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Waking Up in Panic

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 4027

Shari,

I need to be careful to not dwell on anything work-related, since it causes nightmares, and I wake up agitated. Decluttering and getting rid of work things would help.

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1071

Hi Teebs,

The only way I can state this is by saying a Bible scripture, Phil. 4:8, which mentions thinking about pure and lovely things, meaning to keep our minds on positive and good things. If you're reading or watching unsettling things, then it will likely keep you in an anxious state. Garbage in, garbage out, as it's said. It's better to have relaxing positive reading material or watching a comedy before bed to put yourself in a happier mind frame before going to sleep. I found myself irritable a lot at one time and realized it was because I was watching a particular reality show where everyone is contentious, argumentative and irritated. And, it rubbed off on me. I stopped watching and felt happier. That's why I don't watch the news, it's all bad with maybe one, if any, positive stories. If you're constantly barraged with negative that's where the focus will be. If I watched the news, I'd be depressed and afraid to leave the house. So, I guard and protect my mind by choosing healthier material to put in it. Just like a healthy diet for my body, my mind needs healthy things to reflect on.

Shari

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 286

Thanks so much for the comments everyone. I'm reading them now in the middle of the night after waking up not quite in a state of panic but I definitely jolted away in an anxious state.

Vincenza - Usually I don't recall any dreams associated with waking up. The one exception was last Thursday when I woke up and believe I was dreaming I was a character is a novel I'm reading who was being sent away from her family before WWII as a refugee. I almost said out loud as I woke up in panic, "Why are you sending me away first?"

Kaitie - I have noticed being warm when I wake up like this. It's probably mostly from getting so worked up, but sleeping in a cooler environment might be something to try too.

Ivy - Thanks for the reminder of self-talk about it being a chemical reaction that will be over soon. That's one of the more helpful things for me to realize and tell myself, because I get so afraid the feelings of panic won't go away. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the feelings and forget that fear can't hurt you. I need to work on breathing into the fear both at night and when I'm at work so I don't get carried away with the flood anxiety. Hopefully tonight was a sign of improvement. When I woke up with that jolt of panic, I didn't go into a full fledged panic attack. I still feel really anxious, but at least feel like I'm trying to talk myself down from a lower level of anxiety than when I'm at a 12 on a scale of 1-10.

In general, I think my recent panic and anxiety attacks have to do with the increased stress I've been under and some unresolved issues that have been on-going for me this month. I'm working hard on addressing these issues while I'm awake, but it's frustrating, because I think I tend to get anxious more easily when I'm not well rested. So, after a middle of the night issue, it's doubly hard to go to the work next day, like I have to do in a few hours. I'm shaken from the anxiety attack, and less rested which makes it harder for me to cope with.

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 177

Hi Teebs,

I struggled with this for so long and a few months ago even posted my own thread on this topic! It's called "Nightmares and Panic Attacks" in the "Understanding Panic and Agoraphobia" section.

The majority of the time for me, it was caused by a dream which caused me to wake up in a state of panic. My biggest fear is vomiting, and for months I had a different dream each time that involved someone vomiting. At first I didn't realise this was the cause, but once I did I could start to come to terms with it.

I also found that heat made it worse. I was more likely to wake up if I got too hot during the night, and the panic tended to be worse. So now I leave my window open at night and have my fan turned on low. I also have a meditation app on my iPod, by "Meditation Oasis" which I listen to as I'm falling asleep. It helps me get to sleep, stay asleep and feel less anxious when I wake up.

I also keep a bottle of water and a tin of mints beside my bed. And if I'm hungry after being awake for a few hours, I have a couple of pieces of chocolate ;)

Hope this helps,
Kaitie.

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Vincenza

You could almost set a clock by my panic attacks every night at two in the morning. This is conditioning and memory working together. Like most everything in life from that morning coffee to how to get from point A to point B.

CBT says that we can use that conditioning to change the thoughts that cause the reaction. The Thought Triangle says that those thoughts recycle to memory and contribute to the memory. They also recycle back to the original thought (the first corner of the triangle) stimulating more negative searching and keeping the panic active.

So this is why I say activate the panic before you sleep and load memory with positive solutions so that when you panic and start searching memory for solutions you will have positive ones on the top of the pile and it is a fact that last into memory first accessed. (unless you have Alzeimers) Ever notice how when you are anxious it is hard to remember. Anxiety stimulates memories needed for survival and we know survival memories are negative because they have to be to activate Fight or Flight. So you can be sure that if you don't have positive memories waiting in the wings when you wake you will activate those negative survival skill memories. For the first while a person probably still will but it gets better unless a person gives in and doesn't use the positive memories they have stored.

CBT is about techniques, recovery is about using them.

Davit

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1853

Hi Teebs,

I'm sorry to hear about your recent struggles with panic attacks occurring in the middle of the night

Are you having any dreams that you can remember that may be triggering panic? If so, what is the feeling you have in your dream? Do you tend to wake at the same time from these panic attacks?

Could your anxiety and panic be related to unresolved issues you are having in your daily life?

You have some great supportive advice from your friends here at the PC center. Please keep us updated on how you're doing and if you try any of the strategies and advice offered from other members.

