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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

My journey through pain - 16. Chapter 16 - Long nights of insomnia

I suppose first of all I should say I’m thankful. Ever since the bad things happened months ago , I hadn’t really had any problems falling asleep at night. Quite the contrary, in fact. I used to look forward to the nighttime because it was when I could go to bed and forget about how bad I was feeling for eight, nine, or ten hours. Then in the mornings I would get another anxiety wave, but I could always look forward to the night once again so I could catch my breath, emotionally speaking. Also, a very clear symptom of my constant depression for the past two years has been that I tended to sleep for way too long. Ten hours was the bare minimum but, in order for me to feel really rested, I had to sleep for about twelve hours and also take a nap in the middle of the day. That meant that my days were really short, and for years I thought that it was normal.

Now, things have changed. I have been working very hard on fixing or learning how to live with many of the emotional consequences of what I went through. Progress is always there, I guess… But now a new problem has arrived and it was so sudden that I don’t know what to do. It’s threatening to undermine everything I’ve been working for – it shatters my days into formless shards of tiredness and anxiety that won’t fit with one another to make a clear picture anymore. It terrifies me and it’s quickly taking over not only my days but also my nights. It’s insomnia, plain and simple. And I don’t know what to do about it.

I still don’t understand why it started. The first hard night I had was a week ago, which was ironically the night I was able to go out with a friend and just have fun. I was very relaxed and even kind of happy when I came home. I still remember the sensation, though it feels like I experienced it years ago instead of just seven days. I remember getting ready for bed, closing my eyes… And then anxiety hit like a truck.

That first night it manifested itself as an entire seven hours of sleeping in short spells, dozing off every now and then only to wake up with a jerk and me wondering why it wasn’t daytime yet. I was confused and I chalked it off to maybe some nervousness about the interview I was going to have on Wednesday, but I wasn’t worried or bothered that such a night would repeat itself. But it did. The very next night, I was able to sleep for about four hours straight and then I woke up. Fully alert. It was super weird, like somebody had flipped the switch that said to me: nighttime’s over. Only it wasn’t, it was about 3 AM and, after that, I was only able to sort of doze off fitfully for the rest of the night. When 6 AM finally came around I was exhausted of tossing around in bed and I just got up. A gigantic day with many hours lay ahead of me and I had no idea of how to fill them all.

Things got steadily worse as the week progressed. I had another night of waking up around 3 AM with anxiety dialed all the way up, finding it next to impossible to fall back asleep. Then the next day, I had trouble falling asleep to begin with and it was devastating. I was tired, sleepy, and yet as soon as my head hit the pillow my mind kicked into overdrive. It took me more than an hour and a half to fall asleep – an hour and a half of tossing around in the darkness, literally sweating with anxiety, trying to convince my mind to calm down and shut off for the day. In my case, when anxiety comes, relaxing and shutting off are the last two things my mind is able to do. It was horrible. I went through the day after that night like a zombie, tired, barely able to focus. Nighttime came and I was tired enough to fall asleep right away, but again I woke up at the same witching hour of 3 AM and I wasn’t able to rest very well after that despite me knowing that I needed it.

I tried switching around variables. Maybe eating earlier in the evening instead of an hour before going to bed. Maybe drinking less water, maybe watching something boring or reading or doing nothing before bed. But the very next night I again had trouble falling asleep to begin with and I was terrified. I still don’t know what’s going on. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. It’s been more than a week now, and the horrible anxiety that used to greet me every single morning now haunts me during the night as well. I don’t know why. But it’s bringing even more fear into my life, and it is destroying my motivation. I have tried to reason this out but I can’t. Why am I having so much trouble sleeping out of the blue? Was it because I stopped drinking Coke? It’s been about two weeks since I stopped drinking soda altogether in an attempt to be healthier. Maybe there’s a chemical imbalance somewhere in there because of the relatively sudden lack of caffeine in my system? But it’s already been two weeks. Why now? And why isn’t it going away?

I have received advice during therapy and I have been told that, if I wake up and I can’t go back to sleep, I should just get up. I can’t bring myself to do it, though. Waking up at 3 AM, the thought of simply getting up and, I don’t know, working for a bit on my computer or preparing myself some tea or whatever… Those thoughts are so overwhelming. I can’t bring myself to get out of bed. It’s like I’m literally trapped in there with my own desperation and I can’t break free of my own volition. Getting up feels like I’m admitting defeat and I panic. I’m already having trouble filling up the empty hours of the day when I’m not working. To add even more hours to a sleepless day is more than I can bear.

