Update and my Nightmare

 I don’t know if I told you guys this but I have nightmares a lot. I didn’t really recognize that I had them a lot because I thought it was normal to have bad dreams a lot but anyways a lot of my nightmares have to do with my fears such as my moms drinking and the death of my parents or me regressing back to when I was depressed in the psych ward again. I don’t know if I told you this either but the reason for the nightmares is that my therapist told me I have post traumatic stress disorder about some things like 1. when my stepdad beat my mom really bad when she was drunk when I was younger & her drinking/fighting in general, 2. my dad falling down the stairs, and my fear of him dying and 3. when I got raped by my ex. Sorry I still hate calling it rape. Well I guess you could say that thing post traumatic stress disorder,  that explains a lot for me but it sucks cause theres really no cure like there is for anxiety and depression, pills help but it just sorta goes away over time I guess and through art and rememebering in therapy.

Here are the symptoms and I have a lot of them.

Re-experiencing the traumatic event

• Intrusive, upsetting memories of the event *
• Flashbacks (acting or feeling like the event is happening again) *
• Nightmares (either of the event or of other frightening things) *
• Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma *kindah
• Intense physical reactions to reminders of the event (e.g. pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, sweating) *

PTSD symptoms of avoidance and emotional numbing

• Avoiding activities, places, thoughts, or feelings that remind you of the trauma *
• Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma *
• Loss of interest in activities and life in general *
• Feeling detached from others and emotionally numb *
• Sense of a limited future (you don’t expect to live a normal life span, get married, have a career) *kinda more due to panic I think

PTSD symptoms of increased arousal

• Difficulty falling or staying asleep *
• Irritability or outbursts of anger  *
• Difficulty concentrating *
• Hypervigilance (on constant “red alert”) *

<li style="font: nor

mal normal normal 12px/16px verdana; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 0px; “>Feeling jumpy and easily startled *

Other common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder

• Anger and irritability *
• Guilt, shame, or self-blame *
• Substance abuse 
• Depression and hopelessness *
• Suicidal thoughts and feelings 
• Feeling alienated and alone *
• Feelings of mistrust and betrayal *
• Headaches, stomach problems, chest pain *

Anyways about a month ago or 3 weeks ago I started taking these new medicines. I didn’t write on here a lot but I was doing really bad with my panic and stuff. I was stuck in my house for a whole week, which means I am agoraphobic. I already knew I was agoraphobic before that such as that I can’t take a bus or cab by myself or go anywhere by myself especially places like downtown or to a mall, it would get worse at night and wide open spaces freak me out. When I am in these places alone I would feel like I was going to fly off the face of the earth. See I know I wouldn’t but that is just the physical feeling I would get like there was nothing to hold on to. But anyways that happened last summer and my agoraphobia never got anything to do with house-bound until a couple months ago when I had a panic relapse I started spending more and more time inside and my room had magazines covering the windows so I wouldn’t get any sunlight, plus I had trouble sleeping/getting to sleep so I would have an erratic sleeping pattern sometimes sleeping only in the day and waking only in the night, so when I went out I would be really sensitive to light which is a symptom of anxiety in the first place it just makes it worse and weirder if your not used to the light. Pretty soon I got to scared to go outside in fear that I would have a panic attack. I didn’t really see this coming but one day I tried to walk up to Caribou alone and I got that flying off the earth feeling especially over the bridge and I was at the edge of panic the whole time I wanted to run, it was so close tho and I don’t get it. When I got there I had to have dan drive me home and I felt safe in my room. Anyways the agoraphobia got so bad over the next two weeks that I was even afraid to leave my room and go into other parts of the house. All this to keep me from panicing and I was still having severe anxiety, the energy in my body feeling, just feeling hopeless and depressed about it. I told my doctor and I was already on so many pills Effexor XR (anti-depressant), Buspirone twice daily(Generalized anxiety releif), some chinese herbs 3 times a day(from my acupuncturist for anxiety releif and sleep) and vitamins including vitamin d (for the sunlight i was missing/seasonal disorder). All this and it wasn’t helping one bit, and if it was than hell I don’t wanna see how I would be without them! I actually started to get semi-suicidal thinking and I was worried about the Effexor maybe causing it or not taking enough. I started asking my mom for some of her klonopin every month which is a benzodiazepine (medicines that are used specifically for panic attacks and panic disorder, the pills they give you in the ER when you come in with your first panic attack not knowing what it is) and really hard to get prescribed to you because it is addicting a schedule VI drug and I treasured it, used it sparingly, I needed it! I told my psychiatrist that I couldn’t leave my house and that everything was just getting worse, I was feeling at the edge of panic 24/7! She just upped my effexor and buspirone (the mgs and take up to 4 a day) and she gave me serequel. This didn’t help at all and I think actually made things worse. The seroquel put me to sleep but thats pretty much it, I had really bad nightmares everynight because it makes your dreams more vivid. I think I wrote some of them on here. Anyways I still wasn’t leaving the house and my therapy appointment was coming up and I wasn’t sure if I was going but I was going to try to make myself. My mom was getting really worried about me though so she made me a doctors appointment for the same day. When it was getting within the hour that I had to leave the house I started getting really almost panicy with the energy inside of me buidling to the point were I couldn’t sit still, just thinking about leaving. My mom gave me a klonopin and it seemed like it took forever to work but finally it did before we left. We went to the doctor and I told her everything and my mom told me to exagerate since I was on klonopin and that was illegal to be since I wasn’t prescribed. So I shook my leg like I would have and acted like I would have if I hadn’t of taken it. Anyways after I told her all my symptoms she thought it was so severe she decided to call a psychiatrist for an emergency appointment. That is how I got a psychiatrists appointment the same day which is unheard of, usually you have to wait

