Afraid to Fall Asleep

[dandom]

Sometimes when I'm falling asleep I'll start to overthink about how weird sleep is and I get really anxious and afraid to fall asleep. I'll end up laying there for hours. Does this happen to anyone else?

 

[Zeesi]

Yes, sometimes this happens to me. I've found that if I work really hard on a particular day, then I don't have this "over-thinking sleep" problem because I'm too tired to think about anything. I feel that if I'm thinking about "sleep", one of the best remedies is for me to get up and get to work on something. Easier said than done though because once I'm laying in the bed, I tend to want to stay there and not get up, even if I'm tossing and turning.

 

[Aree Wongwanlee]

No, not me. I don't have any problems falling asleep. I could actually drop off to sleep, like falling off a log. That's probably because I only go to bed when I am really tired and already groggy from lack of sleep. When I sleep, I hardly dream, too. Perhaps it's related to my state of exhaustion before I fall asleep. I was too tired even to dream.

 

[HappyKoi]

I feel that way sometimes, especially if I've had a particularly anxious day. I feel afraid to fall asleep because I worry that I'll have nightmares (it doesn't happen as often as I worry it will). Sometimes I can't stop worrying about something and it keeps me up till the small hours of the morning. I've never really overthought sleep itself, but that's interesting that you bring it up. We lay on a soft thing just for sleep (well, mostly), wear special clothes to sleep, and then we go unconscious for hours and hallucinate for part of the time. But I guess it can't be too weird for organisms on this planet. Trees do it. Animals do it. Fish don't even have eyelids and they do it. So I guess it can't be too odd, right? (Now I'm imagining a dolphin in pajamas. That's probably weird. )

 

[John Snort]

There are times I wish I could fall asleep as fast as some people do but can't because it's hard for me to stop thinking about anything I read during the day or maybe a movie I watched. No matter how hard I try to shut off my brain I just can't do it. I'm an insomniac but it's not because I'm terrified of falling asleep.

 

[Alex]

There was a time once when I was afraid to go to sleep and I would sleep on the sofa instead, because I had a fear of not waking up or something in hindsight that seemed irrational. I had changed my medication, and while I knew deep down that it seemed crazy, I still would do it. I came off those meds (Citalopram) as it was not helping me at all. At times we can overthink simple things that we need to do in life, but hopefully the body just gets exhausted and you fall asleep.

 

[pwarbi]

For many people I think that when they first get into bed at night it's a time when they start to reflect on what's happened that day and also think about what they have to do the following day and we can often start to overthink things. Even if we are physically tired that doesn't mean that we're tired mentally as well and that's the thing that can keep us awake a lot longer than we should be, or minds.


I'm sure we would all love the ability to be able to just flick a switch and turn ourselves off but sadly that is never going to be the case, so what I have started to do now is before I get in bed I make sure that I have done all my thinking for the day before I actually get into bed. On some days that can mean I'm not actually getting into bed till gone midnight, but I'd rather get in bed late and go to sleep straight away, than be in bed for 10pm but then be tossing and turning into the early hours.

 

[sidney]

The only time I was anxious about falling asleep was when I watched something scary when I was a teen, it was "The Blairwitch Project" and I kept looking behind my bed to see if someone was out to get me the night that I watched the movie and the lights were all out already.


The 2nd reason is a bit more personal, but at times I don't like falling asleep because of some "privacy breach" that goes on as I sleep, so that's what keeps me awake at times.

 

[cluckeyo]

Well, I know sleep is very important. But it's a pain in the butt. I try to get by on less hours so that I can get more things done. I have not had much success with this. I do get in moods sometimes where I can stay up into the wee hours of the morning. But lately sleep has been very demanding. Seems like I have to get at least 6 hours and 8 would be ideal. When I do get in those stay-up-late moods, it does seem like I am kind of anxious about falling asleep. I don't really think the whole thing through, I just use the energy to get things done.

 

[Aleece13]

Sometimes when I'm falling asleep I'll start to overthink about how weird sleep is and I get really anxious and afraid to fall asleep. I'll end up laying there for hours. Does this happen to anyone else?

Yes! I always feel so stupid when I do this to myself... I have to really try not to think about it otherwise I will, like you said, stay awake for hours if not practically all night. I don't know why it happens or what even causes me to freak out over falling asleep, but it certainly causes me great anxiety. When it does happen I just have an internal talk with myself, pumping myself out for the possible outcomes, by the time I'm done motivating myself to just get over it I'm usually asleep.


