How should I deal with muscle tension that happens while I sleep?

[selenium17]

Even if I feel pretty relaxed before bed, my muscles tense up at night (especially my jaw and pelvic floor). Even if I take valium right before bed, I still end up waking up tense in the morning. When I'm awake there are things I can do to deal with it but I'm not sure what to do about something happening while I'm asleep.

 

[Cactusflower]

Hi @selenium17
Welcome!
Our subconscious minds are are very busy when we sleep, so if we are stressed or anxious, it can manifest in things like tension.
What are the “things you do” during waking hours, and how have you been approaching TMS, if that’s what you think is going on.

 

[TG957]

If you continue working on your anxiety as the root cause of your tms, tension will eventually go away.

 

[Baseball65]

This question has come up a lot lately. I suppose because we go 'safely and quietly insane' when we are sleeping , our unconscious mind unchecked is having a battle with our conscious mind.

If I am having symptoms they tend to be worse when I try to relax....Sarno wrote about this in Healing back Pain. It's just our pattern. I had one last night for the first time in weeks...Painful Leg spasms. I want to blame working hard for 9 hours without a break doing a miserable task... but I know better from experience. It's about something that I am nervous about..so When it woke me up ,I had a 'talk' with IT (the spasm/my brain) about the event causing me anxiety and I forcefully told it I will not be distracted... it took two times but it was gone by this morning and I slept the rest of the night fine.

Sometimes to break the cycle we need to get out of bed, out of our 'comfort zone' (which isn't really comfortable anyways) and approach it like: "OK... you want my attention? Your gonna get it and leave!"
I always talk to it like it is an annoying younger sibling... the 'attitude of disdain' that Sarno spoke of... it works pretty good!

 

[JanAtheCPA]

A short meditation or visualization before dropping off to sleep works for me, for whatever nighttime stress might be an issue. Combined with some deep breathing, I visualize sleeping without tensing whatever it is that needs to relax, and waking up refreshed. I successfully did this years ago to stop clenching my teeth so I could stop wearing a night guard. It only took a few days to retrain my brain. I told my dentist a couple years later that I hadn't been using it and he said he would never have known because he saw no new signs of clenching.