Are You Like This? And How Does That Make U Feel?

[Guest]

For 39 years my bedtime had been anything but peaceful, as I grew older my Type B Night Terrors became increasingly severe. Over the last decade, sleeping had become the most intensely tumultuous and physically harmful part of my existence. When a night terror victim goes to sleep, the turmoil of my life is just waking up. That turmoil erupts with awesome ferocity very shortly after I fall into a deep sleep. Usually within forty minutes I bolt up, eyes wide open, unbelievably frightened, heart pounding, and it is one of the most intense demonstrations of sheer terror a human being is capable of.

 

And when I awake I usually remember little or nothing of the episode but my husband Joe would always keep track of these things for me and he would chart the terrors and how often and how violent. I am grateful that he would take on such a task because it is important to have a compassionate and loving man who is willing to do so without me even asking and someone that suffers from an illness needs to see not just their side of things but a perspective that only comes from outside our mind. I report on the inner working and Joe is able to see the exterior and when we put them together we are able to plan and make my life better because Night Terrors are destructive, it is a bad dream taken to unbelievable extremes, its not a nightmare.

 

In a nightmare the body is in an induced state of paralysis and the person remains in bed until waking. Night terror provide no such protective paralysis and suffers often say and do the most horrible things without ever knowing. The emotional experience is really impossible to describe in words and suffers show no signs of pain even though the internal damage to the body is extreme.

 

What often happens is that these Night Terrors are usually part of secondary illness or the may bred other illnesses because in these Terrors everything is fierce, irrational and it can become part of your awake behaviour and those who love and care for you become in these Terrors the invisible attacker and the huge adrenaline rush brought on by the sheer terror of the moment feels like demons are tormenting you and it can carry over in unpredictable patterns, and wild and bizarre behaviours towards are caregivers.

 

And the suffers often end up viewing their lives in vague and cloudy ways. I am extremely fortunate to have a dedicated husband because he enabled me to reveal the secret of these terrors because I hid them from family and friends because I thought I would be embarrassed – that others would see me as defective and that no man would ever stay with me. And without his help I would be in bad shape today because terror can cause extreme psychic trauma and will leave you confused and conflicted. I think the reason Joe has been able to handle me and actually make my life better is because by nature he has a curious and forgiving soul, a fashination with all these that impact our lives, and a strength of character that has always remained consistent and comforting.

 

Literature states that we are not born with these terrors that we develop them as a result of being surviours of neglect, abuse, and disasters. The longer these terror remain secret the easier it is to develop sleep and or anxiety disorders and we become filled with stress related problems which always turns into anger and other psychological symptoms and often suffers who experience many years of untreated trauma become persistent in their beliefs and experience a level of ego inflation to the point where they exhibit behaviours in which they are significantly blocked and brilliantly unable to see what is obvious compelling evidence of their behaviour.

 

In adults, anxiety disorders are common place and because the Night Terrors have gone on untreated for so long, and aided by chemical changes which occur in the brain that are a direct result of extreme abuse, suffers often become polarized, develop panic disorders and generalized anxiety and that makes the lead in to the start up of post traumatic stress disorder, and that is something truly harmful, because the seed for PTSD is usually planted as a direct result of childhood abuse, then brought to the surface during extreme adult abuse, and that leads directly to persistent sensitivities of the pituntiary-adrenak and automatic stress response, which in turn leads to an increased risk for adult psychopathological conditions, which are often played out against a caregiver, a bf, or partner that immediately proceed the previous abusive relationship and when it does the level of reaction to disturbances is completely flawed and the magnitude of impact is exgarated because people end up believing that independence is a priority and that is a result of the premorbid personality that develops in those already predisposed to such changes due to their lives experiences [nature and nurture].

 

What happens is these people who have survived situations involving great physical danger and psychological stress and it has been prolonged they develop a basic biological reaction that is protective so they are unable to see, care, or rectify the hurt and the actions they inflict on others because they have become desenstivized. Often they lash out with unnatural brutality and if left unchecked and treated, suffers only get worse, in their own health and in their treatment of others. Trust me, I know this is true. When Joe and I first started tackling my illnesses I had no idea how much damage I had caused to him and I was only able to gradually return to a place where I never did that because he withstood everything I threw at him and his love for me eventually broke thru the ice.

 

And my damaged memorization returned as I began to trust in his words and started to believe and act upon what he saw and thought instead of following my own distructive thoughts over and over again. And the reason I have gotten better is because I have not had to have someone new learn my triggers over and over again, and by not being held captive to my fears and insecurities [by being with a lifelong mate] I have released a huge amount of stress factors which had been contributing to my decline. Today I can honestly say that I might not be alive if it wasn’t for this man’s love. Because during my worst days I did not realize that I was displacing every hurt and fear and trauma on to his shoulders and viewing him as the cause of all this. And during those days I would shift back and forth, rapidly cycling between my known and real love for him, and an amazingly powerful and harmful dislike for him that really had nothing to do with him. At one extremely horrible stage in my life I almost ended Joe’s life because of my actions but somehow he held on and kept fighting for me and gradually I started to see that he was not doing that out of pity, or to be a saint saving a sinner but because he just plain and simply love me for who I am.

 

I have no idea how he held in there for me. We have been together now for 20 years and I love him more and more every day and he does with me. There is nothing I could ask for more. So let this be a lesson to those out there who are causing their partners extreme hardship – make the repairs and soon as possible so your partner can help you, and if u have placed them in a confided position – do everything you can to be with them, even it is only for a few hours – visit them wherever they are because they are in that position because you placed them there and that is part of yer healing and your start to tackle your illness.

 

Don’t be fooled by what you believe are the correct methods to undergo the responsibility of your illness. To show you how extreme and confusing all this can be to a person, I once placed Joe in a position where if he contacted me in any way he would go to prison for life, and while I was doing that I continued to make overtures of love and insist that he be the one that lead our courtship even though ever time he did so I punished him. I was actually setting him up and the cycle kept repeating and becoming encorpoarted into part of my belief system where I would tell him the way I would fall in love with him would be if he treated my poorly and paid no attention to me – I can clearly see know that this is what a victim of abuse believes is the way to love and it is wrong and hurtful – thankfully Joe was such an amazing lover that his constant pounding eventually cleared the cobwebs and I was able to see him as he truly is and me as I had become. Now we live a balanced and healthy life and we are both responsible for that.