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So... the reason for the panick attack isn't really important. But. Last night I woke screaming and ended up rocking back and forth on my bed hugging my knees for about an hour... or five.
What I'm asking here, is if I'm the only one that has this problem. Am I? I mean, I'm able to handle things most times but I have little moments in my life and memory that are essentially me taking a brief vacation from sentience. |
| I also sleepwalk, sleeptalk, have night terrors... but the good news is that I don't sleep much. Sleeping seems, for me, to be a dangerous endeavour. |
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Edeyn Hannah Blackeney |
| Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make... |
Comments
Nope
I generally have good dreams, even the bad ones are pretty cool. I have had night terrors, but that was when I was running a fever and looking back, it was a pretty stupid dream.
My sister walks and talks in her sleep, but she doesn't remember anything about it and it doesn't upset her. It seems to have tapered off as she left her twenties.
Your photo shows a pretty young person, maybe time will help. In the meantime, you should see a doctor with a sleep disorder specialty. Sleep is important for our well being.
Mr. Ram
panick, attacks, and sleep or the lack thereof
Hi Edeyn,
Don’t feel alone.
There was a time when I slept with my firearm without a chambered round and with the safety on because I was known to have such vivid dreams that in my sleep I would rack the action (thus chambering a round) and remove the safety. I never seemed to get so far as to pull the trigger at the monsters that were so vividly pursuing me in my dreams but...... Close.
I still sleep with my firearm’s chamber empty and the safety on.
Apparently those whose dreams are most vivid and thus who have creative imaginations as well as traumatic past event history are subject to these unscheduled events which may occur awake or asleep. ( at least it never seemed to make much difference to me) However, my doctor assured me that more collide with their panic state while asleep than while awake and thus we tend to have difficulty with that necessary (evil) sleep.
It took me a while to learn that my panic sleeping attacks were more likely to occur if I ate my last meal late and if I slept in certain positions. I think it is a security thing. For me sleeping on my side is better because I may move myself to action, thus removing myself from the area of my panic, faster when sleeping on my side than if I was asleep on my back (which required me to spend extra time turning in order to get up). I have found myself awakening at a location as far as two rooms away from where I went to sleep, firearm in hand and apparently listening for the source of whatever it was that caused me to get up in a panic. I seldom know why other that a particularly detailed and/or vicious dream.
Possibly some outside sound or flash of momentary light entering the room through the closed and curtained window may have caused it. Who knows.
The dreams have slowly over the years subsided to a degree with, more lately, me finding myself still in bed although having awakened myself screaming. Not much fun for anyone around me. Some of my dreams take me back to events long past and one in particular was quite vicious until I was finally, with my doctor’s help, able to turn it around by making it into a comedy. I may still awaken but now I can go back to sleep. I still dream of myself walking into the event with both eyes open and unsuspecting but I now also dream a second me into the dream. The second me is pulling and pushing to try to stop the first me from approaching the event which caused me harm and thus became the source for one of my multitude of panics. (Yes, I have more than one but some are simply heart pounding while others have me wondering if I will live to wake up).
It takes a lot of effort and years of relearning that ‘peace’ is possible, even if it is to a limited degree. I at my peak slept less than two hours a night and now am able to achieve five or even six. Ain’t paranoia grand?
Rénae
Agoraphobia
In the late seventies I was trying to lose weight and working at an extremely stressful job. Long, rushed hours and a diet consisting mainly of diet Coke led me to extremely frayed nerves. I started to have frequent panic attacks. I hadn't had them before, and I was terrified. It became so bad that I couldn't stand to leave my apartment. It was doubtful I could continue working.
Then I found series of books by Claire Weekes and used her techniques to modify my behavior. It worked like magic. Within days I was on a clear road to recovery and within months I was fully functional. I've since given speeches to crowds of several hundred, given government testimony a number of times, and led a life most people would consider quite public.
Fear is a strange thing and all fears seem to be connected. Fear is extremely powerful, but is highly manageable. You simply have to face up to your fear. Accept it for what it is. (In the case of panic attacks it is unchecked adrenaline.) Float, by utilizing a positive image. And, finally, let time pass while the adrenaline works its way out of your body, rather than creating a "fight or flight" spiral which manifest itself in a panic attack as you described.
I've given copies of the books to dozens of people and with one exception they've worked for all. Ironically the one person who rejects my advice, and the advice ofClaire Weekes, is my daughter.
Good luck. I'm sure you can find the books or tapes at your library.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Thanks for including...
the author's name. I passed it on to my daughter... Perhaps she'll look at one or more of the books. You know. Considering she's planning on Med School & with a specialization in Psychiatry, you'd think she'd be willing to go see a shrink to for anxiety help. (At least it's not occurring in her sleep.)
Thanks for the suggestion,
Annette
angora's nothing to be afraid of, Jill
Hee hee! I did an Angela :)
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I can relate to panic attacks, although never at night in bed.
Freaking out in the Mall: "Er, I'll be in the car..." would be a mild one, still rational enough to act somewhat sanely; others were horrifying and embarrassing. My anxiety stuff is generally all about people, the more of them crowding a space the more likely I'll start to spiral into blind fear. Ironic that I always seemed to work in the service industry. Weekdays were fine but friday nights at the pizza place or the opening weekend of some big blockbuster at the theater, the gnawing dread would start on the way into work: I'M GONNA FREAK OUT! I'M GONNA FREAK OUT! I did learn certain tricks to dealing with my agoraphobia, rational-cognitive this and that, but they weren't foolproof, and even on a good busy day my guts would ache at the end of a shift. And oddly sometimes a panic attack would be preceeded by a manic state that actually felt kind of good, my brain bouncing around like a pinball---DING! DING! DING!---making weird associations that would come out in these Robin Williams monologues that had my co-workers & the nearby customers in stitches; although I came to recognize this state as the pre-spazz attack "aura", that was heralding a melt down. I did about as good as I could without anti-anxiety drugs- wasn't adverse to them but just never went that route. I was as dedicated & useful an employee as I knew how to be during the sane periods, always ready to tackle the unpleasant jobs (cleaning up customer puke etc.), partly as insurance, so that if I did start screaming that people were turning into giant lizards (okay not really, but the adrenalin did cause some freaky borderline hallucinations) and had to be sent home the management would weigh my good performance against my phobic weirdness and decide I was worth the occasional inconvenience. Then I was offered a maintenance position at the cinema and jumped at it. Two a.m. to ten in an empty building was bliss and I preferred the weird hours to the crowds, and did that for years; A cop-out maybe to avoid the problem rather than keep trying to "overcome" it, but it kept me employed. And nowadays I tend to go shopping in the morning rather than during the early evening rush, two days before the big holiday weekend instead of in the thick of it, and stay out of the mall in the weeks just prior to Christmas. But anyway, yeah, panic attacks, whew, big fun!!! Not...
~~~hugs, Laika
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
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Not me, but...
My daughter has had several in the past year or so. In her case, they seem to be triggered by stress. She's able to "hold them off" while she's out doing things or with other people, but get back to her dorm - alone - and they hit and she's unable to do ANYTHING until they reside. She's finally "considering" looking into professional help to look at what might be going on and perhaps give her tools to avoid them in the future.
Good luck to you.
Annette