I am scared. I am frustrated. I am even a little angry – I know that healing is nonlinear and so on and so forth. I am told by people around me that I am indeed making progress even if I don’t see it. But now that insomnia has reared its ugly head and further complicated my life, I’m not sure I can deal with everything. I put my heart and soul into each and every day to make them productive, satisfactory, worthwhile. Almost every single morning, simply starting the day by taking the dog out for a walk has required what feels like a titanic effort on my part to fight against the horrible defeatist inertia that conspires to keep me in bed doing nothing but feeling sorry for myself. I fight against it and I have snatched my own sanity away from its claws again and again and again. Instead of shirking work I’m embracing it, trying to become a better person and a better professional. I’m paying attention to my body too, not only my mind, and I am exercising a lot and changing habits to eat well. I’m even socializing more, even at night, hard though it is for me. I fight against my lingering fears as well as I am able to.

And yet I don’t feel better.

I don’t understand.

I know I’m acting like a child right now in a way, who’s throwing a tantrum because he’s unhappy and he thinks stamping his feet and screaming for a little while will make him feel better. But I’m tired. I’m scared of how tired I feel. A few weeks ago it was horrible but there was a tiny bit of progress which I could see and I could cling to the hope that, with time, my pain would fade. Maybe it still will, but it’s so slow and it’s so hard to be patient and just wait for things to get better. I need things to be better now. I need for my mornings to not be tantamount to torture. I need for my nights to not have so much fear. I need… I don’t even know what I need. I have tried every single way of looking at my panic attacks and my anxiety. I keep telling myself, today for instance, that I need to remember my own words and be okay with not being okay. But the problem is that I don’t see things getting better – and this might just be a trick of perception, I might not be seeing the forest for the trees. But I am sick and tired of feeling like I’m going to puke from anxiety every minute of every day. I am sick and tired of the jittery energy that follows me throughout the day, making it impossible to sit still. I want this awful fatigue which comes from not sleeping well to go away. I want…

I don’t know. I think I’m rambling but it’s just that I don’t understand. If I were somehow able to substract the emotional component from my days recently, they would be great days. They would be days when I did many things, productive things, and even once or twice I was able to distract myself with a fun activity. But I can’t take away the emotional pain that shadows me. It’s this awful portent of doom hanging over my head that I can’t ignore. I don’t even know where it comes from and I don’t know how to fight it. I want it to go away, I desperately want it to go away. That’s why I’ve been working so hard, and dammit, I don’t often like to toot my own horn because I have been taught several harsh lessons in humility, but in this case I will come out and say that I’ve been working my ass off to heal, to be better, and I’m not seeing any improvements in my mood and it’s discouraging and scary and disappointing and I don’t know what to do. Why do I still feel this way? And why can’t I properly sleep?

I’m concerned about frustrating people around me. I’ve received a lot of support over the last few weeks, but when I still don’t feel good even after all that help I feel like I’m letting everybody down. Like someone will come up to me and say hey, we gave you all this attention and all of these pep talks and you said you understood. How come you’re not happy? How come you still say you feel bad?

I have no answer to that. I don’t even know what to do right now – it’s the middle of the day. Simply writing this down, the effort required, is making me sleepy. But I know for a fact that if I climb into bed right now I’m going to freak out. I’m going to freak out and I’m not going to be able to fall asleep for a nap and it’s just going to mess up my day and mess me up psychologically, even more if that is somehow possible, and it just boils down to me feeling trapped. I’m so tired and I can’t rest. It’s horrible. It’s almost like torture. I need some way to break the cycle. Nothing I’ve been doing so far seems to be helping, so maybe I need to do something else, something more radical. Maybe the answer does not lie in working hard, doing exercise, or socializing. I just don’t know where to look though. I’m going to sound like a whiny child again but I want to stop suffering so much, all the time. I can take the suffering and the anxiety and the worries and the regrets if they come every now and then, but not if they are here without leaving. It’s like I need at least a little bit of time to catch my breath, emotionally, before diving back down into the murk. But now it feels like somethings keeping my head down in the water and I’m running out of air.

