Chronic Insomniac And Obsessed With Sleep Posted: 04-28-06 13:03pm
Ok, I am first time poster, but I have
been battling insomnia for over 12 years.
It been under some control over the years,
but each year it has gradually gotten
worse.
Let's start with some background.
Generally I am a very happy person w/o a
lot of stress in my life (other than
insomnia). I have always been a person
who is overly concerned w/ sleep growing
up. I never had any problems, but would
always tend to think about sleep too much
(like I had to get a perfect amount of
sleep or had to control my sleep
environment perfectly or I would get
anxious).
By nature I am a pretty controlled and
risk averse person. Growing up I had
always tried to put my self in a position
of not having to risk getting out of my
sleep confort zone. That meant avoiding a
lot of travel or sleeping in room w/
another person.
Well, 12 years ago, I was dating a girl I
liked, and decided to make a bold move to
take a trip to europe for 2 weeks with
her. Well, this trip turned out to be a
complete disaster and started my on a road
of lasting obsession w/ sleep, and
recurring insomnia.
During the trip I could not sleep at all.
To make matters worse, my girlfriend at
the time was not understanding. To make a
long story short, I came back and could
not get over my insomnia. I tried various
medications but none would work. I took
me over 6 months form me to gradually
build back to getting a full nights
sleep.
However, since this time I have become so
fearful that I could relapse into another
6 month horrible stint of insomnia. I
have avoided taking all risks (such as
major travel, I don't sleep in the same
room w/ my wife, I have developed more and
more late night rituals, such as eating
specific foods and exact orders or else I
freak out that I did not so my sleep
rituals perfectly.). I also have been
taking 1 melatonin and 1 valerian each
night for the last 12 years to further my
ocd tendancies (note this tablets do
nothing for me, but if I don't do my
nighttime rituals perfectly, I will almost
sure stress out and not sleep.)
and when I have a bad nights sleep, I tend
to really freek out leading to more and
more bad nights sleeps. So I have been
doing this controlled environment just to
avoid having another huge 6 month relapse
of near complete insomnia.
Overtime, however, no matter how many
rituals and controls, I do, I tend to have
more and more bouts of serious insomnia.
Lately for the last 2 months, I have been
averaging only 3-5 hours a sleep a night,
and sometimes none at all.
I am soooo frustrated. I have always
known that my obsession about sleep and
having such a controlled sleep environment
w/ all my rituals would be a problem that
would continue to get worse and it has.
I have read the stories by tomoftexas and
I am so scared to remove all my rituals
and just go cold turkey for fear of not
even getting a barely manageble 3 hours of
sleep a night.
But by not beating this thing, it is only
getting worse and worse and at some point,
I am going to have to face my fears and
try getting out of my confort zone.
All I want to do is to be able to sleep
fairly normally and when I have a bad
night's relapse, not to freak out where a
new major bout of insomnia will last
weeks, if not months.
This fear of an ever spiriling insomnia
bout after just one bad nights sleep is
all consuming. It seems to happen every
time I don't sleep well for whatever
reason. I have a conditioned response
after one night of poor sleep. It's like
"here we go again" is always playing in my
head.
Help!
|
chuawa
New User, Becoming EHEALTHy
Joined: 16 Aug 2004 Posts: 32
Posted: 05-10-06 03:40am
Hallo cman,
i have read your story and would like to
assure you that you are not alone. I
guess many peeps in this forum (including
myself) are in similar situations.
I noticed that you have ocd (something I
had as well) and ocd is usually a
pre-occurance for gad and related
conditions. I had ocd, gad,
mild-depression, insomnia.
I realised that when I tend to hold on to
wanting to have a good sleep, this
translated into stress, which then messed
up my sleep.
I have been to a doc, got to try many
different drugs (mind you, for
psychological conditions, there is no one
miracle drug that will have the same
effect for everyone) until one that suits
me and managed to have proper sleep after
6 years of insomnia.
But, I also learnt to let go of wanting to
have that perfect sleep. By thinking
about it, worrying about not having a good
sleep just before bed will make matter
worst.
From deepak chopra, there are two kinds of
rest, a restful mind when you are awake
(being stress free) and restful sleep.
I think it is important to reduce your
stress level when you are awake as much as
you can, this helped improve my sleep
patterns.
Also don't engage in mentally exhausive
activities in the evening.
