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HI Anna, it sounds like a very tough spot you are in.
As to your worry about falling asleep at inopportune times, I wonder if you have caught yourself dozing off e.g. while driving ……or whether you have been worrying about doing that/
To be sure, worrying about it is no fun, but it is a different circumstance.No doubt you are tired. But are you also sleepy? There is a difference, and I wonder if you are so anxious that you are actually not sleepy, though obviously very tired. A sleep medicine doc would be able to diagnose actual narcolepsy, but if you haven’t actually fallen asleep suddenly and repeatedly at inopportune times, I would think not.
Finally, when I have had bad bouts of insomnia, I have been convinced I did not sleep a wink all night, yet later told I was snoring. I was tired afterward, so obviously not a restful sleep, but apparently not without any sleep.
Sleep anxiety is a nasty revolving door: if I don’t sleep, I can’t live my life, and I am worried about it still, so here is another night of insomnia. I know firsthand how hard it is to realize that the way out is not to bust out of the revolving door, which is spinning too fast to escape. Rather, it is stepping back and observing yourself spinning in it. I can’t think of anything else where you want to try as hard as you can to beat this thing, and yet effort does not work.
Take care, you are not alone in this.
Hi SandyL, it sounds like you are going through it right now. A few preliminaries, which you may have already considered, but here goes….
—Racing heart could be caused by the sleep anxiety, but chills and nausea? Maybe see about a general physical exam to rule out anything else?
—Changes in normal routine, even positives like a vacation, can affect sleep.
—Unfortunately you are right about sleep meds. Although one thing doctors do actually know something about in the insomnia field is sleep apnea. A sleep study can measure whether that is driving the insomnia. Severe apnea can mean virtually no sleep at all because of breathing problems.
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If all that gets ruled out, the good news is that you have pinpointed the issue of sleep anxiety. As you probably know, this means that even without any external stresses in your life, you can’t sleep because you’re worried that you can’t sleep. A hamster wheel if there ever was one.
Please consider reading other posts, where at the very least you will see you are far from alone. It is helpful to read the Success Stories as well—as long as you know that setbacks are often part of the mix. Setbacks don’t have to be a total bummer, once you realize they are temporary.
For me, it comes down to thoughts swirling like a tornado, where I am at the mercy of whatever pops into my head. I have to remind myself that I am more than my thoughts. All sorts of analogies here….one is that thoughts are like people walking by your house. You don’t have to race out of the house and accompany them (which would look kind of weird anyway). Instead, know those people are on their own journey. Yes, you notice them for a bit, but on their own they will drift on past.
There is a huge difference between:
1. I need to sleep so badly. My life is going down the drain, I can’t stand this anymore; and
2. I’m having the thought that I need to sleep so badly, and that my life is going down the drain, and that I can’t stand this anymore.
If you are really hammered by insomnia, it can be hard to see the difference. True though.
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.
Hi jolanta, if you completed the entire course and now do not sleep well every night, I don’t think it means the course doesn’t work, or that you failed at it. I think instead that the brain is going to do whatever it’s going to do. I’m not sure even a skilled neurologist can tell you exactly what the brain is doing every nanosecond, much less why it’s doing it. Sort of like when your computer goes bonkers sometimes?
Sometimes the computer solution is just to reboot the damn thing, and maybe with sleep it is just recognizing that for whatever reason (present life stressor, maybe), your brain is just banging around doing this or that. And reviewing the course might just lead to letting it happen, watching it flail around like a leaking balloon, which flies around for a bit and then calms down.
See what other people say about this on the posts. My semi-educated guess is you’re having a setback, which is normal. And that it seems like it is never going to be right, which is just the insomnia talking right now.
All I can do is echo what Martin is saying. Well, maybe add a little.
I have found that at least for me, I can sleep well most nights for weeks, then have a particularly rough night and feel like I’m back to square one——as if I haven’t learned anything. When this happens, I have learned it’s just the insomnia talking.
As for panic attacks, yep, they are intense. So much so that you have to think they must be sending some sort of really important signal. I will defer to Martin and his book recommendation. I can say only that while they are incredibly intense, at least for me, they were pretty much the same message I would get from more generalized worrying. I got to the point where I decided to reject the idea I was falling apart. I
Hi Ryan82, sorry to hear you are struggling. I guess like all of us on the forum at one time or another….
I also have a CPAP, diagnosed with sleep apnea and also insomnia unrelated to the apnea. I am wondering if your insomnia is caused totally or partially by apnea. Maybe you can see how things go once you get your new equipment. If your sleep improves right away, great.
