Thanks everyone your feedback all makes sense, in the sense that I don't feel like an alien as much anymore, and it brings up more aspects of my sleep patterns. The elusive good nights' sleep, that promised land at the horizon is like a dirty trick as I have reached what I saw as the horizon I can see yet another horizon.
GregoryH, I appreciate the groan or shrug before the comment around the sleep hygiene/ritual and non-medicinal sleep aids. I suspect that so many of us would have movie and popcorn money for the weekend if we had a nickel for every time that we were supplied that by medical folks and call lines. I tend to cycle my sleep aids to suit what's going on, if I am just restless but calm inside then I may use melatonin or benadryl, and as the scale increases with the inner demons so does the sleep aid.
arfie, your comment of languages brings up memories from various recurring nightmares that include Arabic and Urdu in them. I am not speaking either in these dreams, but from my time hearing these it sounds pretty good.
change, you said it it feels at times my brain is fighting itself with sleep, the body wants to sleep but the mind doesn't want to go there. Then there are triggers and then the mind goes on alert and when that happens the body switches to and is fully awake with adrenaline. There is that tug-of-war for sleep.
Kas_Can_Fly, the 20-40 minute cycle of sleep sounds like what I have during the mild to intermediate nightmare phases, that sleeping sprints and then being horrified awake for a short duration then back into another 20-40 minute sleep. Sometimes, this is pretty neat or at least I find it sort of interesting, after being awake for 10-15 or even 20 minutes I have been able to carry on from the nightmare before. It pretty much sucks, but come on that is pretty cool.
Thrashing about in my sleep happens, and my two dogs tend to curl up against me for warmth, which is very comforting, and my dogs become alert to when this is going to happen and pull away usually before the thrashing begins. There have been times where if they were close to my legs that they have most rudely found themselves awake while being air born across the room. I have whacked furniture during the thrashing, on occasion dislocating various joints in my hand/wrist or feet, bruises and scrapes are common to wake up with. What you mention around your bruising sounds pretty interesting.
(also responding to Fridayjones, now)
My nightmares are a mix of things, some are recurring, others are recurring with flashbacks - with some of those being pretty much the same as the flashback but different characters, costumes, and scene - that are pretty much what the incidents were. Other are have recurring themes and elements, and there are also the bulk of those that follow the same rhythm, everything is utopic and honeymoonish, then transfers to a natural disaster, then transitions to needing to look after my group and relocate to a safer location while during the post natural disaster some form of civil strife occurs further complicating things, then things just get entertaining from there. I am always taking care of my group, always performing first aid/security/decision making/risk management for the group, there are always fatalities, we always encounter groups of individuals who are determined to do us harm to access our resources. Some of the conflicts in these dreams tend to replicate ones that I have had, and others are pretty much identical just with the wardrobe/scene changes, with the outcomes much the same - although sometimes my actions in the end change.
The pain in these nightmares usually replicates injuries that I have actually sustained in life, and often in the flashback mode it is verbatim to what happened in life. The event is the same, the pain is the same, the sounds and smells are the same. I get to hear everything again. In other cases in any of the other set of nightmares injuries that I have had in the past happen again however the mechanism may be different, but if it isn't in a vehicle it could be in a plane or helicopter and still wind up with a few of the main injuries from the vehicle life incident, or there can be added injuries from other life incidents. As in life, I am having to tend to these injuries on myself and on others, then having to coordinate others to assist. The pain and frustration is just the same.
Thank you all for adding your two cents, it is well appreciated.
Here_Still
