Chronic nightmares after narcissistic abuse - seeking solutions and support.

Hi. I’ve never been on this forum, but I wanted to challenge my self to reach out and seek some type of encouragement. I watch a lot of videos online about recovering from narcissistic abuse, particularly scapegoating and mobbing. I’ve been ganged up on and scapegoated in many different environments, and I’ve been under going a big reset in my life. I’m very dedicated to healing and creating a better life for myself- but a big and completely unforeseen problem that I’ve been facing after removing the many toxic people from my life is that I now have chronic, constant nightmares- mostly of these past people coming into my dreams to gaslight, attack me, and emotionally dump on me. It’s been going on for over 4 years now, and it is so obsessive and incessant that it feels like I can no longer focus on my self. As best I can figure out, it is a form of emotional enmeshment with these people. Especially now days, its so easy to follow people online, and I can tell that since I’ve cut off a lot of these relationships they just literally never let go of me and stopped trying to track me. But it’s feeling very invasive and making it hard to move forward in my life and feel separate from these people and situations. I’m constantly being triggered and retraumatized from nightmares, and it’s given me a lot of social anxiety that has kept me from moving forward to build new things in my life, so I feel a little bit stuck in limbo. I keep telling myself to just “get over it”, or that I’m going to try harder, but, like I said it’s been years and I feel like I’m stuck in a sand pit and like I’m making no progress at all. I was initially so excited to cut off these relationships, and there’s literally zero risk of me going back to any of them, but at the same time it’s like I have no space or inner privacy from these people. Has anyone ever experienced something like this? It’s like the psychic attack from hell.

@Opus1212 welcome to MSF. Thanks for reaching out to the community.

I am sorry that your mind is being filled with toxic images. When I keep thinking about something during my waking hours, it comes back in living color in my dreams. So in that sense I have experienced what you are talking about.

As to what to do about it, my method that helps me is mindfulness. What mindfulness does is it helps me not react to invasive thoughts or trauma from the past. I observe it and note it and then return back to a point of focus. The breath is one that I find works for me. It is always here for me and always in the present moment.

There are many youtube videos on mindfuless by Jon Kabat Zinn and others. There is also a free 8 week self guided course by Palouse Mindfulness. For a free, no ads or purchases, smartphone app you can try Healthy Minds put out by the University of Wisconsin. I have never seen another app that was so well thought out that moved me progressively day by day in short periods of participation toward a more mindful life.

So maybe you couild check to see how much these people are popping into your mind in the daytime. That may be causing or exacerbating the problem.

CANDC

[If you want me to see your reply to this post please include @CANDC in your message - not in requoting my message]

@CANDC, thank you for the response. Yeah, I agree- they pop into my head quite frequently during the day, and it's taken a long time to get the severity of that down somewhat. And that seems to have happened more as a matter of just time passing, and me not posting online for a long time. Like to make the boundary clear. I finally found a description recently from Jerry Wise Relationships Systems on YouTube where he talks about "systems stress" or "systems emotions" which is kind of matching what I've been experiencing. But he calls it the "WiFi" of the group you're plugged into, and how when we go no-contact, the systems stress of the toxic group will sky rocket. That's when they start trying to re-hoover you, smear campaigns, etc. So when I first exited these groups, the invasive thoughts were crazy. Now, it's not as bad as it was, but I still struggle to focus all throughout the day. I usually cope with the anxiety by spending too much time mindlessly scrolling, and then my whole day ends up going to waste, so I agree the mindfulness is the key part here. I think I will look first at the smartphone app and try that. I notice how I start my mornings tends to shape the rest of the day (that's why the nightmares are so irritating :/ ), so maybe if I try some of the exercises instead of going on YouTube, it'll start me off right. Because once I start to spend too much time scrolling, my anxiety just tends to snowball and then it's hard to get it back down all day even when I try.

@Opus1212

Quote:

I will look first at the smartphone app and try that. I notice how I start my mornings tends to shape the rest of the day (that's why the nightmares are so irritating :/ ), so maybe if I try some of the exercises instead of going on YouTube, it'll start me off right.

I do a morning practice to get me started in the right direction. Then I do things that create a positive outlook like doing the dishes and practicing yoga (Palouse mindfulness yoga or adrienne on you tube or five minutes tai chi)

Keep me updated on how things are going

CANDC

@CANDC, Thanks. I'm trying the HealthyMinds app. I downloaded it Friday night and have done the evening and morning exercises since then. They seemed to really help, I fell asleep more easily Friday and then Saturday I felt pretty calm all day- I was out in my car all day doing food deliveries, so that's a major time I start to ruminate because there's nothing else to do. But Saturday it was much better than usual; today was pretty bad again though. I had one of those dreams about the people gaslighting me again, and then no matter what I tried I couldn't relax and felt kind of irritated and confused. I'm gonna keep progressing through the app, though. Since this has been happening a long time, I almost forget what my mental state was like before all this started, so some of the questions or frames of reference it presents are useful. I've also been socially isolating for a long time since I cut these people off, and I haven't had any one to talk to about this stuff yet or like had any other mirroring besides these weird dreams. It's actually been a couple of years that I've been trying to either reach out through a hotline and talk to someone, or leave a comment on one of the YouTube channels for mental health that I frequent, but it was so hard to start talking about what's been going on, so I never did. But, on Tuesday this week I spent a bit typing out a long comment to one of the channels I watch because I saw another viewer said something similar about the weird nightmares, and I got hopeful. I typed the comment out and spent a while editing it, and then a few hours after I sent it I realized everything in it was a statement, and there was no questions in it so like no reason for any one to respond. Lol. But Wednesday night I was feeling horrible, like somethings gotta give so I kind of just found this forum and hopped on it the next day without thinking too much. So hopefully that means real progress is happening anyway. Thank you for listening lol

@Opus1212 glad the app is helping. That sounds encouraging. I like posting here with an anonymous name.

If you spend a lot of time on youtube, you might like to toss in a couple videos listed on the Palouse Mindfulness site. You do not have to sign up or even join the program. JUst click on week 1 or 2 and scroll down to videos and look at what might be interesting. These are professionals in mindfulness so I find them worth the time.

Feel free to post in other forums here at MSF It helps to look and see that that forum is more actively posted.

Nice chatting with you. Keep me updated

CANDC