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I have a combo of difficulties that culminate at nighttime - mindless eating and online shopping

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Changing4Best

Changing4Best

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I find myself buying things online at 3 AM that I later realize are not the right size or I cannot afford, etc. I guess you could call me a nighttime shopper, and it is akin to nighttime eating. I do a lot of that too.

3 AM is my favorite time of the 24 hour cycle. I don't want to say it is my favorite time of day, because it is not "day" then! The peacefulness is divine. I can read, play online, eat, (well, I should not be doing that, but I do!) or I can paint paintings, which is a much healthier and more therapeutic activity. However, I prefer eating at that time the best and will mindlessly walk into the kitchen often at that hour. I try to stop myself, but I do not always succeed! So I have been putting on weight....

I live alone, so I am not disturbing anyone, thankfully. It is just that I am messing up my waistline and my budget, sometimes pretty badly.

I've been diagnosed with Bipolar and cPTSD and a few other things too, like chronic Lyme Disease. So waking up early like this is not that great for my physical health either, but I cannot get back to sleep sometimes. I can't even stay in bed, I get so restless.

Do any of you have these kinds of problems?
 
Yup. There is something about nighttime that really gets to me.

My dad was like this too, in his later years especially. He traded stocks online (mostly at night) and lost it all in 2008. He was suffering from Dementia then. We did not know it though! I have been checked for it twice and do not have it. Hopefully it will never be a problem, because I don't want to go broke!
 
Hmm, so I think the "logical" and "responsible" part of our brain is probably pretty sleepy at night :p

Could you compromise?

By putting things in your "online shopping basket" at night, but only clicking on "buy" (or not clicking on buy!) during the day?

Also, could you prepare some healthy but yummy snacks and put them in the fridge for night time eating? And then compromise on being allowed to eat as much of that as you like at nighttime?
 
I also do that but I am often unaware. It's called...oh darn, I forgot. Oh yeah, Parasomnias. Do you take Pramipexole for your restless legs? That can cause shopping and overeating. I take 1mg a day, so it isn't as bad as it used to be when I took more. I woke up once with a bagel under my pillow!

About a month ago, a duplex coop with an extension showed up on my porch. I was mystified. I had been looking at one for about a week, so I went to the website, and yes, I had purchased the coop and extension at about 3am. I got it on sale, with an extra $40 dollars off for using a credit card. Ack!! I did not want their credit card! I did keep it though since I had 15 Polish chicks that needed a coop, and it was perfect for them. I haven't done anything since the coop, except my son told me I ate a bagel, but I don't know why I stopped. I also had a thread about this awhile ago, and the suggestions were good.
 
Hmmm... I take high doses of gabapentin for my RLS. I wonder if that could be the reason. That is funny about your coop. I have a friend who has guinea hens. I will tell her about your story! LOL... @DharmaGirl Anyway, I did not buy anything or eat anything last night (to my knowledge), so I am a bit encouraged. Sometimes I am aware of it as I am doing it, sometimes I have no clue until I find some clue that I ate or bought something. Like Amazon sends you an order confirmation and then later tells you when the item(s) have shipped, etc.
 
It makes perfect sense to me that, with ptsd, you find the early morning a calm and enjoyable space. There’s a whole heap lot less stimulus going on, so with the over-worked system that we have as part of our ptsd? The world is easier to cope with in the early hours of the morning.

There’s 2 big problems that tend to come out of this. The first is that it doesn’t take much for “3am is calmer” to become a full-blown anxiety issue where your functioning during the rest of the day is substantially impaired. Because living at 3am is a textbook form of avoidance, it is feeding underlying anxiety in your system. It’s great to make you-time occasionally, but when 3am becomes your normal clear-head time? Daylight functioning when there is necessarily more stimulation for our system to manage becomes more challenging.

The second big issue is your bipolar (which I also have, and it sux!). A lot of people will tell you that good mental health cannot occur without good sleep hygiene. But if you have bipolar on board in particular, we know that sleep disturbance is a key cause of mood instability (sending the mood dangerously high, or dangerously low). It’s very hard to have a stable mood without good sleep hygiene. With bipolar, good sleep hygiene is like a fundamental form of medication that your system needs every single day, to a degree that someone without bipolar potentially won’t understand.

There’s a whole host of things you can do to improve your sleep hygiene. Screens at night, and eating at night? Both make the “bad” sleep hygiene list (!!), and they’re going to be making it tougher for you to reestablish a good solid block of sleep each night. But there’s also things that you can do during the day, and in the leadup to sleep, to improve this issue. Your T should be able to give you evidence-based information about improving sleep hygiene.

It’s interesting that binge or boredom eating, and online shopping, are both instant gratification behaviours. Having identified that you’re engaging in that specific type of behaviour? Is worth raising with your T. Is there an emotional issue going on that you’re avoiding, for example? Both of these behaviours can (and often are) done in a mildly dissociated state (so, not really remembering your online spending, for example) which is another issue to perhaps look at - “How dissociated/grounded am I when I’m doing these things at 3am...and why?”

These are really common (self-defeating) behaviours that a lot of people engage in, but don’t have the courage to ask for help with. So give yourself a big hero cheer for starting the conversation:)
 
Changing4Best said:
Do you leave your phone or computer on at night after you have slept? I am trying to turn mine off if I don't need them!
Click to expand...

Ohhhh this gives me anxiety just thinking about it ... I keep my phone on and nearby because when I wake up middle of the night (usually 3-4 times per night) I am nervous and anxious and unsettled that I am awake, that I am vulnerable, that I have to be around myself alone, that my thoughts and feelings are loud and painful..... I immediately jump on my phone for distraction until I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open, which feels SO GOOD.

Something about being so tired I physically can't keep them open even if I want to feels good. I won't say more because I'm getting into flashback-triggering content now.
 
Your title caught my attention because i dont have appetite to eat but i do end up binge or mindlessly eating non stop. (Eat so much even the cockroaches became cookies and silverfish fried in golden batter..joking).

The shopping browsing to. Usually for stuff that could help me function better. I think at night my brain is better because the world is more quiet.

The eating part do u think its the brain saying it needs fuel?
 
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