Night terrors

Night terrors are basically times in the night where you suddenly wake up and feel really afraid. You usually shout or scream too, and sit bolt upright in bed and panic. They leave you with a horrible niggling anxiety that makes it really hard to go back to sleep.
 
Many people experience night terrors for a variety of reasons. For me, it's part of post-traumatic-stress-disorder.
 
I get them quite a lot, and up until recently I never knew what they were. I thought I was going crazy. It's usually in the early hours of the morning I think, when I'm suddenly ripped out of sleep and shaken.
 
The last time I had one was two nights ago, at a sleepover with a bunch of friends. I woke up screaming for no apparent reason and caused my friends to wake up and be like, 'the hell?' Immediately after I just wanted to bury the anxiety and go back to sleep but my heart was racing. I had to remind myself that I was safe and that no one was going to hurt me, which took a while. I explained to my friends in the morning.
 
For me, night terrors are always really exhausting, because they disturb my whole sleep. I end up tired a lot during the day. My sleep is already quite messed up so it really doesn't help suddenly waking up in a panic sometimes!
 
I might be having some sleeping tablets to see if they can cause a sleep deep enough to stop the night terrors. They're only a minor part of my PTSD but after you have one, it can affect you for a good few days sometimes and cause flashbacks during the daytime.
 
I hope this shed some light on what night terrors are and my experience with them. They're different for everyone who has them but a lot of people don't realise they're a problem, they think they're just the result of a nightmare or a bad sleep when in reality they can be a sign of an underlying problem.
 
Ailsa x