My mother has been experiencing deep depression for a number of years. I may have made some progress getting her to see a psychotherapist but in the meantime, can you explain to me what is causing one of her worst sensations:
She conveys to me that every morning she wakes up in a state of extreme terror and anxiety, feeling like there are demons circling around her, and she feels paralytic, with the deepest sense of dread, misery and hopelessness.
Now I know what some of you may say: sleep paralysis right? Perhaps, but I don't know if it is as simple as that. I am convinced that there must be some link to her pattern of 'sleep' (more on that in a minute) and how she is feeling within herself on her day to day basis, which is acute loneliness, hopelessness, and all the other ess's which have something traumatic linked to them. I'd say she spends at least 95% of her day ruminating and catastrophising to an absurd extent. Getting some understanding of her sleep patterns, she tells me she goes to bed and spends the next 5 hours of so lying awake ruminating, worrying, sticking her mind on spin cycle and the rest. She then falls asleep at 5am and wakes up at 9am with the worst of the worst, the entire world bearing down on her and these imagined demons assaulting her very existence.
I remember a therapist of mine telling me briefly about how REM sleep has a lot to play in the anxiety we experience in the morning, and how we are most vulnerable at that time, especially if we slip into deep sleep at 5am or so.
Do you know anything about this? I thought that if at least I could make her understand why her body behaves like this through some cold science, it may soften to some extent her dramatic personification of what she experiences, and go some way towards putting a plan in place to diminish her suffering.
She conveys to me that every morning she wakes up in a state of extreme terror and anxiety, feeling like there are demons circling around her, and she feels paralytic, with the deepest sense of dread, misery and hopelessness.
Now I know what some of you may say: sleep paralysis right? Perhaps, but I don't know if it is as simple as that. I am convinced that there must be some link to her pattern of 'sleep' (more on that in a minute) and how she is feeling within herself on her day to day basis, which is acute loneliness, hopelessness, and all the other ess's which have something traumatic linked to them. I'd say she spends at least 95% of her day ruminating and catastrophising to an absurd extent. Getting some understanding of her sleep patterns, she tells me she goes to bed and spends the next 5 hours of so lying awake ruminating, worrying, sticking her mind on spin cycle and the rest. She then falls asleep at 5am and wakes up at 9am with the worst of the worst, the entire world bearing down on her and these imagined demons assaulting her very existence.
I remember a therapist of mine telling me briefly about how REM sleep has a lot to play in the anxiety we experience in the morning, and how we are most vulnerable at that time, especially if we slip into deep sleep at 5am or so.
Do you know anything about this? I thought that if at least I could make her understand why her body behaves like this through some cold science, it may soften to some extent her dramatic personification of what she experiences, and go some way towards putting a plan in place to diminish her suffering.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2nFHD6S
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