Mild Sleep Issues?

[thisbejoe7]

Does anyone else have only mild sleep issues? I've always been a very light sleeper and it takes me a while to fall asleep most of the time. Sometimes between 15 minutes and up to an hour or so. I wake up quickly to light noises and am sensitive to sounds made by the air from a ceiling fan rustling items in the room.

I've found I get to sleep quicker if I am physically worn out and having sex before going to bed also seems to help. But even then its not a 100% consistent thing.

I don't usually have dreams or nightmares or anything like that. Sometimes I even have a state of consciousness while I'm "sleeping" where I'm aware of the passage of time but my body still feels rested in the morning. This makes for a really miserable night of "rest".

I don't have any breathing problems, I'm usually calm and want to sleep, but it just doesn't come easily. So I'm wondering if anyone else has similar issues and how other people deal with them?

 

[blackswan]

I'm a supporter not a sufferer, but I'm a supporter who has spent the last decade working in sleep medicine. It's behind a pay wall, but there's a recent Scientific American article on Sleep And Consciousness goes into how emerging science suggests that it's possible for the attention part of the brain to stay online while the rest of the brain sleeps.

Partial sleep hypothesis.

My reading suggests that this is likely more common in people experiencing hypervigilance. And not that it's going to help for you today, but this is a topic that I'm considering exploring in my postgraduate thesis. From a scientific standpoint I know that your body and brain are resting even if your attention isn't, so even if you're waking up feeling rotten please know that what you've experienced overnight is physically better for you than being actively awake all night. There are very effective insomnia treatment programs out there, but I would refer you back to your primary trauma-clinician/therapist regarding choosing the most appropriate option for you.

It's horrible not sleeping well :( makes every other daily activity just that bit much harder, and I wish you all the best with it.

 

[thisbejoe7]

Thats very interesting, thank you for that information. Its not debilitating for me at all, some days I feel like I'm doing just as good as if I had gotten a normal nights sleep, but it does vary from night to night. I've also tried non-habit forming sleep aid pills, but that doesn't always work either. I should also mention that I don't take in any stimulants. No sodas, and I don't like coffee, so I get very little caffeine if any. I suppose if I did feel that functioning during the day was getting too difficult, I could resort to adding some type of stimulant to my daily routine.

 

[scout86]

@thisbejoe7 , my experience with sleep is similar, except there are a lot of mornings when I wake up feeling like I've spent the night engaged in some kind of fight. My T tells me that "falling asleep easier when you're really tired" is actually called "exhaustion" and that's in a slightly different category from "easily falling asleep".

I had to laugh when you mentioned "sex". The past couple of weeks, I've had more trouble than usual getting to sleep. It finally bothered me enough that I emailed my T and asked if there were any ideas he hadn't mentioned yet, or that I'd, so far, blown off. He didn't reply, until my last session. He has what I think of as "a tell". When he's about to embark on a journey into potentially difficult territory, he takes a deep breath, looks at the ceiling, then looks back at me. He began the session by doing that (so I'm thinking "Oh no! NOW what?") and said that there WAS one thing we hadn't talked about with regard to sleep. When I asked "What?:" he said, "Sex". I stared at him for a second, because I had NO idea where he was going with that. He didn't say anything, so I asked what sex had to do with sleep. He started to explain that some people have an easier time falling asleep after sex...... As it happens, I don't. LOL It was still a memorable conversation! (As I understand it that has to do with hormones like oxytocin.)

He actually says that he think a lot of MY sleep issues are related to ADHD. He says I score a bit higher on that curve than most people and it can cause sleep issues. I looked it up online & was surprised to find out how accurately it describes how I sleep (or don't). I'm sure it's kind of a mixed bag in my case and some of it is more than likely PTSD related too. It's something you could consider, though. As a part of that, I'm supposed to be very consistent as to what time I go to bed and when I get up. (Not something I'm inclined to do, but it helps). He also tells me that I need to "make myself available for sleep", whether I actually sleep or not. That doing that, by itself, helps the body rest from the day. Looking at it that way took some of the pressure off and actually helps a lot. My T has all kind of visualization techniques that help a lot of people. I have a problem with "visualizing" and it happens to be one of the things that keeps me awake. :sorry: There's a lot of info about that technique online too, I think.

 

[thisbejoe7]

scout86, thats funny! Its interesting how people react differently to one person's solution isn't going to work for someone else. I have found that for me, sex helps quite a bit in getting to sleep most of the time. There have been times that I can fall asleep in just a could of minutes after sex, which is great. It doesn't always work but it is effective more often than not. If sex is not available I have also tried taking matters into my own hands, which isn't as effective but does help to some degree.

I can relate to the mixed bag part of what you said, most of the time I'm a "mutt" on most tests and evaluations. Almost never any clear leaning in any one direction. I'll check into some of the techniques to help with my sleep issues, I've honestly never looked into it before.