Hello my friends. One aspect of CPTSD from dark tetrad parent abuse that I've not talked much about are the nightmares. Since I started really examining these dreams, I'm seeing them as memories of abuse, neglect, exploitation, abandonment, endangerment, invalidation, shaming, gaslighting, parentification, scapegoating. I'm also understanding that the anxiety, shame, fear, guilt and exhaustion I've felt all my life is being played out in those dreams. If I needed proof that I was abused, I've only to look at my nightmares. You just can't make this stuff up.
Here's how. Note I uses dreams and nightmares interchangeably but you need to know that, call them what you will, they're always awful and upsetting.
It's hard to describe them because they are insanely chaotic. I'm in uncomfortable, dangerous, unsanitary, unfamiliar places and complicated situations that are always changing. I'm always responsible for many children that I don't know or know what I'm supposed to be doing with them. I just know there are a lot of expectations, many more than one person could handle.
Agewise, I'm in an adult body, usually, but I'm being ordered around and scolded like a child. Or like I was as a child. Not how I treat children. Everyone is heaping tasks on me. There are mountains of dirty laundry, dishes, cooking and housework to do. The more I do the more there are like in Rumpelstiltskin. I have to get people places, put children to bed, feed them, bathe them, keep them safe. All by myself.
So that part is bad enough. But the adults are the worst part They're bossy, bullying and demanding. They're always doing some big theatrical, self-aggrandized thing that doesn't amount to a hill of beans. They're bragging and showing off, but leaving me to do all the real work to me. They're annoyed with me for failing to do it all but not lifting a finger to help.
And the interesting part is how I'm responding. I'm working my tail off to do all that's put before me. I'm apologizing for being in the way, as I struggle to do all these tasks. I'm apologizing for asking questions about the children's care because I'm "interrupting" the adults to whom the children belong. They yell and snap at me for things I'm supposedly failing. But they don't assist or explain what I'm supposed to be doing.
Some variation of this happens every single night in my dreams. Multiple times a night. Sometimes nights are just one long dream sequence. I wake up more tired than when I went to bed. I dread going to sleep for the nightmares. This has been going on as long as I can remember.
All that's crazy but what's really disturbing are my feelings throughout it all. I think they are the biggest indicators that all the crap my parents put me through, happened. And how it damaged me very deeply. I'm not making it up or exaggerating.
Now you might think that all this endless work would make me angry, bitter, rebellious, resentful. But in my dream I never am. I'm just anxious to please. And they are always pissed off with me. I feel stupid, in the way, inept, like I'm just one big nuisance. I literally feel sick with how much of a loser I am compared to them. And I always go into shame mode and work harder. I never just stop and say, nope, no more.
In some dreams, the entire family, plus people I'm not related to, like my dad's wife's family, are all grouped around me like some kind of tribunal that I've been called to stand trial in front of. They ambush me by inviting me to an innocent thing and then all take turns attacking me. I'm crying because I feel so guilty and sorry for whatever they say I've done. But I never can remember anything I actually did.
Except, sometimes, and this is the really whacked-out part, I have dream memories of doing things that I have never done in real life. Those dream memories are so real that I believe all my life I did those things. One I think I may have shared was a memory of continually waking my dad up and him being angry.
But when I really look back, I know that never happened. My dad was always so easy to upset and I walked on eggshells always. I also felt so guilty (because he rubbed it in my face) how HE had to work nights and how I'd better jump through hoops with gratitude for that. Now, interestingly, no one ever worried about how much homework I had when they issued their commands. I did all their housework and co-slept with their children, getting up night with them, since I was 12. No one worried about waking me up and I was dealing with trauma nightmares even then.
When I was 11, my mom's unemployed boyfriend, who lived with us, would rage if he was awakened. He would sleep on the couch and blare the TV till 4 am. I slept upstairs with their four foster children ages 6 mo to 4. I was so shell shocked by all the loud, raucous noises that I would walk and talk, even cry in my sleep. I would check the kids and wander around confused. He and my mom would laugh at me. Or she would pout and dump on me about how he never came to bed (they had an apartment in the basement). Dad's wife did the same as I slept with her babies.
Now maybe you can see where a lot of my nightmares come from. Would you believe it's taken me 59 years to figure that out? I'm not having much success getting them under control but I'm praying about it and I assume maybe I'm supposed to be learning something from them.
One thing I'm seeing is that I've been made to play the parent and adult role all my life. And I've been treated like an annoying nuisance. I would be given lists of adult chores to do and then told to be seen and not heard like a naughty kid. It was exactly like it is in my dreams: the shaming, the grandiose attitudes of the adults, their dismissive scoffing at me, their endless demands, all of it.
I think my young mind couldn't process the amount of responsibility I was forced to take on. I think that's why I'm burdened in my dreams with impossible tasks. I was forever terrified at failing in some way. They set me up putting too much on me, including things they wouldn't and couldn't do. I think the child trapped inside me, who never had a childhood, is constantly seeking not only approval but also a way to do all that's expected of her. her missing youth.
I think she is beginning to see that she never won the approval because they always move the target to keep her hopping. And maybe, she's seeing that she doesn't care anymore. Their approval was never worth having anyway, if it had to be earned in such demanding, demeaning ways. And every so often, in my dreams, she talks back. The other night, I was dreaming that they were actually the ones waking me up. And I realized this was how it really was. And in my dream, I was the one, not my dad, to stomp downstairs and demand what the hell they were thinking waking me up?? For once, it was they who jumped and looked guilty.
So nightmares are exhausting in more ways that one. I'm grateful for what I'm learning but ready to be done with them now.
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