But if you still struggle after that, then maybe your “bad health anxiety” is at play. I am speculating that this is general anxiety over your health, and more specifically here sleep anxiety? If you browse the forum, you will see that this is perhaps the common driver of insomnia—(“I really need to get some sleep, how can I function tomorrow when I’m so tired,” etc. etc. and of course how can you get to sleep when you’re wound up like this.
While meds can sometimes offer short-term relief, I can tell you after 15-20 different ones, including restoril, that there’s no magic pill out there. Rather, the answer is letting go of something you can’t control anyway. Sleep eventually happens, but you can’t make it happen. Easier said than done when you’re hammered by insomnia and can’t think straight. True, though.
There are zero scientifically peer-reviewed studies in legitimate publications which prove that insomnia leads to health problems. The only symptom I have experienced is it can take a week instead of 3-4 days to get over a cold if you can’t sleep a lot. Try not to get sucked into the stuff you read on the Internet, where a number of people proclaim expertise on insomnia and everything else.
Finally, I think you have already come across quite an insight, namely that you have anxiety about your health. This might lead you to focus not so much on every aspect of your health, and more on why you are anxious about it. Check out Martin’s materials and other people’s posts. You are not alone in this.
Hi Baukje, I am convinced there is no one size, fits all here. All I know for sure is what works for me, and “works for me” is kind of a stretch. Sometimes nothing works, if “something working” means falling back to sleep.
As many other people on the forum will tell you, and I daresay Martin refers to in his course, this insomnia thing just gets bigger when we view it as a problem to be solved. Well, okay, it is a problem. Who wants to have to tough it out the next day because we’re tired?
But it is certainly not a problem we can solve, akin to building a house. There are specific steps to building a house, which you either learn and do, or hire somebody who already knows how. Insomnia has no instruction manual, and there aren’t courses which show you how to go about it. Of course there are hustlers who “guarantee” a cure if you buy this or that. And maybe there are well-intentioned friends or family who haven’t experienced longterm insomnia.
Actually I think you have already hit on an important point. You ask what to do when “you feel anxiety getting worse?” Definitely an uncomfortable feeling, but I have found that simply recognizing that anxiety can help. And in recognizing it, in my better moments I can step back and just watch it. Sure, I’d rather it wasn’t there, but it is. In watching it, I can realize it is just a feeling in me. It doesn’t have to define me. Sort of an esoteric concept which I concede is hard to remember when you’re hammered tired and can’t think straight. But I do believe true.
Hi dkpendleton, I can speak only for myself in that I have not found any drug which will guarantee a good night’s sleep over the long term.
Actually, I can go further: if there were such a drug, I know I would have heard about it. Beyond the ads that “guarantee.”
If something works for a while, fine. But I have invariably developed a tolerance for whatever drug and then it doesn’t work so well anymore. I am guessing you know this already, otherwise you wouldn’t be taking Martin’s course.
As far as staying up until sleepy, at least for me that seems to work best. Again for me, the least pleasant is to lay in bed awake–tired but not sleepy–trying to sleep, getting more and more anxious when I can’t. And the sleep anxiety can build into this huge snowball which get hard and compacted and seems like no way it’s ever going to melt.
I realize I am not addressing your specific concerns about melatonin. It’s just that I tried that and dozens of other drugs, OTC and Rx, and maybe I can dissuade you away from wandering the same path I walked for so long. I will acknowledge that this or that drug might work for you in a pinch for a while. It seems really variable, maybe depending on physiology. I finally said to hell with it and focused on dealing with the thoughts and feelings which were driving my sleep anxiety.
Good luck, whatever route you take. A lot of us are dealing with this, you are not alone.
Hi Michael61, I think you are onto something here.
Perhaps one thing to watch out for is thinking: Great. I have learned to stop struggling (so far, good)……… but then concluding that I have solved the problem of insomnia. Because inevitably there will be nights when anyone doesn’t get the rest they were hoping for, and maybe this goes on for a while. In which case—at least for me—I can lapse back into thinking, I am exhausted, no relief in sight, there’s no way out etc etc., in other words, it’s the insomnia talking.
Again, I am not here to rain on your parade. I agree that just letting go and letting whatever happen is a good approach, if we can just stay there and indeed accept whatever happens. At least for myself, I can tend to overthink all this. If during a rough patch I can remind myself that okay, I am really hammered from insomnia right now, my thoughts are going crazy…..and if I can realize that and let it all float away, things start to look brighter again, regardless how I sleep.
