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Jimmmm
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PathStep 1 Compassion hearts12 Forum posts2 Forum upvotes3 Current upvotes3 Age GroupAdult Last activeNovember, 2015 Member sinceNovember 9, 2015
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My sleeping problem...
Healthy Living / by Jimmmm
Last post
 April 6th, 2016
...See more (I posted this one on life story aswell..but thought that it would be more suitable here :) ) Hello everyone!Glad I found this site it has been really helpful when I needed someone to talk to. Anyway,I would like to share with you a problem i've had had for about 2 years now and after that i would appreciate it if you could share your opinion about it (what should I do,if the way I deal with it is good etc.).So here we go! First of all..i have anxiety issues..meaning that i worry a lot about stuff i obsess over some thoughts and I tend to overthink a lot.So, one night on September 2013.I had my first encounter with insomnia..I didn't sleep for a night and then i started panicking that i can't sleep there's something wrong with me and lots of what ifs that i don't even want to talk about.The whole thing tortured me for a whole week with difficulty falling asleep and simultaneously sleeping a lot but not feeling full rested.From back then i always thought that something is causing me the insomnia(apart from the anxiety of not falling asleep)and the first thing i blamed for the insomnia was a video game i liked playing back then(maybe because when i couldn't sleep i was thinking of getting up and playing..making me more anxious about sleep).So from back then i was obsessing with intrusive thoughts like ''if i do this or that i may get insomnia tonight'' or '' i was listening to that song when i had insomnia,so if i listen to it i will get it again'' and lots of other crazy thoughts. For the next 3 months i didn't have difficulty falling asleep till February of 2014..From that point everything started falling apart (around sleep)..I started taking valerians I couldn't fall asleep easily away from home(not even at my village where I used to sleep like a baby)and this OCD-like thing messed me up..i stopped playing video games(something that i used to do a lot before the whole thing) and i got obsessed with the fact that i need to sleep 8 hours or something bad will happen to me.And then we go to summer of 2014 which actually helped me deal with some of the issues i mentioned.That happened because for 2 months straight i didn't sleep more than 5-7 hours a day plus the fact that i went on vacations with friends where i had pulled 3 all nighters and nothing bad happened to me (apart from the fact i was completely tired)..So after that summer i stopped worrying so much about not sleeping a lot. My sleeping problem kept coming and going at some points until June 2015 where OCD striked again messing with things i like doing giving me thoughts that they might cause me sleep problems..At that point i was like ''ok f**k this I'm getting tired of it.I will just do what my thoughts tell me to be afraif of and then i will go to sleep just to prove myself that the thoughts aren't true''.And so I did.At that point I found out how useful alcochol can be about this matter.And i don't mean getting wasted..just 2-3 small glasses of wine or 2 cans of beer would do the trick..And from that point i felt like i had found a small solution to this problem.Because after that everytime i would have difficulty falling asleep i knew there would be wine at the fridge to help me.And that actually helped me way too much than i expected.So from that point I would rarely have anxiety about not falling asleep.For 3 months I believed i had a permanent solution to this problem.And everything changed yesterday.. because of the thoughts again..I was telling a friend who has trouble sleeping how much wine has helped me for a while..and after i said that a random thought popped up saying ''what if alcochol can't help you anymore and instead of helping you it can cause you problem?''And with that a billion other thoughts like this popped up..after 10 minutes of overthinking i felt like anything would cause me sleeping problems.And when i finally went to bed..yes you guessed it..i couldn't fall asleep easily..even after drinking wine.And today was a really stressful day because i've been thinking about it the whole day. Well as you can see the reason i can't sleep easily at night is mainly because i worry about sleep (i think it's called phychological insomnia or something like that)combined with intrusive thoughts..It's not because of physical pain or depression or stress about a big event following the next day,but because of the fact that i worry about sleep itself..Causing me anxiety about when i will fall asleep or even worse if i don't manage to fall asleep one night and be a mess the following day.But even though i go through this thing..everytime i faced it before..i always managed to sleep..even though it had to be a tough night or i was convincing myself that i wouldn't be able to sleep after 3-4 hours of trying to sleep.But right now i feel like i've come so far just to fall back again..i will try to face it..i will keep drinking at night and then go to sleep to prove my thoughts wrong..but after what happened yesterday i feel like it gonna be messed up..And after it goes away..the same thing will happen again..and it will ''hit'' something else that time.Sometimes i feel like God is punishing me for cursing to much or for not believing that much..other times i think that i'm just messed up in my head and i need to see a therapist.The only thing i want is to be free of this thing..i'm tired of ''testing'' myself because of my thoughts..i'm tired of pushing my self do stuff to prove myself that the thoughts are not true..but even after i do so,the thoughts keep coming back.I mean,i know what i do wrong and what i must stop doing to fix it..but i can't because of the thoughts. So yeah,that was what i wanted to share with you people..Thank you if you made it this far..i really appreciate it..I would also appreciate it if you could tell me your opinion about it,what would you do..and if someone goes through something similar,share how he deals with it.Once again,thank you :) !
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