Sleep Panic Attacks
Panic attacks can occur at any time and at any moment. You could be driving in your car, walking in a shopping centre, at home reading a book or even on a holiday when this condition can strike you. Panic attacks can even occur during sleep.It can confuse many people how sleep panic attacks can occur in a period where your mind is relatively free from stress and worry.
Many panic attacks actually do occur during the night, mostly between the first one to four hours sleep. During this time period blood pressure is lower, eye movements are reduced, heart rate and breathing slow down. However for some, this state of relaxation can be interpreted as your walls and defences going down, and so your body will kick in and tell you to ‘Wake Up!’
Those who find themselves anxious and stressed more during the day will experience more peaks in heart rate during the night. If you are particularly sensitive and have learned to fear those peaks, then this will have a different impact on you compared to someone who is less sensitive. Our body does not pick up on what is not relevant to it when it comes to survival, but will personally attuneitself to what is important. For example, you might sleep through a loud party going on next door, but as soon as you hear your smoke alarm go off you’ll hear it, even if it’s not as loud. Cues signifying danger are significant and meaningful, and once they are registered by your primitive brain can wake you up.
An individual who worries about their relationships or financial problems can experience as many peaks in arousal of their nervous system during sleep as those who panic. The difference is that these ‘worriers’ don’t associate the normal symptoms of arousal as a sign of danger (such as an increased heart rate), so they don’t react to all the heart rate peaks. Since it’s not a signal thattriggers the ‘fear cue’, it doesn’t result in a panic attack. So people who worry but don’t panic can experience identical peaks in heart rate and other symptoms such as sweating and an increased breathing rate, but their body won’t produce adrenaline to cope with something that threatens its survival.
Something that could improve your sleeping patterns is to control your anxiety during the day. Things such as exercise and relaxation techniques can help calm your system down and reduce your state of arousal. If you control your anxiety during the day this will cut down the ‘ammunition’ for consistent worrying all through the night.