Hi Markdauphin, one thing I try to keep in mind is not to freak out if (when) I wake up in the middle of the night. Most nights I do wake up, to the point where I am not surprised when it happens. I will typically stretch for a while, and then go back to bed. If I don’t drift back to sleep, I figure I might be tired but evidently not sleepy (there’s a difference), so might as well get up. Typically I will quietly practice guitar. This gives me a sense of accomplishment. Not that I have to do it, but so often I find reasons not to practice as the day goes on, so nice to get some practice time in.
This is just an example. Maybe for you it would be reading, or watching the night sky gradually turn to dawn….you mention cbti, so maybe it comes down to resting in awareness, acknowledging the feeling of difficulty: ‘I’m noticing a feeling in me of difficulty dealing with waking up early’ without trying to solve it or pretend it isn’t there.
Martin addresses nighttime wakefulness quite a bit in his course. You can also read many posts about other people dealing with it as well. You are not alone.
Hi PamelaLee, I also have struggled with sleep anxiety. I am guessing that a big part of it is stressing out over how you’re supposed to get through the next day. At least that’s a big part for me.
Sometimes I remember that I have made it through 100% of those tough days. You have, too. I think we can give ourselves some credit for that.
HI BenjaminR and RandomName47, I think if the podcast works for you, great. But I sense you both realize that even if it doesn’t keep working, that the larger issue is not obsessing about sleep. Which is hard not to do. I guess that’s the nature of obsession, right?
Sometimes I get so blitzed with insomnia that I don’t have the energy to be anxious about not sleeping. And then I seem to sleep fine the following night. I guess sleep is one of those things that just happens when you’re not trying to make it happen.
Hi jk3775, I am a 73 year-old man with no kids, so I can understand if you dismiss what I am about to say. But it sounds like you are dealing not with specific postpartum depression, but rather yet another example of sleep anxiety, which most of us can relate to.
No doubt you have a specific, present trigger toward awakening, i.e. baby cries and needs your help. But it sounds like this has morphed into a bigger problem. It’s not just baby is crying; I wake up and help; then go back to sleep; baby cries; I wake up and help….etc. —-but rather the anticipating the next time is keeping you awake in the interim. Even when you know you don’t have to get up next time because dad will be handling it.
Not sure I’ve got every detail right here, but I do recall reading about experiments with Buddhist monks with a researcher at the University of…Wisconsin? They were subjected to interruptions of some sort, I think even mild electric shocks. A second group of well, non-monks who had not adopted the practice of focusing on the present moment went through the same process. The second group showed more signs of ongoing anxiety, e.g. increased blood pressure than the monks.
Sorry if I’m not getting every detail right here, but the upshot is the monks were able to recover from the adverse stimulus more quickly. They were able to focus on the post-shock time, moment by moment, without apparently worrying about the next shock, whether that would be coming minutes or hours from now.
Wonderful, if only we could achieve this kind of serenity, right? But maybe to a degree at least? So that yes, baby may well wake you up again later in the night, but in this present moment all is quiet. Whether you call it mindfulness meditation, or exploring how our thoughts can intrude on our present as Martin does in his course….I think it does come down to living in the present moment, or at least giving it our best shot. Alternative: bracing for what might happen in the future, or ruminating about the past.
And no, I have not achieved total serenity by a long shot. Definitely easier said than done.
I hope you will read other posts and check out Martin’s podcasts etc. for other ideas also.
Hi rvlad89, I can relate to your situation. It is one thing to understand how to deal with insomnia logically, but quite another emotionally. The anxiety just barrels on through: as you put it, the amygdala seems to have a different opinion regardless of our intellectual understanding of the issue.
I wish I had a magic solution, but I don’t think there is any solution, in the sense like you can solve the problem of a glass tipping off the edge of a table by placing it closer to the center of the table. My best approach, when I remember, is to just observe whatever is happening, like how anxious I am getting about whether I will sleep better tonight…hopefully, without diving into the anxiety and swimming in it.
Side point: On tiredness, there is a difference, as I’m sure you know, between being tired and being sleepy. After a bad night, I am tired but not necessarily sleepy. I never even attempt a short nap if I’m not sleepy.
I have actually had poor sleep the last few nights. Right now, I’m at the point of recalling that this isn’t my first rodeo; I’d like to sleep better tonight; I can’t control whether I do; and whatever happens, happens. That might sound passive, but I think that’s what all this boils down to.
