STORYTIME – Nightmares

I haven’t been a good sleeper in years. Now when I was a baby, I was a pro sleeper. But you start sprinkling in some trauma and all of a sudden Mr. Sandman is nowhere to be found.

Enter Dustin.

I’ve always hated sleeping with someone else in the bed, aside from my Mommie. I can’t stand snoring, I abhor cuddling, the whole experience just wasn’t for me.

Enter Dustin.

All of a sudden I was sleeping 4 hours at a time, no breaks! His snoring was like a lullaby, and being wrapped up calmed my sensory system. But the thing that impressed me most was how he handled my nightmares.

The first time I had a nightmare with him he just squeezed me until my body relaxed and I fell back asleep. He didn’t speak a word. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He didn’t ask for details. Just squeeze and snore.

While I was grateful for the additional zzz’s I was almost insulted. He didn’t even care that I had been upset.

Wrong.

I asked him a few days later why he didn’t talk me through it. He explained that suppressing my system and allowing me to drift back off was more effective in not allowing the nightmare to dominate the rest of the night. If he encouraged me to talk about it then it was kept at the surface and would either prevent me from falling back asleep or would return once I went back to Dreamland.

He always encouraged me to talk about the scariness during the safety of daylight hours, but once my breathing changed and my body tensed at night, he just held on until it passed, rubbed my head or back, and resumed my lullaby.

If the nightmare was extreme, he would put on sleep videos on YouTube or play Buddhist monks on Spotify.

Lucky for me now, I don’t have nightmares, cause I don’t sleep 🤷‍♀️