Thanks MJP! It is very nice to know I am not alone. I know what you mean; sometimes I would rather be in that "other life" since I seem to be able to get a lot more done "in there"! I just hate the fact that I don't think I will ever wake up refreshed again. I have given up hope on that, although there was a day in the summer of 2003 when I woke up not remembering any dream, and I woke up feeling great! No idea why, and have not been able to duplicate it.
So for now I will go on living with the fact that most people would never understand when I try to explain to them that sleeping makes me tired, as I am so "busy" dreaming all the time. I will even dream for a minute or two if I fall asleep for a brief time. So times I can even be falling asleep while watching TV and see things on the TV that are not really there. Half asleep, half awake.
I have tried to explain this "excessive dreaming" to doctors, but they just don't seem to believe me. Boy I wish they could dream like me for just one week, and then we would see how well they like it! Since that is not going to happen, back to the internet to find someone out there who finds this fascinating enough to want to help us figure out how to turn it off.
Later!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
I FINALLY FOUND AN ANSWER!!!
For anyone else out there who dreams "all night" just like myself, it may have taken writing a few scholers that probably think I am nuts, but I found out what we suffer from! Unfortunatly, there is no way to shut it off yet, but here is an excerpt from the paper Dreaming: a psychiatric view and insightsfrom the study of parasomnias1 n A. S. Eisera, C. H. Schenckb
Beginning in 1986, as our sleep center was becoming
more familiar with the characteristic dream disturbances
of RBD, and as we were also becoming
increasingly aware that adults with sleepwalking
and sleep terrors could have precipitous and sometimes
elaborate dreaming during their recurrent
NREM sleep episodes, we also started seeing
patients who presented with a distinct set of dreamrelated
complaints that we eventually named “epic
dream disorder”. In 1995 we published findings
from our initial series of 20 patients in an abstract
entitled,“A disorder of epic dreaming with daytime
fatigue, usually without polysomnographic abnormalities
that predominantly affects women” [25].
I will now summarize the salient findings from this
series, present two clinical vignettes, and describe
subsequent reports from three other centers in
two additional countries on this intriguing, newly
recognized dream disorder.
Now that we have a name for it, maybe we can start making someone listen to us, and figure it out!!
As long as I can remember, I have had benign positional vertigo, to which some of this problem may correlate. YIPPIE!! I am on to something here, and hope we can start a community to figure this out.
SO COME ON, LEAVE SOME COMMENTS!! LET'S GET THE BALL ROLLING ON MAKING A STAND TO NO LONGER PUT UP WITH SO CALLED "SLEEP DOCTORS" IGNORING OUR COMPLAINTS!!!!
I Wish you All the Best!
Beginning in 1986, as our sleep center was becoming
more familiar with the characteristic dream disturbances
of RBD, and as we were also becoming
increasingly aware that adults with sleepwalking
and sleep terrors could have precipitous and sometimes
elaborate dreaming during their recurrent
NREM sleep episodes, we also started seeing
patients who presented with a distinct set of dreamrelated
complaints that we eventually named “epic
dream disorder”. In 1995 we published findings
from our initial series of 20 patients in an abstract
entitled,“A disorder of epic dreaming with daytime
fatigue, usually without polysomnographic abnormalities
that predominantly affects women” [25].
I will now summarize the salient findings from this
series, present two clinical vignettes, and describe
subsequent reports from three other centers in
two additional countries on this intriguing, newly
recognized dream disorder.
Now that we have a name for it, maybe we can start making someone listen to us, and figure it out!!
As long as I can remember, I have had benign positional vertigo, to which some of this problem may correlate. YIPPIE!! I am on to something here, and hope we can start a community to figure this out.
SO COME ON, LEAVE SOME COMMENTS!! LET'S GET THE BALL ROLLING ON MAKING A STAND TO NO LONGER PUT UP WITH SO CALLED "SLEEP DOCTORS" IGNORING OUR COMPLAINTS!!!!
I Wish you All the Best!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
still working. . .
Found a different type of site today, and trying to figure out if anyone out there actually understands non-rem dreaming. If I can find it, I will post what I find. Someday we will have this mystery solved!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Sick of dreaming!
