Ican have that, too. If you find that you do get over it once you are u - get u! The more times you stay in bed "self-soothing" - the more times you are making that a habit that will be reinforced over and over.
Sometimes the best thing to do, is the hardest thing to do - just get up!
It's crazy - but if you think about it - sometimes we actually enjoy our misery - we know a walk will make us feel better, but we don't do it!
We know that watching a certain show will give us bad dreams, but we watch it anyway! Some self discipline is required to overcome anything that is not serving our best interests - and I speak for myself in this area, believe me!
May you have a happy morning! I will be thinking of you as I get up!
Love,
Purrs

Sorry - my "p" is stuck on my computer!

Thank you so much, that is actually really helpful. :)

To avoid nightmares and the insomnia, I take a sleeping tablet every night. I know that might not be your answer but I find having a good nights' sleep helps with the waking up and coping with getting out of bed.

Perhaps as you wake up do some deep breathing exercises and tell yourself that it is going to be a good day and try with some positive thoughts of what good things you can look forward to.

That's a good idea, thanks. :) Surprisingly, I sleep very well. Partly because, if I need to, I take a lot of Xanax to sleep (haven't needed to much though recently). It doesn't seem to affect nightmares--I can sleep soundly and have nightmares the whole night through, sometimes horrible. And be rested somehow, just terrified, tense, defensive, and panicky when I wake up (even though I usually forget instantly the content of the dreams--I can remember it later, often, if I try).

I take prazosin (mini press) for the nightmares. It helps a lot. Med is an alpha blocker for blood pressure but in low dose is is used for PTSD nightmares. makes getting up in the morning easier.

I do a little meditation at night before bed and go over the things I am thankful for or things I accomplished that day. Positive affirmation works well too.

A friend suggested to me to look into Lucid Dreaming. Might be worth checking out if you have regular nightmares.

I wish you well!

I've been having the same problems. Every night dreams about dying babies or puppies, or being abandoned, or some creepy weird Steven King monster crap. I wake up over and over again throughout the night screaming and carrying on, and end up getting no sleep. Then the next day I'm worthless and shaken all day long. I used to be on a sleeping medication, but no doctor will let me be on it anymore because I also have narcolepsy and it tends to carry over into the day for me, so now I'm just trying to cope with it the best I can. Wish I could say something that would help out, but all I can really offer is that you are NOT alone :/

I get wacky dreams and nightmares. Only today I was telling my husband about mine.
I can wake up in a sweat. Heart pounding. Sometimes it takes a moment or two to figure it was just a dream not real. It can be freaky and scary.
I do not stay in bed when I wake up. I get up very soon after waking up. I put on my music, radio and get right to the day.
Clean teeth. Bathroom. All of that. The anxiety is still there but I carry on and it begins to settle. The thoughts of the nightmare, the recall may still be on my mind but I shake it off and not read into it too much.
Cortisol levels are higher in the morning too. So combine that with waking up from a nightmare. It's nuts!
But you carry on doing things and not wallow in it or dwell on the crazy nightmare or the physical sensations of anxiety you maybe having. I kinda plough through it cuz I know the nightmare is not real and anxiety is just doing its thing.
Break whatever morning cycle you are in. Change it up a bit.
Wake up. Get up. Stretch, put on radio, open shades, curtains. Begin the day with some kind of new routine.

I wish you well.

Yes, this is something I experienced more often in high school but when I started Zoloft it started all over again. I know something that usually causes nightmares for me is having anxious thoughts before bed, for example my mother was having a conversation in the kitchen with my aunt once about someone they knew who had cancer and that night I had a terrible nightmare that my mother died of cancer. So what I try to do now is do something fun before bed like playing a fun videogame/listening to a nice song/reading a good ok/watching a good show right before I go to sleep. I make sure its nothing to dark or scary because I do like dark genres but they also tend to make me more anxious. I hope that helps!

