How Do You Feel The Day After A Night Terror?

[barefoot]

I very, very rarely remember anything about my night terrors, which I think is pretty usual and one of the common markers that distinguish a night terror from a nightmare. Occasionally, I do have some memory of it - I think this is usually when I've woken up in the middle of it - but these memories are still extremely vague.

Quite often though, I realise at some point the next day if I had a night terror the night before. It's not really that I consciously remember having it and what happened. It's more that I just 'know'. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but something just feels off. It's a bit like a low level, below the surface feeling of fear/dread. It makes me feel quite flat and depressed and that feeling generally lingers the whole day - it's nothing I can really put my finger on, I just can't shake it off. And not surprisingly, I often don't feel very rested the day afterwards. And I tend to get a tight feeling in my head - similar to the way my head feels the day after I've had a migraine.

I guess it must be some kind of somatic response...at the time, during the night terror, my body believes that something frightening is happening so adrenalin and the fight/flight response kicks in. Then I go back to sleep (I know I haven't actually woken up for the night terror, but you know what I mean!) and don't remember the content or what I was doing the next day...but I suppose my body (and perhaps my subconscious mind?) is still in some way holding the traumatic memory (even though the trauma wasn't real). Something in my body must remember that hours before I was terrified even if I have no recollection of it. So, I suppose the feelings I have the next day are understandable. I just find it very draining and it just feels pretty horrible and can really throw me off when it happens.

I was just curious as to how others felt afterwards and would be interested to hear if anyone had found any ways of managing/reducing their post-night terrors 'hangovers'?

 

[Tanishq]

I feel upset and shaken after having nightmare, yes horrified. I take sometimes days or sometimes get over within 1-2 days. Depends how much it shook me.

I try to listen music, try not to pay attention what I saw in nightmare and that helps me. Sometimes it is very hard to distract myself, so I just patiently wait to subside all pain on its own.

This is all help I can offer you. May it help you.

 

[desiderata310]

I wind up getting up and walking around the house and outside to clear out my head. Sometimes I can manage another little snooze before I go to work and other times I'm just up for the day. Depends on how badly it's scared me.

It's one reason I hate taking sleeping pills: it's harder to clear my head of what happened if I can't wake up fully

I know I'm hyper vigilant the following day.

 

[barefoot]

Ah, sleep disruption is rubbish, isn't it?! Thanks both for sharing your experiences - sometimes the fact that I have night terrors makes me feel like a bit of a nut job, so it's kind of comforting to be somewhere where odd things during sleep is very normal! But I'm sorry you're suffering too.

I think one of the things I find most difficult to wrap my head around is that I don't have a conscious memory of what I experience during night terrors. And maybe it's a good thing because maybe if I was conscious of it afterwards it would just feel too horrible. But as it is, I just have this weird almost creepy sense of something bad having happened...It feels like things are very wrong, but I just don't know why.

Sigh...

 

[Freedomfighter]

Yes I hate those and I do have them too. It is very distressing, because in those night terrors I am right back in the life with an abuser, smack dab in the middle of it. Horrifying and when I wake up and I can not believe that I was so "weak" in those dreams.

 

[ButterflyDisco]

broken...

 

[Friday]

Thirsty.

Hangover is a good word for it, I'm dehydrated afterward, and need to slam some h2o + rehydration salts. Alternating hot & cold showers & a whole lotta coffee helps as well.

 

[Ronin]

Same thing, drinking. And grounding myself about my body (just the 'basic' check on I'm whole). If I can manage, hearing someone's voice. Lower tones if possible (everything else is too damned loud/sharp/hard/stop already).

Edit: Skipped the 'day' after wording and took it for 'immediately after'- day after, groggy. Behind the glass, irritable. So drinking and working at comfort it is.

 

[barefoot]

broken...

Broken....yeah...I guess that probably sums up the weird, sort of depressed, flatness and confusion I was trying to describe but couldn't really put my finger on...

Behind the glass

And this.

 

[barefoot]

Actually, I'd never really thought about doing grounding stuff the day after but perhaps that's exactly what I should do. Because, thinking on it, I seem to get stuck in a bit of a freeze and just sort of sit feeling weird and uncomfortable and trapped in my internal state. So perhaps some grounding to connect me more to my body will undo some of that freeze and will help me shake off the emotional 'hangover'. That seems really obvious now, but I've never thought about it before! So thanks for the replies and suggestions.

@FridayJones - I'm going to give the alternating hot/cold showers a go next time.

Glad I found this place - so helpful to have other people's suggestions and perspectives and to be understood so that I don't feel like a lone loon!

 

[Gadgie]

Are your nightmares things that you have actually gone through, or are they just random dream type events? Mine are all events that have been locked away for years, in the back of my mind.

A therapist once described it this way to me, that they had been safely tucked away in a file document in the back of my mind, until an event, acted like a trigger, and opened the file that they were in, and they came pouring back into my mind.

The trigger can be a sound, like a song, or loud bang, a smell, or a photograph or a touch. I have found this to be true, and the result can change my mood, from feeling quite good, to sinking me into a deep depression, that I can't shake off, and that can last for a few hours, up to a few days?

I described it like a cloud that hangs over me, and no matter how fast I can run, or drive to get away from it, it's still there, controlling everything I think or do. Sometimes I can wake up, and it's there, other times a trigger sets it off, just like the nightmares I have, they are so frightening that I'm scared to go back to sleep, in case I have another one, which has happened in the past.

I've always thought that this was abnormal, and that I was a freak, but when I discovered that other people suffer the same thing, it made me realise that I wasn't a basket case nutter after all, but that I was just another PTSD sufferer. The relief of finding that out prompted me to search and find out more, and here I am, with you all, and I feel like I'm home.