Here for you,

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 4

Teebs, you have my sympathy on this one, it's an issue I've been struggling with for a few years now.
I haven't yet found a way to 'make it stop', but I have found some ways to reduce the length of the panic attack after I wake up, perhaps my experience can help you.
Usually, if I wake up in a panic attack, I need to first remind myself where I am and find something familiar and solid to know that I am still okay and things haven't changed much since I went to sleep. (You may or may not find comforting, but I find comforting because if things haven't changed that probably means that nothing drastic or bad has happened)
The next thing I do is try to halt any anxious thoughts that might be buzzing about in my brain by distracting myself (Either I'll get up and take a shower, or I'll read a bit of a book, or sometimes it's just as simple as trying to actively think about something else -- anything that can keep my attention.)
After that I do some self-talk, reminding myself that what I'm feeling is just the chemicals in my body, an adrenal response that will be over soon and I'll be fine, there's nothing I need to be worrying about right this minute, and if it's important I'm better off dealing with it while rational and calm so I don't need to worry.
If I'm still not very calm or it's taking a while to calm down, I might try to think actively about how I feel when I'm calm, to try to push myself towards that state. (It doesn't always do much, but sometimes it can help)

I do this in a cycle, and what I've found is that if I do it every time (even if I do it out of order) my brain knows I'm going to calm down soon, it anticipates the process the same way as you'd get hungry if you always ate at the same time of day, or with the same plate and you saw that plate, it's conditioning, and so using that I can calm down faster.
Though I do seem to have hit a bit of a hard limit of at least 5-10 minutes before it's mostly over and I'm only anxious not panicking, and can often get back to sleep. Really that's not all that bad considering I started off not sleeping for the rest of the night and even after the panic stopped I'd still feel very anxious.

Davit may have been onto something with the identifying of your triggers. I don't have those kinds of 'triggers' I don't think about anything worrying before I go to sleep (or I wouldn't sleep) and when I wake up in the middle of a panic attack, I don't always know why I'm feeling panicked and don't have any accompanying anxious thoughts, just the physical side of things, I call it chemical panic, or body panic. Those are the most common for me, and frustrating because I don't think I can prevent them.
But if you *do* have triggers, or specific thoughts that get to you when you first wake up with one, you should definitely work with what you have and try to prevent the panic before it wakes you up. If your sleeping brain doesn't hit any triggers, or if it can deal with them when it trips over them, you should have an easier time of it. Likewise, having a calm-down cycle that you follow can help over time.. It took about a year for mine to really start being effective so be patient with yourself.

Hope that helps
- Ivy

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Hi Teebs

You can try this. Do you know what the trigger is? If not do you remember the parts of the panic attack? If so then just before you go to sleep play them along with all the reasons that the panic is stupid or illogical. What this does apparently is put all the answers at the top of your memory so that if you do have the trigger occur in the middle of the night you won't wake up in a panic looking for answers to something that is so confusing it doesn't really have answers till you straighten it out. If you wake up you will wake with both the panic and the answers so that it is mild if at all.

Over time they lessen till they take care of themselves. To help with this do relaxation and distraction exercises first to get your mind into a positive frame of mind so you can better build answers to the trigger or panic. The more you have in memory the less chance of waking in a panic because the chances of countering the panic in your sleep is a lot higher.

If you wake in the morning slightly agitated after this it is because you have done just that without waking.

Play the trigger and all the reasons it should just go away and it will.

I used to wake every night at two with a full blown panic attack about confinement in a tight space. After trying this I would wake up saying, "that is stupid, I would never do that". I also used visualization to change the situation as in the case of being stuck in a culvert. In my mind I would shrink myself and make the culvert bigger till I could sit in it like a mouse and look at the world around me. This turned a panic situation into a pleasant one.

And the trigger was having the blankets tucked in. I don't do that anymore but having two cats sleep on me can still trigger it as can sleeping against the wall.

Davit

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1071

Hi Teebs,

This used to happen to me. I used to distract myself by focusing on doing a word circle puzzle or watching t.v., getting on this site and reading posts, reading a book or playing a PC game, anything to keep my mind off of the panic symptoms. Then, I would go back to bed. I realized it was a temporary uncomfortable feeling, the same feeling you get after a work out exercising. I knew it couldn't hurt me, so eventually, the panic decreased until it stopped. I read it can also be a glitch in the carbon dioxide and oxygen transfer, for me it was, so when I woke in a panic, I would just tell myself, it's a normal glitch, nothing to worry about and eventually I got to the point where, I would just roll over and go back to sleep, instead of doing puzzles. Just keep using the coping tools you've learned here, like you have been doing, and relaxation techniques and after awhile panic will decrease or leave altogether. It's just a matter of practicing the coping skills every time it happens and even when it doesn't happen. I've only had high anxiety return on a consistent basis once and that was because I stopped practicing what I've learned here. I have to keep practicing to manage anxiety, so it doesn't get to that point anymore. It's so important to replace negative thoughts with positive truthful statements, daily, so the negative thoughts don't get a stronghold on your mind and take over and cause a setback. Negative thoughts are like a runaway train. If you allow them to take over, they will, and then we end up overwhelmed with anxiety. It sneaks up on us. Recently, I had one stubborn negative thought that was relentless. I had to combat it with a positive true statement to over ride it. It was a battle. But, I won. Sometimes it's hard, but I had to be more persistent than the negative thought and constantly challenge it and it eventually had less power over me until it finally stopped altogether. It's hard work sometimes, but positive always wins. I hope this helped. It's just what I've learned and have personally experienced. You will be able to manage it again, like you have in the past. I am confident of that.

Shari

11 years ago 0 +0 / -0 286

I went a whole year without a full-fledged panic attack, but I've had several in the last few months. Nearly all of them, including the two I've had in the last two weeks, have occurred in the middle of the night where I've woken up in full-fledged panic.

This seems especially unfair, because I don't get any chance to prevent the anxiety from escalating. Each time, I'm able to use some of my tools to eventually calm down and go back to sleep, though sometimes this takes a few hours. But what can I do to help keep this from happening?

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Waking Up in Panic