What do I do? What am I doing wrong? How do I go forward feeling like this?

Sorry for the rant, everyone. I ... I needed to vent.
Copyright © 2018 albertnothlit; All Rights Reserved.
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The content presented here is for informational or educational purposes only. These are just the authors' personal opinions and knowledge.
Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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  • Site Administrator

First of all... you are not acting like a child. You are acting like someone frustrated and angry with having even more heaped on top of what you've already been through.  Insomnia sucks. I've dealt with it on and off for a long time.  I don't have a magic answer for you, but listening to your therapist seems like a good idea.  I know it's easier said than done.  What you are going through is exhausting enough without heaping the sleep deprivation on top as well.  :hug:  

 

Quote

I’m concerned about frustrating people around me. I’ve received a lot of support over the last few weeks, but when I still don’t feel good even after all that help I feel like I’m letting everybody down. Like someone will come up to me and say hey, we gave you all this attention and all of these pep talks and you said you understood. How come you’re not happy? How come you still say you feel bad?

This is the depression talking.  Your loved ones and supporters do not think this, let alone say it.  :hug:  

 

You will get through this.  Whether it's tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.... you will persevere.  You have such an incredible fighting spirit.  I admire your courage in sharing your journey.  I wish I could do more for you, but I hope my words of encouragement help.  :hug: 

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I will add my voice to @Valkyrie‘s in care and support. You have every reason to be frustrated, and I’m okay with listening. Nothing you’ve said seems out of line to me. If a long distance hug would help you rest, I offer you one of mine. 

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Thank you, Valkyrie and Parker. I normally try to be as optimistic as I can about all this, but somehow today all the bad stuff got to me and I didn't know what to do but vent. Thank you both for the hugs - we may not know each other in person, but I feel you reaching out all the same and it means a lot to me. I know I always say this, but thank you so much for reading, for listening to me, for being with me on this journey. When the bad thoughts whisper, they tell me I don't deserve such love, from you, from my family, from the people around me. But your kind words, and all the messages and the support I've received here, prove those bad thoughts wrong. I'm not giving up, far from it - tonight I'll take whatever comes my way, be it rest of lack thereof, with as much equanimity as I can muster. I'm scared because I don't really know how to deal with this kind of insomnia come out of nowhere, but I'll give it my best shot. Who knows? Maybe this is the last really rough bit of road before I break through to the other side, where peace of mind awaits. Maybe I just have to be strong and tough it out for a bit more and that's it. Or maybe not, but as long as I have strength in me, emotional strength in this case, I'm fighting this. Thank you, guys. I'm all teary as I type this. Realizing I am not alone in this world gives me hope.

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  • Site Administrator
11 minutes ago, albertnothlit said:

 Realizing I am not alone in this world gives me hope.

You are not alone :hug:  

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Well, if I were experiencing this right after having gone out and had fun for the first time in a long time, I’d say I was probably punishing myself for daring to have a nice time. But that’s just me. My own worst enemy. 

 

As for disappointing people: you’re certainly not disappointing me and if you do encounter someone judgmental enough to actually feel that way I say screw ‘em. Let them spend a few days inside your head and see how they cope. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. You are amazing. 

 

And now for something lighter yet on the topic of people being unrealistically, simplistically judgmental:

 

 Bob Newhart - Stop It

 

My partner and I tease each other with this regularly when we’re lamenting not achieving some mental health goal or another. 

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Hey StonyCreeker,  thank you for your words. I'm feeling all uncertain and fearful, but messages of support help me enormously. I'm writing this in the early morning, after waking up way too early again, but I'm going to try and have a positive attitude today.

 I watched the video, at the beginning I was kind of anxious -in the mornings I can't sit still or focus too well unless I'm physically moving around- and I didn't know whether I'd be able to watch the whole thing, but I did, and by the end I was smiling. It's a great skit. Thank you for sharing it and making me smile.

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  • Site Administrator

Albert, I was thinking of you this morning and about insomnia.  Something I've used with some success--it doesn't work all the time--is progressive relaxation.  I'm not sure if you're familiar with that technique, but it may also help you during a panic attack.  The idea is start at your toes and first  tighten your muscles as much as you can, then release your breath and relax your muscles at the same time.  So you start with your toes, then feet, then ankles, then calves... etc. working your way through all your various muscle groups.  I'm usually asleep before I get to my arms.  

