Frustrated with sleep

[desiderata310]

I find myself in a really frustrating place.

Until very recently, I had gotten accustomed to poor sleep. Four hours was my threshold and I could operate like a human being as long as I got four hours. Less than that and all hell starts to break loose.

Then I started having trouble with a head injury and I got on some crazy meds that made me sleep all the time. Suddenly, I was rested for the first time in years.

That's slowly reversed now that I'm on some different medication. Now I'm back to 4 or less.

The neurologist wants me to fill out a 'diary' for my sleep and gave me 'sleep hygiene' guidelines (seriously, the most basic of guidelines. I have a much more detailed plan for sleep)

I'm at a place where I just want to kind of give up where sleep is concerned. It just doesn't seem to be fixable and it FEELS like a slap in the face to be given guidelines and asked to fill out a diary. I know it's all about ticking off the boxes. The thing is even after thinking about it, I don't WANT medication. I generally wind up having a terrible reaction to meds and not able to get past it.

The problem right now consists of nightmares and waking up into panic attacks- bad ones. The kind that keep me up for hours.

Honestly, is there really ANY hope this is going to get better? Because I'm not very hopeful.

 

[jaccat]

I struggle with it. For me sleep is a trigger. Relaxing sends me into panic mode. It's been a therapy focus for a good couple of years, but every time I try and pay any direct attention to it, it gets worse. Like I can only function if I don't try and work on it.

My T strongly believes it'll get better. But after 30+ years of it, I can't believe. Believing that it might be possible to get better is too much, involves too much trust in my T, in the power of therapy, and myself. That doesn't stop me trying. There's nothing more in the world I want than to sleep like a normal person. But it's exhausting.

I'm kind of in a place where I'm letting my T do the believing. And much as I might not want to admit it, my sleep pattern is changing. Mostly for the worse, which is typical, but apparently any change is good. And I am noticing minute improvements in the way I feel when I'm in bed, things that would have had me on the ceiling a year ago.

This doesn't seem like a hugely hopeful response. And my sleep problems, and the way I'm tackling them, aren't going to be the same as yours. But I get that hopelessness, that exhaustion when you're just too tired to even try any more. I guess what I'm saying is sometimes you've just got to keep behaving as if you believe because it's better than the alternative.

 

[barefoot]

it FEELS like a slap in the face to be given guidelines and asked to fill out a diary.

I get this feeling. I recently decided to finally tell my GP about my night terrors to see whether he thought it was worth a referral to a sleep specialist/sleep clinic. He looked absolutely blank and then printed off an NHS fact sheet for me. It was one side of A4 and wholly related to night terrors in kids with the key message being "don't worry - they'll get over it in a few years." So it was 100% irrelevant and unhelpful and I just felt dejected. I would actually have rathered he had just said "honestly? I have no idea. But let me ask my colleagues/do some research and see what I can discover" instead of giving me a totally pointless piece of paper in some great gesture of helping me.

The problem right now consists of nightmares and waking up into panic attacks- bad ones. The kind that keep me up for hours.

I feel for you as I know how tough this can be. Have you found anything that comforts you at all at these times? I haven't found a way of stopping the nightmares/panicked wakings but I have found a couple of ways to self-soothe so that I can calm myself down and then get back to sleep again

As for whether there is hope that it will get better...? I believe there is always cause for hope! Mainly because I don't want to resign myself to a state of hopelessness! But I know how hard that is when it's the middle of the night and sleep is elusive or when we are woken from hellish nightmares, heart racing, body shaking, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat, terror and panic.

@desiderata310 and @jaccat - I can't offer much but, for what it's worth, I am happy to believe for all three of us! I have hope that improvement is possible. And I will hold that for each of us :-)

 

[desiderata310]

instead of giving me a totally pointless piece of paper in some great gesture of helping me.

I think I am going to start getting in the habit (when I am talking to the doc) to point those sorts of things out. It really irks me and comes across as just lazy and dismissive. I don't feel that the doctor has to have all the answers immediately- just be honest.

Have you found anything that comforts you at all at these times?

Not really. I just have to kind of deal and try to walk around till I feel like I CAN go back to sleep. Even then I resist the urge because more than once I've fallen back into the nightmare that I was having.

 

[barefoot]

Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing. I just sort of took the bit of paper thinking "really?!" then read it when I got home and then felt very annoyed about being fobbed off. I wish I'd have had the nouse at the time to put it in his bin and say it is totally irrelevant to me and is he able to offer - or try to find - and other real things to try or shall we just draw a line there. Frustrating.

Ah, falling back into the same nightmare to continue the horror...that's rough.

I'm sorry I don't have anything more concrete and encouraging to share
:-(

 

[anthony]

The problem right now consists of nightmares and waking up into panic attacks- bad ones.

Four hours is not enough, regardless what you tell yourself. The problem is also the solution. Look at the reason nightmares are happening. Are nightmares based on trauma? Or are nightmares happening due to environmental stressors?

 

[desiderata310]

Are nightmares based on trauma? Or are nightmares happening due to environmental stressors?

Both. My therapist is aware. Not sure what else to do about it ATM.
If you've got suggestions I'm all ears

ETA I agree 4 isn't enough but it's been...at least bearable

 

[anthony]

My advice then is to focus on lessening the environmental stressors, being that they are the easiest and based on things going on in your life right now. Focus on how to change what is causing you stress in your life right now. That removes enough to get you back sleeping, thus reducing nightmares, if not removing them again.

Then you need to step-up into your trauma when your environment is solid.

There is always a right and wrong approach -- but an approach and method exists every single time -- you just have to find it and apply it to your situation.

Always stick with the basics. Draw your cup, write down everything in it, then look at what you can remove the easiest from it to reduce it overflowing (causing nightmares and less sleep).

 

[desiderata310]

I hear what you're saying.
Going on leave from work was supposed to make things better and reduce some of my stress.
It's had the opposite effect on my stress.

 

[Rebecca_helena]

@jaccat

I can so relate to your issues. For me beeing tired is a major trigger! And the more tired I get, the more my psyche battles to stay alert. Wich is quite unfortunate and really debilitating. Since beeing tired is the bodys signal that it really needs rest to be able to carry on. And sleeping is kind of essential to be able to function.

For me, working directly on my sleeping issues only makes it worse. Since then I get more aware of how difficult it is. And also since those problems only is symptoms from my traumas. One of them is beeing put on heavy sedative medicines for several years and having to fight a battle every day to just be able to think one straight thought.

So I do my best to "accept" my issues with sleep. And try to be confident that as I progress i processing my traumas my sleep will also improve. Tough and difficult to believe that it will ever change, but I try to have faith in that my therapist knows her thing.