[nibbler]

Hi everyone! Long time anxiety sufferer, first time insomniac. I’ve had sleepless nights before, especially due to panic attacks but I never had panic attacks specific tied to not being able to sleep. During the day I’ve been great at dealing with anxiety, accepting and just letting it be making it eventually go away. But at night it just comes with a force, and I know I need to have the same approach but it’s so much harder, it seems like there are many more negative thoughts and I don’t have my work and other people to keep me busy. How do you deal with frustration, because I feel like it definitely fuels the anxiety.

[Martin Reed]

Welcome to the forum, nibbler 😉

There might be as many potential triggers for a panic attack as there are people in the world. Trying to avoid all potential triggers can make things more difficult as we can so easily end up focused on avoidance (and withdrawal) and that can make it harder to live the life we want to live. And, when it comes to sleep, that’s something that isn’t even under our direct control.

With all this in mind, perhaps what’s most important here is how we choose to respond to the stuff that’s out of our control — the anxiety, the frustration, the wakefulness when we want to be asleep.

Do we try to fight and avoid (and where does that get us) or do we practice building skill in experiencing all that stuff with less struggle? If all that stuff was able to show up and was more like water off a duck’s back, how might things be different?

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[hiker]

Hi nibbler, I had what was later diagnosed as a general anxiety disorder for years before the insomnia started. None of us are on identical paths, but maybe you and I are on similar ones.

I think (hope) my worst insomnia is in the rear-view mirror. One thing which has helped is actually expecting to wake up in the middle of the night. I wake up almost every night, anyway, and it seems better to expect it than get panicky or depressed when it happens.

Interestingly, when I wake up at say 2:00 am, invariably I have thoughts running through my head about some way I have failed–getting a poor job performance review thirty years ago, getting bullied by a kid in sailing class sixty years ago, whatever. This happens so often I come to expect it. What I have changed over time is how I view it. I used to get immersed in the bummer thought and reaffirm to myself what a failure I was, and then I try to remedy things by imagining how I could have handled it differently, or how I ultimately wasn’t really a failure— you know, trying to solve it all to make myself feel better so maybe I can get back to sleep if I’m lucky.

I don’t do that anymore. Now, I just observe the bummer thought going through my head, recall that I seem to get these thoughts popping into my head, especially in the middle of the night when probably my subconscious defenses are down or whatever……and I just let the thoughts drift through like clouds passing by my window.

If you find your experience has been considerably different, that is probably to be expected. Like Martin says, there are probably as many different triggers as there are people in the world.
I would encourage you to read other people’s posts for different views, including Martin’s emails and podcasts.

Take care, you are not alone.

[Author]

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