[Alyshamarie007]

My first bout with insomnia happened after my second child where I developed postpartum depression which led to terrible insomnia. Zoloft really helped with anxiety I never realized I had been struggling with for years. The doctor also prescribed trazodone, which made sleep possible for me immediately and my sleep fears subsided. For the following 8 years I only needed the trazodone to sleep a few nights a month when my brain wouldn’t shut off. Just knowing I had it in my arsenal made me not fear sleep and I haven’t had much issue since; however, I would soon find out that ignoring to address the root of the problem would come back to me later. Cue a month ago when I was several months of stopping my Zoloft. The anxiety came back like a freight train. I have 2 special needs children which come with a lot of stress but the low dose of Zoloft always helped me manage it. But after having a couple bad nights of sleep due to a stomach virus running rampant in our home, my insomnia came back with a vengeance with full on panic attacks. My trusty friend trazodone no longer worked. While it can be a helpful tool, I had made the mistake of using it alone without ever doing the work of working on my sleep thoughts and anxiety. It’s been a month of bad sleep and some times where I feel I don’t sleep at all. I have had times that it starts to improve but even then my hyperarousal kicks in several times a night. Any stressful thing makes the insomnia worsen. Finding the insomnia coach videos has been so healing to me. Seeing that I’m not alone and I don’t need to fear this has helped so much. I’m only a couple days into the free program but am feeling hopeful. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and started having anxious racing thoughts about one of my kids therapies. After awhile I told myself that I recognize that I’m anxious and it’s hard for me to stop thinking about it, but that it was ok, and I would just focus on accepting that sleep might not come and that I can at least rest here and be comfortable. I don’t know if there was the right way to think but eventually I did fall back asleep so I consider it a small win.

[hiker]

Hi Alyshamarie007, I am impressed. You are in a situation which would stress out anybody. But I sense you have what it takes.

You deserve to have a sleep med which simply works every night, period. Unfortunately and as you have discovered, it doesn’t exist. The lines would be blocks long if it did.

But one additional thought on meds. If by “full on panic attacks” you mean a short stint where you feel like you cannot breathe and feel like you are getting close to suffocating, I have been there. I was prescribed Xanax, which worked quite rapidly, though I recall a few times where either I did not have the med or was too overwhelmed to retrieve and take it. If you are experiencing anything like this, maybe a consult with a psychiatrist or neurologist or ARNP (i.e. someone who can prescribe) might be useful.

Re insomnia generally, it sounds like you have discovered that it’s all about sleep anxiety, and that it’s about accepting that sometimes sleep just isn’t happening.

I hope you will follow the posts and check out Martin’s materials. If you haven’t already, you will discover you are not alone by a long shot.

[Author]

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