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Hi everyone, I take been posting and talking about my night terrors/nightmares recently and I have been asked nearly the difference between the two and what the human relationship is between these and PTSD and C-PTSD.

I was going to write a response on the Facebook folio and I felt that it would be a better idea to make this available to anybody by creating a blog post well-nigh these mutual symptoms that babyhood trauma survivors and any trauma survivors endure.

What are Night Terrors and How are they related to Complex PTSD and PTSD?

Annotation: I feel the need to annotation that I will be touching base on what specifically PTSD and CPTSD are at a later time, when I do I volition exist certain to link up all the pages and post to the Facebook folio as well.

Night Terrors

Night Terrors, from which I and many survivors of childhood abuse and other traumas suffer, are a slumber disorder where the sufferer partially wakes up in a land of terror. It is important to understand that night terrors are not the aforementioned as nightmares. Nightmares are basically bad dreams. We will get to that in a moment. In adults, night terrors are a common symptom of C-PTSD and PTSD. Information technology is also a symptom of other mental health disorders.

The sufferer of dark terrors will partially wake while the symptoms of panic, the fight or flying response of the body is activated and this can cause the following symptoms:

  • Note that these are just a few of the symptoms; sufferers of night terrors can have a plethora of symptoms as anybody is different, so their responses are as well.
  • Torso paralysis
  • Panic Attacks
  • Racing Centre
  • Concrete reaction such as self-harm, attacking loved ones who are trying to help and so on.
  • Screaming or thrashing around as though beingness attacked
  • Hyperventilating
  • Sweating, as if they have a fever
  • Rapid Heart Rate
  • Take difficulty existence woken up and if they practice wake up they can be dislocated and scared
  • Aggressive behaviors
  • This is 1 I found really interesting considering information technology has happened to me all throughout my life and I had no idea: Many people see spiders, snakes, animals or people in the room

Typically the sufferer of night terrors will commencement to wake up slowly and feel like they are still trapped in the trauma they are experiencing. It will experience similar information technology is all the same happening and sometimes they are unaware of their environment.

Some volition autumn back comatose and not recollect the episode and others will take trouble calming down and falling back asleep. Typically, if the sufferer is an adult, they volition think their nighttime terror. Children are a dissimilar issue and I will not go into that as this page is really for adult survivors of childhood abuse and PTSD and C-PTSD.

Night terrors occur during a deep not-REM sleep, typically within an hour after the sufferer has gone to sleep. Night terrors can last anywhere from v to 20 minutes. It is interesting to note that while the endure is sleeping during their night terrors, their optics may be open.

Some people think their night terror and others exercise not. Information technology is like everything dependent on the person and equally nosotros know, everyone responds to trauma differently. The interesting matter about the night terrors is that they are not dreams, they are typically experienced equally feelings. Reliving feelings of trauma.

Nightmares

Nightmares are different from night terrors every bit they are dreams. They happen during normal REM sleep. The nightmare tin upset and frighten the sufferer who will often wake upwards with brilliant memories of the nightmare which will somewhen (not always but most of the time) fade away.

Nightmares tin be and so vivid and real and can cause the sleeper to accept rapid middle rates and can cause the sleeper to wake upwardly with a panic attack. Often nightmares can take common themes for the person dreaming. They are running from someone or something, they cannot run fast enough. They relive past experiences.

In that location are actually some basic symptoms of a nightmare disorder:
• Waking up through out the night oft with a strong recollection of the dreams that one has. They typically have to do with fighting for survival.
• When the person wakes up they are alert instantly
• The effects of the nightmares stick with the person and tin touch their daily functioning

My Personal Experience with Night Terrors and Nightmares

Okay, so I feel the demand to state that I am not an expert. I am someone who is learning as she goes and I am trying to assist people along the fashion. Because I have felt and then alone and I wanted to connect and exist a part of a customs of survivors and protectors and people who encourage and communicate. How astonishing it is that my Facebook page has get this very supportive customs? I honey you guys. <3

I have been talking about nightmares and night terrors lately and a few of our customs members have been request for clarification on these 2 dissimilar symptoms. Initially I was just going to reply to them on Facebook and so I realized how important this information is for trauma survivors and I wanted to do some research and find out myself what the difference was.

There is a plethora of information out there so please, if you want to learn more take a wait at some of the links beneath. Remember about the sources of what y'all read and educate yourself on what yous are suffering through. That is the key to healing. Acceptance. Education. Understanding.

I plan on talking with my psychologist and psychiatrist on this matter because after doing the research, I am a little confused as to what I am actually suffering through. I think it may exist a mixture of both. I am not sure. I will update this and post on the Facebook page one time I take more information on my personal symptoms.

I have never been a restful sleeper. I have had nightmares my entire life, every night. I can even so call up some from when I was a kid. Ane in particular was just after I had been adopted. My biological female parent was a zombie and she was trying to become me and it was terrifying.

