Ask Lemmy

If you want something specific, simple, and believe it or not evidence based to do:

Do a simple, repetitive task that uses both your eyes and hands

• crocheting / knitting
• coloring
• simple arcade / phone style games such as Tetris, candy crush, or snake

...while listening to instrumental music. Jazz, classical, lofi, or EDM are all great options, but you might also consider a video game soundtrack

This will gently stimulate your subconscious to get some processing done kind of in the way walking / water aerobics is good for physical rehab.

almost three years without my dad. the nightmares have pretty much stopped. every once in a long while i'll have really what i'd call a stress dream more than a nightmare. they're different, bearable. so it really will get better.

the grief might be there a long time. perhaps forever. i remember sobbing when i realized that he'd always been there for my whole life but now he'd always be missing. for the rest of life. but your relationship with that grief will change tremendously. therapy will help, i promise. if it doesn't, get a new therapist.

there's some great advice in this thread. mainly i wanted you to know you're not alone. it's not just you. it's not abnormal. and i wanted to join in because these comments have been valuable to me, too. to rephrase, your question has helped me. so thank you.

my heart goes out to you, friend. stay strong. stay hopeful. stay grateful.

may their memory be a blessing to you.

idk how to help you, but this image helped me:

Your grief will come and go and manifest in bizarre ways.

According to the dual process model of grief, healthy grieving involves oscillation between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented behaviours. Basically, you need to sit with the feelings some of the time, and pursue new experiences some of the time.

The important thing is to be able to switch between the two when your mind needs you to. If you get stuck in one or the other, the grieving process stops getting better.

So if you need to take a break from thinking about it, take that break. Just as long as you can come back to thinking about it when you're ready.

Each time I've lost someone the intensity of the dreams and grief began to taper off at around the 6 month mark. Things got better after that.

So sorry you lost your mom.

It's shit. It's really really shit. I'm so sorry.

I was by my mother's side as she passed. No one tells you about the noises and sounds, how the way they hold their face changes, how their breath becomes a wheeze, and becomes a really quite unusually loud gasp, so loud and uncomfortable that you're amazed it doesn't wake them, and then shallows further and further until it stops. No one tells you how quickly we lose our heat. There are so many tiny yet striking new experiences that you somehow have to fold into your broader lifelong experience of them as a person, as your mother, that it takes time to process. Their death is such a tiny fragment of who they were, time can help contextualise that

Until then, it's shit.

X

I'm so sorry. When I lost my sweet, patient, and kind primary caregiver, it took a long time to process and get over the pain of my loss. Then one night, over a year later, I had a good dream about them engaging in an activity we engaged in together, and seemingly quite happy. We spoke, exchanged hugs. And it was incrementally better, after that.

Your time may be less or more. Give yourself grace and compassion, no matter how long it takes, ok? Wishing you a speedy and complete healing.

First, you're not alone. Second, it's almost three years out from my Dad's passing - the dreams are rare now, but still there. A month is no time at all to process. When you get past the probate (if you need to), and close the estate, that's when you stop just endlessly grieving and start healing and moving forward.

My suggestion? Fight the depression and other stuff holding you back. Form new memories, physical and social ones. Go hiking on new trails. Join a sport. Join an in-person RPG group. Do new things. Meet new people.

By giving your brain more new stuff to deal with, you'll have less time to dream about her.

It's truly different for everyone. For me it's never really stopped but the frequency is much less often. My son was born 3 months premature and was gone after nine days, it's been twenty years since. Losing my wife in 2019 didn't help. There are a lot of other reasons behind still having the nightmares but it's just something I've learned to live with.

So sorry for your loss. You're a stronger person than me. My dad passed when I was 16. Liver and kidney failure from alcolishm. We weren't exactly close, and I cant say i liked him at the time, but he was still my dad. I couldn't handle being there in the end. The sounds like you describe them were too much. I never had grief nightmares, but i also haven't had vivid dreams since i was like 10. I did have a few panic / anxiety attacks in the years immediately after, but they stopped pretty quick. I'm about to turn 30, and I promise you, every day gets a little easier. I'm sure your therapist is a better resource, but you ever want to talk to an anonymous stranger, my DMs are open.

