If suffering from anxiety in my daily life wasn’t enough, I’ve now been suffering from anxious nightmares. They can spur on from any situation that has happened in my life past or present and produce themselves when I’m trying to sleep and they progress into nightmares about that situation. It’s a new thing that my brain wants to torture me with and has stopped me from getting much sleep.
WHAT IS IT LIKE SUFFERING FROM ANXIOUS NIGHTMARES? LET ME TELL YOU.
My most current one is about a guy that I like, we are currently friends and depending on how we both feel about each other it could be something more. There have been a few certain hiccups that have made my anxiety be triggered and have made me worry about a few things which of course my anxiety loves and feeds from (I like to think of my anxiety as a little gremlin which clings onto me wherever I go), it’s been a few nights recently where my anxiety has produced itself into anxiety nightmares which have created situations in my head in order for me to dream about and once I’ve woken up they feel incredibly real to me.
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Upon waking up, I freak out thinking it’s actually happened and have to double, triple check that it hasn’t happened in order to get my brain back to a somewhat normal state and try to put myself at ease. I may feel generally anxious about it afterwards which really puts a dampner on my mood for quite some time. My heart races every-time I wake up from an anxiety nightmare and my body goes into panic mode.
HORRIBLE. SCARY. TIRING.
Nightmares can happen to anyone if they have a bad thought going through their mind or have been through something traumatic, it can manifest itself in your sleep and cause a bad dream or nightmare to form. Nightmares can also happen to those who suffer from anxiety or can even cause anxiety to these person having the nightmare. They can be both frequent or rare depending on the individual person. Dreams tend to happen every 5 days as they follow a pattern or cycle, we can’t remember every single dream we have but we do dream sometimes without knowing.
There doesn’t seem to be much we can do about nightmares as it’s your brain trying to tell you something – either a warning or a lesson you need to learn for the future. Once your nightmare has woken you up, there isn’t much you can do and try not to go over the nightmare again and again as that always for sure makes it worse. Try to clear your mind and get back to sleep. I always find if I mull over the nightmare again, it gives me anxiety for the next day which seems to make the situation a whole lot worse than it is.
Sleeping problems are quite common amongst those who suffer from anxiety as it can cause not just anxiety nightmares but also insomnia, lucid dreams, restlessness, night terrors but can also spur onto further anxiety attacks.
Some ways to help get over your nightmare is to:
- Take deep breaths
- Guided meditation
- Yoga
- Listen to relaxing music
- Have a glass of cold water and clear your mind
Images used in this post are credit to Burst on Pexels.
Have you suffered from anxious nightmares before?
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