Anxiety, keep waking up with my brain thinking I'm at work..?

Hi,

Lately my anxiety seems to have come back unfortunately, but it does seem different this time.

It seems to impact my sleep much more than it did a few years back when I was really struggling with daily panic attacks. Back then, I had nightmares and things like that but overall I do remember that I was actually able to sleel alright for the most part.

Not so much this time…

It first started some three weeks ago, when I was mega exhausted from work. I work as a camera operator for broadcast TV and I had a really early morning where I had to wake up at 5am.
The biggest problem was that I kinda had forgotten that I also had a concert the evening before which lasted till midnight.. So I only had about 4 hours of sleep.

I then committed to stay awake the entire day afterwards, as in, no napping. Because I was afraid that would mess up my sleeping rythm.

I managed to do it and when it was finally time to go to bed, I was so happy and excited to finally sleep. And that's where it went wrong..

I couldn't sleep… Just as I was doozing off into dreamland, I got hit by some sort of mental shock and I was instantly wide awake. It felt like when you think you are falling just before you fall asleep, but without the physical jutter.

This then proceeded to happen some 6 or 7 more times in the same night, leaving me once again with hardly any sleep at all. Which was really worrying me as I had been awake almost 40 hours on only some 8 hours of sleep.
I suppose this is where the anxiety started to slip back into my life again as well.

The next night, I think I finally managed to get some good sleep again, so I felt very much relieved and much better.
Except the night after that, I again had the same "brain zaps" every time I was about to fall asleep. And I once again hardly slept at all.

Another think I noticed that night however, was that my brain seemed to think I was still at work or something.
You see, that evening I worked as camera operator for a talkshow which kept going till midnight. Then I came home, relaxed a little bit, drank some camonille tea (which has always been my before sleep routine) and then I went to bed and I DID fall asleep for about an hour.

After an hour, I woke up and I truly thought I was at work for a little bit. I could hear the director cueing cameras and I really thought I was behind my camera. This kept me from sleeping any further as I was now pretty much wide awake again. After an hour or so I did fall asleep again but kept waking up on and off.

And that's pretty much what I'm still dealing with right now. Yesterday I again had a talkshow, again fell asleep for an hour or so, again woke up and my mind was filled with the voices of the director and assistant director, cueing cameras and telling us to do things. Fell asleep for a little bit again, woke up again, again heard voices, repeat.

The only new thing I did notice tonight, is that I for sure woke up one time gasping for air. Like, one big deep gasp as soon as I woke up. Never had that before…

I know I'm not hallucinating these voices. They are definitely just in my thoughts. But I also can't get rid of it when it happens. It's almost like a song that's stuck in your head.

What's going on..? How can I get rid of this stuff? And how can I go back to having good nights of sleep without waking up every hour or so?