It's such a curious thing.

 

[janemariesayed]

Sometimes I get scared when I'm falling asleep. Especially if I am aware of that point when I am about to slip into the subconscious. I realise at that time that I am about to slip into a consciousness close to death and it is scary. Mostly I manage to overcome it, telling myself 'don't think about it' and close my mind off from it. There have been nights though that I have laid awake for many hours even just with an overactive mind. I found a way to deal with it that has proved to be quite effective. That is that I have set up a portable DVD player next to my bed, and watching that as I settle down makes my eyes just close. I often find now that I fall asleep and can't get even ten minutes into the movie without my eyes just wanting to close. Reading a book before sleeping is also a great idea for quieting the mind from negative thoughts as your mind will be full of what you have just read.

 

[lexinonomous]

This happens to me on a nightly basis. As I'm starting to fall asleep, I will catch myself and my eyes will spring open. My heart will escalate and then I'll start to fall asleep again. I repeat the process until I'm exhausted enough to sleep. My worst fear is dying. When I notice that I'm falling asleep, I fear that I'm dying and not falling asleep at all. That is where my anxiety lies when it comes to not wanting to fall asleep. This keeps me up at all hours of the night. I tend to stay up until 6AM so that I can have a bit of sun and feel safe again.

 

[mauricioq]

It's exactly the opposite for me, when I go to bed it's the time where I'm most relaxed, I love sleeping! Sometimes I have problems falling asleep because I'm overthink on something that happened or is about to happen but when that doesn't happen I'm usually pretty happy falling asleep.

 

[GrubbyRose]

Even when I have nothing on my mind, I have trouble falling asleep. This is not medical advice, but I use melatonin to help, and it lets me doze off quicker. I think my sleep problems are from when I worked a night shift job, and I have never gotten back to a proper sleep cycle.

 

[hades_leae]

Wow, that's something to think sleep is weird. I have been worried before about going to sleep and not waking up, I also wondered how can I catch myself in the very first moments of falling asleep because I just wanted to know what happens when I'm knocked out. I'm never afraid to fall asleep though because I enjoy it.


Iook forward to falling asleep daily, and I think you should to because it's good for you. No need to be afraid, and not going to sleep because of that reason is hurting you more because you need sleep.

 

[sorrowscall]

That happened to me when I first started having chronic panic attacks. I would sit around and worry that I wouldn't wake up if I fell asleep because of the issue with not being able to breathe. I was worried I would have one in my sleep. It took a lot of convincing for me to stop being paranoid of going to sleep. Although, since insomnia causes paranoia, it couldn't have been very easy for my friends and loved ones to convince me. I actually made them take turns watching me sleep the first week I tried sleeping again!

 

[Ashley0323]

I'm not sure I can totally relate to this question, but in a sense, yes, I can relate. I find it hard to fall asleep sometimes, I do have an actual fear of it. I live in a triplex, and we have neighbors that recently moved in and they fight constantly, slamming doors, screaming at each other, etc.. and I always feel as if its going to escalate. I am afraid of falling asleep and something happening, especially since my babies are in this house too.

 

[fuzyon]

I don't know if I'm "afraid" of falling asleep but sometimes I do kind of stay up because I'm scared of having a bad nightmare. I'm prone to having vivid dreams so when something bad happens in them it's kind of terrifying, but I haven't had one in a while. I'm also unable to fall asleep on my right side for some reason except when I'm really tired, it's something I noticed recently.

 

[rz3300a]

I definitely get this from time to time. I remember as a kid I suffered from this a lot too, and it was more than just your kid scared of a ghost type situation. That said, I think that I have gotten better with age, but I still get worries and have trouble getting to sleep. Thunderstorms usually do it to me, and it is not the sound but more the fear of a tree falling or damage being done to the house or the car. I start thinking about insurance and then it is game over for my normal sleep. Luckily this is not all too frequent though.

 

[misszerable]

There was one point in my life when I got scared about falling asleep. That was when a friend of mine died of heart attack in his sleep. He was in his early 20's and didn't have a heart disease as far as I know. People around us are quite superstitious and they would say that his soul was fetched by a relative who died a few months back. I had a relative who died two months before that and I got scared that I will be fetched too. The more I thought about it, the more anxious I became about sleep. That was stupid, though and after a few days of depriving myself of sleep, I gave in to what my body was craving for - long hours of restful sleep. Nowadays, I really treasure sleep and I find that whenever I'm stressed out, I can sleep a bit to release the stress.