"Nocturnal" panic attacks and sleep anxiety

integrityguy · ‎13-09-2013

Hi forum posters

I haven't seen much literature on this particular topic, but I'm interested to know if anyone has had similar experiences.

I've been suffering from irregular panic attacks since last year, and most seem to happen in the middle of the night. Typically it will be after a bad anxiety day/week when something is weighing heavily on my mind. Strangely enough I can usually calm myself enough to fall asleep, but then my body jerks me awake in the middle of the night or at about 6am in the morning - the heartrate escalates, etc. My coping strategy is to concentrate on the symptoms (rather than the thoughts causing the attack), tell myself it will pass, and let it run its course. I also tell myself it's annoying and uncomfortable, but not devastating or catastrophic.

My psychologist says the subconscious is still active when we sleep and our minds are still processing everything. Sometimes I wake up and I'm hit by a stream of unwanted thoughts, which brings on the attack. I also suffer from sleep anxiety i.e. if I know that I need to be alert and active the following day (e.g. for a long road trip), I put too much pressure on myself to get a good sleep. The end result - I don't sleep well. Usually I will wake up, be aware that I've only slept for a few hours, and panic that I won't get a good sleep quota. In these cases, I try to resign myself to the fact that I'm awake and not getting back to sleep, or remind myself that people can function on less sleep.

Has anyone been through this? Any thoughts or coping strategies?

The_Real_David_Charles · ‎14-09-2013

Dear Mr Intergity,

Yes, anxiety works when you're sleeping !

I had a similar thing last year when my wife was offered work in New York which involved a possible family move, school change, etc, and generally had me over thinking the situation daily. It got to the point where I would wake regularly with an audio alarm - I just kept hearing the loud front door bell every now and then when I was sleeping ! Just drove me crazy (sorry already am - er, drove me MORE crazy). 2am, 3:15am, 5am - and every time I checked there was no one there and I'd imagined the whole thing. Total stress and hard to re-sleep after the rush.

I think it's not just the re-processed subconscious going on. It's something to do with the moment you became mentally ill. Maybe something really abrupt happened. So any "threat" or "panic" is connected to this original "health slam". There were a few Court Processors tying to leave Court Notices at the time as we had a 4 yr battle with a bank (which we won) so strange callers during the day probably reinforced my particular problem. To this day I have problems with salesman and feel some sort of Primevil Fear of my Inner Sanctum being breached.

You'd think in the Human Evolution we would have worked out how to sleep through the night - or maybe it's all a throw back to keeping safe at night and keeping one ear open for wolves or Readers Digest salesman ? The BBC put out a great Evolutionary DVD last year where Dr Alice Roberts (Bristol Anthropologist) traverses the globe plotting the Human Race and how we migrated. At one stage, in the Africa segment, she sleeps a night in the Savannah and basically gets woken up and put on edge several times as lions fight out for territory a few hundred metres away from her sleeping bag and hyenas do their best impersonation of Mariah Carey across the plains. All in all, I don't think there is much sleep. So maybe not much has changed. The body has invented panic attack to cope !

The garbage trucks at 3am don't exactly help much either. Hope this helps.

Adios, David.

integrityguy · ‎17-09-2013

Thanks David. It's good to get another perspective on the situation. Another way I deal with such anxiety is to tell myself it's just my mind paying tricks on me. It's a strange concept ... distancing oneself from one's mind, but hey, if it helps me cope, I'll do it 🙂

I think your example of Dr Roberts is another reminder that anxiety (in a fundamental sense) is a normal part of the human psyche (fight or flight and all that). Of course, those of us with excessive anxiety in situations which should (logically) not be that stressful, are on edge far more than is good for us. That's what we have to live with I suppose.

PS - I enjoy reading your forum posts across this site - keep it up. 🙂

The_Real_David_Charles · ‎17-09-2013

Dear integrity guy,

I am thinking that sleep anxiety is like walking anxiety. Absolutely no one knows what they heck you are going on about - disturbed sleep - in the same way that if someone saw you struggling to walk they would think you might be mucking around. A few would say "What's wrong ?" but a lot would say "Come on integrity guy, stop mucking around. Taking that long to walk to the bar isn't gonna get you out of it being you're shout !".

My wife keeps telling me to leave Beyondblue as she feels it's a way of drawing into the negativity and not making a positive break with my own problems. I'm not sure if I buy it as (1) Geoff says she's just bossy, (2) I'm normally up late with my music stuff so a couple of responses is an easy fit and (3) my wife's never read any of my responses over the last 2 years. Did someone say control ? Ha ! Next she will be telling me to cut the grass.......... When someone tells you to NOT touch the Red Button you normally end up touching it. In your case telling yourself to GO TO SLEEP might be working against you too. I sometimes listen to soft music as I doze off but then sometimes I hear a great phrase and jump up with the idea for a new song !

I hope there is an Intergrity Gal so that you can intergrate and then sleep won't be a problem. After a male orgasm the brain releases about 20 times the amount of sleep chemicals - they covered this on Dr Oz so it must be true ! Or have a really scalding shower as the temp drop will induce sleep when you are tucked up in your jammies. Yep, give that anxiety some hot water to relax it.

Adios, David.

PS Buy some tickets to the Opera - you should be asleep by Act II.

Tillie · ‎24-02-2017

Only just joined and fell upon your posts with Integrity Guy. I agree. You seem to have a lovely balance of humour, normalizing and genuine interest in the the points raised. 🙂