My boyfriend of four years, just recently broke up with me. I'm in the process of moving out of our apartment, while he is staying with friends and family. For the past week though, I can't sleep at all because within an hour of falling asleep I begin having nightmares about him. He never abused me in any way during our relationship, but in the dreams I'm having he is physically hurting me. In the first one he hit me in the face, in another one he was holding me down on the ground with my arms behind my back, and in the one I had earlier tonight he was throwing me up against our bedroom wall. I've never been one to have nightmares much, especially this frequent. I wake up and my heart is racing and all I want to do is cry. Then I can't get back to sleep and all day I'm left with the horrible feelings those dreams gave me. I'm almost afraid to sleep now and I feel like I'm going crazy. So I guess what I'm trying to ask is, is this a normal side effect of a break up and does anyone have any ideas on avoiding the nightmares?

I'm no expert on brain function, but it's probably just your sub-conciousness running rampant when you fall asleep. I'd imagine that the same feelings you have when you are awake, you have when you are asleep... you just get tossed into an imaginary place where your feelings and thoughts become reality for ~12 hours. I'm sorry that you are having to go through such things. Try a nice bath with salts, and all that other good girlie stuff. I'd think anything to help you relax would help, maybe a sleep aid, but I don't like drugs.

Hope you feel better!

4 years is a long time to be with someone, and you can expect all kinds of emotional fall out to come. Click on the links in my signature, and see if the suggestions they present, can help you, and let us know.

You need to seek out a counselor. I am very series here. Seeking out a counselor will help you come out emotionally with your experience. When you begin to deal with these emotional issues it will stop coming out in your dreams as abuse.

4 Years of being together and breaking up now, there is a lot of upheavel in your life and you need help dealing with it. The issues that surrounded the breakup your relationship as a whole and dealing with it being over is a lot.

I had some problems years ago that were unrelated to relationships and I started having nightmares. It was always the same, I was on top of a skyscraper and I would jump/fall off and just as I was about to hit the ground (always head first for some reason) I would wake up sweating. At first I just laid there the rest of the night never getting back to sleep but then I got up and walked around the neighborhood and came back and took a hot shower. When my situation passed so did the nightmares.

Your dreams are kind of like your thoughts that can't form. I always have nightmares, they are more directed towards the breakup anxieties that I have having now... since we broke up 2 weeks ago. You are stressed, for sure, and sometimes it's too hard to actually feel the feelings we are having. Dreams can take those feeling and mesh them altogether until you have a nightmare.

You dreampt that he slapped you in the face, that he threw you up against a wall, that he had your hands restricted. Those are feelings that your dreams has just put into images. He just recently broke up with you, so it's still a shock, everyday while you are trying to get out of the apt, pack up everything, and move on... it's an emotional slap to the face, he's put you up against a wall and restricted you emotionally.

I had a nightmare once that him and I were expecting a baby, and when I was in labor, he was not there. Not that he was stuck in an elevator shaft or anything, just he didn't bother to go. In real life, he wasn't there when I needed him, unless it was convenient for him.

Nightmares are good, it's kind of your bodies was of forcing you to deal with the emotions that we might not even know that we have.