waking moments of fear

At 3:30am this morning I woke up screaming the words “stop hurting me! stop hurting me” and my back was arched like I was in intense pain and fear!

I was crying and fighting it! I was shaking and confused until I realized I was coming out of a dream and I wasn’t being attacked or hurt.

I immediately grabbed my laptop that sits next to me and wrote out the images and feelings and emailed them to my therapist – which he has always wanted me to do when I wake with these horrible spells.

I then went upstairs and woke my husband and hugged him to ground myself; to remind me of where I am and that I am safe and loved.

One of the things that my therapist has taught me through the years is how to ground myself when awaking in the dark from something so big.When we are awaken in the dark, everything is unknown. There is nothing to ground to.

The first step is to put on the light. He said when you are in the dark, everything is bigger and by putting on the light, you make things smaller.

The second is to breath and lean into anything you can that would remind you of where you are and that you are safe.

Then, if  helpful, write down the horrible thoughts that awoke you, because giving the dream and thoughts meaning is more powerful than not.

I have written about my spells of waking up crying before, and it seems to only be getting worst. It’s amazing how emotions can find their way out through vulnerability of my sleeping.

This has been happening a lot for over a year now, and I am ready to get to the bottom of this. This is no way to sleep or wake up and I really wonder where these deep emotions are coming from. I wonder what these very intense images and emotions are telling me and what is the story behind them.

There are times when I am laying down to sleep, I know if it’s going to happen ahead of time, because I have an intense feeling of emotion building up as I drift off to sleep, almost like an edge of crying, but not. almost everytime I drift off to sleep like that, “IT” happens.

Sometimes when I wake up with these emotions and horrible images and crying it stays with me all day and it almost feels like a hang-over of some kind, and then other days I forget about it.

Sometimes when I wake up crying, the moment I wake up and realize what is going on and realize I am crying, the emotions are gone! I don’t continue to cry through it, it goes away almost like it was shut back off and I am numb again.

I wonder if others out there experience something similar.

I wonder that if we hold in our emotions too much inside sometimes, they eventually will find a way out through any means.

I wonder if these are emotions from the past slowly finding a way out to be free.

I wonder if there is something inside of me trying to tell me something, but I still have a wall up against it.

I wonder how much healing can be done in honoring these emotions as something important, rather than something that just feels horrible.

Whatever it is, it’s exhausting at times, and last night’s wake up was exhausting! It’s discouraging at times also because I thought it was getting better and last night’s episode proved otherwise.

Maybe a part of healing this is opening a wound like a window and allowing it to stay open until it’s free – no matter how painful it is.

Whatever it is, the one thing I do know is that I am surrounded by goodness, support and love and I have a great path that has led me to many understandings. They key to the power over this is talking about it.

Something is here and like my therapist would say “this is exciting, not exciting that you are going through this, but excited that something is here and this is our guide to healing”