CPAP nightmares

Hello my name is Courtney and I've suffered from sleep apnea for most of my adolescent life leading into now at 35. I just recently started sleep therapy using an APAP for about three months with no improvement and within the last month I've been using a CPAP, my current pressure is at an 8.0 and I use a nasal pillow but I've noticed I've been having disturbing dreams, which as far as I can remember I actually experienced a few times while using the APAP. The dreams usually consist of me screaming and struggling to awake or feeling paralyzed and seeing shadowy figures surrounding my bed, is this normal, will it eventually stop, are there any others suffering from this and what solutions exist, if any?

Many of us have had nightmares go away with cpap. Not many have had them start with cpap.

It does sound like your machine is not set ideally yet for you. This is pretty common as the sleep studies only study one night, and we sleep differently without the testing equipment. Please read the post at the top for new people. Let us know what machine and mask you are using. And get sleepyhead and post graphs from a typical night. We can help you zero in on better settings for you.

cburgess08 wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 03, 2018 11:41 pm

Hello my name is Courtney and I've suffered from sleep apnea for most of my adolescent life leading into now at 35. I just recently started sleep therapy using an APAP for about three months with no improvement and within the last month I've been using a CPAP, my current pressure is at an 8.0 and I use a nasal pillow but I've noticed I've been having disturbing dreams, which as far as I can remember I actually experienced a few times while using the APAP. The dreams usually consist of me screaming and struggling to awake or feeling paralyzed and seeing shadowy figures surrounding my bed, is this normal, will it eventually stop, are there any others suffering from this and what solutions exist, if any?

It is the CPAP boogeyman out to get you! Lol

In all seriousness I had similar experiences when I started out therapy and I did ask a similar question to yours. I just copped it up to your brain going into deeper sleep than it normally did without CPAP and thus your dreams could become more vivid. The other factor is that you now have a foreign object strapped to your head which in its own right is not a natural thing so your body can be interpreting the headgear and mask in whatever way the brain works and incorporating that sensation into your dreams.

In my case I would dream of being paralyzed and strapped down and immobile and a mask would be placed on my face like someone was trying to sedate me and perform a surgery against my will. I wear a full face mask so it isn’t really a surprise to me that I would have dreams of a mask being placed on my face. Of course I freaked out the first few times and would end up taking my mask off in the middle of the night only to come to my senses and then put it back on. It’s been 5 months since I started therapy and I can’t recall in more recent times of having bad dreams. Seems to have faded with time.

I always wondered why my children would sleep like rocks yet have the craziest nightmares - I can only surmise that kids have intense deep sleep (my kids at least) and that is when their little subconscious minds run wild.

I am confident your situation will get better with time. Hang in there!

I would prioritize making sure your treatment is actually effective. When my treatment was not yet optimized my dreams were so disconcerting I was afraid to go to sleep. Once I was no longer suffocating in my sleep, the scary dreams stopped. Dreams are funny things - the strongest claim to understand them is still little more than a best guess or opinion. I am convinced my untreated then undertreated sleep apnea caused mine, yet I have no science to prove it. Sometimes journaling dreams remembered can reveal a pattern if they have a common contributor.

I will have to say that I have "nightmares" now on occasion. Didn't have anything close to them for decades. I have to get up and go to the bathroom once in a while to sort of clear my head after having one.

Not a problem, not frequent. But there is little doubt the cpap treatment is part of it. I suspect the much deeper sleep is where they come from. On a better note, my other dreams are much more common and long lasting than they were before.

I know what is going on, so I just have to tell my head to ignore them.............

I've been having dreams on a nightly basis since I started treatment in 2010. Some have been scary, while most of them aren't. When we get proper sleep (via cpap treatment) they seem to occur. I used think it was of the deep sleep thang', but I can start a dream just before I eventually get up, and I momentarily drift back off to sleep. It's not unusual for cpappers…… and always be ready to "kick butt" in those dreams!

Sheriff

I cannot believe that I just woke up 30 minutes ago from guess what? A nightmare after I said here that I haven’t had one in a while! I must’ve slept well because I went to bed at 12:30 AM and was up by 6 and I normally would sleep much longer than that. I don’t feel tired at all but more rattled than anything. As others have said there isn’t really an explanation that can prove why people dream the way they do. Everyone is different.

Remembering any dream is actually not a good sign in terms of sleep quality.
We remember dreams because we wake up during the dream or maybe right at the end and we are awake long enough to form a memory of that dream.

So remembering dreams...means we are actually waking up some...and that means less than optimal sleep quality.

We can dream in any sleep stage...so don't assume it is always REM related.

For a cpap user....verify that the therapy is optimal when we start remembering dreams because it means we are waking up or having arousals.
Now the wake up/arousal may or may not be related to our cpap/apap therapy but we need to make sure that the wake up isn't related to sub optimal cpap/apap therapy.