Anxiety – Night Terrors

-This was originally posted on Tumblr on 1/20/23.

I have a long history of night terrors and incredibly life-like PTSD dreams. I’d like to thank my family when I was a kid in the 80s and having to survive on my own as a teen, sometimes homeless. Nobody is on their own as a 16 year old if your family is a good one.

I am in my 50s now. The super clear nightmares are very rare these days, but when I go through stressful events, I have night terrors and I wake up screaming.

This unsettles my wife and my cat, and I am left with a hazy feeling of fear and unease. I don’t don’t remember dreams for this these days. That’s probably for the best, really.

I suspect the stress of the contractor mess, combined with my history means last night my anxiety was like, “Go get him!”

This morning, I came out and looked at my kitchen sink, which is perfectly sealed (by me), my counters sanded and oiled (by me), my dishwasher properly installed (by me), and the under sink plumbing perfectly done (By plumber Jimmy) and sighed in relief. The nightmare is over, and my house is not ruined.

It’s funny how I never thought I’d own a home. I accidentally lucked into buying this one. I feel at any minute, someone could take it all away. That overhead anxiety about the move and all this is not easy.

Adding this contractor disaster? That was just too much.

It’s causing all my minor concerns to be an anxious mess. I talked to my therapist about it. I finally have a good one, and he was reassuring me that with my background (homeless queer kid in the 80s) it’s normal to have anxieties and reactions like this to high stress.

I guess I never thought of it that way. We talked about how if you have PTSD and anxiety that it’s okay to take measures to reduce that, even if others might not understand. Like I am going to have electricity run to my shed next year (was going to be this year until I had to pay to fix the contractor’s shit) because I am unaccountably terrorized by the dark in the shed at night. I know why. It’s related to my childhood, but I am 51. I wish it still didn’t affect me, and the spector of my father didn’t still haunt me.

My therapist said you’d be gentle with others if it was them, but you have no patience for yourself. I guess we all do that. We don’t give ourselves space to exist in our own heads.

So I guess if I am 51 and can forget, here’s a reminder to others.