Latuda Dreams in 2023

One of the big obstacles that I need to overcome as I move forward is learning how to be able to lean into the day after a night of unsettling dreams. Ever since I’ve been on Latuda I’ve had nightly intense, vivid dreams. Dreams that can be unsettling and disorienting. Last night I had yet another dream in which I am screaming expletives at my father. It’s like a lifetime of suppressed emotions has found an avenue to finally be heard and felt. Everything I’ve ever stuffed down inside of me and on some level wanted (and needed) to express is being presented to me in my dreams. I don’t always have dreams like this. Sometimes- often- my dreams are representations of my anxiety. I can’t find something, or I’m late for something, or I’ve done something wrong- but whatever the dream landscape may be that particular night, it’s ALWAYS vivid and detailed and very real to me upon waking.

But the nights in which I am either verbally or physically aggressive towards my parents or some other authority figure are by far the worst. I awake into a fog of emotion and guilt as I repeatedly ask myself WTF was THAT all about? Latuda has been a truth-teller and a tool in learning how to feel all the things I’ve been afraid to feel my whole life. Besides stabilizing my moods and preventing me from slipping into the depths, Latuda has allowed me bring out of the shadows all of the negativity that I have buried within my subconscious and refused to deal with. But man- it makes it hard to get up and get on with the day sometimes.

In therapy it has been suggested to me that I need to deal with these newly-surfaced emotions and have some honest conversations with my parents about how much my relationships with them have negatively impacted my life. And my answer has always been at this point in their lives what good will it do? I would just poison the well and stain their “golden years” and burst their happy, content little bubbles. No- I need to continue to navigate the maelstrom of emotion that these Latuda Dreams stir up and feel what I have for so long refused to feel. Feeling is healing and at some point I will reach the other side of these nocturnal storms. Some days it’s hard to rejoin the land of the living though, after a nighttime of turbulence and raw emotion.