Hope this word will be assistance to these people who can’t overcame their fear of dying while falling asleep.

beginning：

Hi I’m poppy I’m going to talk to you about my anxiety

so I usually get anxiety attacks or panic attacks when I’m just about to go to sleep

so the point in which I’m lying in bed and I start to kind of overthinking everything and think oh gosh what well my brain is going at like a million miles an hour but it’s not actually that’s the significant point but it’s leading up to the point in which I’m about to go to sleep but going from a wake to sleep

as you sleep into sleep I feel like that is me dying which sounds so silly but it really feels like my body is kind of giving up and I’m dying so can you mind I’m sure you can imagine that being awful because every single time I go to sleep I feel like that’s my body dying so I get shortness of breath. I start to panic and get very dizzy and disorientated and my heart starts beating irregularly and part publications and feels like it’s coming out my chest and when I’m really tired of it’s really difficult because I’m so exhausted but every time I slip into sleep I kind of shot myself awake to try and like kickstart my heart if that makes sense. It sounds so rational and I realize it is so irrational but the physical symptoms are so real so I’m just thinking maybe I am dying and then I panic and jump out of bed to try to kick start assist and I think I have any control over but it was quite funny because my friend said to me this afternoon she’s when I was telling her about a Latina for a while she was saying how it was quite sweet that I thought that I’m quite glad that she said that because it just makes you think what am I talking about but it is just very gated because I know it’s so silly but because the physical symptoms are so obvious like a god breathe. I feel like my body’s dying I feel like I’m about heart attack I just finding it very difficult to go to sleep because every time I go to sleep I shot myself awake so it’s like a drop off and then just jot myself awake again so I think I need to stop my head going at a million miles an hour and to think that really I don’t have a say in my own death quite frankly but I would really like some help if possible in trying to cope with that anxiety and cope with the irrational fear that I’m going to die every time I go to sleep because I’m really tired please help me hope that’s what you needed to know is yeah that’s it. The rational fear of death in my sleep please help me thank you.

FINDING THE CAUSE OF THE ANXIETY：（1）

Hi I would be talking to you about my first session with Dr.daniela rossi.. We went over how I feel a threat is happening and I perceive that thought which turns into an anxious thought so I experience anxiety which then brings on physical symptoms and then my response may be irrational because my brain has kind of created my body to produce these physical symptoms and then I act upon them so it’s about thinking about my brain creating a scenario then it turning into something that feels quite real and Daniela taught me how to try and ride the wave as opposed to fight it because you can’t ever stop a wave you have to? kind of just learn to go along with it so don’t avoid the situation but learn to cope with it when it does arise and you can do this avoidance or distraction technique I can sometimes make a problem a lot worse and it turns into like this official vicious cycle that’s not real so a way to combat this is through breathing which I found was really really helpful because breathing so simple in the way that you do it from birth to death and if you ground yourself and use it as an anchor it can be really helpful when in difficult scenarios so that can prevent when I’m wandering off and cut straight on now and not be distracted by other things. another analogy issues which I found really good was that there I was the rider on a horse and my brain was kind of the rider and the horse was my body and I’ve got to learn to ride the horse control it but not fight it because in effect it’s the horse that’s going to get me to places so I need to learn how to control that and work with it as well so I hope that makes a sense.

FINDING THE CAUSE OF THE ANXIETY：（2）

Hi so in the last couple of sessions we focused a lot about imagery and how our brain are so amazing in the fact that they can just create these scenarios. If we can create those scenes we can also create scenes of calm as well. as anxiety. a lot of anxiety is created by myself in my head and if that is true then surely I can create the opposite I can create the calm sensations and realize that it’s all the figure of my imagination and because I have quite a vivid imagination well an extensively vivid imagination I find it very ease to kind of snow ball with things and until I’m getting into a state where I’m really anxious really not feeling good and it’s about learning how to kind of prevent that snowball from happening but also perhaps snowball it into a positive thing and recently our Dr.rossi asked what I can control in my life and it took me a little while to take that in. and we came up with that you cand control your what you say and you can control how you act to a certain extent obviously because emotions are very powerful and sometimes they can control you which is possibly what is happening in all of these cases where I’m very anxious so to come extent you can control your mind in how it acts but you can’t control how it creates things and the imagery that it forms by itself so you kind of have to learn to accommodate those images and consider them and realize if they are valid or if they are a bit negative and not going to help you in anyway. So one of the images that we created when do you feel like you were so scared but also you had some pleasure from that too and I said when I went sky diving because I always say it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my whole entire life but I also say that I was absolutely terrified and we use that because when I was up in the plane I was absolutely terrified watching people jump out of the plane in front of me but and then when they said are you ready I just kind of went yes but I wasn’t really but I wanted to do it and I mean I couldn’t really get out of it by that point so I was terrified but as soon as I let go and jumped out of the plane my emotions went from fear to elation and I had an amazing sensation all over my body. It was incredible I was so happy I laughed all the way down so we kind of used that because I have anxiety associated with sleep you can relate that very much so because when you’re about to go to sleep you could say that that’s before I was jumping out of the plane I was anticipating what was going to happen and creating there scenarios which is snowboarding out of control but once I let go once I jumped out of the plane and once I had gone to sleep it was a feeling of bliss happiness and contentment. So in effect skydiving it’s like sleeping and that is a very interesting way to think about it so initially you’re scared an anticipation makes you anxious but once you’d let go you’ll be more and happy and feel so grate ful that you did and we did another imagery exercise where dr.oz her asked me to imagine a num imagine a person in the army and imagine a jazz singer and the num was I imagined her obviously to wear nun clothes and I actually acted out dr.rossi who told me after it’s I acted out each character with my hands so a nun I said I was verry tentative she thought about every action she made and was quite quietly spoken and a bit reserved whereas the person in the army was very assertive very commanding and sure about what they were saying and had a kind of straight up of parents and then the jazz singer was more flamboyant and laid-back and happy-go -lucky kind of person and I imagined all these types of different types of clothing the way their mannerisms were their character their faces their smiles our hair colors that I colors their shoes the scene that they were in and my imagination to created all that from one word is quite fascinating really I find it so amazing learning about the brain more and surely if we can create such vivid imagery we can also create calm so then I was asked to think of a really safe place that I had and I had what my safe place was walking the dogs in the river where there is a river banking up the bank there’s field which the Sun hits it so perfectly and the trees are really green and I can hear wind in the birds and the river and my dogs running around and I love lying on the grass and just feeding the grass and looking at the sky I’m quite a whimsical person so I that was my safe place and so if I can imagine all these things off one word surely when I’m anxious I can try an go back to that safe place and try remember all the feelings and thoughts that I had about that place and try and harness that into that present moment where I’m feeling anxious to relieve some of that and feel the feelings of calmness that I had in that place so sleep is essential for us it’s important to let go and to regenerate the body and it’s so important and I’ve realized that I can do it It’s all up to me and my little brain.

Last:

We looked at the way that my brain works the way it processes thing the way it created false scenarios to give me a physical response to my anxiety which then makes my brain react to that physical response which is the anxiety and I’ve learnt to control that not let it run off with me and to realize that it’s just something I’ve created it’s not reality and I am so thankful.