I have been afraid to go to sleep forever and have insomnia as well. Have for a very long time. Did EMDR and discovered being abused and tortured particularly at night. I take a lot of psych meds and some do have an effect of surpressing dreams. So, I'm honestly not sure if I am having nightmares or not. When I go to bed I leave the tv on to some show that I've watched tons of times so that I don't watch it, just listen until I fall asleep. For me that is the Waltons, lol. Even knowing why going to sleep scares me, it hasn't made the fear go away. I don't have panicky fear, more that I just put off going to sleep as long as I can so end up going to sleep pretty late. I have been working on going to bed earlier, but it's not easy.

Growing up as a child, i have been fearful of certain things and one of those are the dark. Something about the closet and scared if someone will pop out or somebody will come and kill you while you are sleeping. The latter part is a reason why its hard for me to sleep:

The last traumatic event happened in the dark and my brother threatened me that he was gonna kill me after he got out of jail. All of this happened during the day but the lights were off in my room. That's when i felt true panic and fear. Plus, since then, some teas don't really work for me. I have taken sleepytime teas and nada.

My fears are both irrational and real. The nighttime is a nightmare for me.

I suppose that I have a fear of going to sleep too. When we sleep we let go of our conscious control. For many of us, that self-control is very important, we associate it with controlling our lives and protecting ourselves.

I've had problems with insomnia since childhood. I've often thought some of it might have come from the way my father always used to associate sleep with death. He liked playing mind games like that with his family. Instead of saying someone was sound asleep he used words like "dead" or "dead to the world"...or "Are you alive" instead of "Are you awake".

Don't know if he was messing with us or if he got that from his parents.

Hello Jas. I was surprised but oddly comforted when I found out it is not uncommon for those of us with ptsd to be afraid to sleep.

Not sure that fear is my reason, I just cannot fall asleep until I am tired enough to close my eyes and go right to sleep. Laying there waiting for sleep to come is horrible for me.

Can you give more details why your afraid to sleep? That might help us give you more input on what you could do to make this better.

Your in good company here. We get it.

#3 Have you tried any meds to sleep. Melatonin is a naturally occurring substance in our bodies and taking some can help with sleeping. I started with 1mg and you can work your way up to 3mg. I've never taken higher than that so I don't know how high you can go. Benadryl also helps with getting to sleep. I had a psych for a while that didn't believe in using sleeping pills and had me take Benadryl. I now take meds to help with sleep, one being Trazadone. I still don't want to go to sleep and put off taking the meds until I know I have to, but I am working my way to going to bed earlier than I had been.