Narcolepsy Support Group
A sleep disorder (somnipathy) is a disorder in the sleep patterns of a person or animal. Some sleep disorders can interfere with mental and emotional function. If you are having trouble falling asleep or having some other kind of sleep disturbance, this group is for you.
I have had N for 4 years and find all the various symptoms really hard like we all do. I get great comfort from reading about other people's experiences and it makes me feel less alone, so thank you. Whilst the day time sluggishness and fog is hard the worst is the nights. I stumble through the day and then feel there is no respite as the night brings no relief, in fact I dread going to sleep. I feel like I am going to a 10 movie complex and I am the actor in each of the films. Sometimes I can control the plot and other times I am detached or I simply am swept along inside another reality. the movie Inception just made me weep, because it is real for N sufferers. I would give anything for one night of no dreams or nightmares. I wake and don't know whether I am awake or not and this can carry though the day. I often have to ask my kids or ring my partner to find out whether I am still dreaming. There are those times when there are dreams within dreams and it is really scary. I hallucinate most nights...toilets flying through the air, plates dancing ad crashing together, black figures sitting on the bed or the bed covers turning into animals. The worst is when I am in a trippy nightmare where the colours are not real and everything is distorted and parts of my past and my memories are in the plot too. I haven't taken acid but it is like a really bad trip. The worst is that I don't think I am going to wake up and that I will be stuck in that place. I have learnt a trick to wake up. For years I had recurring nightmares where I could not scream, but now if I scream in a nightmare I wake from it. I am normally drenched in sweat and very shaken and will myself not to sleep again. The other way I have found to wake from it is to will myslef to fly through things, normally people or walls and then I instantly wake.
I was just wondering whether any one experiences this. Does anyone have ways of breaking from the nightmare and waking up? Stress makes it worse and at the moment it is getting unbearable at night and then I wake and face the day. When I wake I say thanks for all of my blessings as I know there is still so much good in life. Would appreciate anyone sharing their night experiences....thanks
I was just wondering whether any one experiences this. Does anyone have ways of breaking from the nightmare and waking up? Stress makes it worse and at the moment it is getting unbearable at night and then I wake and face the day. When I wake I say thanks for all of my blessings as I know there is still so much good in life. Would appreciate anyone sharing their night experiences....thanks
-
Hey all, i know its been quite awhile since i posted on here. Its been a summer all right. Its been something else........... You know how they say not to open the can of worms? Well a few months ago i decided to find out what my due date would have been for my first baby, the one conceived by r***. My baby would have been due on March 4th of 2006. They would be 20 years old. I was R**** on June...
-
My day...today...misplaced my debit card...didn't realize it until I got to the register after shopping to a full cart. Used a different debit card and pulled apart everything looking for missing debit card before I left parking lot. Got home, dropped keys. So now I have a missing debit card, missing keys. A full cartload to unload and put away. I got everything put away.Dumped purse for a...
My heart goes out to you. What you are experiencing is most definitely a huge part of N. I am in a support group on FB and so many of my friends there go through exactly what you just described. I don't remember any of their tricks to get out of the nightmares but at least wanted to let you know that you are not alone.
What meds are you taking for your N? Maybe you could talk to your doctor about Xyrem. Once you get to the right dosage it's my understanding that those nightmares subside.
However I will say that the first few nights of me starting the Xyrem I had the most weirdest sci fi dreams that one could imagine. I can't really say I had nightmares, they really weren't scary but just the strangest things. I even woke up laughing hysterically one night from what I was dreaming about. And every time I tried to close my eyes to go back to sleep this one thought just kept popping back in my head and I would start laughing again. Was miserable trying to go back to sleep but at least it wasn't the N nightmares.
Hang in there, and hopefully others will have some suggestions.
Sorry you have to go through the nightmares. Like you I feel that for me they are the worst part of N that I have to deal with.
Hallucinating is part of N, it's HH, or hypnocognic hallucinations. Just a fancy way of saying that our nightmares are more realistic to us and terrifying.
The thing that I've found helps the most for me is taking Klonopin, 1.5mg a night. I usually wont dream or if I do I know it's a nightmare and it's not as scary.
I've run out so my nightmares are getting worse and I think I forgot just how bad they get.
I hope you find something that will work great for you.
I watched a video about a woman who has N and she had a dream about a giant bug. When she woke up she looked all around her room for this giant bug that she was holding in her dream. I'm sure there are meds but I use meds as a last resort.
I have a loop of television shows playing at my bedside. The basic idea is something light and stress free. For me it's something comedic, but also something that has virtually no plot stress: should be amusing, but not too engaging. It has to be the same loop.
I find that instead of being the actor in the movies I'm more often just sleeping in a theatre playing that same stuff in a loop. It's not very scientific, but when I was diagnosed a couple years ago the docs said it was creative coping mechanism-your mileage may vary.
Without my loop going I have deep and often disturbing dreams for what feels like the whole night (my PSG reported just over 40% and I felt like that was one of my better night's sleep). I also am extremely disoriented when I wake up from those disturbing dreams. I find that the loop keeps me calm and relaxed when I do wake up and I have a sense of them too when I don't fully wake up in the night.
I feel like I'm actively thinking through the night and it's no use trying to be that kind of unconscious others describe when they sleep normally. My most restful nights are the ones where I dream the most mundane elements of my loops all night. It's not deep sleep, but it's the next best thing for me if I'm not going to sleep deeply anyway. Far less exhausting than nightmares.
My main tools were:
1) a dream journal. Writing out my dreams and making sketches of the dream images helped me get a handle on the weirdness of it all.
2) dream talismans. In that movie, Inception, remember how each member of the squad had a secret doodad they used to determine they had returned to the real world? That doodad would be what I am calling a dream talisman. Since I am not a dream pirate, I don't keep mine secret, but it serves the same purpose. I like things I can wrap around my wrist so I don't lose them in the blankets.
3) my critters. Their calm helps me know it was just a dream and their patience with my restless nights seems infinite. They are just plain good company.
I don't know how this works or how it happens, but I've found when my dreams are really bad, I will think (while in the dream), "If I can scream, I will wake myself up!" Usually, my husband will see me struggling and wake me up.
Also, my dreams are most vivid immediately when I fall asleep and they occur FAST, too. I can fall asleep and have a complete, vivid dream while my husband is taking his glasses off and putting them on the table. He'll say "There's no way that you could've had that dream so fast! You were just talking to me!"
I write mine down, as sometimes it helps and they are also funnier in daylight. Mine got so bad my sleep dr changed my sleep altogether and now I sleep during the day - so when I have a nightmare I can get up and its sunny and not so scary.
I try to analyse my dreams alot too, its a great way to get your brain moving in a new direction. So now if I dream I am being drowned by something I know what it means.
I also had to cut out Stephen King books and horror movies (which I loved) as generally the last thing you watch at night is what you incorperate into your dreams.
If you can focus on parts of your dream while asleep and then go 'and how probable is that' sometimes the whole dream falls apart but its taken me years to get to that and it doesn't always work.
Like coffeecrisp if a light switch won't turn on then I know i am dreaming.
There are also some meds that make dreams worse and some that help, might be worth looking into that.
Good luck and hugs