Anxiety and sleep

[troublesleeping]

Hello there,

It's 6:26 and I have not slept a wink. I am not sure what's the matter because it appears that my anxiety is under control. I use my watch to measure my heart rate and my stress level and all indications are that the stress level is low and the heart rate is also low. Every time I drift off to sleep I wake up. This is very frustrating for me. My question really is whether the lowered stress level and heart rate are really indicating that I am not anxious? If so why am I not able to fall asleep?

[quitter333]

I just started sleeping when I felt like it and pretty soon my body said "ok, great now I am getting enough sleep. And a hour long siesta during day is great".

And soon after it just shifted to rather normal midnight to 7AM sleep (I enjoy sleeping for about 6hours 30 minutes to 8 hours). Condition your sleep mechanisms - e.g. I deliberately stared drinking peppermint tea and reading before sleep and now if I pick up a book and drink tea I feel sleepy as hell in about an hour. Makes it super easy to time good sleeping regiment.

.

I'd say - the less you try to oppress the insomnia, the better. If you have a full time work, take a vacation and relax. Insomnia is WAY BIGGER PROBLEM than any financial problem a human can ever run into.

[troublesleeping in reply to quitter333]

The issue is really that I would like to fall asleep much earlier so that I dont miss out on half of the day.

[IHadADog in reply to troublesleeping]

Sometimes, the solution is the opposite of what you'd think it would be. Try staying up LATER than you'd like for up to 5 nights in a row, knowing that you won't get all the sleep you'd like. If you normally go to bed at 11, make a commitment to stay up until 1 or 2 a.m. After a couple/few nights, your body just fights back and you're like, "I CAN'T stay up anymore." And then you start sleeping heavily.

That worked for me once, many years ago. Might be worth a try.

[onthetrail]

I've dealt with anxiety-induced insomnia off and on through the years. I had a bad night just last week due to muscle spasms -- but mostly it was due to *worrying* about the muscle spasms. I agree with the comment about not trying to directly fight or oppress insomnia. In the past when I had it badly, I had to learn to just go with it. I couldn't force myself to fall asleep, and the fear/anxiety about *not* sleeping was just making it worse. Finally, I lost some of my fear of insomnia, and generally I sleep better these days. To some extent we have to trust our bodies. If they can't sleep, get up and do something else for a while. When they get tired enough, they well sleep. Though I know it's not always so simple or painless. Be well.