dreams and thoughts

dreams and thoughts
Posted September 16, 2010 - 11:53am
0

how long until he's not the first thing on my mind when I wake up, and until I stop dreaming about him?
for god's sake we are divorced, and I KNOW DAMN WELL, he aint having this problem. It SUCKS :(

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kiwi10's picture

no dreams now

September 17, 2010 - 12:14pm — kiwi10

now that i have a solution, no dreams of course!
i did have a lot of thoughts in the middle of the night, but that was probably form hearing his stupid voicemail... any ideas on how to stop those thoughts?

gettinbetter's picture

fierflie

September 16, 2010 - 3:59pm — gettinbetter

I have been having the same problem. I have been thinking about this mess 24/7 dreams obessesive thoughts I cried myself to sleep last night

Alive's picture

sick of it

September 17, 2010 - 1:48pm — Alive

hope you are feeling better today....x

Briseis's picture

LOL!! It hasn't been very

September 16, 2010 - 3:34pm — Briseis

LOL!! It hasn't been very long honey!

Hmmm. Honestly, it took me a year and a half before I realized I no longer thought about him 24/7.

It is a matter of time, but I can see how MAYBE I could have tweaked myself a bit more to hurry up the process.

I threw myself headlong into my new life, as fast as I could go. I wasn't completely prepared, either, but it was worth it in the long run.

Nature abhors a vaccuum :) And your exNarc took up a LOT of space in your head. He still does cuz there ain't nothing in there yet to replace him with.

Time will take care of it, to some degree, if you do nothing. Life will happen, opportunities will come by and you'll take them, and gradually the space he used to rent in your head will get smaller and smaller. I'd say my exNarc has finally been kicked off the property but he still skulks around out in the back woods where I rarely go :P

If you want to move more quickly, then you have to deliberately do something new in your life, that fascinates you and takes up a lot of your attention.

My path through this was a combination of the above.

Just that you want him out of your head is going to mean he WILL be out. Time and some effort will do the trick. The beauty is, just living NORMALLY, ie, meeting new folks, working, going to school, exploring new ideas . . . that's what will evict him. He will be gone, hon. I promise.

better off's picture

I agree with all the above,

September 17, 2010 - 12:38pm — better off

I agree with all the above, but also helpful is changing small things to change your routine thought patterns. Sounds simple, but it makes a difference.

For example, I started driving a different way to work. You have to actually pay more attention and there is less mind-wandering. Take different routes. Shop at a different grocery store from now on. Change your hair... see something a bit different in the mirror. Rearrange your furniture or get some different artwork, even a cheap poster if you haven't got much money. Something that represents YOU.

This doesn't sound like much, but if your thoughts are going in obsessive loops it breaks the routine patterns you've developed.

As for dreams, I don't remember how long that lasted, but Briseis is right, if you find new activities eventually that will be what you think about and then dream about. I started watercolor painting, just for myself, and damn it's hard! But I'm kind of good at it. :) But it requires a lot of concentration and that's time I was NOT thinking about him.

Then one day my dreams changed... I used to dream a lot about being in different places (an office building, a college campus, a marina, an army base) and I couldn't find him... he was always juuust out of reach, in the next room, on the next boat, and I would get there and he'd just left and was in another area... one day I had the same "searching" dream and I was searching and searching, for the right color of yellow paint. LOL I just couldn't find it!! I laughed when I woke up.

Now I just have normal nonsensical dreams.

ShaynasMommy's picture

I have something similar,

September 16, 2010 - 1:26pm — ShaynasMommy

But it involves every once in a great while I will have a dream where my husband is acting like a total pig, cheating on me,stringing me along, D&D, etc., all the things my ex narc did to me. I just rage at him during the dream and feel really victorious. And I feel totally guitly when I wake up because My husband is the exact opposite of the N! And there's really no excuse anymore for this except when I was pregnant and had the cheating spouse dream, which Im told is quite common when youre expecting.

Anybody else have this problem, of projecting subconsiously onto your current partner?

wholeagain's picture

Ugh yes

September 16, 2010 - 3:14pm — wholeagain

In dreams I do and I feel awful when I wake up from them. And sometimes I get random anxiety that yet again I will discover a betrayal. My bf knows what I went through so I can talk it out with him, he too is the opposite of the ex.

I guess it's therapeutic sometimes to think it through--I know now that sticking around to "work it out" won't happen again. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the purple heart pin.

I have it in me to work on a relationship. I no longer have it in me to fight for one.

