In need of reassurance about insomnia

Hi Tracey,

Well, I hope you can at least enjoy the irony of being so worried that you can't sleep that you can't sleep! 

I sympathise and imagine it's a very difficult situation for you. The lack of sleep feeding the anxiety and the anxiety robbing you of sleep. However I DO have some thoughts about this that might help:

So a lot of sleep problems are to do with stress and anxiety, and the way we become anxious can actually be very surprising. For example, which started first, the anxious sensation or the the thoughts that made you anxious?

The interaction between mind and body is complex and there isn't the distinction between them we commonly think. Your anxiety may be as a result of a physiological problem, and because you feel anxious you start to dwell on what makes you anxious and before you know it you can't sleep because of it and hey presto - a cycle of anxiety and insomnia and the underlying cause hidden away in plain sight.

So this is maybe why it comes and goes, and my bet is that it will be diet related. At least I'd suggest looking there first. Each person has their own gut biota and metabolic processes triggered by certain types of foods and stimulus like exercise, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, lines, stress and so on. For example, if you eat a high carbohydrate diet, it can spike your blood sugar level, leading to your system producing more insulin, which then fools the body into thinking blood sugar level is low. This causes a cascade of adrenaline related hormones to be released which conflict with other signals. Your mind misinterprets these signals and creates a sense of self (ie how it feels to be you) that is not in step with what is really going on. As you get older, these metabolic processes change and your bodies ability to adjust to certain stimuli changes and can become deprecated. So you just become more sensitive to these problems. For example, some people as they get older find drinking alcohol a bit more challenging.

Diet is at the top of the list for where your body can lack the nourishment it really needs and get too much of what it doesn't that can lead to anxiety. And that's going to be personal, but beware of fad diets. I would suggest low sugar, low carb, low alcohol, high fat and protein diet of the highest quality PLUS supplements. The paleo approach is a good start (the approach - don't get sucked into dogmatic adherence to anything).

The other thing I could suggest would be getting help with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. That can work wonders. They basically train you to recognise negative modes of thought and redirect them. It takes practise but they are incredibly effective. If you would rather do this on your own, I was suggested some books by some medical professionals helping me with a related problem I could dig out for you. I can't remember them off hand. It's also very similar practise to mindfulness, which I have to say, every medical professional I come in contact with these days keeps banging on about.

Another thing I could suggest that has really worked for me is to dig into an eastern philosophy: Taoism. The basic idea behind taoism in the humanist sense is that our suffering comes from our resistance to the natural order of the world. In a sense our suffering is suffering because we view it that way. So this why you're anxious about your anxiety as it were. That 'anxiety' at fundamental level is just a sensation you have 'judged' to be negative, but that sensation can easily be interpreted as 'excitement'. It's not that it isn't there, it's just that it can reframed.

If all this seems a bit touchy feely when you are feeling genuinely rotten, then I do know exactly what you mean. But I have to admit over time it really does help to help you feel centred. I have had to reconfigure my head because I keep trashing my body and its been an extremely difficult readjustment...I am out of credit. My own personal irony is I have to fight against my natural inclination to fight. I really do sympathise with you.

Good luck. I think this is something you can conquer.

I had months without sleep was nasty and horrible but Dr reassured me that laying resting in bed you'd be fine the worrying about it is the reason your having insomnia need to not worry if you do keep worrying it keeps you in that cycle of fear making your brain go into alert making impossible to sleep so go to bed and just relax 

someone told me try make document were you put your worries down, your worst fears of no sleep and then you debunk it by saying things like i won't die, i won't be hurt, i will sleep again, i will be safeetc. also tricking your brain every night by telling it your going to stay up all night and won't sleep which makes brain go ok then i will force you to sleep 

100% your brains in high alert cause your anxious so it's to energetic for you to get any sleep so stop worrying and just relax i promise you it will help i went through worse period of my life when i couldn't sleep for months not once did i fall asleep i went through total nightmare and managed you can