I Cant Get To Sleep Anymore. Too Anxious To Try To Sleep

[xraydave]

Ive personally self sabotaged my own circadian rhythms. i have all sorts of dissociative experiences, some are caused by seizure activity. and what psychdocs are suspecting as epilepsy.

on the other hand, i have academic failure to deal with. and all this trauma stuff on top of my head.
i feel like i am drowning. there is no one around me, and no one to save me from my own brain and my own actions.

i try to keep a positive outlook, but then i am searching things, i am keeping myself preoccupied at 2:30 am in the morning, or till 5 am or past that. and then i just can't deal with "tomorrow". it's hard to explain, how does one get over all of this??

 

[scout86]

how does one get over all of this??

What a great question! You realize that the answer is absolutely huge, right?

Personally, my answer is "one step at a time". If the step seems too big, break it into smaller steps. If the process of choosing how to break it into smaller steps seems too big, just "pick something. Anything".

My T's advice on "sleep" has been that I "need to make myself available for sleep for 8 hours a day." Whether I want to or not. Doesn't matter WHICH 8 hours, doesn't have to be consecutive, and it doesn't matter if I actually sleep. I just need to lay down someplace where I could potentially sleep and allow for the possibility. (He has a number of great stories of famous people who didn't sleep well. The "making oneself available" idea he credits to Thomas Jefferson.) If I'm not getting 8 hrs of sleep at night, he recommends taking a nap (or making myself available for sleep again) for 20 minutes (no more) when I can. For me, that helps more than I expected. Apparently I can get "too tired to sleep" and that gets to be a vicious cycle.

I have a tendency to get side tracked and forget I'm supposed to sleep. T says "little kids do that, you're not a little kid. You might want to consider making yourself act like a grown up, at least with regard to this." (Note he didn't tell me I HAD to do that, just that I might want to consider the option.) I guess he's right. I don't do it perfectly, but I plan to stick to a strict "time to go to bed/time to get up". And avoid those things that make "sleep" harder to come by in the time before I'm planning to sleep. Beyond that, I've been analyzing "things that make sleep harder" and trying to change them. I try to find things to think about OTHER than "everything in the world that's wrong" while I'm "making myself available". I focus on my breathing. I listen to the Bulldog snoring and try to match my breathing to hers. I "feel" my muscles relaxing and the tension leaving them. (Because I'm mentally telling it to do that.) Different things work for different people. You might have to study the problem some to find what works for you. None of this always 100% works perfectly for me. But it's helped and the more I "practice" the better it seems to work. The first step was deciding that I really saw the way I was sleeping (or not) as a problem and one that I wanted to address.

You've got a lot of other stuff on your plate too. What are the prospects for getting your seizure situation sorted out? It seems like getting any seizures under control would help with everything else. What about your academic situation? I remember you've mentioned that before. Any progress? Dealing with all of this at once......I can see how it would seem HUGE. The "self sabotaging" of your sleep YOU have a lot of potential to control, or at least work on, all by yourself. I can relate to dreading "Tomorrow". Facing it in a sleep deprived state doesn't make it any easier to face, does it? (Doesn't for me!)

and no one to save me from my own brain and my own actions.

But there IS, there's YOU. It's YOUR brain and YOUR actions. "All" you have to do is decide to take care of yourself the way you'd ideally like to be taken care of. Please do, you're worth it!

 

[TimidZiggy]

I'm very similar, because of my disturbing dreams I put sleep off. I am very tired but I don't want to sleep I'm always finding something else to do but like Scout86 said, I do basically the same thing. I put time aside where I at least try to force myself to sleep. Even if I'm really just laying there and not sleeping. As of late this practice has actually helped me a lot and now my sleep cycle is becoming more normal. I still hate the weird dreams I have but I'm at least sleeping. It can be infuriating, the anxiety before sleep but the less you sleep cause anxiety the more anxious you get. It's a vicious cycle. I would suggest you try the advice here even if it's not easy, it seems to be the best medicine, or try actual medicine (when it gets too bad for me I usually take a sedative I was prescribed specifically to help my anxiety so I could sleep).

 

[katz]

Ive personally self sabotaged my own circadian rhythms. i have all sorts of dissociative experiences,...

I can certainly understand your situation. I had been dissociating for years. I also was told that I had epilepsy, they considered the black outs to be petite mal seizures. I was also dealing with traumatic memories from a very violent past. I was on 5 different meds, but none seemed to work at controlling my "episodes". My neurologist (epilepsy doctor) had me check into a hospital for one week. I was hooked to wires and stayed there for one week. By the end of the week, I was on only one of my meds, because I did have epilepsy, but they were also able to officially diagnose my PTSD. (I had no official diagnosis till then.)

From a fellow epilepsy patient, please go see a doctor (neurologist) to be sure weather or not you need medicine. When the doctor was able to take me off 3 of my 4 meds, it was such a relief! (I had even been told by one doctor that I would be on one of my meds for "the rest of my life." ) For me, it was also finally being officially diagnosed with PTSD. I had been told for my whole life that it was a "mental problem". Be sure and tell the doctor about your PTSD also, then it will be taken into consideration when they diagnose you. A good doctor will talk to you while your at the hospital and look at your other symptoms from the PTSD too. (Mine did lots of interview time with me while I was there, so they would make the correct diagnosis.) They can also watch how you sleep and what is going on physically in your brain.

Remember that if the epilepsy is there--it "may" not show up on a normal eeg test. They need to watch you for more time than just a few minutes. I was getting normal test results for quite a while, when I would go in for a regular yearly test.

If it is epilepsy, then you will know for sure and they can be sure your meds are correct. Since this was done to me, I have not had a seizure --or dissociated! It's been over 10 years! I know that if I had not had this checked, then I would have put the other doctors kids thru college! LOL

Good luck to you.

 

[xraydave]

I can certainly understand your situation. I had been dissociating for years. I also was told that I had ep...

Thank you so much . I was wondering whether i should take it on myself to go to a hospital and get an EEG/MRI, because this stuff is getting to become unbearable. and the whole process is very slow, with the psych doctors - they did a neuropsych testing for epilepsy and i have to wait until the end of next month for the results. they also did ptsd alongside that.

I will have to try to get an EEG and/or MRI, thank you for the kind words. i really needed that right now.

 

[Mary Smith]

HI. I also used to suffer from insomnia. I clearly remember that feeling when your troubles don't leave your mind even when you're trying fall asleep. Of course first of all you'd better to understand yourself and to find out particular problems. Sometimes a cup of hot milk with honey or a cup of herbal tea help to calm down and fall asleep. I used to have been drinking some herbal teas. Adding spearmint in the tea is also helps.