[Cas80]

I listened to your podcast and read some of your emails from the free online course, and the clarity allowed me to sleep very well (8hours) that night for the first time in 3 weeks. However, I then read how hyperarousal is the enemy of sleep and this made me panic as I believe I can’t stop my panic at night. Before insomnia I could accept my panic as it was no big deal, it will go away. Now it scares me as I’m worried it will give me a hyperaroused brain. In trying to control it I got even more anxious and when trying to sleep I could feel my brain as in hyperaousal and this scared me more. I feel like this knowledge about hyperarousal has made me more scared of it. Please help

[Chee2308]

Oh no, try not to stop the panic. It never works and just comes back stronger! Allow it to come and it will pass. Welcome all thoughts no matter how unpleasant they seem. Thoughts are just thoughts, they can’t harm you and they aren’t always true. But they are almost always false! Read up Claire Weekes’ method of dealing with anxiety and general unpleasantness. Basically, she said allow the unpleasant feelings to overwhelm you until they don’t matter anymore. In time, they just become less important and you get desensitized to them. Don’t shut them out or avoid them in any way but you can do other things to distract yourself but try not to escape them actively, because they will keep coming back and bother you more! Your brain has got confused between real threats such as escaping a tiger or a burning building to something completely harmless like not getting enough sleep or getting poor sleep, you need to show your brain these threats aren’t real and that everything is a false alarm because it is! But in general, you are trying to protect your sleep which doesn’t need protecting at all because your body is extremely good at it, it’s what you’re born to do! Good luck!

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