The title seems a little long, but let me explain the situation.
For the past few months I’ve been getting nightmares on the night before I start the work week. That’s usually on Sunday night/ Monday morning. But over the Memorial Day weekend, Sunday night was fine but the nightmares returned Monday night. Then back to Sunday nights for the last couple weeks.
And it’s not a single nightmare. I wake up with my pulse pounding and adrenaline rushing. I finally calm down enough to go back to sleep and then I have a completely new nightmare that wakes me up. Repeat all night until I figure I won’t make it back to sleep before my alarm goes off.
Because of this, Mondays (or Tuesdays if I had Monday off) are horrible. I’m tired, crabby and lethargic. Because of my wife’s schedule, I usually get to bed late on Monday and Tuesday nights. So I am usually tired for the entire week.
I’m sick and tired of being tired.
I love my job and the people that I work with. The commute sucks, but I mitigate that by leaving way early in the morning. That also gives me time to put an hour in the fitness center at work before I have to be at my desk.
I thought it might be anxiety about work since it only happens the night before I have to go to work. But why not Tuesday night?
My youngest son died a little over a year ago. He was 9 years old. I guess it could be grief, or PTSD or something, but it started long before the 1 year anniversary and still persists well beyond that. And again, why only on the night before my first day of work for the week?
I don’t have any kind of weekend schedule that would set it off either. I rarely drink, though I did this past Saturday. Since my son’s death, I’ve had no desire to watch horror movies. (Not that I was ever a big fan of horror movies to begin with.) Yesterday was a good day and not at all nightmare inducing.
There was no event that I can think of that coincides with the start of the nightmares toward the beginning of April.
Maybe, at this point, they are happening just because I expect them to happen.
I don’t remember much about the nightmares. All I remember from last night was my house was being robbed except it was a house that I had never seen nor been in before. Then a later nightmare was the house was on fire, except that it was a completely different house that I had never seen nor been in before.
Any ideas on what maybe causing this cycle that I hadn’t thought of. Any ideas on how to get out of it?