| | Wow, 29 years into it, and I've finally put a name to an experience I sometimes face when drifting off to sleep - night terrors. This is an experience that I've tried to explain to so many people but no one else has ever seemed to have this problem, and I always thought I was the only one. It's very different from a nightmare where there are scary situation when you're fully asleep, but more like an emotion that creeps over you as you're about to fall asleep. I used to go through this quite often as a child, where I would be on the cusp of losing consciousness when I would have this incredibly strong feeling of well, terror. All that I knew was that if I stopped struggling to wake up I would die, sucked into a blackness if I let go. No context or dreams around this, awake enough to know I was lying in bed. The terror was bad, but worse was knowing that I couldn't easily wake myself up. Half-awake but paralysed, fighting and fighting just to twitch a finger just to break myself from the grip of this feeling. Trying to scream or gasp but no sound would come. Usually, I'd be trapped for several minutes in this state and then I'd finally wake with a huge rush of relief. You don't know how scared you become of trying falling asleep again after an experience like that. Nowadays, it doesn't happen as often anymore but here and there I can sense it coming and that's when I'll get out of bed and try to shake myself out of that place so I can try to fall asleep again. If I don't get up and do this, and sometimes even if I do, it'll just suck me under again over and over. Interestingly I always thought night terrors was the kind of thing that meant you would be sleepwalking all over the place, so I never really looked up the term. But today I read a blog that mentioned a familiar experience, and bam, now I know. And, I guess that's it, there's no real cause or cure, and I've learned to deal with it by now, but it's good to know that well it wasn't just me, yknow? Does any of this sound familiar to any of you? |
| | Posted 6/25/2009 1:50 PM - 29 Views - 4 eProps - 4 comments
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