

Also, during periods where I have a lot of nightmares, I put a small amethyst pebble in my stuffie's pouch (as I believe in lithotherapy). Then it normally stops. 

[Guest Rainbow]

Number one is turn the light on. If daddy is there in bed, I try to wake him. Sometimes this takes a lot of shakes. He'll hold me. Once he told me a silly story that got even more sillier as he was falling back asleep and that really helped. I don't always tell him what was in it. But usually I do by the next morning. If he's not here, I'll just text him that it happened. If it was a really bad one and I am alone, I'll watch something little or funny on netflix.

[Amazing君子]

three years ago I was tormented by nightmares, usually of giant spiders. If your own brain wants to scare you there's no limit to what it can do. The images that I came up with in my sleep became more and more terrifying until I spent all my waking hours fretting over my next nightmare.

 

The problem slowly went away when I convinced myself that there's nothing to be afraid of, except of course fear itself, but the nighmares only seemed to last a few seconds. The nightmares occurred because I was afraid. I also took Ativan (I was getting panic attacks), which seemed to be the biggest part of the solution, although this medication is only supposed to be taken for a short while.

 

I also started seeing a therapist who specializes in phobias. She took a CBT approach. She coached me into looking at pictures and videos of giant spiders. What started happening around this time is I had dreams that teased me about my phobia. The subject of spiders kept coming up, but the images engendered in these dreams didn't scare me. In one of them I was drinking a cocktail with a red plastic spider as a garnish.

[princess.kiki]

i have nightmares quite often. if its bad, i will call daddy and try to wake him up. if he doesnt answer, or if it was not a horrible nightmare, i will suck my thumb, rearrange my pillows, cuddles up in my blankets, if i have a stuffie with me i will cuddle it. if all else fails, call daddy. i always feel so bad for waking him up. but. sometimes i have to. 

[HisGoodLittleGirl]

I had a terrible nightmare last night! (that is how I stumbled upon this post) It was so frightening that I jolted up out of the covers. I must've woken daddy up. Daddy said "baby, what's wrong?" When I told him about my nightmare, he said "Ohhh, baby, come here, it will be okay" and he pulled me in close into his body. He was so warm, which was really comforting. Since it was the middle of the night (he usually gets hard in the middle of the night) I could feel his stiffness against me. I love pleasing him and making him feel good, and I knew it would make me feel better after my nightmare. So he let me take care of him with my mouth. While I did, he told me I was such a good girl. That also comforted me after my terrifying nightmare. Finally, he finished in my mouth... that made me feel a lot better.