Shared Night Panic

Heavenly This American Life.

Today I listened to one about fear of sleeping. At the end, Ira Glass (the main guy) talked about how he always associates sleeping with death and he's always surprised that not everyone feels that way. Then he had a bunch of people say a few things about their nighttime panic attacks about death that are EXACTLY like mine. And III'M always surprised that everyone doesn't do that too. I've been having them since I was very very young, but I've discussed them with several people and a lot don't really know what I'm talking about.

Here's what some people on the show said:

"It's like a complete instant panic attack where I'm just clutching the sheets and going 'oh God, oh God, oh God, oh no.'"

"I'll just hang onto the bed and go 'no no no no no no no' and I'm just wanting to scream"

"There's something about being half-asleep specifically that causes the realization to actually take effect"

"When this wakes me up in the middle of the night it's because I'm right. It's going to happen."

"It's not an irrational fear. It's like you understand that you're mortal. That your life is going to be over at some point."

"I cry and I just get really sad and I try to breathe, I try to breathe real deeply and I just think 'there's nothing I can do.' The terror is overtaken by sadness. I just want it to not be true."

There's no reason for it to feel better to hear other people describe my exact experiences... but it kind of does. Here's a poem by Philip Larkin about it:

Aubade I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse - The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anasthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can't escape, Yet can't accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.