For the last couple of years I’ve had a problem with waking up before my alarm goes off with a horrible feeling of doom. Normally I fall back asleep in about five minutes and once I start my day I feel fine. I ususally comfort myself by imagining that there is some physical reason for it and it’s not that life is horrible, it’s that my blood sugar is low or that serotonin levels are lowest at that time of day or some other completely fabricated explanation that has no basis in fact. I think I’ve actually read that serotonin levels are supposed to start off highest in the morning. Could it be that they don’t start being high til daybreak and they’re lowest in the early hours?
Is there a simple physical explanation for this? Is it common? Is it harmless?
It’s a sleep disorder called Sleep Paralysis - it’s a form of narcolepsy.
It’s characterized by atonia (not being able to move about) and feelings of dread or fear.
It can potentially be treated with something like Ritalin if it really bugs you; however, assuming you’re feeling rested during the day you can just ignore it.
All that being said - I am not a physician. You should probably talk to yours.
It could also be sleep apnea from which I suffer. I often wake up in the middle of the night feeling really “strange” This is due to lack of oxygen. I also get the sleep paralysis at times too. It was very scary till I found out what it was!
Has anyone else ever experienced the feeling of dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming? There have been times that I have known that I was asleep, which freaks me out becuase it makes me feel extremely vulnerable. I’ve even gone so far as to try to wake myself up. Once, all I could do was to move my right index finger until I woke up-very frustrating feeling. Another time, all I could get myslf to do was to make horse noises with my lips. Is that not strange? Please don’t laugh at me.
It is strange and it happens to me a couple of times. Usually the dream was extremely reality that I was convinced that it was reality. The strange thing is that my mind was still working rationally - a handful of times I look at the chaos around me or the stickly mess which I was in (such as forgetting to study for a test, being forced to walk to Thailand without a passport or any other diaster) - I will shout to myself “IT IS A DREAM” and try to wake out. Once by stuffing my mouth into my hands and bite (luckly I didn’t repeat that act in reality!)
As to answer the OP, there was a period of time I would wake up, way before the appointed time that I shall, and I found myself shivering, hyper-ventaliting and feeling as if the entire world has collasped. That was when I was depressed and the feelings lessen, but didn’t go away, after waking up. If it ever lingers I suggest you seek professiona help.
Not sure if it’s sleep paralysis in the OP…he/she didn’t mention the inability to move, just awakening with awful feelings of dread and fear.
IAN anything like a medical pro, but I seem to remember from college that depressive symptoms are worse in the morning, which LostCause’s experiences bear out.
But since you feel fine the rest of the day, I would suppose depression is out. It may be something more mild, just the experience of occassionally waking up in the middle of the night with worry and anxiety that is probably pandemic to the whole human race. A friend of my mother’s once told her “no one ever woke up in the middle of the night and had a good thought.” When I wake up worried and anxious in the night (as I did just this morning), remembering this generally makes me feel a little better.
Could it be Night Terrors? These happen during deep sleep rather than REM sleep and are like waking up from a terrible nightmare, except without the nightmare. The person wakes up terrified (fast heartbeat, sweating, etc.) but with no memory of anything causing the terror. You can find a lot if you Google on it.
What is the OP is describing is not sleep paralysis; he made not mention of being unable to move.
greenvegan and LostCause: What you are describing is “lucid dreaming”. I’ve never understood why people find this experience scary. Its a very power altered state of consciousness that can be harnessed for some fascinating nighttime adventures
Getting back the OP: I experience feelings like that too. A sort of sense of dread when I’m lying there in the morning. I think its more simply a case of thinking about all the problems you’re currently facing in life, at once, whilst in a state completely unable to address their solution.
Could also be hypoglycemia (low blood sugar); however, whenever I wake up with one of these end-of-the-world feelings, there’s no way in hell I’m going back to sleep. Gotta eat something first.
Right. It’s not sleep paralysis and it’s not really night terrors either. I think I’ve had those and they’re more like panic attacks. I have the third, unnamed thing. I’m going to try getting up and eating like Ethilrist said and thinking about what pravnik’s mom’s friend said. It sounds like it’s pretty common.
I used to be able to control most of what happened in my dreams, which was great during puberty :). However, sometimes I woud run into a situation which I could not avoid, I figured my brain was trying to deal with something during sleep that I had to be forced to sort out. During the nights when I could control my dreams I noticed I would wake up a bit on the tired side, more than usual, but not a big deal. I’ve gradually lost that ability and now I sleep like a stone.
Gads. Sleep paralysis. I hate that. I’ve caught that a couple of times during car trips, and all my sleep-addled mind could think of was that I was having a massive stroke. Fun.
I can one-up you, though…waking up, 9 years old, overjoyed that it was finally Christmas morning, and then realizing that it was just a dream about it being Christmas, and that it was actually mid-May. All before raising my head from the pillow.
I often wake up and see strange things. This is caused by being half asleep and half awake. I often see people in my room that will morph back into shadows or curtains when I come fully out of sleep. It used to scare me but now it is kind of amusing. Once I saw a leprechaun jumping around my room!
No, I am not drunk or on drugs when I see these things either.
I forget the technical term for it but it is a related to sleep paralysis.
I think it is the same thing some people have who think they are abducted by aliens.
Since you mention that you wake up with this feeling of doom before your alarm goes off, could it be that this is your body’s way of making sure that you don’t oversleep? I’ve had that happen to me many times, especially if it’s imperative for some reason that I don’t oversleep. I’ll wake up with the feeling of dread (dread that I did in fact oversleep, usually), check the alarm clock, find out that I still have an hour or two before I have to get up, calm down, roll over and fall back asleep.
Are you anxious about oversleeping (or something else, for that matter)?
Years ago I had the same thing. Wretched feeling. At the time I read that one symptom of magnesium deficiency was this phenomenon, so of course I started taking Calcium/Magnesium supplements. I have no idea if it helped, but I haven’t had one of those hellish experiences for two decades.
If I were a clinician, which I’m not, I’d probably want you to talk about what’s going on in your life. Maybe something is causing you dread, but you’re not aware of it yet. Maybe forgotten memories are emerging. Maybe you are prone to depression. Maybe you’re staying up too late and disrupting your circadian rhythm.
I’ve done the same thing for as long as I can remember. I’ll wake up around 3:00 am or 4:00 am and immediately start worrying about something or have an impending feeling of doom. I’ll think of anything from work issues to the fact that I’m going to die someday and there’s nothing I can do to control it! I’ve just always told myself that things always seem much worse in the middle of the night. Of course when I wake up and get on with my morning things are fine and I can go about my day. How interesting that others do this.