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  • Site Moderator

Bouts of insomnia tend to feed off of themselves. Since insomnia also incorporates levels of anxiety about not being able to sleep, you dip into a new niche when you are already experiencing anxiety issues. Val's technique works well to relax your body to rest and it's best to find anything to focus your mind off of trying to sleep. For your overall issues, have you considered hypnotherapy? It's quite helpful in dealing with anxiety if you can find a qualified therapist.

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I’m going to definitely try out the progressive relaxation, Valkyrie. Thank you for mentioning it. I need some way to distract myself enough during the night so I can fall asleep and this sounds like it could help me. Drpaladin, thank you for suggesting hypnotherapy. To be honest I’m scared of it, but at this point I’m desperate enough to try anything. It’s very early in the morning again and I wasn’t able to sleep. I woke up at the same horrible hour, around 3 AM or three thirty. I was really tired and after using the bathroom I climbed back into bed with every intention of falling straight back to sleep. I felt like I would be able to do it. I really did.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t and I don’t understand. The anxiety crept up stealthily and I spent almost an hour just tossing and turning, desperate to please please fall asleep. When I found out I couldn’t I finally looked at my phone to check the time – four thirty. I started praying but it didn’t help. I tried taking deep relaxing breaths but it didn’t help. I tried counting my breaths but it didn’t help. It was really cold and I was really tired, so I couldn’t get up from bed.

It’s 7:30 AM now more or less. It’s been four hours since I woke up and I am exhausted. I know I need sleep but I don’t understand why I can’t have it. I didn’t do anything different from the night before this one, when I did sleep. What is happening? Why this sudden change? It’s been almost 2 weeks. I’m tired, and terrified of the day ahead. I almost feel physically ill and I don’t know what to do about it. I can fight things if they require an action of some kind. I’ve been trying real hard and succeeding here and there. But I can’t fight something that requires complete inaction, like falling asleep. It’s not under my control I don’t think. I do everything I can to give myself the best possible chance of sleeping. I make sure to take proper steps to be very relaxed as I climb into bed, and indeed last night I was able to fall asleep right away – but what do I do after I wake up in the middle of the night?

I’m going to try everything I can. Yesterday I drew up what I’m calling an emergency mornings plan just in case something like this happens. I made a list of activities I can do to pass the time and I’m trying to follow the list as well as I can. Step one was getting up. Step two was having a little bit of breakfast even though I’m anything but hungry. Step three was writing on my journal, like I’m doing right now kind of. And so on. As soon as it’s no longer dark out I’ll take my dog out for a walk and then I’ll go to the gym. Not sure how I’m going to have enough energy to actually work out since I am so tired but I’m going to try. I have to try.

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  • Site Moderator

When you're physically exhausted from lack of sleep, take a nice hot bath. Soak in the tub for at least 30 minutes. You'll find it is like having four hours of sleep for your physical body. I've used this often when I've been in situations where I've had to function with periods of little sleep.

 

You should consider you may be setting a mental trigger before you go to sleep to wake up at an early hour without realizing it. I never set any type of alarm even when I need to get up at a certain time. Before I go to bed, I tell myself to wake up at X time and I do  within a few minutes of that time. It's entirely possible you are hoping you don't wake up at 3AM and instead your mind wakes you up at that time. Try imagining waking up later. I know it sounds strange, but you do have an internal clock of sorts if you learn how to use it.

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Thank you, drpaladin. It might indeed be possible that I am mentally setting that hour in the middle of the night for waking up. It happened again tonight, which is confusing because I don’t think there is a particular reason for me to be waking up so consistently. I’ll try your suggestion. I’ll try to imagine that I will wake up later right before I go to bed. I’m trying everything to see what works for me. Last night I tried Valkyrie’s progressive relaxation suggestion and it gave my mind something to focus on. I don’t know whether I was doing it right, but it was nice to have something to hold onto during the empty hours of darkness. I spent about three hours in bed after waking and I used every tool in my arsenal to try and calm down. I was able to sort of doze off a couple times, thankfully, even though for the last couple days I’ve been sleeping for about five hours I think. It’s scary, but I’m hanging in there.

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