Taking Back My Dreams: Recurring Nightmare Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe recurring nightmares, the dreams that come back for months or years. Many followed a shock or a loss: a robbery at gunpoint in an Accra taxi, a flood in a Lagos repair shop, a frightening birth, a miscarriage at eleven weeks, a school lockdown, a father who died during the pandemic while the ward was closed to visitors. Others had quieter causes that surprised them: a new blood pressure tablet, a side effect after trying to quit smoking, stopping nightly cannabis or wine, menopause, a jaw clenched in sleep, horror films. The writers include a firefighter, a police officer, a veteran of convoy duty, a night-shift nurse, a student nurse on an intensive care placement, a ferry captain after a stroke, and a man in Sheffield whose wife saw him fighting in his sleep. They live from Cork and Belfast to Osaka, Pune, Dunedin and Albuquerque. Writers describe sleep paralysis in a student's halls room, talking to doctors and therapists, rewriting a dream's ending while awake, and medicine reviews. One husband tells it from the other side of the bed. Some stories touch on domestic abuse, displacement and bullying, told plainly and without graphic detail. Several writers say their dreams have gone, others have fewer, and a few are still working on it.

Who it's for

For anyone who wakes from the same dream again and again, for partners lying awake beside them, and for clinicians who want to hear how long people wait before speaking up.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 247 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.