[Anariel]

Hi, I wouldn’t say my insomnia is so so bad yet. Maybe most of you had this for 3 months or for your whole life, but my only insomnia started 1 month ago. Yet it took a toll on my daily life.

It started exactly a month ago. The time I usually went to bed had already passed, but I decided to still be awake because of my teeth pain and searching a doctor for it. Thus, I stayed up for around 1 and a half hour more. Afterwards I closed my eyes and decided to sleep. It didn’t happen. So I took my herbal sleeping pill which I saved for bad nights such as this. 3 hours went and I still couldn’t sleep. The pill only makes me sleepy but it did nothing to make me sleep. Maybe it was exhaustion but eventually, I fell asleep. I expected it was only a one time thing.

No, it wasn’t. The next day, sleep evaded me again. It was not as severe as last night, but it was still frustrating. I reached my breaking point a week later when I couldn’t even get a blink of sleep. I went to visit a neurologist and seeing my extremely high blood pressure, she decided to give me a benzo. At this point, I was so exhausted, I didn’t care anymore. Imagine not sleeping at all for 34 hours. I didn’t immediately take the pill because of my work, but after that, I was finally able to sleep.

The next day comes and I was finally able to sleep immediately without sleeping pills. But I woke up in the midnight, not finding sleep again. I decided to take benzo again and that’s when I discovered: pills didn’t help me much. It still took 1-2 hours for me to sleep after taking benzos but I do sleep. That’s all that matters right now.

Hearing my condition, my mom desperately asked me to come home. So I did. I went to acupuncture and psychologist. That’s when I discovered that I’m a perfectionist and that’s what makes insomnia happens to me. I may not consciously thinking about sleep but deep inside, I am afraid of sleep. So he started giving me CBT-I therapy and it did help. For some times. It didn’t help all the time. But staying at home most of all helps me I think. I only require an hour to finally fall asleep.

But then, I have to leave my home again and that fear made sleep evaded me once more, and I took benzos again to sleep. When I left home, sleep wasn’t actually a challenge to me for the first few days, until today where I find myself in bed for 3 hours and still not getting sleep without benzos. That’s when I realized: All the time I immediately fell asleep is always the 2 days after I took benzos. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I want to sleep but being a pharmacist myself, I know that these pills will only make you dependant to it. I made it my goal to only took 2 every week so I tried to adhere to it. But it’s so hard when sleep keeps evading you.

It’s only been 1 month and I already found myself thinking ‘what if I’m like this all the time’ which exactly fuels my struggle to sleep. I know the key is to not think about sleep at all, but it’s honestly so hard.

Do you have the same problem? I didn’t know what to do anymore. Right now, I’m desperate to find any solution to this problem without meds.

It’s frustrating speaking to people in real life that didn’t have insomnia. They keep saying “don’t overthink it”. The question is “how?? How can I stop thinking about it??”. Then “try this herbal sleeping pill”. The answer is “no. No. And no. I’ve tried and it didn’t help”.

So can I just find the solution already? I’m so tired of this sleeping problem. Thank you for listening 🙂

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