Hi everyone. I dont post all that much here even though I am here almost every single day reading through the posts and just like all the rest of us trying to find some sort of solution to this hell we call DP/Dr.
My personal story is that I have been suffering almost everday since May of 2004, some days arent so bad whereas others are real bad. Mine just started out of the blue one day, I think it can be contributed to alot of stressful situations that I have been up against in the past few years both in my home life and at work. On top of all that I also think that I have depression because all of the typical signs and symptoms of it seem to match the way that I feel.
One of the biggest problems that I have along with this is difficulty sleeping and also alot of dreams when I do fall asleep. I either have trouble falling asleep, or staying asleep and sometimes I wake up in the morning hours earlier then I need to and cant get back to sleep. But like I said I have a problem with dreaming alot at night. The dreams that I have aren't nightmares, some of the dreams are stressful and amazingly enough some of the dreams are actually good dreams some times. I never realized that dreams played a part in any of this until I came across an extremely interestering article online the other day.
The article talked about REM(Rapid Eye Movement) sleep which is more commonly referred to as dream sleep. It went on to say that people who are depressed spend too much time in this REM sleep and less time in more important slow wave,deep sleep. Slow wave sleep is the type of sleep that repairs and replenishes your body. It also said how even though you are physically sleeping during REM sleep that it takes alot of energy out of your brain to dream and that the type of brain waves that are used to dream are the same exact brain waves that your body needs to get through each day with a positive,feel-good attitute towards life and that if you use up all these brain waves dreaming at night, you will wake up the next morning as exhausted as you were the night before and you will have no energy or ambition to get on with your day.
This is exactly how I feel and I truly believe that alot of my DP/DR is being caused by tiredness and that if I wasnt so tired all the time I wouldn't feel so bad. The only bad thing about the article is that it didnt give much of a solution to the problem of overdreaming. It just said that dreams are your bodies natural way of releasing all the stress and tension of the previous day in an attempt to"clean out" your mind so you are able to function properly the next day so all it really said was stop thinking negative,stressful thoughts all day and you won't dream as much as night and you won't be as tired. Yes, easier said then done, believe me I know.
So I just wanted to share this with everyone here as it might make some of you feel better to understand whats really going on when it comes to not being able to sleep and feeling tired and stuff all the time along with having DP/DR. I know it kinda made me feel a little bit better about things after I read it so that was the reason for this post. Now if I could just stop stressing all day and dreaming all night maybe I would be cured!! That would be nice.
Anyway, I would appreciate feedback from anyone on all of this. Thanks.
