[plandory]

I had my second Brain Light session today.

Whereas the assistant had set me up yesterday, today I was left to my own devices to do my own set-up. Yes, Martin, there is a long list of program selections dealing with anxiety, stress, depression, general mood and balance, pain relief etc.

The patient ahead of me cancelled and being there early I got a chance to try out multiple tracks to see what worked best for me. I am not sure which I will prefer in the end but the results are pretty amazing.

I had mentioned in the earlier post that I was pain-free and relaxed after my first session.

I managed to mess this up after I got home by engaging in a very stressful conversation before bed, which brought back all my usual negative inner dialogue.

As a direct result of this, I got zero sleep last night ( despite taking both my usual benzodiazepine and anti-depressent) and got up this morning wondering how I was going to get through the day.

Normally when I have a particularly bad night, I feel extreme discomfort and often weakness and severe pain increasing in intensity through the day.

In short, I am basically a vegetable who drifts through the day in a fog just waiting anxiously for it to end so I can try to sleep again!

To my surprise, although I didn't feel great, neither was I incapacitated. I went to my session and tried two different tracks each 40 minutes long. I did the anxiety one first and the one they call Balance afterwards.

It is now almost 9 PM where I live and I would usually be totally wilted and dying to go to bed by now after the previous night's experience.

Instead, while genuinely tired, I feel only a modicum of tension in my muscles and the negative narratives that normally haunt me, playing over and over in my mind are (though still present) at a minimum. They have quietened in intensity and I am finding it easier to dispell them, if only temporarily.

I haven't decided yet which of the tracks is the ideal one for me and I intend to try more of them but they are definitely making a significant difference.

I also don't know whether it is the strobing light, the affirmations or the subliminal messages that are making the impact. I guess it doesn't really matter, it is the results that count and they seem to be designed to work together;

I am trying to keep my mind as still as possible and hoping to crash and actually sleep tonight. I might have a decent Sunday tomorrow. There are not a lot of days recently that I am really mobile and productive. It is hard to look forward to life when each day is simply measured in lesser or greater misery and fatigue.

It is also too soon to tell if the Brain Light is doing all this good or some of it is a placebo affect. Whichever though, for now I am grateful and looking forward to more sessions.

And yes Martin, in some ways it is, as you pointed out very similar to bio-feedback. Having looked online though, “Brain Light” is in fact a patented system from Germany with a number of available components depending on it's intended use.

I will continue to update as things progress.

My game plan is (assuming that it continues to calm me and free me from the insomnia symptoms/or underlying causes, depending on how you look at things) to let myself settle into perhaps a month or two of more stable and consistent sleep.

At that point, if and when I get there, I will start trying a very gradual tapering off of the Benzo..I just switched from the shorter acting Clonazepam to the longer acting Clorazepate as a prelude to set myself up for this future tapering process. After that I will have to do the same with the Remeron I take but that should definitely be the easier one.

The saga will continue!

[plandory]

Thanks Martin. I appreciate the kind words and I will stay in touch, hopefully to report progress on the road to drug free sleep.

[plandory]

Hi Martin..No..I know precisely what caused it and when. Approximately 20 years ago I went through a period of unusually intense stress. A divorce, raising two girls on my own, combined with business and financial problems. I went from sleeping effortlessly through a process of waking up in the middle of the night soaked in sweat from a panic attack to eventually not being able to sleep at all. Then of course the doctor wrote his prescription and got me hooked on meds.

I actually managed twice in that period to get off meds and start sleeping again. Each time it was with loving support and a lot of suffering through severe withdrawal symptoms. In every instance though, something catastrophic interfered before my brain had fully ingrained it's natural sleep pattern and I was thrown back on the meds. I am now addicted to a much greater degree, as well as being considerably older, so it has become a much harder job to get off again. I have also developed severe fibromyalgia over time from the sleep deprivation and most days are very painful. I drink too much wine to help with the pain and don't excecise enough due to the extreme fatigue. I used to run about 8 miles a day 365 a year as well as many other forms of excercise.

My game plan is to try to gradually start back on the excercise, cut back on the wine and use the various therapies mentioned in my first post to sustain me while I taper off the drugs.

In theory it all sounds great but I have no illusions that it will be easy. I have no choice though, as this is no life right now. My business is suffering due to my inattention and my personal life is non-existent! So, along with all the others on here I am sure, I ask daily for the stregnth to do what needs to be done to make myself healthy again. I realize that although I can get help, in the end only I can do this for myself.

I am listening every night before bed to your download and trying to do the other things I mentioned.

With perseverence and a bit of luck I may sleep again.

Thank you for caring.

Peter

[Author]

Posts