We know a bit about night terrors*. We first went looking for a solution to them twenty-something years ago when living in a house built over a graveyard. Margie was screaming as if she was being murdered right next to me night after night so we were motivated.

The Solution

Our solution was found in the root of the technology we are working with now so you could say that our business was born out of a solution for night terrors. Our products do an extremely good job of dealing with them with a 99% success rate to date. Naturally, this gives us great confidence when offering them a solution for somebody else who is suffering.

Offering solutions is what we are about. Both Margie and I are strongly motivated to help people and knowing that there are people out there suffering from night terrors when there is such an easy fix is like a persistent thorn in our sides. Trying to reach the people in need of help has been an educational journey into human nature, however.

Seeking sufferers

Not so long ago I went on Facebook in search of night terrors and found some conversations. They were all mothers talking about their kids having night terrors. I got busy telling them about our solution and that it was absolutely guaranteed to work. I offered a discount and to get on the phone and talk to anybody that wanted to talk about it. There must have been about 20 or so messages sent and I got one response. The person who responded was here in New Zealand and we had a conversation that got to the point where she was going to discuss the matter with her husband.

Then silence.

Well, I am now envisioning this poor kid being unnecessarily disturbed every night by these awful night terrors so I get unusually (for me) persistent and get back on Facebook and get on her case again. After some talk about money, I offered to send a P.e.bal to her without receiving any payment. If it worked, she could pay us the discounted price previously discussed.

No deal.

So here we had a mother, openly complaining about her son’s night terrors to her FB audience and turning her nose up at a no-strings-attached solution.

I guess you could say I was feeling equal measures of incredulity, anger, and despondency. How could a mother let her child continue to suffer in this way? How could she let herself continue to suffer continued disturbed nights’ sleep too?

After a few weeks on my, somewhat judgemental, high horse I realized what was likely going on here. When I did another FB search and found the same woman still posting about her son’s night terrors, this became crystal clear.

Warning: Plain speaking ahead.

The Problem

It’s about the drama! No judgment here because I can be the same, but don’t we all love a bit of drama? We love it when its somebody else’s and we can share in it but if we have got some going on ourselves then the temptation is to milk it like it was Monika Lewinski’s stained dress.

It’s a frickin’ human addiction and we are all suffering for it. It stops us from healing. It stops us moving forward as we latch onto the drama cow and continue milking the milk of attention.

Rant over.

There was, quite possibly, something else going on here which likely explains a lot of the other 19 failures to engage – belief systems.

Our belief systems are like an old recycled fortress. They are made from our parents’ hand-me-down bricks and others collected in our formative years. These are often mortared together by the agenda-loaded consensus fed to us via the media and our peers.

This kind of fortress, unfortunately, needs defending. The threat is not enemy combatants, however, it is new ideas. New solutions ride on the back of new ideas so without lowering the drawbridge you get stuck with just the old recycled ones.

We are still trying to get the message out there to people with night terrors but have come to accept that with the love of drama and the entrenched belief systems it is an uphill battle. Any soldiers out there wanting to join the army, please send us an email.

• Night terrors are not nightmares. A lot of people think they are the same but they are very different. Night terrors – you want to look at the time of night when you are having the problem. Night terrors happen in deep sleep. Sufferers usually go into a similar state to sleep-walkers – only apparently awake.

Nightmares tend to happen in light REM sleep. People usually awaken into full consciousness if they are woken by or from the nightmare.