[Becca]

Last year I had a break down, due to looking after my mom all my life, she suffers with bipolar and schizophrenia. Eventually the stress got too much for me and led to myself being unwell. I was signed off work for a while with anxiety and stress. Leading up to the breakdown, the signs were there, but I never realised. Insomnia was the initial problem, followed by the complete breakdown of not being able to function. I was terrified of going outside, going to sleep at night was the worst. I was actually terrified of my bedroom, at one point I went 4 nights without any sleep. I started hallucinating and seeing scary images every time I closed eyes. Suffering from panic attacks also.

Finally after doing immense self help work like meditation, exercise, counseling, positive affirmations, fast forward a year, I have been off the medication now since end of January of this year, feeling great and stable until the last 2 weeks. All of a sudden the insomnia has come back with no real reason. I’m back to the emotional state, despair and helplessness. I have no idea how to turn this back around, I was doing so well. My anxiety symptons only come when I don’t sleep. I don’t feel anxious any other time. Which therefore makes me even more confused? Can anyone please help with any advice? thank you

[delv-x]

I am sorry to hear about what you went through. It can be hard emotionally and physically. The emotional state, despair and helplessness is real and an awful feeling. Meditation, exercise, counseling are all good and you should continue with that. Anxiety and insomnia go hand and hand. One leads to the other and vise versa. I am the same way. I don’t feel anxious generally but after a bout of poor sleep, it’s there.

CBT-I would be the best thing to try out. It isn’t easy though and takes time to see results.

[Martin Reed]

Hello Becca. I’m sorry to hear about your struggles with sleep and I know how disappointing and frustrating it can be to go through a good patch of sleep only for sleep issues to return.

The first thing I’d like to remind you of is all the positive progress you’ve made. For four months you slept well — so there’s no reason why you can’t get back to that point again.

Everyone experiences a bad night of sleep again — so we should expect “relapses” rather than become concerned and worried about them. As I suspect you know, as soon as we worry about sleep we make sleep more difficult.

Do you know what triggered your most recent bout of sleep issues? How are you getting on now?

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