sleep thrashing and nightmares

I woke up yesterday morning and noticed I had a huge huge bruise on the inner part of my thigh, and it worried me, and not only did it worry me, but it triggered me.

So I did some research and talked to a close therapist friend of mine about it, and she helped me to understand it a little more.

I had another nightmare Friday night into Saturday this past weekend, only this time my oldest son Christopher heard it happening and got worried and stood in the room with me for a while until I fell back to sleep.

This is my 2nd nightmare of not only waking up crying, but intense vivid horrific actions from my past happening all over again.

When I woke up Sunday morning I saw that I had a bruise, I panicked! I talked to a close friend of mine who also is a cognitive therapist and she told me about “Sleep Thrashing” and that is probably how I got the bruises.

I am not sure if I have mentioned this before or not, but I am very protective of my body. When I sit down, I must have a pillow on my lap. I have been that way since I was little. I must have something covering my lap area and if I don’t I feel very uncomfortable.

When I talk about something difficult in therapy, I will put my hands down to cover and protect my private areas. When my therapist holds my hand to connect while talking about something hard, my other hand will go straight for protection and my therapist will then ask me “what are you protecting yourself from?” and he will help me be aware of it.

This is something I struggled with for a long long time.

When I was younger I had bruises in my thighs all the time and I imagine it was from the sexual abuse and physical abuse I endured, and it only makes sense that I could have gotten the bruise in my sleep this past weekend from thrashing and protecting myself.

I sat with it for a while and it makes sense, and it also makes me sad.

My therapist and I plan to work hard this week on trying to get to the bottom of where these sudden intense dreams are coming from. He truly feels that it has something to do with surfaced emotions from the younger part of me that are here wanting to be heard and honored and felt.

I am not one that deals with nightmares or thrashing. Waking up crying once in a while out of my sleep, yes, but this is intense and it’s triggering as well, and when it comes to it being physical, that scares me, and it hits WAY too close to home.

I really wonder what is going on inside. What needs voice? what emotions are here at the surface. I wonder what part of the young part inside needs comfort and support and why is it here so BIG?

I see my therapist later on today and I hope to really touch base on this. I am the type of person that when I understand something, its manageable .. when I don’t understand something its big and feels bigger in fear.

I never experienced anything like this before in my sleep, and I hope I can figure out what it is and give name to whatever is here and needs voice or emotion.