You know, I assumed once you passed puberty you'd sleep better. Well, maybe not better being an adult and having all that extra responsibility and stress and all, but I figured you'd at least grow out of being afraid of the dark. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of the dark, per se, but I'm afraid of what happens in the dark: sleep. Let me back up and tell you all when this whole shebang started...
I know in college you don't get much sleep (I think I averaged about 20 hours a week, but it's kinda my fault 'cause I always took 21 credit hours - the maximum you can take - each semester). So after undergrad and grad school, I was accustomed to only getting about 20-25 hours of sleep a week and I've operated very well on that amount for the past 10 years. That is until I got engaged 3 years ago. Now I know planning a wedding is stressful and it's bound to take a toll on your body, but this was excessive. See, I had my gallbladder removed about 5 years ago and my body now throws hissy-fits that put shame to a spoiled little kid in the grocery store candy aisle whenever I eat anything with protein, with dairy, or is fried (so basically everything delicious). Don't get me wrong, I still eat all of that (I mean, I need protein and all the vitamins and nutrients there within...and I really like tasty food...) but I have to assess my daily plans to decide if I have the time to lay on my couch in pain for hours at a time before I indulge in that. Well, apparently stress exacerbates this otherwise minor digestive issue. Now combine that issue with the stress of graduate school and planning a wedding and you have one very sick bride (i.e. me). So at the urging of my then future-husband and my mother (and my maids-of-honor, my then future-in-laws, my professors, my coworkers, and basically everyone I knew), I went to the doctor who thought my caffeine intake was partly to blame for my lack of sleep and my increased stress (keep in mind back in college I would have about 3-4 energy drinks in a day as well as 3-4 triple shot espressos to keep me focused), so I stopped all of my caffeine consumption that day. Cold turkey. Completely stopped. Even sweet tea. I'll let the gravity of that last statement sink in (for those of you not from the south, sweet tea is the nectar of the gods and it makes the world turn). Turns out I'm pretty much immune to caffeine. After going a few months with not a single drop of caffeine I was sleeping less, I was losing more weight (during the months leading up to my wedding I went from a size 10 to a size 4 - keep in mind I was not trying to lose weight...I'm just fairly tall and size 10 is about average for someone my height), I was less productive during my waking hours, and the night terrors started.
Now, I just assumed it was the stress of everything coming down on me (word to the wise, elope), and I figured they were just your typical stress-induced nightmare so I just learned to deal with them when they happened. (I also had a small sleep test during my no-caffeine run just to make sure everything was working up in the ol' noggin. Everything came back fine, I guess, because they never told me otherwise.) Anyway, I figured once the wedding was over and once I got my Master's Degree the terrifying nightmares would go away. How wrong I was.
I can't even begin to count the nights I've woken myself up screaming or trying to run from something in the dark. I've even woken up in different clothing and/or with food in my bed with no recollection of changing or getting up for a snack (which is not really unheard of for me...I have a very high metabolism and I'm almost always hungry). Some people told me I needed to get more sleep which just seemed to exacerbate the problem (I usually have an episode when I get more than 4 hours of sleep) and others (namely, my husband) thinks my affinity for ghost-hunting tv shows could be to blame (and I would agree if what was terrifying me in my dreams was a ghost, but it never is). So, I went to the great Google to do a little research and came upon this Wikipedia article. While it was a great start, it posed more questions than it answered. So back to Google I went. The Mayo Clinic was fairly useless, as were many other sites I checked, and some even contradicted the information on medical sites. So I kept looking.
After a while, I started to think that maybe I was just having very vivid nightmares which seem to be much more common and less of an issue than night terrors. I mean, I work two jobs to pay the bills and I'm trying to find a job that actually uses my degrees (which is a job in and of itself) and I'm trying to do a little freelance and I'm trying to help my cousin get into college (she'll graduate next year from high school, so we're on kind of a time crunch...), so I know I'm under a lot of stress and maybe that's why I don't sleep well and why when I get more than 4 hours of sleep I have nightmares - I'm guessing my brain thinks I could be using my time more wisely by job hunting at 3 AM... So I figured that was that and I was just having normal nightmares...that is, until I came across this site, among others, that differentiate between nightmares and night terrors and also sites like WebMD and this site from the UK that lists all kinds of sleep issues and now I don't know what plagues me in the night! I guess that's what I get for trying to figure it out on my own and trying to make it stop by myself. (In case you guys are wondering, I don't really like doctors...at all...so I always go to the almighty Google first to try to figure out whatever ails me and I try natural remedies first. If that fails, then maybe I'll consider seeing a doctor...maybe...)
So yeah...this has just been on my mind for a bit -- especially since I woke up terrified this morning with some fresh bruises that I'm pretty sure weren't there last night when I went to bed. If anyone knows of anything I can try at home to stop this whatever it is, feel free to let me know!
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