Feeling worst at night

[Matt3013]

I have recently been pretty ok during the day. I take my 100mg of Sertraline each day and keep active. This tends to help me manage my day and anxiety.

At night is a completely different story... I have so many fears and thoughts at night. My anxiety goes up ten fold and I find that I just don’t sleep but instead lay awake worrying that I am going to die.

I have this deep dread of being unsuccessful, loosing years of my life, being lonely, having no friends, and having some kind of illness that finishes me off.

Just can’t rationalize at night and find it so hard.

[Platesofmeat]

Hi Matt,

I think those thoughts are quite normal as you are dealing with anxiety. An anxious mind will always turn into a 'What if' scenario with the 'inner dialogue' or self critical debating society, that likes to turn up and fill us with doubt.

Have you seen a therapist to talk about what concerns you?

Have you tried mindfulness?

A half decent book on it is 'Calming the Rush of Panic: A mindfulness stress reduction guide to freeing yourself from panic attacks and living a vital life' by Bob Stahl PhD. It has downloadable meditations that you are suppossed to practice every day.

Another good one is 'Mindfulness a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world' by Mark Williams and Danny Penman.

It includes a CD on guided meditations.

There are many other books on mindfulness practice and I recommend one that resonates with you.

It is all about not fighting thoughts, thoughts will happen wether we try to have them or not. They are not you, or reality, just a debating society making sometimes catastrophic predictions. We cannot run away from ourselves or our thoughts, but we can begin to accept them for what they are, just a stream of activity in the mind which include fantasies,feelings,predictions, judgements, fears and also joy and contentment ( we can easily lose touch with the last two when we are feeling under threat/ anxious).

Sometimes the anticipation of an event is worse than the event itself. I'm sure you have or will experience this.

I also listen to Michael Sealey on YouTube who does great Hypnosis and Meditation videos.

He is very good.

Thing is, keep hopeful (easier said than done I know) and realise you are not alone (also easier said than done ).

Good luck,

From a fellow sufferer.