Few questions about "is this normal?"

Just curious if anyone else experiences this... I'm an "insomniac" to an extent. I can fall asleep in 5 minutes or less when I go to bed but 2 hours later I'm awake and wide awake. I wake up on the hour every hour it seems most nights. I sleepwalk and sleep talk and have even cooked and eaten on numerous occassions while I was asleep.

When I fall asleep though, I feel kind of like I'm being jerked away. Or I quickly fall may be the best description of it. It always startles me. As I start to drift away something jerks me and I feel like I'm going to fall or something and it startles me awake. It will happen like this a few times a night before I fall asleep, this is why it takes 5 minutes and not 2 minutes to fall asleep. It also happens when I wake up at night and try to go back to sleep.

Anyone else deal with this? I have anxiety so it makes me have anxiety attacks since I don't know why it keeps happening. Maybe it's just my mind going straight to REM sleep? Is that what it's like? In my psych class I do believe I remember them saying those who get bad sleep will often go straight into REM sleep when they lay down, could this be a factor? Is it nothing?

I also hear things a lot when I'm trying to fall asleep. Feel things move around me. It makes me jump and wakes me right up. I also have dreams when I'm laying down but not yet asleep. I will have my eyes closed and be aware of my surroundings but I'm also in a deep intense dream. I know I'm dreaming but it still feels real because I'm still awake... Any idea if this could all be "insomnia" issues?

I have had jerks like that before, but mostly when I have been climbing the day before. A lot of our sleep experience is related to what has been going on recently in our waking lives. I know I use to have weird, horrible, anxiety-provoking dreams but as I went through therapy, realized that they were because the anxiety had to come out somewhere and it was better at night than during the day when I was trying to function; so I started being grateful for my night experiences and dreams and started working with them in therapy.

Your sleep walking, eating, and activities is a neurological problem, unrelated to "normal" sleep possibilities, its an illness of its own.

Dreaming you are dreaming

is not that good, means you are not dealing with things as they are, are not feeling safe even when you are asleep so you are going another level down to get away. I have had the sound thing too; can't tell you the number of times I've jumped up out of bed because of a phone ringing that did not exist and still remember the time I got up and searched my closet, convinced that fugitives I wanted to help had come in my window moments before and gone to hide there.

What does your medical doctor say about your sleepwalking and activities? The talking is okay I think; my college roommate had that, sat up one night and was patting her bed all around and asking about her "chain" and I thought she'd been wearing a necklace that had broken or something. Then, suddenly she laid back down again and was silent; I realized what had happened, I'd been talking to a dead person

Thanks Perna for your reply!!! The sleep walking and talking eating and such... Those I have brought up with a doctor once, my old primary care doctor. She assumed it was due to the lack of normal sleep and the ammount of stress I was under at the time. But nothing more has been said about it. One of my brothers has always been a sleep walker as well. I just figured it's something people do but when I started cooking and waking up to the smoke alarm going off and when I started waking up with food wrappers in bed with me, that's when I started getting confused.

As far as not feeling safe when I am sleeping, that's right. I feel safe in my current life but not my current mind. I'm not in a peaceful mind state right now. I've been having a lot of trouble with my mental dx's lately. A lot of fear of my own self. Fear of being awake and the things that entails. Fear of being asleep and all the things that come with sleep... I've always been afraid though. I've always had this fear of everything pretty much. It's only gotten worse over the last few months. I used to sleep with a butter knife under my bed. I was afraid someone would attack me at night but I was even more afraid that I would attack myself in my sleep that I couldn't use anything more than a butter knife under my bed. My brothers thought that was funny...

The hallucinations while sleeping, I've always just guessed they were a 1/2 dream type thing. I always thought dreaming while being awake like that was normal so I assumed what I heard or felt was something coming from the 1/2 dream. I do hallucinate in my waking life though so there's no telling where it's coming from.

When I sleep talk, typically I will say something. Whomever is in the room will make a comment and supposedly I get very aggitated and blow up on them and go right back to sleep. Confusing. But with sleeping and dreams isn't anything possible? Do regular mental rules and life rules apply to sleep or are there circumstances where it can be summed up to just dreaming? This is what I've assumed it was...

But I also didn't see a problem in temporary memory loss before. I thought it was normal to find yourself in your kitchen making a pb&j sandwhich and not know how or why you got there. Until I talked to a doctor and realized things like that were not normal.

So nothing about me is normal. Not even down to my sleep. Is it normal to feel things in your dreams? For instance I remember a couple of years ago. I had a dream that I was in a lake and I started to sink. I was drowning and choking and I woke up choking and coughing. It felt like I had just enhaled a gallon of water. I coughed until I was gagging. I was awake but still felt as if I were drowning for about 4 or 5 minutes after I woke up. Almost all of my dreams involve feelings.

All the feelings that I feel in my dreams, physical or emotional carry over into my waking life on a regular basis. Lately I haven't been dreaming as much unless it's in a 1/2 sleep state, my actual sleep seems to be undisturbed but I never remember my dreams so there's no telling. I only remember the ones lately where I am still 1/2 awake during them.

As if waking life wasn't confusing enough sleeping life has to be too. Go figure!

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleFlyingMonkeys

Is it normal to feel things in your dreams? For instance I remember a couple of years ago. I had a dream that I was in a lake and I started to sink. I was drowning and choking and I woke up choking and coughing. It felt like I had just enhaled a gallon of water. I coughed until I was gagging. I was awake but still felt as if I were drowning for about 4 or 5 minutes after I woke up. Almost all of my dreams involve feelings.

Yes, feelings in dreams are okay; I woke one night in my apartment totally and utterly convinced someone had just put their knee on my bed and was climbing into bed with me, I felt the mattress go down from their weight, that's what woke me!

But such intense dreams and difficulties while dreaming mean there is too much stress or problems in your life now that need to be address; your sleeping life is trying to get your attention because you are unable to give it during your waking time?

Here's an article you might find interesting about sleep eating and its causes:

www.sleepassociation...ex.php?p=sleepeating