Question: I am 40/m and I experience infrequent (every 3-6 years) sleep terrors that I believe are caused by stress. However, each time this occurs I am awakened by my own vocalization which tends to be a drawn out low tone laced with sadness, like the beginning of a crying moan. It’s not a good sound.
Once awake, I realize my dream had been particularly disturbing and relief washes over me. I know odd dreams are common and I’ve read that it’s normal to sometimes dream of ourselves doing things we would never do consciously.I am more fascinated by the sound I make. I can only think that it is like a natural alarm mechanism, like my brain’s self-preserving way of forcing me to wake up in order to alleviate the disturbance.I experienced an episode last night and I can honestly say that I was stressing about finances (it’s tax time) fairly heavily yesterday. I don’t consider this a problem, but I had never researched sleep terrors before today and thought sharing my experiences might help someone else.