Sunday, November 21, 2010

holding on for tight for no apparent reason

I wake each morning with clenched fists and knotted shoulders and elbows. I do not know why I am holding on so tightly in my sleep. I have been trying to tell myself stories of smooth, flat, light and loose as I fall asleep. I flatten my hand and put it under the pillow, under my head before I sleep, so that one hand will not be a knot of fist when I wake.

I am not having nightmares. I am not aware of anything that is stressing me more than usual. I am fit, well and happy. Why am I clenching in sleep? My feet, legs, torso, neck and head are okay. It's just my hands, shoulders and elbows. They ache when I wake, and improve when I've been up for a few minutes. It's not a hurt like my friends with arthritis describe. It's just tension, that releases with consciousness, and builds up with sleep. Kind of the opposite of what I would expect from sleep and muscles and tendons.

Taking ibuprofen before sleep helps a little. Without it I wake up several times in the night to uncurl myself from gripping tightly. During the day I have normal functioning. I'm lifting weights at the gym and performing my usual housework and workday tasks with no problems.

It's more of a puzzle than a complaint. I'd like to figure out what the mechanism is. My intuition says it's something on my mind that is revealing itself in sleep time behaviour. To what am I clinging while I am sleeping? Why can't I let go?

question: what's up with me?

mompoet - wondering about this feeling

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