Struggling with Bad Dreams and Restless Sleep

Music really helps me I have Playlist on spotify of whatever moods I'm in. My one I listen to alot right now is cartoon based and makes me feel like I'm in a fantasy world before I sleep. Also watching what you watch or listen to before bed is wise. You don't want to watch a scary movie before your mind rest because it can think of those last few things you saw. I also listen to podcast my favorite at night being welcome to nightvale. It keeps my mind focused on the story other than my restless thoughts of stress or past.

One thing that helped me is putting less pressure on myself to sleep when I’m “supposed to”. If you need to get up, just get up and do something (I usually go do dishes, no screen, not lots of brain power, repetitive movements). Yes, this means if I stayed up I might be exhausted the next day, but honestly I would have been with restless sleep anyways. Also I find napping during the day is less likely to cause me any dreams I’m not sure why.

I had night terrors and the only thing that seems to help calm them is taking a serotonin supplement, you can get it at the store, it's called 5- HTP

I never had any help from medications for sleep/nightmares/night terrors. Prozac sometimes helps but not consistently with sleep. Cannabis seems to help me most of all.

I use sensory therapy before I got to sleep, it helps calm my mind down, and they had to lower my Hydroxyzine dosage so that it wasn't making me groggy the next morning. The meds help ease the dreams but there are still some nights it gets bad, keeping some kind of noise like a fan or a video playing helps me on nights that are worse. I noticed if its too quiet my nightmares and sleep are worse because I'm reacting to every little sound. I hope that helps, if you don't know what sensory therapy im talking about let me know so I can explain it!