months and go through intake to get a new psychiatrist. Anyways when I got to the psychiatrist I did the same thing and told him the same story about what was happening. My mom and Dan seemed to think he sounded concerned and nice but I was scared he was judging me. Anyways FINALLY I was prescribed a benzo which is xanax .5 mgs 3x a day (that I had taken before that had made me feel normal again when I had a week long panic attack) and a new anti-depressent named imipromine (which is a tricyclic anti-depressent, a really old one, one of the first they came up with back in the day like 1950’s before SSRI’s such as prozac, paxil, celexa, and all the other ones you hear advertised on TV) I guess my depression and anxiety is resistant to SSRI’s which kindah makes sence since they never really worked. I guess the imipromine also does really well for working with panic disorder and anxiety but since it is older it has more side effects than SSRI’s for most people. I am resistant to SSRI’s though so the only side effect I noticed is really constipation but I am taking pills for that now. It really seems to be helping since I am more happy especially after I take it and it puts me to sleep and I usually stay asleep all night without any nightmares. As for the xanax it did help. I was suppose to take 3 a day, and at first I did well and was able to leave my house a bit and get out of my room. But the thing is that the pill is addicting and I have heard horror stories such as people getting off of them and having worse anxiety than before, people never getting off of them and getting brain damage, people who get sick for a year from withdrawl side effects and people who get resistant to them so it doesnt even help anymore. I mean the pill was helping so much so even though it was addictive THE PROS OVERWEIGHED THE CONS BY SOOO MUCH. That is how bad the anxiety was for me. But I started getting scared because after a while I started having to take 4 (even 5 once) pills a day even tho the prescription said 3, because the pill would only last a max of 4 hours a min of 2 sometimes until I would feel this terrible energy in my body where I felt like I was going to go crazy without a pill. Anyways after 2 weeks I told my doctor about this and how it was scaring me so he put me on klonopin another benzo .5 mgs 3x a day because it supposably lasts longer even though it takes longer to work and so far it is working. For the first couple days I still took four but now I am only taking three and some days even two. When I get really bad anxiety I chew it or dissolve it under my tongue in order to make it work faster like xanax or I could just take a xanax because I still have 40 left from my prescription but I am saving them for emergencies or parties where people are drinking and I feel left out I will pop 2 or 3 xanax. Yes you can get high off them but its a weird thing because a lot of people just feel tired. When I take my dose I feel normal but it puts everyone else to sleep that kindah shows how bad my anxiety is and that i am NOT abusing this pill I need it for its purpose, to treat severe panic disorder. So far since I have been on benzos I have been able to go outside everyday even by myself for a block or 2 and go through many several stressful situations such as a graduation with lots of people, moving, getting locked out of the car at a park, going to the beach, hanging out with friends, going to the mall, going through my cat dying and visiting my dads house by myself. I have bad days where I am afraid it will never get better and I good days a lot lately.

