Bad Sleep (Just a Vent)

[quizzical]

I can’t officially call last night a sleepless night. No, I only lay awake in bed until 5 a.m. (I know I should get up rather than toss and turn, but I was too stubborn.)

Next thing I knew it was 6 a.m. and I’d had one very short weird dream, followed by an outrageously symbolic dream related to my ADD diagnosis, followed by a nightmare.

Some fun.

I realize this could be a temporary adjustment to the meds, and I was actually being totally cool about the sleepless thing for a while. “I’ll just lie here and doze; that’s still rest…” I don’t even mind that my husband’s deep sleep mocks me, hour after hour.

The nightmare, though, that just sucked.

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[Carrie]

My meds would keep me awake at first so I would take 3mg of Melatonin to knock me out. When I have to get up at 5:30am, I dont have the time to toss and turn!

I hear you about the nightmare thing. From about 3-18 years old when I got pregnant, often I would have nightmare filled night that would keep me up all night. Once I became pregnant they stopped. Now its only once in a while. About 2 weeks ago I was up all night with nightmares… It was one that you finally wake yourself up out of and then fall right back into once you doze off again. However… about 95% of my nightmares are not the kind where your naked in front of your class kind of deal… but fictional and gory. I still remember nightmares from when I was 4 years old. I have 2 recurring ones over and over. Wolves chasing me at my elementary school at night, and a ;possessed cat trying to kill me, but I love cats, and didnt want to hurt it… but no matter what I did to it, it came back and tried.

My husband always falls asleep in minutes while I lay there awake! But he gets night paralysis, in which he has a terrible nightmare, but cant move to wake himself up… So often he will make himself breath funny to signal me, then I touch him and he wakes up. Often I know its happening before he signals me because all the hair on his body stands up. My dad gets night terrors, as does my uncle. Interesting stuff. Sorry for getting off topic there! hahaha

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[laddybug3]

I have many vivid dreams and nightmares. I wrote a few of my dreams just so I could go back to sleep. One of my friends had a slumber party and the day we shared some of our dreams. I wake up at least 3 to 4 times a night and remember all my dreams. It is strange, because some dreams feel like I slept for two days and it is only an hour, while others it is just minutes.

Last night I had a dream about time. Now that was interesting, and was somewhat a nightmare, but not really.

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[quizzical]

My nightmare was one of my recurring ones – that my teeth were falling out, one by one. Those nightmares started when I got braces on my teeth back in high school, but I still get them all the time.

Funny thing about the recurring bad dreams for me is that at some point the fact of them actually becomes part of the *new* version of the dream. As in, when I had the dream on Friday night, I was saying in the dream something to the effect of, “Oh, no! All those nightmares are finally COMING TRUE!”

The worst part was that in the dream I was just out-of-control screaming, howling. And the teeth just kept falling out. And then they started changing – I was spitting out normal-looking teeth at first, and then clear-plastic-looking teeth, and then red-plastic-looking teeth, almost like Legos or something, and then I woke up. Sort of like my brain was telling me, “I’m just going to make this dream more and more over the top until you snap out of it and WAKE UP!”

Sometime I’d like to elaborate on the other dream, but that one will take a while to write down, so I’ll save it for later.

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[laddybug3]

@quizzical I found I dream I wrote about and now it is starting to turn into a manuscript. I am 32, 100 words.

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[Anonymous]

quizzical – I can relate somehow – I had double jaw surgery about 9 years ago, and one of the dreams I had several years afterwards was that my mouth was falling apart – I was at my orthodontist’s office and he couldn’t even look at me, I was such a mess.

I used to have a lot of hypnagogic episodes (sometimes on going to sleep, sometimes on waking up) where I couldn’t move or speak – eventually I would get a muffled noise out and my husband would come wake me up. They were very frightening because it was as if I was completely awake in the dream, in my own bed at home. There would always be some kind of intruder. One time I got very pissed off and actually threw a pillow at the intruder (they were almost always at the foot of my bed). When I finally fully awakened, the pillow had been thrown across the room, not a very good shot, but it was evidence that I’d really done it.

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[Anonymous]

I’m a horrible horrible sleeper. If I go to bed early (10 to 11ish) I am only provided with extra time to toss and turn and run things through my mind. I have always been this way and my mom tells horror stories of me as ‘the baby who didn’t sleep’. That wouldn’t be so bad but I had a twin sister (who fortunately slept like a ‘baby’- haha) and another sibling just 2 years older.

You always hear the line from parents, “Just wait until YOU have kids and get a taste of your own medicine!” Well, I had kids and had one of those babies was just like me and never slept. When I had her, we weretogether in the hospital for 9 days (another story). That newborn hadn’t been told she should sleep. All the nurses kept commenting on that baby who was always awake. Things weren’t much better at home but she did take occasional cat-naps for 15 minutes about every 8 hours.

Several years later when I went back to the hospital for baby #2 I was greeted by a nurse with, “I remember you! You had that baby that never slept!” Now I know why my mom complained about my lack of sleep.

