Shots - Health Blog Sun January 15, 2012 Ending Nightmares
Caused By PTSD Everyone has nightmares sometimes. But for people
with PTSD, it's different. Sam Brace doesn't want to talk about
what he saw when he was a soldier in Iraq eight years ago. In
fact, it's something he's actively trying not to dwell on. But
what he can't control are his dreams. They're almost always
about the same explosion. "When I was overseas, we'd hit an
IED," Brace says. "When I have a nightmare, normally it's
something related to that." Healthy dreams seem kind of random,
according to Steven Woodward, a psychologist with the National
Center for PTSD at the VA Medical Center in Menlo Park, Calif.
"They're wacky," he says. "They associate lots of things that
are not normally associated." PTSD dreams are the same real-life
event played over and over again like a broken record.
"Replicative nightmares of traumatic events ... repeat for
years," Woodward says. "Sometimes 20 years." Scientists wanted
to find out the reason why people with