seeking help - chronic nightmares/nightmare disorder as an adult
i am desperately seeking help for dealing with chronic nightmares. they are interefering with my daily life and are becoming borderline debilitating. i'm willing to try just about anything at this point
context/info:
- i have had nightmares every single night for more than 10 years. i do have PTSD (among other mental & physical health conditions) and am working through things in therapy
- they are vivid and high-intensity. i don't feel like i ever actually sleep. it's like i just live another life in my sleep. there are times i cannot discern what happened in a nightmare & what happened in real life
- they are often unrealistic and have little to no relation to my real life. by unrealistic, i mean the concepts are just a little far fetched but they look and feel real. the content is sometimes influenced by my real life but it feels it happens arbitrarily.
- i always wake up feeling like i just ran a marathon with my heart pounding (hard, not fast). sometimes, my eyes & face feel like i was crying in my sleep. i can sometimes shake the feeling but other days, it will replay in my mind ALL day & i cannot escape how it made me feel.
i can elaborate or provide examples of what i mean where needed.
what i have tried:
- talk therapy + my current therapy which is solution-oriented. my therapist is doing their own research in approaches to dealing w/ this so currently pending further assistance here
- multiple medications including various sleep aids (pamelor, tazadone, and amitriptyline) Prazosin which is specifically for PTSD nightmares
- journaling and mindfulness prior to sleep
- CPAP for VERY mild sleep apnea
any and all help or insight is immensely appreciated. thank you!
ETA: i have also been on other medications like clondine, zoloft, and celexa. but those were the few sleep-specific ones i took
also, the content of the nightmares is almost never the same. i have one recurrent one that has happened 2-3 times but they stay unrelated other than that. i swear i could write like 100 books at this point because i've experienced so many different "plots" lol