Sleep, she wrote
It's 10:30pm, and I am having my first panic attack in months. There is so much adrenaline coursing through my body that I feel like I'm vibrating, and my brain takes me on a tour of my worst, most anxiety inducing memories. I am fighting back tears when my boyfriend asks me what's wrong, because nothing is wrong and everything is wrong.
The unfortunate outcome of this is that going to bed for the next few days is difficult, as my body has linked a harmless activity with my fight or flight response.
Sleep has never been an easy task for me. Lying in bed with nothing to do, nothing to distract, gives the demon a stage to work his magic. As a child, my mother spent an agonizing number of nights with me, trying to run me through relaxation exercises or talk me through my fears to try and settle my brain. I used to have ambient noise CDs to play to give me something to focus on besides worrying that my chest pain was actually a heart attack and that I was dying. I was an intense kid.
My sleep got better as an adult, but I still have bouts of intense anxiety that prevent me from sleeping. I have new relaxation exercises now, like a word game that is meant to have the same effect as counting sheep but is much less borin2g. You take a simple word, like "horse" or "bird" or "rock" (preferably with no repeating letters), and starting with the first letter, make a list of all the words you can think of that start with that letter. When you run out, you move onto the next letter, and so on. I've had a lot of success with this in the past, but I'm finding recently that it's difficult to focus on the game itself. My mind wanders very easily, and it's been harder to find words. My lists are getting shorter.
I don't want to be awake right now. I find no peace in the darkness, just shadows that warp into frightening things. With the lights on they are harmless. With the lights on, I can see the people around me, see the irrationality of my thoughts. In the dark I am alone, and there is nothing to help me distinguish the rational from the not. And the demon knows this. He knows I can't turn on the lights because my boyfriend is sleeping next to me. He knows I can't sleep because my brain is too active. He knows I can't get up because it is too early to start the day and it will disturb the people I live with. So here I lay.
It's 5:20am, and despite falling asleep after midnight, I am wide awake. I can't stop thinking about my personal finances, and spiral very quickly into a place of anxiety. I play on my phone for an hour before deciding to try and use this time productively and write this instead. Sleep is a fickle beast, one I often wish I didn't have to wrestle with. Sometimes talking about what's keeping me up helps. Don't really want to discuss what's going on with my bank account on a public blog, especially because my worries are largely founded in greed.
It's getting more difficult to organize my thoughts, and I'm worried this may already be disjointed and rambly. Going to call it here, and hope I can settle back down again before my alarm goes off.
The unfortunate outcome of this is that going to bed for the next few days is difficult, as my body has linked a harmless activity with my fight or flight response.
Sleep has never been an easy task for me. Lying in bed with nothing to do, nothing to distract, gives the demon a stage to work his magic. As a child, my mother spent an agonizing number of nights with me, trying to run me through relaxation exercises or talk me through my fears to try and settle my brain. I used to have ambient noise CDs to play to give me something to focus on besides worrying that my chest pain was actually a heart attack and that I was dying. I was an intense kid.
My sleep got better as an adult, but I still have bouts of intense anxiety that prevent me from sleeping. I have new relaxation exercises now, like a word game that is meant to have the same effect as counting sheep but is much less borin2g. You take a simple word, like "horse" or "bird" or "rock" (preferably with no repeating letters), and starting with the first letter, make a list of all the words you can think of that start with that letter. When you run out, you move onto the next letter, and so on. I've had a lot of success with this in the past, but I'm finding recently that it's difficult to focus on the game itself. My mind wanders very easily, and it's been harder to find words. My lists are getting shorter.
I don't want to be awake right now. I find no peace in the darkness, just shadows that warp into frightening things. With the lights on they are harmless. With the lights on, I can see the people around me, see the irrationality of my thoughts. In the dark I am alone, and there is nothing to help me distinguish the rational from the not. And the demon knows this. He knows I can't turn on the lights because my boyfriend is sleeping next to me. He knows I can't sleep because my brain is too active. He knows I can't get up because it is too early to start the day and it will disturb the people I live with. So here I lay.
It's 5:20am, and despite falling asleep after midnight, I am wide awake. I can't stop thinking about my personal finances, and spiral very quickly into a place of anxiety. I play on my phone for an hour before deciding to try and use this time productively and write this instead. Sleep is a fickle beast, one I often wish I didn't have to wrestle with. Sometimes talking about what's keeping me up helps. Don't really want to discuss what's going on with my bank account on a public blog, especially because my worries are largely founded in greed.
It's getting more difficult to organize my thoughts, and I'm worried this may already be disjointed and rambly. Going to call it here, and hope I can settle back down again before my alarm goes off.
Comments
Post a Comment