Susan32's picture

Fighting the good fight

September 17, 2010 - 6:19pm — Susan32

I was tired of fighting to be MYSELF in that "relationship." I was always on the defense. I wasn't fighting so much for the relationship, but I was fighting for myself.

almostlydia's picture

Excellent comment, wholeagain

September 17, 2010 - 12:21pm — almostlydia

'I have it in me to work on a relationship. I no longer have it in me to fight for one.'

Excellent, excellent, excellent. I'm writing this one in my head forever. So true. Especially when you should never have to fight against the one your trying to keep to keep something they keep telling you they 'love'.

almostlydia

iAmMINE's picture

interesting...

September 16, 2010 - 12:44pm — iAmMINE

I would like to know if this works as well.

I have only had one dream in which the jerk was in it. It was after he'd boxed me in at the Taco Bell drive thru, and a couple nights later I was dreaming about being happy in my new home and as I looked out the kitchen window there he stood outside wanting in.

I simply flipped him off and screamed at him (which was something I never did in real life) to "go away, you are not welcome here anymore!".

POOF! ~ no more dreams :)

~~~~~ “The best revenge is to survive and be victorious over it. Nobody can take from you what you don’t give them,” --she said, (taken from my final remarks in a Sync Weekly Magazine article about my art and mySelf :)

betty2020's picture

Hey Fierfly, This is perfect

September 16, 2010 - 12:08pm — betty2020

Hey Fierfly,
This is perfect that you brought this up. I need someone to test out this for me and your the perfect candidate, if you dont mind. As you know I was at the IVAT conference over the past few days. I was in a session with two docs from university of Ohio and their doing a lot of work with PTSD and they recommended something with regards to the dreams. I use to have constant nightmares of him and it exhausted me so much my health was in danger. So heres the recommendation:

In the morning when you wake up and you have had a bad dream write it down with as much detail as you can recall. Dont drive yourself mad just as much as you can remember.
Then at night read it then rewrite it with changing one thing in the dream. It can be even as simple as the clothing your wearing or not wearing...It can be anything you want to change but only change one thing.
Then re read this new updated version to yourself 3 times before you fall off to sleep.
This is suppose to work but it takes time and practice in developing this skill to alter your dreams. I would love for you to try this as i am so wondering if it really works. I have sense stopped dreaming so I cant test this out myself but would love to hear if it works for you or any others on the board. Please let me know if you would try it.....

xoxo
Betty

only one way to go...Forward (tm?)

almostlydia's picture

Very interesting idea, I

September 16, 2010 - 12:15pm — almostlydia

Very interesting idea, I would like to hear the results as well. I no longer have dreams about the exN at all. It seems he became completely absent in my dreams and then only occasionally shows up. An odd thing that was happening was that I would forget what I was dreaming almost the moment I woke up even when I purposely intended to remember. I know our dreams tell us what is really going on deep down so I was trying to pay attention and then they were just gone. Life is weird.

almostlydia

kiwi10's picture

betty

September 16, 2010 - 12:12pm — kiwi10

i would certainly love to try this.
most of the dreams I have of him, oddly enough are not nightmares. in my dreams we happy usually, which i odd considering he was almost always cruel to me. at least for the last year and a half. but i'll try it for sure. does it stop the dreaming for any particular reason? i'm a psychology major, so i would love to know...

betty2020's picture

Oh i totally know what your

September 16, 2010 - 12:34pm — betty2020

Oh i totally know what your saying. A lot of my dreams with him were not always bad. But i call them nightmares b/c i couldn't get him out of my mind.

I believe what this does is to train your mind to control your dreams through the act of changing it. She claims she uses this a lot and has worked with many of her patients. She is a research doctor from the University of Ohio and she is going to be sending me more information on this and a study that she is working on for PTSD.

She claims that once a person has been victimize and suffer PTSD symptoms they have an overwhelming sense of loss of control and powerlessness in their lives. To the point of where the symptoms are debilitating and it interferes with their routine activities. This spills over into their sleep and dreaming and has a severe affect on the patients health.
So she began to use this dream technique with her patients to give them back control in their dreams. She gives them the ability to change one thing. She said over time as her patients worked with it they began to control their dreams. Eventually the trauma in the dreams were completely wiped out, gone. I found this fascinating as i have never heard of this but i can see the logic behind it. I wished i would have had this some months ago when i was going through this very problem. Would love to know how it works for you. If your ok with sharing this on the msg board that would be great for everyone to hear but if not you can let me know through an email

Take care...
xoxo

only one way to go...Forward (tm?)