Daily Practise That Helps...?

[LateInThe Day]

Ooh, been lurking for a while and building up confidence to post!

So, finally (at 45) I have a diagnosis of ADHD plus Generalised Anxiety and CPTSD (as a result of childhood abuse). A course of therapy last year was hugely helpful, and has meant that I've started to unpick the issues around the anxiety and CPTSD. However, daily life is still a real challenge. The main problem is that, although I'm lucky and sleep quite well, I've always had and continue to have stress dreams and nightmares every night. This means that I awake up every morning feeling massively stressed and anxious and spend the rest of the day trying to unwind. I often feel better by mid-afternoon, but it's hard work. I keep trying meditation, yoga and tapping (which I'm new to and don't know much about but it seems helpful) shortly after waking up, but none of them seem to make that much difference. Waking up every day in a state is just exhausting, frustrating and I'm starting to dread it every day.

I'm wondering if anyone else has any similar experience or tips.

 

[ShodokanJenn]

I wake many times through the night because of nightmares. When I get up in the morning, I am always in a state of anxiety, verging on panic. I meditate, and then distract myself. I've been doing martial arts since I was twelve, and we do meditation at the start of every class. Being thirty-two, this means I've had 20 years of meditation practice. That's a long time to develop this useful skill. One thing you may want to try is guided meditation. YouTube has tons to choose from. Another thing I sometimes do is get into the shower and turn it as hot as I can stand it. The physical sensation helps drown out the emotional and mental discomfort. You are definitely not alone in this.

 

[LateInTheDay]

I wake many times through the night because of nightmares. When I get up in the morning, I am alwa...

Thanks for your reply ShodokanJenn, it's such a relief to hear I'm not alone in this. I felt a bit emotional just reading your text and knowing someone else has had a similar experience. I've always found one of the hardest things to deal with in my situation is the isolation. You just don't hear about or know many people in a similar situation (thankfully in some ways, if you know what I mean). I'll have a look at youtube for the guided meditation tips, as it's already been good for yoga practise.

 

[Friday]

This means that I awake up every morning feeling massively stressed and anxious and spend the rest of the day trying to unwind. I often feel better by mid-afternoon, but it's hard work. I keep trying meditation, yoga and tapping

Also ADHD here (ADHD-c)... I find that if I'm trying to get out of my head? I can't do head-style activities. To get out of my head I need to do something physical.

((Neurotypical folk can usually replace one mental thing with another. In fact, most neurotypical or non-ADHD folk can't think of 2 or more things simultaneously, which is part of why one sees that advice everywhere ; to think of something else. With ADHD, we generally just devote another "thought stream" (for lack of a better descriptor) to the new thoughts. Until so many streams are added that they lose their individual cohesiveness and become a loud/noisy chaotic mess. Most of the time my PTSD stuff trumps my ADHD stuff. But sometimes? This is where my PTSD & ADHD intersect and have a little party :wtf: PTSD intrusive thoughts & negative mood locking onto the ADHD mental hyperactivity, and awaaaaay we go! Ugh. In order to deal with my PTSD stuff, I have to use ADHD tricks.))

Meditation would be the worst thing I can think of to change my headspace from bad dreams or intrusive thoughts... Since it's half dream state, anyway. Yoga might work (I don't do yoga), but since my understanding is it's half meditation half physical activity, I wouldn't think so. I could do those things after some physical activity. But until I shook off the headspace, I'd just keep getting sucked back into headspace I want out of.

For both grounding & mood/affect my rule of thumb:

Physical >>> Mental
Mental >>> Physical or Sensory

It can be done the other way around (mental to mental, physical to physical) but IME it's exhausting, and takes a lot longer.