Morning Terrors

[Janets]

I need some help dealing with the terror I feel when I first wake up in the morning. Anyone else out there have to deal with this and how do you manage to get through it?

 

[ShadowSolace]

I deal with it quite often. I try to calm down by having a nice cup of coffee or tea and by listening to music to cheer myself up.

Maybe try something like that, or just step outside and look at the sky. I know sunrises and sunsets are very calming to me, and so is breathing in the fresh morning air. Good luck Janets ;)

 

[ms spock]

I can wake up in a total panic, so I do a yoga nidra as that works for me.

 

[Friday]

Rituals.

For years it was stand up, stumble out, scramble eggs, feed my son, step outside, smoke, wake up for "real", take a shower, really wake up for "real" & start my day. Which was usually some form of exercise with my kiddo (and another shower).

Quit smoking, no more kiddo... Getting a new ritual down was hard. Half the time I'd simply wake up and go back to sleep. Literally. For days on end. Only waking to eat and pee once or twice a day.

I had to dig pretty deep before parenthood enforced a changed ritual to look at my old patterns. When I'm doing well? I'm super adaptable, but rituals still help. When I'm doing badly, I need the structure. Something that brackets periods of time. A way to force me to shift gears (waking to sleeping, stillness to moving, work to play, panic to calm)... Because otherwise I end up stuck grinding gears. I can't shift on my own. I spin out, and grind, and overheat, and am just a solid mess. Alpha & Omega. I need a beginning and an end.

 

[user27357]

yes, a conditioned response might be the answer-ritual-whatever you want to call it.

I find my alarm clock in the dark and stare at the numbers until they make sense to me.

Terror! Adrenaline! Awareness that it has happened again. Open eyes and be sure they are open. Find the light from the clock. Stare at it . Breathing calms down, eyes focus, numbers emerge and then I start to think about things like time and place and where I am and what time it is. Get up or just push off the sweated out pillows and go back to sleep if there is enough time.

4 to 6 nights a week, as long as I can remember, probably ten years now.

I don't scream anymore and I haven't found myself frantically stumbling in the dark for over a year now. It gets better.

I have ways to get through a day. They fall aside when I go to sleep and what comes to mind comes to mind with no techniques to avoid the thoughts. I am at a loss as to finding a way to not dream what I am going to dream.

I feel for you, it sucks in a big way but you find a way to get by because it beats the alternative

 

[Deleted member 28845]

I get these f*ckers everyday, Do you wake up feeling terrified?

 

[Karen12]

Do you wake up to an alarm clock?

If you wake up to a beeping or ringing alarm you might try a sunrise clock, which wakes you by slowly brightening the room over a half hour, simulating a sunrise. You set it at your eye level and it triggers a natural awakening cycle which is a completely different physiological response than is triggered by an alarm. This helped me a lot with morning terror. Human beings weren't mean to wake up in alarm every morning, that's hard on everyone even if you don't have PTSD!

 

[City Slicker]

@FridayJones - rituals for sure.

Also there is research linking increased cortisol levels with low blood sugar levels upon awakening making 'wake up' anxiety and panic an issue for a lot of people, not only those with PTSD. When you combine that with PTSD you have quite a cocktail of things going on. Yes, back to calming rituals - we each have to find the ones that work for us - trial and error. But once you find the ones that work, you may find the days begin to get easier.