Hi Faith,

I have been in intensive CBT for my PTSD for the past year and I just couldn't take the nightmares anymore. There is no mystery to them, they are all directly related to my trauma. I began not wanting to sleep and I now have a terrible sleep disorder.

My psychiatrist put me on Prazosin (a high blood pressure med) which has an off label benefit of helping with nightmares. I took 1mg and they completely stopped. About 6 months later it just stopped working completely. I tried upping the dose and I couldn't go higher than 2mgs because I am already on the low side of a normal BP and that lowered it too much and I was passing out .

I don't know whether it just stopped working or not because I had a traumatic dissociative episode related to the PTSD and that is when it stopped working so that could be why. There is another med. being used for nightmares too called Periactin. It didn't help me but has others.

I am in the process right now of getting an EEG and sleep study done. I just had my consultation on Monday. I have done a ton of research on this and these tests can be extremely helpful in evaluating what is going on in the brain. Like you, I wires freak me out, they are directly related to my trauma and so I haven't figured out how I can actually do this, even though I want to have it done.

I toured the sleep center and was able to over come some other obsticles that were also holding me back. They do allow someone to spend the night in the room with you, not in the bed though and I would be able to have the one room there with windows. There is no way I can go into a small room to sleep with no windows, again another huge triggger.

My sleep center has a website and a video showing a woman checking in for her sleep study and getting wired up. There were wires on just about every part of her body and straps above and below her chest. By the time she got into bed she looked like a suicide bomber. NO way I could do that. I found out in my consultation that I don't have to have all that as I don't have sleep apnea or restless leg or other things they use the wires for. So now I am just down to wires on the head.

I will find a way to do it, I have to. My body is taking a real toll and I don't know how much longer it can take it. I am going to do some exposure therapy in preparation and hope that helps.