Thinking while sleeping

Hey all, first post, please be gentle while I work out how these forums work.

I'm living with bipolar type 1 and PTSD, which relates to experiences of antigay bullying when I was in high school (25 years ago) and intergenerational family violence. Diagnosed with bipolar about 15 months ago and PTSD was picked up by a clin psych about 2 years ago and confirmed by my psychiatrist... this morning. Big day.

My bipolar is generally pretty stable, but every now and again I'll encounter triggers for post-traumatic stress. Sometimes my work (I'm a writer) puts me in the way of that. The same-sex marriage plebiscite last year really set me up for that.

When I'm triggered, I tend to get a ton of emotion, not always clearly attached to the trigger or the related experience -- it can get attached to whatever I'm writing about. And then I ruminate about it for days. Medication has definitely helped stop the rumination. But recently I had to finish some writing that was on the very same topic I got triggered about. It should have taken a few days and it took me nearly a month. So the task itself kept returning me to the painful topic.

This is what I wanted to ask about: does anyone else experience 'thinking while they are asleep'? I'm trying to work out if that's common for bipolar or PTSD. I'm getting to sleep okay but then I wake up around 3AM to go pee and realise my brain has been working away, like I've been in a light slumber rather than fully asleep, thinking or dreaming or dreaming about thinking about the topic I'm writing about.

So: I finished that piece of writing a couple of months ago and my sleep went back to normal. I'm already in counselling for the post-traumatic symptoms, and I saw my GP and my pdoc and we've worked out a strategy involving sleeping tablets as a first line and possibly a low-dose anti-psychotic as the second line option.

I'd love to know if anyone else has experienced this, and if so, what have you tried doing about it?

Many thanks,

Diver Dan