BPDFamily.com

Hi,

just wondering how many of us dated a BPD that had reoccurring nightmares? Mine eventually had the same nightmare every night of being molested since age 9-14 by her mothers bf. When we first met she didn't have the nightmares sleeping with me, but as we became closer, and spent many nights together, she started reliving her past in her dreams. She told me about the molestation the first night we met red-flag, but after a few months together I saw the change in her, as we woke up more and more together. On those mornings, Black hollow eyes, and she would say... he was in my dreams

Ugh that's so sad!

That's awful.

I've had 2 exes that I believe were sexually abused.

The first would twitch and jerk badly in her sleep, like she was dreaming and fighting something.  She would also do this somewhat while half asleep, as if she was afraid something would happen to her as she was in bed and vulnerable.  The twitching was bad enough to wake me up.  I kind of figured out what it was about, so it was also emotionally distressing.

The second, my recent uBPDexgf, told me she used to have recurrent nightmares.  She never told me what the content was.  She said in her 20s she drank to the point of blacking out so that she would not have them or at least not remember them.

Very sad indeed.

Mine had them.

My ex had nightmares... .the whimpering woke me up often, it was very very sad.  Sometimes she could remember what the nightmares were about, sometimes she couldn't.  I always thought it had to do with her physically abusive ex.

It's not unusual to find pretty serious truama in pwBPD.

My ex BPDw had horrible nightmares as well, the worst of which involved a general theme of death.  The content of the dreams varied a bit (I had died, she had died, a loved one from her disordered family had died), but death was an all-consuming fear with her.  This is surely due to the extreme physical ailments she suffered as a child (a series of heart defects that nearly killed her a number of times before she'd even hit five years old).  There was a lot of unresolved trauma associated with these childhood experiences, as well as additional trauma associated with unrelated neglect and/or abuse. 

It broke my heart when she'd wake up sobbing in the middle of the night after experiencing these nightmares, and they continued for our entire time together.  In hindsight, given this extreme fear of death, the passing of my mother probably ended up being a deal-breaking trigger for her in the end.  She and my mom had become extremely close, and my mom's death pushed her WAY over the edge... .so much so that I had to (or rather, made the choice to) forego my own grieving in order to soothe her.  The fact that one of her therapists (yes, she had many) told us at the time that I absolutely had to put my own feelings aside about my mom's passing in order to help my ex get through it surely validated her feelings on the matter.  By the time she'd begun to function again, my stages of experiencing grief had been severely interrupted, and this eventually coincided with the BPDw leaving our marriage.  It left me a wreck, but I got through it eventually.

The BPDx didn't have nightmares but she was kind of an insomniac. She'd stay up through all hours of the night.

I have recurrent nightmares about suicide attempts and the desperation in watching on. Sometimes I stagger out of bed in a daze to secure all potentially dangerous items, as per my usual routine when we had a relationship, before realizing I'm now in a safe environment. The clinical terminology to describe these moments include intrusive thoughts which are characteristic post-traumatic stress disorder. Many of you might better recognize that situation being described as a flashback, which also include different varieties. Although sexual trauma does not guarantee this sort of response, it can certainly be understandable.

Yup. At the beginning he dreamt almost every night of being physically abused (in a multitude of ways) by the very people around him (especially those he liked, me for example). He has a backround of repated abuse, stuff that happend long before we met. But shomehow his subcounciousness showed us, people he liked and trusted on the day time, as torturing and raping him at night. Waking up, and shaking away those dreams would take him a lot time. In the worst time it has taken something like six hours until he was okay.


Now his dreams are not about abuse that  much anymore, but they are still quite horrible. They're more overall disturbed and mentally pressing, a lot of anxiety. His dreamt of his dog dying (she's _really_ important to him), or making some huge mistake, or being wrongly persecuted. Quite recently he had a nightmare were he deliberately overdosed.

He is diagnosed with PTSD & early childhood attachment disorder with OCD, DID, BPD and anorexia (they're all parts of ptsd i've understood; the BPD and DID traits originally brought me here). Has a lot less flashback now (he is being treated), but i think there is still a lot intrusive thoughts he has to struggle with - those being the OCD type i.e. thougths of him doing something really disturbed to someone. These thoughts are in reality the very opposite of him, ie stuff he would never ever do no matter how sick in mind. He explained me that they are so vivid that he (and others with similar problem) are sure they are about to do something that horrible.

And like clydegriggith's ex - he avoids getting to bed. Rather stays up very long.