I'm fed up with fighting a constant battle everyday

Sam, I wish I had different advice for you than a couple of weeks ago but it is the same.  Keep exercising daily as you have mentioned that it makes you feel better. Also, don't get so distraught when you have setbacks or wake up in the middle of the night.  Half the problem is being worried about how bad you are going to feel the next day if you can't go back to sleep.  It is far better to get up and occupy your mind with a book or some other form of relaxation than to lay there tossing and turning trying hard to go back to sleep.  Your thoughts just go out of control and then you are fighting a battle you will never win.  Get out of the bed and do something relaxing, if nothing else than to simply reset your thoughts and quit worrying about your sleep so much.   

I know it's hard but shifting your focus from "I feel terrible and am going to die if I don't start sleeping better" to "I'm going to live a good life today regardless of how I sleep" will help more than anything in the world. 

In short, unless your depression is for something brutally traumatic, get off the drugs. They are making it impossible for you to obtain a natural, healthy sleep pattern. Continue running, walking the dogs etc, perhaps join a gym like myself (I go 4/5 days a week).

Going to bed after midnight isn't good either. Try 10:30, 11pm at the latest and get up no later than 7pm. About the noise, wear ear plugs. Those foam ones you get in factories, you can get them on eBay too. And tell your brother to stop ******* around at 4am, unless he's going to work or something. I dunno man you need your own space, you know?

Diet is mega important too, cutting out junk food and eating good stuff really helps with your sleep. I'm thinking about starting a thread on how to improve sleep quality and share what I've learned in my 6 years or dealing with major sleep issues, look out for it buddy.

Hi Sam,

I do sympathise, as I worried constantly about getting enough sleep when I was young. (And I suspect from the content of your post that you're still in your teens or early 20s.)

I agree totally with the other posters in here. I'd also like to make another point. You complain of "waking up every 1 to 2 hours". In fact that's perfectly normal. Normal sleep consists of several cycles per night, each lasting about one-and-a-half hours. We all wake up to some extent between each cycle. If you put people in a sleep lab, obversations show that most of them wake completely each time, but they just don't remember it.

Some of us, however, are fully aware of each awakening. This is perfectly normal too, but it's where anxiety can creep in. If we believe we're not supposed to be awake after one-and-a-half hours of sleep, we can easily get into the state you describe.

I know you're going to say you never used to be aware of these regular awakenings. There are two explanations for this. The obvious one is that it was always going on, but now you've become aware of it, you can't become unaware. The other factor is that adult sleep patterns take over from our childhood patterns in our teens or 20s, and adults are more likely than children to be aware of the fact that they're waking up regularly.

I'm not quite sure what your concern about your dreams is due to. Is it because you remember them when you wake up, or because you forget them during the course of the day? Both are quite normal. Everyone dreams, regardless of whether they remember their dreams or not, and we all forget our dreams during the first hour or so of waking - except maybe for the most striking ones. So everything is quite normal in that department too.

I note you mention "this limbo I've been fighting my way out of the past week". We all go through periods of poor sleep that can last weeks or even months, without suffering any permanent damage. It's clear from your post that you're getting some sleep every night. I suspect you've simply bought into the fallacy that everyone has to have 8 hours of "perfect" unbroken sleep every night. In reality, adults can survive quite happily on very short periods of sleep - whether broken or unbroken. Consider the case of parents of young babies. They get no sleep at all on some nights! OK, they feel pretty groggy after these nights and they're often very tired during the first couple of years of parenthood, but nothing bad happens to them, does it? If it did, we'd all lose our parents - either to death or to the insane asylum - by the time we were 5!

I see you're on mirtazapine, and you've been changing the dose quite a lot. This may not have helped. One of the symptoms of mirtazapine withdrawal (or reduction) is insomnia. I would agree with Lee that it would be better to get off it altogether, but this should only be done by slow tapering under medical supervision, not by trial and error.

Please try and calm down. Nothing you've described is abnormal and you'll be fine once you get through this phase of anxiety.

Hey Sam,

Same problem wid me mate. I ve been having same problem as yours for 7 years now. I somehow collected myself to finish college. I get anxious all day. Can't sleep at night. Wake up after 1-2 hrs of sleeping, try again get panicked try again get to sleep and wake up again after 1-2 hrs.If I have an interview or something like that, I get panic attacks. Can't even look straight up in the face of my long term friends to talk to them. I have negative thoughts all day. I get sucked up in thoughts and don't have awareness of the outside world. I know it's bad. I've tried sleep meds and anti depressants but that ll only make my head foggy the other day. So stopped it. I also run regularly and then do a Pranayama yoga program and meditate 30 mins to 1 hr everyday. Only this can keep me functioning. Lastly, I have booked a CBT appointment. I know it's difficult living like this mate but it's a long journey and u gotta find out your options. Hope this helps