If you trauma dump enough it should get better.

Idk If it your kind of jam but right now there is really good show airing that deals with grief "journal with witch". It would be shock theraphy so take this as trigger warning.

My best tool in coping with grief, as a neurodivergent that has had a lifetime of difficulty in dealing with/understanding loss- has been in the acceptance that I was never going to avoid this.

What I mean is, this was something that was going to happen eventually. They could not have outrun it, they could not have “healthed” their way around it. It WILL happen. And accepting this goes a long way to help to resolve the constant “what could I have done differently” part.

What does this have to do with nightmares? I’m getting to that.

Basically, Grief comes in two flavors;

There’s the “selfish” part, which is the idea that YOU won’t ever get to be with them again- and how it hurts that YOU will now forever have a massive hole in YOUR life that get once filled, that they will never have any new interactions with YOU

And then there’s the “selfless” part, which is sadness and empathy for THEIR pain, and the worry that THEY were suffering, that THEY will never have any new reactions with you.

When these two things mix together- from my experience, the selfish one is always the loudest. It’s the one that drives the knives into my heat.

… and it’s the one that brings the nightmares.

And nightmares oftentimes are a subconscious manifestation of guilt.

Once you come to terms with the fact that this was something that was always going to happen, it gets easier to work through the pain and come to a place of peace. Just know that the love you had for her remains untouched and timeless.

The nightmares will eventually cease, and her all of your memories of her will bring warmth and comfort.

Just hang in there and try and be good to yourself through this.

❤️

I lost my dad 5 years ago this month. It doesn't get easier, but it does get less "every day". I still occasionally dream about him, but less often. I still sometimes have anxiety "can't sleep" times, but less often.

I snuggle my dog and my teddy bear and that helps. I also sometimes take an as-needed anti-anxiety medication when I really need some help, and it both knocks the anxiety down and makes me sleepy.

I also listen to podcasts to help focus my mind and get me to sleep. One I used to use is "nothing much happens". She tells a story with lots of detail but little of importance, like a trip to the market, the fruit she picked up, the smell of the apples. Then she tells the same story, in the same words, again, except slower.

All trauma and people are different. I'm not prescribing anything.

When i was going through mine from a severe work accident i had to not just sit with the feeling and adrenaline waking up after watching meaningless gore-filled horror shows in my dreams but push into it. Feeling it as hard as i possibly could telling myself that I WANTED and NEEDED to feel it, trying my best to think about every detail of it. It was horrible to experience that, but in the moment i was focused on seeing my trauma and getting to know it.

It seemed the deeper into it i went the faster it receded over time. The worst of it, fits of adrenaline filled crippling anxiety, went from daily to null over 3 years. The wincing about the thought dulled over the following few. I settled at some point on just having a heightened internal sense of empathy. It's probably why i avoid a lot of visual format social media.

I hope you find a method that works for you. You may not get back to your old normal but you can get to a normal where you can live life in whole again free from this pain.

Looks like you're been given a lot of good advice here, and it sounds like you're already doing what you need to. In the short term, what helped me was to focus on basic sleep hygiene. Avoid caffeine and alcohol as they can cause more vivid dreams (REM rebound). Keep to the same schedule every night, reduce screen time before bed, make sure you're properly hydrated, make sure you're getting enough exercise etc etc etc. All the usual things people tell you to do. They're all good things to do anyway, but I found that having a plan and sticking to it helped me a lot

This sounds terrible. I'm sorry for your loss. I hope you find your way through this soon.

Sounds pretty rough! Sorry to hear that

In my experience, grief comes in waves, and they slowly diffuse and get weaker and further apart. So it will slow at some point, and then it will come back again, but less intense, and that will repeat until it fades into the background of your mind.. Sorry I can't suggest a timeframe, that's too context dependant.

Something else I've found useful is listening to podcasts about grief - there are quite a few of them, and the wisdom is pretty transferrable, and it has that good vibe of feeling like there are others out there who get it.

