Amped Up + Exhausted = Yuck, Yuck, Yuck

[Chava]

I feel better when I'm moving, jittery and sick when I'm still, but I'm so physically exhausted I feel like my heart will malfunction. I slept really poorly, lots of crappy dreams, and hot-cold-hot-cold all night. My body is really screwed up. I need to take it down a notch, I NEED REST, but I feel worse as soon as I slow down. How do you deal with this kind of mess? I'm going to try low-exertion movement this evening, like walking, maybe a little yoga, and just pray I SLEEP. I've on panic edge and not specifically stressed out about anything...my body is just all screwed up. Less cigarettes, I know, I know......

 

[sixktransfer]

It sounds like you could benefit from medication management and some cognitive treatment,

sleep is hard to get when you are hyper aroused. which sounds like you are, what over things are you doing tell me about your daily schedule?

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

@Chava - I hope you can get some sleep. That would probably help, but I know how hard that can be.

 

[Bees Are Awesome]

Do you drink a lot of coffee or soda or take anything else with caffeine in it? Sometimes people are more sensitive to it than others and it can give you the jitters and make it difficult to sleep.

Not being able to sleep makes everything worse. It sucks. I hope you are able to sleep tonight!

 

[Chava]

ehhh...I try to respond and my computer is eating my words....I see a therapist but she's been gone a while, my work is hectic and it's a challenge to slow down, I have other stress I'm just stuffing into a gnarly ball somewhere in my body because I don't know what else to do with it, and mostly I'm tired...which seems to make me more hyper-like, jittery, etc. No coffee past noon has always been my personal rule. Smoking isn't different but it's effecting me worse, yet so is pressure to quit. I am going to go shopping for less cheap foods tomorrow that are higher quality (I was trying to save money by eating more white bread, cheap and sugary granola...just too much sugar perhaps)...I'm exhausted but just went running with my dog. My body hurts.

 

[Chava]

Split another half of a sleeping pill since first one is doing nothing. I'm so mad at my body and SICK OF IT

 

[joeylittle]

Does meditation help you? It's sort of a predictable thing to say, but doing a long-ish guided meditation can sometimes help my sleep meds kick in; it's really frustrating when they don't work.

 

[Chava]

I might try following one of the CDs I have...for tonight. MBSR stuff. Fall asleep not angry at least. I did yoga, Pilates, some meditation last night and it was unhelpful because I was slightly drugged and pushing to say I got it done. So, wrong context. I need to create space and time and get this all better balanced. I'm so overloaded on ambien right now. I BETTER SLEEP!

 

[joeylittle]

Fall asleep not angry at least.

This should, hopefully, improve the quality of your sleep if nothing else. Give those CDs a shot. Try not to panic (I panic when sleep suddenly becomes impossible, which of course, makes it more impossible).

Sometimes, if I let gravity take care of my exhale (like if I'm lying on my back) it tricks my body into the kind of automatic breathing that happens when sleeping. Or I listen to the rhythm of my cat breathing and get in sync with him.

I'll be thinking of you.

 

[franciemarnie]

Here's a trick I learned today for when my primitive brain, as usual, thinks I am about to be annihilated when I am not, and I wake sick with terror, nausea and numbness.

The trick is to distract the primitive brain with a bigger emergency than the fake one it is registering.

Lie down on the floor face up. Press your heels into the floor, your calves, your thighs, all the way up. Tuck in your chin. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Hold it!! For as long as you safely can. Then let go.

The number one job of our primitive brains is to keep us alive and that means keep us breathing. If we stop, and are laying down in a grounded mode (you must be grounded like that), it drops what it was doing to get you to breathe again.

Then it says, Now what was I doing before? Can't remember.

And at least for a little while, you are free and can hopefully rest.

 

[anthony]

I feel better when I'm moving

I'm with that... if I sit still too long depression starts to settle in, followed by other symptoms, typically telling me to get up and get moving.

 

[scout86]

Do you have any times during the day when you actually feel like sleeping? I've got a tendency to get kind of like what you're talking about, but usually only at night, when I actually have the opportunity to sleep. Mid-afternoon, anytime I slow down, I can doze off. Unfortunately, I drive quite a bit for work during the day and driving is one of the activities that's relaxing enough so I can sleep. (But only during the day!) My T suggested that maybe I was "over tired". He said, "You know, like a little kid?" I did not actually know and wasn't sure it was a "real thing". Anyway, he suggested that I take naps (Not when I'm driving!) during the day. I can't prove it, but it seems like that helps me sleep at night. He said no more than 20 minutes. I've found that, if I lay down for 20 minutes, I can relax and then feel better, even if I don't sleep. Then I seem to be more able sleep at night. It's like if you get pushed past a certain point you just can't shut down enough to sleep. Getting brief bits during the day seems to help get things back to where they are more manageable. Just a thought!