did i panic during a nap??!!

[Amandala]

Hi everyone,

Well, a little background, I've just swapped my prozac to mirtazipine a week ago and I have noticed more of those adrenaline rushes as I fall asleep, always when a mid day nap- never happens at night.

So, today I lied down for maybe a 1/2 hour and I felt like something,like a wave, was coming over me and trying to pull me down. I jolted awake and my heart was fluttering in my chest and I was a nervous wreck.

I texted my pdoc and she said it sounds like a panic attack but it was literally the scariest thing I have ever experienced, I still haven't fully calmed down 3 hours later.

anyone ever experience anything similar or have I gone completely insane?

[xBettyBoopx]

Strange things happen to our bodies when we drop off to sleep. I used to get similar to what you are experiencing, I'm not sure what it is, it is frightening but nothing to worry about. I don't know whether it's an effect of the medication though.

[Rubicon]

It's nothing unusual, as you know it is panic, probably caused by normal bodily sensations.

As the person above me has said, our bodies go through lots of changes as we fall asleep, some people will wake up suddenly as they feel like they're falling just as they drift off, some will struggle to switch off thoughts, some will just slip off to sleep easy peasy.

What happened could be a combination of the medication and your body getting ready for sleep. Nothing to worry about anyway! :-)

[Antianxiety]

I can vouch for that feeling as well. I get it during sleep, get in shower, force myself to relax, then go back to bed. It has happened multiple times at night. Along with that I get dizziness, burning sensations, etc. Been told all anxiety related. Sure enough if I take a Klonapin it subsides.

[EKB]

When I was at my worst, I felt that way. Falling asleep felt like dying... it was terrifying. I had to actually tell myself "It's okay, I'm just falling asleep."

[Amandala]

Thanks for the encouragement every one. But now today I have convinced myself that it was a TIA and that my right leg is weak...:doh:

[TelBoy]

Hi There

Well;))) I have had that same sensation at night which make it all the worse:scared15: It is a terrible thing to happen to you. I have had hyperventilation attacks a few times in my life, it is dreadful but the most terrible are those time when you wake up at night and freak out as though you are in a huge panic attack as though you are about to die!! so I know exactly how you feel.
In December I was up stairs looking out of the window waving goodbye to someone in a car... I started to feel very uneasy and frightened.. I can downstairs to the kitchen and then *bang* I started to go into this huge mega panic attack I felt as though I couldn't breathe... for the first time in my life I called 999 and they came round and wired me up to an ECG monitor gave me aspirin.. they said to me your readings are normal apart from your BP being a bit high, so another ambulance arrived and took me off to the hospital in the gale force rain and winds and I thought the ambulance was going to turn over as it was rocking from side to side..
once I was in the hospital they did all the tests again and took bloods from me and had to wait about 4 hours for the results and thankfully it was all normal...but the doctor came round the bed and said to me, do you suffer from anxiety? and I said, I think I have what you would call anxiety, but then again I know that I have the condition called Fibromyalgia, and part of that can make you a nervous unsteady wreck depressed and a lot of other things....In the meantime I just wanted you to know that you are not alone with the symptoms you describe especially when you wake up from sleep.

[madelaine]

had it loads of times sleep paralysis its horrid bt harmless

[Mark Bowden]

Amandala,

Rest assured you are NOT going insane. Much of our anxiety lies deep down in our subconscious mind. It's a learned reaction to different stimuli in our environment. Once it's learnt (quite often without us trying to learn it!) it comes out automatically when we encounter similar situations in the future.

The conscious mind knows the difference between real and imagination but the issue that you were likely to be experiencing was that your subconscious cannot tell the difference between real and imagination. It relies on your conscious mind to step in but since your conscious mind was disengaged (you were half asleep), your subconscious was free to see your imagination as reality.

It's like waking up from a dream when you are still living it. Sometimes it takes your conscious mind to step in and tell you... it was only a dream...

[Select]

Can I just add that when I went on to mitrazipine the exact same thing started happening to me any time I went to sleep I had a very vivid bad dream and then woke with a start, In a real panic. I had only been asleep 20 mins one night it happened 10 times you can imagine after that I was scared to go asleep. I looked into it a bit and whilst the tablets do cause you to have vivid dreams which usually wears of or calms down, the panic can be to do with how you are feeling in real life, i.e out of control, so as the mirt starts to work and you feel in control the panic attacks whilst asleep will disappear. So hang in there and you are not alone or going insane :)

[Mark Bowden]

Our minds our outrageously powerful!