So after lots of research of Insomnia I have narrowed mine down to Primary Insomnia. For years I have tried to act as if my sleeping issues were just stress but after researching and studying the cause and effects of Insomnia I am more certain than ever I suffer from this and the research that I found is not reassuring that it can be cured and is something I will deal with for maybe the rest of my life.
Primary insomnia isn't a symptom or side effect of another medical condition. It is its own distinct disorder, and its cause isn’t well understood. Primary insomnia usually lasts for at least 1 month. Many life changes can trigger primary insomnia. It may be due to major or long-lasting stress or emotional upset. Even if these issues are resolved, the insomnia may not go away. Trouble sleeping can persist because of habits formed to deal with the lack of sleep. These habits might include taking naps, worrying about sleep, and going to bed early.
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/inso/causes.html
Some Basic signs and symptoms of Insomnia, most are a gimme but one stood out to me that I never would have imagined that I have always seemed to deal with.
The main symptom of insomnia is trouble falling or staying asleep, which leads to lack of sleep. If you have insomnia, you may:
• Lie awake for a long time before you fall asleep
• Sleep for only short periods
• Be awake for much of the night
• Feel as if you haven't slept at all
• Wake up too early
The lack of sleep can cause other symptoms. You may wake up feeling tired or not well-rested, and you may feel tired during the day. You also may have trouble focusing on tasks. Insomnia can cause you to feel anxious, depressed, or irritable.
Insomnia also can affect your daily activities and cause serious problems. For example, you may feel drowsy while driving. Driver sleepiness (not related to alcohol) is responsible for almost 20 percent of all serious car crash injuries. Research also shows that insomnia raises older women’s risk of falling.
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/inso/signs.html
Feeling drowsy while driving is one that I have had for at least the past 3 years. There is many times where I have felt like I could easily close my eyes while driving to work in the morning or home in the evening and fall asleep. At times I have to roll the car windows down when it is cold outside or crank up the AC in the summer to keep myself from falling asleep while driving.
Another interesting find that I stumbled across was the habits of a person who struggles or struggled with sleeping at one time finds themselves continuing to worry about going to sleep causing themselves to deprive them of sleep due to worrying about lack of sleep. I have been doing this a lot lately. More than ever honestly, I find myself worried each night whether I am going to go to sleep or not, how long will I actually get to sleep, and or how many times will I get up if I do go to sleep.
However, in some people, the bad habits are reinforced, the person "learns" to worry about his or her sleep, and sleeplessness continues for years after the stress has subsided. Therefore, it is also called learned insomnia or behavioral insomnia.
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/primary_insomnia/page2_em.html
More interesting finds of Primary Insomnia that never would have occurred to me but seems to be truth to most all of the below:
Primary Insomnia Symptoms
Psychophysiological insomnia:
• Sleep disturbance varies from mild to severe. (yep this is me)
• Sleeplessness may manifest as difficulty falling asleep or as frequent awakenings in the night. (Me too)
• Persons with insomnia often find that they can sleep well anywhere else but in their own bedroom. (oddly enough me too, did not know this until recently)
• Persons with this type of insomnia tend to be more tense and dissatisfied compared to good sleepers. Emotionally, they are typically repressors (suppress their feelings), denying problems.
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/primary_insomnia/page3_em.html
On top of the Primary Insomnia I have been struggling with the past week or two I have recently been having awful night terrors. Night terrors that is unexplainable and terrifying, just as the name Night Terrors. I have found myself in the terrors feeling as if I was awake but awful things happening in my house or around me, yet finding myself not able to wake up, feeling as if I can’t move and even at times feel my heart racing and even experienced an anxiety attack this week. This is another reason I found it important for me to find out more about my sleeping problems and more importantly these terrors that have paralyzed me and scared me into no sleep when sleep is what I need.
Sleep paralysis is a natural protection mechanism that prevents you from acting out your dreams. It affects most of your body, with the exception of your eyes (allowing them to demonstrate Rapid Eye Movement), chest (so your lungs can breathe freely) and sometimes minor extremities like toes, fingertips and lips.
Sleep paralysis switches on and off around the sleep-wake border. As a result, sometimes people become aware of the paralysis and are shocked to find they can't move. This can be scary, inducing nightmarish hallucinations (but not always), and when it happens frequently it is classed as a sleep disorder. The experience can last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. It doesn't always invoke visions of evil entities, but this is a common feature when you're afraid. The experience of sleep paralysis occurs when your mind (in part) wakes up, but your body remains asleep. Physically asleep, you remain paralyzed. But mentally conscious, you may start to panic and the half-dreaming mind conjures up nightmarish images to "explain" what is happening, often based on cultural beliefs. Sleep paralysis is common: half of the world's population may experience this condition at least once in their lives. The condition is more likely to arise if you are under stress and/or have disturbed sleep cycles due to shift work, narcolepsy, sleep deprivation, jet lag, and other sleep disorders.
http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/sleep-paralysis.html
Ah ha, last statement, disturbed sleep cycles, this would explain it. But I guess the reason I was prone into looking into this is that I suffer off and on with Insomnia, sometimes going months without any problems sleeping or going months with continued sleep problems, sometimes weeks with only about 5 hours of sleep. However, I have never encountered Night Terrors like I have until this week. This is scary beyond recognition. I found it hard to move, get up, and calm myself down just to relax in my own home. This is a scary thing for anyone. To feel paralyzed and frightened in your own home, to feel as if you are a prisoner to your body and cannot escape.
If sleep paralysis is just a dream, then why does it feel so real?
Some of the effects ARE real. This state is a very clever merger of waking consciousness with the dream world. It's a bizarre mind trick.
For instance, footsteps thumping towards the bed are often a distortion of the sound of your own heartbeat, pounding in your chest due to all the adrenaline. Hearing your assailant breathing unnaturally is common too - thought to be the sound of your own gasps for breath in this panicked state.
The feeling of your body being paralyzed is real, too. Releasing yourself from the grip of the paralysis is one way to end this terrifying situation (see below).
However, the perceived difficulty to breathe properly is what causes many people to imagine an entity trying to harm them (by stopping them breathing or crushing their chest). It's important to remember here that the effect is psychosomatic.
http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/sleep-paralysis.html
I’m hoping that after finding and researching more about what has been going on with my sleep patterns and disturbance in dreams I can try to reassure myself that I have to control my behavioral patterns in order to sleep and not to create a ‘LEARNED’ behavioral pattern once my period of insomnia has worn off by causing it to go into further time periods and possibly giving me extreme night terrors.
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