Jesse, we're SO with you and pulling for you!
I also can't add anything to Beach Girl's advice. I can describe to you the many nights I was awake for hours with TMS-equivalent symptoms, however. My TMS was/is less about pain and more about "nervous" symptoms. Digestive problems, racing heart, twitches, and alarming episodes of extra heart-beats - these are the things that used to keep me up in the middle of the night.
And by the way, your description of your audition totally reminded me of the evening last summer when I had to teach a four-hour class, which I had taught before, but my symptoms were SO bad, I was shaking and wobbly getting from the parking garage to the seminar room, I had to sit down after the first hour, where half of the class couldn't see me, and I had a terrible headache and painful neck for most of the time. It was just awful. My evaluations were not great, needless to say. That just doesn't happen anymore! If I can do it, so can you!
But getting back to your nights: You know the song that goes "Oh the night-time, is the right time, to be with the one you love... " Well, my version of that song is "Oh the night-time, is the right time, for symptoms to make you depressed" :^) I think this is just part of being human - nights ARE hard.
BG has a great point in bringing up dreams. Your brain may be waking you with pain so you stop dreaming. I have often felt very disturbed by my dreams and fearful of their meaning. It was only recently that I read my first book about dreams and understood what BG mentions above. I learned that dreams are, in a sense, meant to be disturbing, because our brains are creating scenarios that are not at all realistic - instead they are designed to challenge us, to deliberately create feelings of fear or confusion, sadness or loss, and to know that we can survive those emotions. Now that I see my dreams as constructive, I don't fear them anymore and I'm sleeping better. All I have to do is remind myself of that before I go to sleep - it really helps.
Do you have any affirmations, or meditations, or visualizations that you do at night, before going to sleep? They are all just variations on the same thing. It doesn't have to be long or involved - you could create an short affirmation where you tell yourself that your body is going to stay relaxed and let you sleep through the night and have some constructive dreams that will help you work out the stuff you're working on or experiencing during the day. Affirmations and visualizations are really powerful, and they are super-easy. I've been known to relax and do a short affirmation, and then read for awhile before falling asleep. Perhaps that's not as effective as it could be :^)
Hm, longer post than I thought when I started. This is such amazing stuff, I love exploring it, and I hope it helps, even if only to know that we're all in the same boat!
Hang in there -
Jan
