Hey everybody. Man, how long has it been since I’ve posted on here? It seems like for freaking ever. Well, I’m back baby! At least for now. ”So”, you may ask, “why the hell are you blogging now after all this long?”
I can tell you, and I will.
I am suffering from sleep related anxiety. Let me tell you all how it started. About a month ago, I had been having a normal day, nothing out of the blue that would cause any extra or harsh stress on my mind. As the day came to a close, and day became night, and nighttime gave way to bed time, I went to bed. As things would have it, I laid there awake. Until about 5 or 6 in the morning. Man, did that really suck ass. Luckily, I feel asleep until about 10 in the morning or so, as I didn’t have to worry about getting up for work or anything like that.
After I got up that morning, I was naturally tired from the previous night of no sleep. Throughout the day, I had the simple passing thought of, “Last night sucked, so I can’t wait to get to bed tonight and things should get to normal in the sleep department.” As bedtime reared it’s head that night, I laid in bed and awaited to go to sleep. That didn’t even come again until about 5 am as well.
From that point on, each day I now suffer from moderate to bad bouts of anxiety that stem from the fear that I won’t be able to sleep that night. And it really is bad. It’s ruining my quality of life throughout the day and I am not liking it in the least. I feel that pressure of anxiety in my chest and in the pit of my stomach throughout the day in the fear and anticipation that I may have a bad night that night.
Now, I’m not saying that EVERY night is bad, as I can get to sleep at a decent time after I lay down to sleep, but there are those nights where I lay there and just fight the sleep. I’ve even contacted my physician about the situation and I’ve been given advice about how I can handle the situation at night if I can’t fall asleep. Of course, it doesn’t work all the time. I’m using herbal sleep aids to assist my body and mind in the attempt at relaxing and drifting off to sleep. Sure, I could take real medication to take down my anxiety levels or to knock me out every night, but as you can imagine, I don’t want to become addicted to them, as that would lead to a whole new set of problems that I don’t care to have.
I know people would say to just don’t think about sleeping and you’ll fall asleep or “just don’t worry about it” but I can’t just turn it off like a light switch. I will be the first to admit that this whole situation is all in my head. I totally own that. I would love to not have to worry about this.
I know I’m now sounding a little on the bitchy side, and I know I do. I feel I want to complain about it because after a month of pretty crappy sleeping habits, you’d complain to. There are way too many people out suffering from insomnia and I’m not saying that I’m any worse than they are, but I will admit that this situation isn’t any fun at all.
I felt that by keeping a blog of my situation, maybe I can get this crap off my chest. Who knows, some kind folks out in internet land might actually be sympathetic to my problem and lend some advice and/or a similar story and start a conversation about our sleeping problems.
Anyway, here’s to some better nights in the future for me! That’s what I would like for Christmas! Not my too front teeth, but some good nightly sleep that I can get back into.
