What Happened to my Brain Chemicals?

I am absolutely sure at this point that my brain chemicals are some combination of non-existent or not very good ones. Among other things, my entire “light,” “dark” mechanism has been completely irradicated. For many years, as Cristina’s caregiver, there was no longer any day or night. Emergencies happened at all hours, every day, for years. I had to not only be awake, I needed to be VERY alert and “together” because my daughter’s life was at stake many times.

I have woken up every two hours for many years now. Talk about not besting “rested.” I also stopped dreaming for many years. I did a lot of research about the brain during Cristina’s recovery. I had a feeling that the constant stress over such a long period of time was having it’s affect on my brain. Not only that, I also was learning that, under such life and death circumstances for such a long time, parts of the brain were used that hadn’t been quite so active before.

The main thing that seemed to help having any type of positive affect on my brain was dancing… and laughing… I did both a lot. Even in the misery. Or maybe because of the misery… another thing to ponder. Or maybe not. This is why the Yoga Nidra feels so helpful to me. Trying to balance such completely opposite, and intense feelings so long is, to say the least, very trying. For me, doing Yoga Nidra has been/is being very good for me. One way or another, you've just gotta roll with the punches. I don't know what else to do. Hard to learn to "welcome" everything... but seems to be better than the opposite.

Dancing helps me feel so alive and vibrant. Joyful Equanimity (for the moment) radiating out in every direction simultaneously.

This is from Wikepedia.com about the brain:

“The brain undergoes transitions from wakefulness to sleep (and subtypes of these states). These state transitions are crucially important for proper brain functioning. (For example, it is believed that sleep is important for knowledge consolidation, as the neurons appear to organize the day's stimuli during deep sleep by randomly firing off the most recently used neuron pathways; additionally, without sleep, normal subjects are observed to develop symptoms resembling mental illness, even auditory hallucinations). Every brain state is associated with characteristic brain waves.”

Could be why people with post traumatic stress disorder have such a rough time.