# Sleep and Dreams > Sleep and Health >  >  Nightmares and Nightsweats

## AnastasiaB

Hello all,

I stumbled upon this website while searching for information about my insomnia/sleep deprivation, which has recently hit new kinds of rock bottom levels.  I, of all people, know the importance of sleep, but while I am in an accelerated graduate nursing program at a top 10 school, my sleep is VERY restricted.  Often I work into early hours of the morning to finish a paper or study for a test, and it severely cuts into my sleep.  Also, despite being exhausted in both my mind and body, my brain often just does not turn off.  I spent Dec and Jan being sick on and off from sleep deprivation, but I think it has recently hit a new level as my vision and speech are now affected.  My vision is often blurry when I get tired, and I see blotchiness in my visual periphery.  When I am most sleep deprived, my speech gets slurred and I am unable to enunciate words, and often spell them incorrectly (like "excitement" becomes "excitedment").  

In my search to better understand my problems I found this site.  LD has always interested me since a friend of mine informed me about his ability to LD, but I always felt my problem was that I didn't enter REM very long, or at all.  I thought this to be the case because I never remember dreams I have (if I have them at all) and even when I sleep for long periods of time, the quality of sleep is VERY poor and I never wake rested. It's been this way for 3 years (long before grad school started), so I know it's not an episodic development.  

After spending a few hours reading numerous blogs on this site, I began to "try" to pay more attention to any glimmer of any semblance of a dream and see if there was any common theme or "signature" to my dreams (if I could remember anything at all).  A few nights later, I very vaguely remember having a deja vu thought during a half-awake/half-asleep moment that "these dreams area always the same." "These dreams" references the vampire/zombie-filled chasing nightmares I was observing myself to have often.  I found this to be somewhat unsettling, as I don't want these things to have a prolonged presence in my subconscious.  I also noticed that I woke up drenched in a cold sweat, which is a VERY regular thing.  I was tested for sleep apnea (which I don't have) and my endocrinologist ruled out anything hormonal with some bloodwork.  If the night sweats I've been experiencing are related to nightmares I am not remembering, then I am having them pretty much every night, some worse than others. 

Does anyone with expertise or experience have any meaningful insight to add here?  

(Please relocate if I have blogged in the wrong area-thanks!).

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## shitmymonksays

To be honest, it sounds like you are exhausted. Hospital work is bad for this, but at the very least try to get some consistent sleep. You may be sleeping against your hours; your body may naturally like to go to bed early & wake early (or late) but can't do it. For eg., my body likes to wake at 6am; if I go back to sleep and rest until 7.30am, I wake exhausted. That extra 1.5h kills me!

If your mind is racing, you may wish to try some simple de-stress meditations. Jon Kabat-Zinn has a great CD on it, called Mindfulness for Beginners.
Mindfulness for Beginners: Amazon.ca: Jon Kabat-Zinn: Books

This can help calm your mind both during the day and at night before bed. His meditations are not religious, but they stem from Buddhist ideas.

Nightmares can come out when you encounter a situation in your daily life that your subconscious is terrified of (or that bears a resemblance to a situation that terrified you in the past). For eg., at two years old you may have become afraid of people who are overly nice due to a bad experience. As an adult, a chance encounter with someone who bears a whisper of a resemblance to such a person could trigger a nightmare, even if your conscious mind didn't notice it. So you may wish to sit down with yourself quietly and ask yourself if anything is scaring you recently, what are you worried about, or if your go-go-go schedule is to avoid certain feelings etc. (Sometimes people make themselves busy so they don't have time to think about what is really bothering them.) Sometimes you can tell if your subconscious is bothered by something because when you ask yourself about it, you will feel a sensation - dread, uncomfortable, sick to stomach etc. 

I've had a lot of nightmares and these days I'm happy when they show up because they give me something to examine. And when you do look at nightmares, remember that in general every character in your dream is an aspect of yourself. So even if you dream of your boy/girlfriend, you're actually dreaming about the aspect of yourself that reminds you of your bf/gf, and not really about the external person.

Finally, sleep sweats. Yes! I get these all the time; they come & go. Could be food related; could be the nightmares. For me it is when I go to bed a little cold, pile on the covers, and then over heat. I haven't figured out a solution other than make sure I'm at the right temp before bed.

Good luck!

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## apsinvo

+1 to the reply above. I used to have often nightmares - the usual persecutory ones. They were either not being good enough, being out in public naked and embarrassed, or being chased/attacked. Daily meditation will eradicate these quickly. I understand that you have a very busy lifestyle, but even 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes before sleep will make a dramatic and fast improvement. Good luck  ::D:

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## amosgreen

> +1 to the reply above. I used to have often nightmares - the usual persecutory ones. They were either not being good enough, being out in public naked and embarrassed, or being chased/attacked. Daily meditation will eradicate these quickly. I understand that you have a very busy lifestyle, but even 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes before sleep will make a dramatic and fast improvement. Good luck



I love that you say this........I intend to act on this starting now as my nightmares are becoming more disturbing and cause me to be high strung in the days afterwards cause they are so vivid and I cant shake the memory of them.

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