Sleeping should be for sleeping

When I go to bed at night, sometimes quite late, the most important thing on my mind is sleep.  You know that period of time when you have a rest from all things, supposedly.  It should be a physical, mental and emotional rest, supposedly.  Sometimes that just doesn't happen.

I can't remember how many evenings I've been yawning my head off, I'm really tired and sleepy, ready for bed, yet when I get there I'm wide awake.  I use to fret incredibly about the sleep I wasn't getting, how tired I would be the next day but now I just get up and do something until I get sleepy again and usually on my return to bed I will sleep.

So I've learnt to cope with that and insomnia to some extent.  What I haven't come to terms with is nocturnal panic attacks.  Last week during a blissful sleep, supposedly, I awoke to find myself sitting up in bed, heart racing, feeling nauseous, wondering what on earth was going on.  It took me a moment to realise I was having a nocturnal panic attack, got back in control by seeing it for what is was and breathing away the panic.  Where on earth do they come from?  I had nothing particularly distressing on my mind, I had been in a reasonably positive frame of mind during the day so I cannot connect it to anything.  It's not as if I'd been thinking about something and off I went.  I mean for goodness sake, I WAS SLEEPING!!!

So I'm wondering how much of what we feel deep down and choose not to think about during the day, gets processed in our subconscious while we are sleeping?  If that's the case, then our subconscious is not very nice to us.  How many of you have had or suffer from nocturnal panic attacks and what are your coping strategies.  Does anyone know why we have nocturnal panic attacks?

Anne