Somniphobia

The fear of sleep.

Dealing with this fear has been quite a struggle ever since I had a major breakdown about two years ago. My life changed that day. I found myself unable to live all by myself as I used to. Unable to be left alone for fear that I would die all alone. Unable to sleep alone at night. Getting heart palpitations. Rushing to the ER every day and every night for fear of having a heart attack. It was a total nightmare. Life came to a terrible stop. And I was left feeling vulnerable, unable to do the simplest things in life.

Sleep became a chore. Weeks after the breakdown, my mom had to sleep by my side so that I would feel safe. And even then, it would still take a while for me to sleep. She would have to massage my back so as just to make me feel relaxed and be able to feel drowsy and sleep. Some nights, I had to take strong sleeping pills just so I would be able to sleep. Waking was no comfort either. After a night of weird dreams, I would spend half the day trying to analyze my dreams and desperately seeking for explanations for what they could have meant.

What were the dreams like? Often they were about death. Murder. The occult.Scenarios where I would die horribly. Or perhaps me murdering someone else. I could remember one of me being riddled by bullets a few seconds before waking up. People from the past, dead relations, they were in my dreams. And then you'll wake up wondering if they were there to pick you up because you were dying in your sleep.

The phobia led to insomnia. I wouldn't fell asleep until the wee hours of the morning. If I do fell asleep earlier at night, I would get really anxious if I wake up too early, say between 2-3am, feeling that I didn't get enough sleep but couldn't get myself to sleep again either. I also had a weird fear of 3am, the "witching hour", somehow believing that waking up at the hour was brought about by something paranormal.

Things then led to parasomnia. Night terrors. Waking up but being unable to move. You just had a dream involving death, you try your best to wake up and stand up, but you're unable to. It's as if something supernatural is pinning you down. Perhaps this is where the legends of succubi and incubi came from? It sure felt that way.

So I sought help. And thanks to the shrink, things had been a lot better. But the scars of the experience still haunts me to this day. I'm still an insomniac. And I developed some pretty weird habits before I could sleep, such as having restless legs or having to know what my heart rate is lest I find that my heartbeat is way too slow or fast. Hell, I even had to have the clock removed from my room because I couldn't stand the ticking.



If sleep is indeed a wonderland, I have long not known what that wonderland is like. But having experienced the worst, I'm sure things would only get better from there.

...If only so that my eyebags would no longer be as large as Vince Vaughn's.

Photo from projectvisual.net