This has all started as I have many times come on the computer after waking up from yet another night of dream after dream. My family, including husband of seven years, knows all too well what my nights are like. Dreams full of strange houses, that once your in the attic you can't move to close to the edge of the house or it will topple over because it is sitting on a mountain peak, or dreams that seem to glide into one another like the six tornadoes that are coming at you and suddenly it doesn't matter because your in another state with different people (people you know but do not look like themselves) and then you are all walking through your highschool hallways on horseback, and then your back to the tornadoes and your yelling at people as they are about to hit, then your back somewhere else in another house with many rooms playing tag. Did that sentence seem to go on and on? Well, so do my dreams. So much so that as all people who "suffer" like I do know exactly what I mean when I say I could write MANY movies based only on my dreams. (And they would probably be better than a lot of movies currently out!)
I have had this "problem" since I can remember. In highschool I would go back to sleep after my morning shower and enjoy a half hour mind movie, and fall asleep in class for only five minutes but be startled upon waking because I was dreaming at my desk. I can take a ten minute nap on the couch and tell you some wild dreams, or even take what is on the TV (because I can still hear it in my sleep) and suddenly I am dreaming what I am hearing. (Makes for some funny dreams if there are cartoons on!)
I have had three sleep studies done in the last ten years, and no one can explain why I do not feel rested. The last one had me hoping I had narcolepsy since at least then I would understand why I was always dreaming upon falling asleep, but unfortunatly I was not in REM sleep upon falling asleep and therefore not narcoleptic. UGGG! If I could just stop dreaming!
What people who do not dream like this do not understand is that when your busy dreaming ALL NIGHT, you feel so un-rested when waking. I have yet to find doctors or answers to this, but I can wake up crying, or heart pounding because I was scared, or very excited from whatever was going on in my dream. The chemicals that are released during this emotions are released during my dreaming, so even though I may not have actually physically ran two miles to get away from the pack of wolves that were stocking me, my body feels like I did. There is no break, no rest from the mind. I just want my brain to sleep for the night!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am starting this blog because of those who have night after night like this along with me. I hear your fustration, because I am there too. No one else understands, and no one is willing to research what is going on with us. Together I am hoping we can find some answers to how to get a good night sleep. A rested, peaceful, recharging nights sleep. Sounds simple enough, yet night after night, decade after decade I still can't get rested.
Oh, and btw it is not due to apnea, or anything like that. Although my last sleep study test showed I did have some upper airway resistance, these problems have been with me since I was a kid, and the first two sleep studies did not indicate this problem. So the sleep doctor who doesn't care to listen to me or take the time to investigate something other than his textbook answers can kiss my you know what!
I have had this "problem" since I can remember. In highschool I would go back to sleep after my morning shower and enjoy a half hour mind movie, and fall asleep in class for only five minutes but be startled upon waking because I was dreaming at my desk. I can take a ten minute nap on the couch and tell you some wild dreams, or even take what is on the TV (because I can still hear it in my sleep) and suddenly I am dreaming what I am hearing. (Makes for some funny dreams if there are cartoons on!)
I have had three sleep studies done in the last ten years, and no one can explain why I do not feel rested. The last one had me hoping I had narcolepsy since at least then I would understand why I was always dreaming upon falling asleep, but unfortunatly I was not in REM sleep upon falling asleep and therefore not narcoleptic. UGGG! If I could just stop dreaming!
What people who do not dream like this do not understand is that when your busy dreaming ALL NIGHT, you feel so un-rested when waking. I have yet to find doctors or answers to this, but I can wake up crying, or heart pounding because I was scared, or very excited from whatever was going on in my dream. The chemicals that are released during this emotions are released during my dreaming, so even though I may not have actually physically ran two miles to get away from the pack of wolves that were stocking me, my body feels like I did. There is no break, no rest from the mind. I just want my brain to sleep for the night!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am starting this blog because of those who have night after night like this along with me. I hear your fustration, because I am there too. No one else understands, and no one is willing to research what is going on with us. Together I am hoping we can find some answers to how to get a good night sleep. A rested, peaceful, recharging nights sleep. Sounds simple enough, yet night after night, decade after decade I still can't get rested.
Oh, and btw it is not due to apnea, or anything like that. Although my last sleep study test showed I did have some upper airway resistance, these problems have been with me since I was a kid, and the first two sleep studies did not indicate this problem. So the sleep doctor who doesn't care to listen to me or take the time to investigate something other than his textbook answers can kiss my you know what!
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