Dreams

I'm getting really frustrated. I no longer think that I'm grinding my teeth in my sleep, but I'm pretty positive that i'm clenching my teeth as hard as I can in my sleep. Waking up with my mouth and jaw hurting every morning is getting a little old. Not to mention I'm having one hell of a time sleeping now. For the last few weeks I could close my eyes and I was dead to the world - not anymore. I'm tossing and turning and just simply can't sleep. And when I do sleep, i'm having bad dreams and nightmares. I don't even like to say that out loud because it makes me feel like a little kid. Before I started my anxiety medication, I could probably count how many nightmares I had to that point. But since the medication, I have bouts where I have a nightmare, sometimes 2 every night. Now, for a while whenever I had a nightmare I'd wake up because I was having a panic attack in my sleep and couldn't breath. My husband would hold me and assure me that everything was ok and I'd immediately drift back into sleeping. But now, I'm off my meds and still having nightmares- however, i'm not waking up from them. I mean, it's ok to not be waking up in the middle of the night having panic attacks, but I would almost rather do that than being stuck in these stupid nightmares! It's to the point that if I happen to wake up after a few hours of sleep, I just have no desire to go back to sleep because I don't want to get stuck in any more of these bad dreams. I am so annoyed.