Afterwards my biological female parent took her ain life I would have dreams every night with the same theme, I was trying to find her. I was searching for her and I would well-nigh detect her only then she would exist but out of reach. She was always with her dorsum to me. These dreams stopped after I had one where I finally establish her. She was in the last home nosotros lived in together before she died. In that location was this wooden bed with pictures taped to it. They were all of my biological siblings just not me. I tried to tell her who I was. I tried to bring her dorsum with me, but as I stood in the doorway she just looked at me, no recognition in her face up. I was no one to her, nada.

To my younger self these nightmares brought dorsum the loss and grief that I had grown upwardly with. The neglect and the longing. The deep longing for honey and affection and for a mother who would protect and comfort me.

All of my nightmares that I remember throughout my life, aside from the ones about my mother accept had similar themes. Either I am being hunted by a darkness that I cannot see or draw, or I am trying to save people. Those have ever been the worse. Trying to save people from danger and failing.

Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma Twin Towers Later ix/11 I had this dream that I still recall, it was and so vivid. Now, at this fourth dimension I was struggling with C-PTSD and PTSD from that effect. I did not realize what that meant at the time. They were just words. I did not understand the significance. Anyway, I am certain when September rolls around I will write a long post on 9/11, for at present I volition tell you virtually one of two dreams I had afterwards it so I will tell you nigh what is happening to me now.

The first dream was of me in one of the towers. There was a big staircase that went all the way upward to the height of the building and the building was filled with a bright white light. People were everywhere. Talking and unconcerned. I was standing on the staircase carrying a huge teddy deport. It was a big brownish bear, nearly as large as me.

I suddenly knew that the tower was going to fall and I started to shout at people to run, they had to go out of the building but they ignored me. I threw the teddy carry down and as he vicious down the stairs people just stood and looked at me. I screamed at them, trying to make them empathize they had to leave. I tried to pull them down the stairs to the entrance just they would not budge.

I saw two children and I ran toward them downwardly the stairs, yelling at people until my vocalism was horse trying to get them to leave, it was going to happen. Information technology was happening. The building was crumbling and falling and I ran past the big behave and down the stairs and I grabbed the two children. One in each arm and ran out the forepart doors.

Franticly I looked for condom and I saw a large orange vehicle used for construction and I ran toward it with the children in my arms. I ran effectually it to the other side and couched downwardly, covering the children with my body as the building fell and the dust covered everything. I couldn't breathe merely I held onto them and protected them with my body while tears ran down my face equally I knew the others had not survived.

After some fourth dimension there was silence. I opened my optics and watched as the grit floated before me, a night snow falling softly covering everything. Equally I turned to look at the children I had been protecting I realized that I was belongings skeletons. The children that I had thought I had saved faded away to dust and I was solitary in a grey wasteland.

That nightmare stayed with me all this time and I think information technology volition probably stay with me for the rest of my life. The grief of having failed to protect the innocent. Of having witnessed the destruction of the ii landmarks that had been a staple in my life. The people who had just been going to work and living their lives all gone in a moment and I was unable to save whatsoever of them. Even the two children that I had dragged out of the building.

Now, I am having nightmares and nighttime terrors (I Think) that are bringing up the by. The feelings of abandonment, and loss and existence unloved and alone. Seeking and losing. I wake up and I can not move and I feel similar I am withal in the dream. I experience as though information technology is real and it takes some time before I am able to motion and when I can my heart is breaking and I am crying and my breast feels similar it will explode. When I practice fall asleep again, it starts all over and every night is like this. Every night I dream of loss and of being unworthy and dingy and wrong. I dream of sexual abuse and I dream of being yelled at and hated and every fourth dimension I wake up I am unable to motion and I feel like information technology is real.

I dream of trying to relieve people and failing, I dream of fighting to protect people and killing to protect people and it is and so real. My heart breaks when I am able to move. My chest hurts with the grief I feel and in the morning time I am so wearied I do not know how I can arrive through the mean solar day. I fear losing everything that I accept worked for because I feel like I am falling apart.

Then to answer your questions my friends, I am not entirely sure what the difference is between Night Terrors and Nightmares in my case because I seem to have the symptoms of both. The emotions and the vivid imagery, the sweating as though I have a fever, hyperventilating, raid heart charge per unit, panic attacks, paralysis. So I will bear on base with y'all all once I have some answers from my squad.

I promise that for those of you who wanted to empathise the symptoms have a improve understanding now. If you have any more than questions, send me a message and I volition practice my best to reply them for yous.

I am now taking medication for these symptoms. I am not certain if it volition piece of work or not, all I can do is try and if it doesn't work, effort something else. Because something has to give. I tin not keep living like this.

Anyway. Night Terrors and Nightmares are unlike and they are a common symptoms of PTSD and C-PTSD. I will write more when I find out more. -Jess
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