Discussion on Ataraxia: freedom from anxiety....What is it?...How can we attain it in a world mad with chaos and conflict?

Night terror fits what I experienced. At that time, I was about 31 years old and was living alone, so I might not even have remembered those cases when I woke up from a night terror itself as described by Dr. Breus.

Around that time, I had a sleep disorder which made me wake up after just a few hours of sleep, and I could fall asleep again only in the morning, such that the alarm clock or the rising external noise level in Tokyo woke me up during night terrors and made me remember them. Alternative events after the alarm were sleep paralysis and out-of-body experiences. Sleep disorder, night terrors, sleep paralysis and out-of-body experiences disappeared within a year. I guess reading a book and mental drills with a card-index instead of just waiting for the second sleep helped me to fall asleep again faster and thereby cured the sleep disorder. When I was 46 years old, I developed a similar sleep disorder again but without night terrors, sleep paralysis or out-of-body experiences. This time, reading or studying is again helpful to fall asleep again but total sleep at nighttime is down. Since retirement, I mitigate the sleep deprivation by additional sleep after breakfast or lunch as needed.

Finding Ataraxia in today's chaos is tough, right? I've found some solace through personal practices like mindfulness and, surprisingly, exploring medical cannabis under proper guidance. It's about finding what works for you. For me, it's been a journey of trial and error, but the relief it brings is undeniable.

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Quote from Martin

This is the case while we are fully conscious with properly functioning mind. However, while we are asleep and therefore our ability to use logic is turned off, they can temporarily come back.

Wait your waking and sleeping states are different. When I used to work drilling my sleep deprivation would get so bad I'd dream with my eyes open. I occasionally start to dream while I'm still half conscious as-well. And whenever my dreams become coherent and are more than just a random shuffling of sensations I'm generally fully aware that I'm dreaming, and can choose to wake or continue with the dream. When I was a child I literally killed all my nightmares, took alot of work to gain that much control over my dream state but now it's pretty easy. All it took was the suggestion from my father that I could control my dreams, and I was off to hunt my monsters. Sometimes I'll get annoyed with the irrational parts of my dreams and think to myself 'well that doesn't make any sense' and then go about editing out the nonsensical junk. Though generally I don't like to use that much energy when I'm suppose to be resting so I just go with the flow as long as it's tolerable.

But to the actual topic I agree with the general direction of the thread, that with practice we should gain some control over our own emotional state, but that extreme circumstances can and do disrupt this. However I would suggest that if you find yourself anxious about the state of the world, that unless the chaos has reached your doorstep, you take Epicurus advice and stop doom scrolling... I mean retreat from the clamor of public life. I find 99% of news feeds to be Narratives devoid of facts anyways. I generally have to be really interested in a topic if I'm going to dig around and find enough facts to piece together a coherent picture.