My Nemesis: Sleep
From an early age, sleep has been difficult for me. Now that I am an older boy I can recognise these animals.
These are all because of my brain. Everything I experience is just my brain’s interpretation of senses. When the lights go out, my brain is denied its real-time data, and it goes crazy.
Exploding Head Syndrome
For me, this goes far beyond just imaginary sounds. I have hard slaps to the back of my head when I’m super-tired, but you may experience them elsewhere. They can also be harmless (but scary) noises (e.g. tapping at the door or windows) upwards to explosions that reap the fear out of you.
My advice is to drag yourself out of bed and reset the electricity in your brain somehow (whatever suits you) and do the opposite of what you may have been recommended previously: shine bright ☀️ lights into your eyes! Start from the beginning, because your brain is soiled.
Hypnic Jerk
So annoying. Every time I rest my headspace enough to drift off, then I kick or fling my arms into the air. It can be as simple as a twitch of your hand, but the effect is to stop you from sleeping. In extreme cases, you will jerk into a fit.
These can really scare you.
Drag yourself out of bed and reset the electricity in your brain with a herbal tea or bath. I think letting light into your head does help, and then start the entire sleep process again.
Sleep Paralysis
Waking up and being unable to move or communicate is a horrid experience. Probably, you are still asleep but just more aware of what is around you in real life than most people experience. I’ve had lucid dreams — which can be fun — but are just another clue to your unhappiness and distress, I suspect.
You cannot drag yourself out of bed in this case. I try and let myself go back to proper sleep, and then wake myself up again by shaking my head. Shaking my head has been my route out of bad dreams for around 20 years.
Night Terrors
Night Terrors were my first real horror — after sleepwalking as a child. It was Nightmare On Elm Street every night for me, as my Malbec addiction mitigated my inability to lie down without fear. The best way to describe the terror that I dropped into every night as soon as I slept was when Frodo put on The Ring.
I only found alcohol as a solution for this one.
Insomnia
The most perennial of them all. It’s a bright light shining inside your head (that you cannot understand or explain) when you most want to rest; a switch that will not go off. My brain gets consumed by ridiculous puzzles — all loosely related to my life — that my brain must solve before I can let go. I need to drift in and out of cruel and painful sleep sessions before I can actually let my brain stop: takes around 6 hours.
I’ve no solution.
