Sciency... There's a complicated series of biochemical-neurological things that happen as we shift from waking into sleeping. Not my area, so I can't speak to all of them, but a few common parts are; sleep paralysis stealing over your body (so you don't act out your dreams); hypnogogic jerks (which kind of test how well the sleep paralysis has applied); transitioning from cognitive awareness to REM & other sleep-states; digestion, immunologic, & other systems altering, as the autonomic nervous system & parasympathetic nervous systems get all possessive about being in charge, etc.
That transition is fraught with a whole lot of potential f*ck-ups, & keeps sleep disorder docs in boats & summer homes & wintering in Aspen. If you're ADHD, you already know that process doesn't work for you the same as other people. It's waaaaaay longer, happens in weird (and inconsistent) order, doesn't play well with "sleep-hygeine" (could we just rename that 1,001 ways to cause insomnia?), and yeah, it's common to be cognitively aware of your surroundings whilst still dreaming (and about 50 other weird combos that neurotypical people just kind of :O_o: at). Adding PTSD to my ADHD weird-sleep-baseline? :wtf: WTFO. Oh joy. Oh rapture. Yuck.
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My best ways of dealing with sleep (and the space between waking and dreaming) are not the fastest. (Fastest = Chemical Smackdown. Completely remove both my ADHD & PTSD issues from the table in seconds. Oh. Hi Morpheus. Zzzzzzzz.).
Best way means meeting both my ADHD needs & my PTSD needs & where they intersect... Which means that until it's routine & I don't have to think about it? My entire day, every day, for at least several weeks... Will be entirely focused on making it possible to sleep at night. Without kicking into insomnia, flashbacks, & other joys.
A Few Examples (not a complete list); I have to both mentally & physically exhaust myself over the course of the day (and then ideally a mini one shortly before bed) so that neither hyperactive component will kick in when I lay down (I'm ADHD-c, so I've got both components). I also have to be bleeding my stress levels / not adding to my stress levels in that process, to deal with the PTSD side of things, because if I kick my stress levels up tiring myself out, my anxiety grabs hold of my sympathetic nervous system (fight&flight) & tells my parasympathetic nervous system (rest&digest) to piss off. I have to mind my pain management, so that I'm not kicking into flashbacks due to pain, as my ADHD disassociation wears off in the lack of incoming stimulus & my brain starts searching for interesting things to pay attention to. I have to create an "interesting" place to sleep so that my ADHD is paying attention to what's going on around me, but not annoyed by it (fans are eeeeeevil, personal hatred, air blowing on some people is soothing :p) instead of digging around in my brain for "interesting" things to look at.
And the list goes on and on. Really. It's a f*ckload of a list, and it's 99% designed to take that hour long (minimum) process of transitioning from waking to sleeping & turning it to a stick sinking into water smooth. It becomes really easy over time, so much so that it doesn't even occur to me that I'm doing XYZ in order to sleep that night, but when it gets disrupted for whatever reason (like a nightmare cycle, or not realizing I'm getting a massive dose of adrenaline for no f*cking reason) it can take me a little while to rebuild it.
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So for me... If I'm suddenly kicking into flashbacks as I'm falling asleep? I really need to turn around and look at my day. What's different? What changed? Can that be taken away, or is it something I need/want in my life & I need to find something to counterbalance it? Which disorder is being most affected? (One of those, Imknow it's the PTSD acting up in response, but it's often my ADHD stuff being out of whack allowing the space for the PTSD f*ckup).
:bag: Sorry about the length. Some days it takes me a million years to get to the point.