Through my hold childhood I have had terrible nightmares. I got use to it, if you can use to it, and in adulthood many of them dissipated, but i can understand that shaken feeling, and usually I do not dwell on it, and just put on some TV for distraction etc. My most terrible dreams were not just of monsters, even though terrifying, it was about real life events, such feeling embarrassed by family members, a relationship ending, a crush on someone, and than something horrible happens in that.

now, something i just discovered last year, because i had bout of it, is Hypnagogia Hallucinations! I did not see anything on this website about it, after doing a search. maybe most people do not know about them, and associate them with nightmares. There are nightmares, night terrors, and Hypnagogia Hallucinations. it is not considered a mental illness but a sleep disorder. Reading up on this, and reading the stories, i realized it was not just nightmares i experienced when i was young, but i had Hypnagogia Hallucinations, which are much, much worse. i am surprised not much more is known about this, or discussed, because i am assuming it does happen to more people, but they just do not know they are having one, and associate it with a nightmare.

So this thing is is a Hypnagogia Hallucinations happens at the verge of falling asleep, and waking up. It is a different transitory sleep than REM sleep the dreaming state, so it is not considered a dream. There is no dream, but it is a dreadful feeling, and sometimes you may hear things, or see things, but it is not elaborate like a dream, so there is not much to explain why we are so afraid. many times you see something that is not so much scary, but you seem awake, and you realize that thing should not be there and it terrifies you like someone was there, is there, and should not be there. Even talking about it puts a big chill down my spine.

Ok my experience with it last year was i was starting to wake up at night in my dark bedroom. I felt something, evil, horrifying, dreadful, the feeling went up my spine , and it got closer, and closer till it was right on top of me, and my only reaction was to get the heck out of there. there was something there, i swear there was, and it was evil. I jumped out of bed with CPAP still on, blankets,, etc literally throwing everything off my bed stand, blankets in tow, falling over, skinning my knee, and not stopping crawling out into he living room, and desperately trying to put on a light. i looked towards my bedroom, and was terrified, and was heavily breathing. Just as soon as it happened, i realized, or thought it was a dream. I knew it was not real, but the pure terror stayed with me, and I could not sleep at all for the rest of the night. I had to put on every light on in my apartment, and even with my bedroom light shining bright, i could not sleep out of terror until the sun came up.

My second experience maybe a fews day later as basically very simper, but i did see something. believe it or not, and it might sound silly, but i saw cut out animal sponged glued on my bedroom wall. Well this terrified me, because i thought i was wake, and who the heck would do something like that, and who came into my house, and put those there? With Hypnagogia Hallucinations you will see seemly harmless things like this, but terrifying for the reason I just said. I than felt that presence like before, and it was even more intense, got the heck out of there, and being disabled, and nerve damage in my legs, I fall down, skinned both my knees, and was extremely sore, for the adrenaline rush of running out of the bedroom, and l was laid up because of it. I could not find my glasses for the longest time, and got very frustrated. I now sleep with my glasses inside my night stand, so i do not fling them off, and break them since I cannot afford to replace them.Unfortuantly i can do nothing about my CPAP machine.

Anyway i had those two incidents last year, plus very minor ones as seeing something that was a shirt look like something else, and making me turn on the light to see what it was, and having a hard time sleeping. For the longest was not getting any sleep, and had to stay awake till the sun came up to be able to get any sleep. it was horrible, and it still has effect me till this year, and still have to sleep with the living room light on. I do not need other lights on, or have to wait till dawn, but most every night i dread it happening again, and remember it very clearly. i use to sleep in almost complete darkness, and can only do so knowing someone else is there. I am 40 years old, a man and feel like the biggest baby, but I tell you wait those terrifying feelings were real, and i had no control over my fight or flight response which also frustrated me.

i now remember having this kind of thing when i was child, and running out of my room at night, but I associated it with nightmare, and never had them as an adult until now. I associated it with anxiety, for i had a lot of it at that time, and pulled back on a lot of stuff that was causing this anxiety, and it stopped.

i take prazozin as well

I'm the same way--but usually I don't remember the nightmares---if I do then I analyze them and try to figure out what they are trying to tell me--usually if I can figure it out I will have better nights and mornings---the problem really starts when I can't remember them at all and just wake up feeling horrible and shaky---so I've started meditating right before bed--and I make sure the last show I watch (or last few shows I watch on tv are good sitcoms that put me in a good mood--then when I wake up I watch some more sitcoms, before I even get out of bed...lol...seems to be a good way to divert my worries...

I also take melatonin--seems to help!