I don’t like it though when I forget to take my imipromine. That is the only porblem with decreasing my benzo dose to 2 a day when I stay home or am not really under stress because by the time like 10 or 11 pm rolls around I still have things to do but I feel like I need to take something even though I should take my imipromine at 12 or 1, I shouldn’t take a klonopin an hour before the imipromine and I dont like taking the imipromine an hour early and plus it takes the imipromine an hour or something to make me really tired so I guess I really should take the imipromine. I have this porblem though where I dont like going to sleep even if I am tired because I feel like I havent done enough in my day and I need to stay up and do more. Now that I am on my pills and I need to keep a semi-normal schedule for them to work I have been doing a lot better with my sleep but sometimes I forget to take the imipromine and I fall asleep with my 3rd klonopin (or my 4th xanax when i was taking xanax) I always wake up in like 4-5 hours tho if that happens and I take my imipromine when I wake up but the shitty thing is that I will have bad dreams sometimes if I forget to take it. Like tonight.

I had a dream that I was with my friends and my mom picked me up in a car. As soon as I saw her I knew she was drinking when I asked her how much she had she said 32 which is weird, she was probably binging majorly for days. Anyways, I got in the car even though I was afraid and I was like "are you sure your ok to drive?!?" She said yeah everything is fine, but when we got close or on the freeway I noticed I forgot my purse with my phone in it and I needed my phone just in case something bad happened and I needed to call the cops or someone. So I told my mom. She said are you sure you need it? I said yeah and she drove recklessly almost crashing to turn around. Then somehow we ended up in this big wearhouse where there where BIG machines that could have easily crushed us and our car if we got in there path, they were everywhere and other things too I cant remember. There was a guy there but I forgot what he said I think he helped us out. Anyways then we went back and I got my phone. The next thing I know we are home at my moms house but it doesn’t seem like it because I can peek through the side of a hallway into the kitchen by the stove which isnt the outline of her house. Anyways. Her and Gale are yelling at each other, she is mostly screaming at him like she always does when she is drunk, she is provoking it. I peek over and I see that Gale is holding a knife. But then I look more and I calm down a bit because I see he is just cutting vegetables or something. They argue more and more. Both him and her and all of a sudden I hear the words " AND FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU A BIG LONG GOODBYE" in a very angry words from Gale like he is going crazy….like that night when he beat my mom. I look over the corner and I see him with the knife stabbing my mom over and over again so angry so crazy like, in the chest like I always feel it (I usually feel it in the back or stomach actually) but it was in the chest in my dream and I saw the blood, the knife was big but the blood wasn’t gushing my mom could still talk she said "yeah thats what I thought" still provoking as she is getting herself killed. She always does that still provokes even if she is in danger that is when I usually save her or scream for her to shut up be quiet please in real like. In my dream I ran around the corner in slow motion, it was all blurring and I was terrified, crying screaming NO!! STOP!!!. I think it was too late though, I mean he was stabbing her so much she must have been ready to die. But I was going to try to protect her, to save her, I didn’t care if he had a knife even though last time I tried to s

ave her I got pushed hard away. That is when I woke up, crying, say "no please stop, stop". I called my mom to tell her. She doesn’t understand. They say it’s just a dream. Duh I know that I just want someone to listen! She kept talking about how thats never going to happen I dont have to worry then she started saying how I need to get over that by going to DBT therapy like my psychiatrist told me. She doesn’t understand. DBT isn’t for post traumatic stress disorder, nothing is! It’s not like I can control my dream. My therapist told me the best way to help it is to make art when I start feeling the feelings associated with it like the need to check on my dad or being startled easily or flashbacks after sex or feeling the stabbing etc or need to call my mom when she is drunk with gale. He says that its hard to cure because you usually block out the memories of your traumatic event that caused you to be this way. It makes sense to me. My mom doesn’t understand and she just made me mad, she thinks I can help it, just calm down and you wont have the flashbacks and dreams anymore…sorry no it doesnt work like that. And my therapist told me I have every right to be afraid, because seeing my mom get beat up has made me this way (to have a dream like that, to have anxiety when i am in her house, not want to eat the food in fear he poisoned it, thinking gale is trying to kill me, plotting to kill my mom, etc), my fear is real and rational even though it isn’t to other people because of what i’ve been through but I can get better over time he said and with medicine and art. Anyways then I woke up Dan and both time I told the story of the dream I cried really hard especially to him and when I wrote this. Then I texted sabrina. I really wish I could text kyle cause I remember I would tell him my nightmares on seroquel.