I’m on meds now for my ADHD and my sleeping habits are no worse than before I started meds. It really upsets my psychiatrist to hear of my sleep habits because he is determined to change them. He declares that it isn’t healthy or good for me to sleep for so few hours each night.

I ‘know’ he is absolutely correct and I’m probably aging/destroying my body at an alarming rate. I promised myself I would be very good this summer and try (desperately/hopelessly) to develop better sleep habits and even use the sleep meds he wanted me to use.

*sigh* ‘Summer’ is half over for me and by summer, I mean school vacation. I have one month left to keep my promise to try one more time to work on my sleep habits. Gee, why don’t we ever develop hyperfocus on sleeping, if you know what I mean?

😆

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[billd]

My mind won’t shut down enough TO sleep.

Now things are so bad, I”m going to a sleep clinic.. I fall asleep during the day, constantly tired, want to nap. If I sleep 6 hours it’s not enough, but if I sleep more, I feel worse, and have MORE need to sleep during the day.

Monday during a class about mid-afternoon I actually started dreaming while awake and was sure there were people in the room with us on couches, etc. sleeping! My eyes weren’t really closed but were getting there. I was aware of two worlds – the class, and the “dream” and I could not shake the latter. I’ve never experienced such a thing – usually I’m awake or asleep – this time I was both – with one foot in each world. Freaked me out.

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[quizzical]

Ugh – last night sleep was THISCLOSE all night long, but, tired though I was, I just couldn’t let the other shoe drop.

About a month ago, before I got my ADD diagnosis and was stressed and obsessed all the time about whether I had it, another doctor gave me a prescription for a sleep med. Helped a lot.

Now that I’m on the ADD med (Vyvanse) I’m trying a night here and there without the sleep med, since I seem to be fairly fatigued at the end of the day as the Vyvanse wears off. The first night off the sleep meds, I had the tooth nightmare.

Went back to the sleep meds for a couple more days and then tried without again last night. Got a lot closer to sleep, and did drift off long enough for a dream in the early a.m., but obviously, I’m still not where I want to be. I think, though, that eventually I’ll be able to wean myself off the sleep med, if I keep trying and go to bed before I get that second wind at 10 p.m.

What’s bugging, but also intriguing, me, lately is that nearly all my dreams, whether on sleep meds or not, seem to be very closely linked to ADD issues – in one dream I’ve forgotten an obligation and I’m trying to jump in at the last minute, in another I’m searching all over for a lost item, in yet another I’m going through closets and seeing years’ worth of accumulated long- forgotten collections, etc. So while I’m somewhat less obsessed with the ADD during the day, at night, it all comes dancing out.

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[Anonymous]

@quizzical, I used to have nightmares about my teeth all the time–falling out or shedding off the enamel. Really stick with you. Someone told me that teeth dreams are about money. Made sense to me, because I was in huge debt at the time.

I think it’s natural to dream about what you’re worried about. it sounds like you mind is trying to process this information. I tend to dream in worst-case scenarios. When I’m taking a career risk, I’ll have a dream about losing my job and going homeless. When I was getting married, I dreamt about my fiancee dying, or me dying and leaving her alone. These dreams are vivid, lifelike dreams that feel like reality. Once I get over that–have the dream and accept it as a potential outcome–I’m more relaxed about the issue. I’ve seen the worst, and know I can (hopefully) cope.

Anyway, to help you out, I just read this study about a new symptom of ADHD: turns out one symptom is ADDers can sleep peacefully and undisturbed for 8 hours! Hope that helps.

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[Anonymous]

Hmm, I’m not one of those ADDers. I wake up within about 20 minutes of falling asleep, wake up every 2 hours, and wake up earlier and earlier in the morning. But on ritalin, no problem getting to sleep and staying asleep – if I wake up and have to go the bathroom (I’m a frequent pee-er), I can ignore it and get back to sleep.

I can’t get an official written diagnosis until I have a sleep study done, I have a consultation mid-Sept, it will probably take a few months for that to happen and then a few months for my doc to treat the sleep issues (if any) and then my ADD psychiatrist consultant a few months to see me again and issue the formal report. What a pain in the butt this is!

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[billd]

>>I just read this study about a new symptom of ADHD: turns out one symptom is ADDers can sleep peacefully and undisturbed for 8 hours! Hope that helps<<

Oh, I wish! The problem is we can’t shut down the brain………… I get no real sleep, no matter how many hours. Adding hours doesn’t help and actually makes me feel worse.

Most of my dreams have nothing to do with fears or worries – only one that really did seem to connect hasn’t happened for a while now – I used to dream about getting lost in a school building, unable to find my way out, or to the room I was supposed to be in. That fits – I have real trouble with complex buildings, turns and twists. If I go into a large hospital for example, I need to ask for help finding the exit. Even in the doctor office if the room is more than 2 or 3 turns back, I need help getting back to the reception area.

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[quizzical]

@ pete: LOL!

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[Author]

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