I'm 20 years old, I've had anxiety since I was about 7 or 8. Occasionally I'll wake up in the middle of the night with a stomach ache and being very nervous, but maybe only once every other month or so, that's the way it's been for most of my life with anxiety. But the past 6 months or so it's gotten a lot worse. Now it's happening at least once a week usually, sometimes more. It always happens anywhere from a half hour - two hours after I fall asleep, never any later than that. Usually if I wake up in the middle of the night, I know that I'm going to before I go to sleep, because I either don't feel good or I'm super stressed about something. But lately with the increased number of mid-night panic attacks, they've been less predictable and there's nights like last night when I'm totally fine before I go to sleep and I just wake up in a panic.
I understand panic attacks at night, that they're just a symptoms of anxiety and everything, like I said before it's happened my whole life, but usually I just am nervous and have a stomach ache and I can just feel that I'm very tense. But lately when I wake up, I'm thinking about the wierdest things and it's just like it's all I can physically think about, and I just feel very dazed and confused until I cancalm down and think about something else and forget about it. The things I wake up thinking about/panicking about are things just so wierd, and not panic worthy. Like last night when I woke up, all I was thinking was Buster (my horse) and Savannah (a younger girl that rides him for me since I don't have the time to go up and ride him as much as I'd like, she leases him from me). And that's all that was in my head. I just kept thinking Savannah and Buster, Savannah and Buster, Savannah and Buster. And then I was worried about me taking pictures for her of her riding, and her putting them on her Facebook, but she doesn't even have a facebook...
I'll think about things like that when I wake up panicking. I just wake up and I'm just focusing on a certain person or thing or situation that's totally irrelevant or not even possible, and I can't think of anything else until I stop panicking, it's like my mind is locked on that one idea, and I'm extremely dazed and confused until I can calm down and unlock my mind, because I can't figure out why I'm thinking about that person or thing, and why it would be something that would cause me to panic.