I just wanted to let you know that you’re not alone, and while it never fully goes away, it can get better over time. Shit like this sucks, and what you’re going through is normal; i.e. there is nothing wrong with you.

Keep doing what you’re doing. You got this!

First of all, I'm so sorry for your loss. I really hope you can find meaning in this situation and use it as a way of learning what you want more of in life.

I think the goal right now is for you to live a good life, one in which you're the kind of person that you want to be.

When you say that you "try to sit with [your] feelings as they happen", I'm really glad that you're doing that. It's not easy. But the alternative causes much more suffering and doesn't teach you what's meaningful in your life. Also, when you say that "[you're] in therapy", I'm also glad. Therapy, when it's good, makes accepting hard realities easier.

I have also gone through losses and had nightmares immediately after the loss. In fact, this happened to me in November 2025. The night after my loss I woke up breathing intensely. My eyes were wet, almost as if I was crying while asleep. I woke up in the middle of a gasp, as if I was about to start screaming. It sucked.

Eventually, I was able to sleep normally again. And, as you mentioned, everyone is different.

There are things that you can do, but I want to emphasize something that you probably already know: the pain cannot magically go away. Why? Because you cared about her. Because now that she isn't here, you're reconstructing your self, your expectations, and your everyday life. And that reconstruction process is painful. As you rebuild these parts, the pain will gradually go away. But trying to avoid it will cause more suffering.

I will not dwell in this point, because you already know it. Instead let's talk about what you can do.

You can actually work on accepting this new reality. You can be deliberate about it. I tend to suggest acceptance and commitment therapy exercises. They are evidence-based and they have worked for me and countless others. You can find some exercises here.

However, in my experience, not all exercises are the same. Some are more powerful for me. In particular, I think there's a massive difference between experiential exercises and merely verbal exercises. The experiential ones are more transformative for me.

Which experiential exercises would I recommend? There's a couple in Steven C. Hayes' book A Liberated Mind:

• In defusion, there's "Look at it as an object".
• In acceptance and self, there's "Applying Perspective-Taking to Acceptance".
• In presence there's good ol' mindfulness, which will definitely help you right now.
• In values there's "values writing" and "flipping pain into purpose". Both will help you learn from this experience and help you take steps towards living the kind of life that you want to live.

In that same book, there's an example of someone who had nightmares with a dinosaur. ACT helped them deal with those nightmares.

As always, I want to say that not everyone clicks with ACT and there are many ways of accepting tough situations and committing to who we want to become.

I hope this is helpful and feel free to ask questions.

If you're a hug person, I send you a big ol' hug via Lemmy. I also wish the best for you.

in my case, it depends on the circumstances surrounding the trauma. I was able to process some untimely loss within a reasonable amount of time, but some others continue to haunt me for years

I haven't had to deal with this many times personally. A great grandparent, great aunt and uncle, you know, ones you expect.

I've only had one occasion to deal with that affected my day to day, a younger sibling. And I've blacked out a lot of the next couple weeks of it tbh. Happened right before the end of my senior year of high school. I don't think I had a nightmare phase, but even now, almost 22 years later, it just takes thinking about it for too long before I feel the hurt and sadness again. I don't envy anyone in your spot.

Emotional triggers will vary by person anyway, so I don't know how much good any answers to this question will be.

But at least we can all commiserate. The experience is pretty universal. The reactions will differ, just due to differences in the situation it happened in and the personality of the survivors, but we all understand loss.

You can try hypnosis I heard it's pretty effective for better sleeping. Personally I never had sleep problems but I would if it happens to me.

As others have said, it's different for everyone. But it will probably take a while longer. And when they finally stop happening that often, be prepared for them coming back around her dying day for years to come.

I’ve found cannabis to be great at stopping nightmares. I’ve also found they come back extra vivid when you stop. Get extra exercise, go to bed tired. Keep up the therapy. It will take time, more than 30 days. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of processing to do and your brain is trying to get it out at night. We all handle grief and death differently. Seeing someone you love in that state is traumatizing. Losing a parent is a kick to the mortality balls. Life is full of death, I hope you can heal from this one.