The Thin Veneer of Sleep

I miss this show

Yeah, I know I write about sleep a lot, but it comes up a lot in life, ya know?

Sometimes, I fall asleep like I'm dying and then sleep like the dead. My husband will chuckle when he wakes me up to brush my teeth if I've nodded off before grooming or the next morning when we get up for work. He'll say something like, "You just fell right asleep in the middle of watching *insert favorite YouTube channel or Netflix series here*!" and I'll say, "That's a good thing!" I envy people who do that all the time because falling sound asleep near bed time almost always means I will sleep mostly if not all the way through the night. If I toss and turn or I'm anxious at bed time, it could be bumpy ride.

You see, I'm not one of those people who just has trouble falling asleep, though I often do. Oh, no. I also have trouble staying asleep and falling back to sleep. It's like a good night's sleep is a warm down comforter that is heavy enough to make you feel like your body is being hugged by a kind yeti that will protect you diligently until morning. A bad night's sleep is a light sheet in mid-December with a breeze coming in from the window that could blow it off at any minute.

Let's take last night for example. I went upstairs pretty damn ready to sleep. I'd panicked for much of the day and was worn out. I watched a movie with my hubby. Then, I decided to roll over and close my eyes. That is when my perfectly calm brain did the weirdest thing. It started racing, but it was like I had the thought process of a five-year-old sitting in the backseat. Half-sentences, random images of innocuous things, snippets of song, etc. all popped in and out of my brain. I couldn't get comfortable or get my internal dialogue to stop for long enough to drift off.

When I finally did fall asleep, it was only the fragile porcelain mask of sleep. It shattered within minutes. I woke up, struggled for about half an hour, decided to take a sedative, and drifted back off for about an hour. That's about as much success I get from my mild anxiety medication. The next time I woke up, I struggled a bit more, thinking that sedative was in the background there. It would have to help me at some point, but no. I had to take the sleeping medication that I rarely touch to fall back asleep again. This time, I got a whopping four hours. By then, my husband was getting up for work. I figured I might as well too, since I didn't want to go through trying to fall asleep again.

F*ck you, sleep.

. . .

Wait, I'm just mad. I really love you. Please come back. Let's pretend I'm sixteen again and sleep from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. Please?

My Anxiety's Relationship WIth Sleep

This has nothing to do with
my anxiety, but I thought it was funny.

 

When you have an anxiety disorder, you more than likely have sleep problems to go along with it. The two don't always go hand in hand, but most people who suffer from anxiety seem to have trouble sleeping at some point or another. This trouble can take various forms and has had many faces in my life–not all negative, believe it or not. Here are a few troubles I've had with sleep and that you may have if you suffer from anxiety:

• Difficulty falling asleep
• Difficulty staying asleep
• Difficulty falling back to sleep
• Difficulty waking up
• Difficulty staying awake
• Difficulty trusting the efficacy of your sleep medication

Okay, that last one isn't really anxiety related as much as it is related to my dismay that medication is not magic. 

Anxiety is the antithesis of sleep. Check out this study abstract if you don't believe me. If you are worrying or having physical anxiety symptoms when you lay down at night, you are not likely to fall asleep fast or have restful sleep. I have spent hours laying in bed worry about life, worrying about worry, having panic attacks or stressing about sleep while trying to fall asleep. I know I'm not alone in this, though I never saw anyone else pacing the halls or asking the nurse for anxiety meds at 3 a.m. when I was in the hospital. I suspect they were giving everyone else better meds.

Trouble staying asleep and falling back to sleep is something I experienced mildly in the past. However, it came about full force at the end of last year. I was waking up multiple times a night with panic attacks and having trouble getting back to sleep. This was different from waking up a bit early and laying there hoping for more sleep. It was a desperate clawing need for sleep coupled with panic symptoms that prevented it from happening. The meds that helped me fall asleep did nothing to help me stay asleep. It's been about three weeks since this has happened after a period of it happening every night, so you could say I'm pretty excited.

It is much more common for me to have issues with sleep than it is for me to sleep too much or feel sleepy enough for a nap, but it happens. It typically happens when I'm a bit depressed, but don't have the underlying anxiety that usually triggers it. It also happens when I'm on psych meds for my conditions, and they are working. I think I've decided it's better to sleep too much than too little, so I'm going to be super med compliant this time . . . I promise.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that not all affects of my sleep problems are negative. It's true. I'm typically a night owl, so much so that I may stay up until 5 a.m. and sleep until noon. When I go through a bout of strong anxiety, I tend to get up earlier–a reset that usually lasts a few months after the relapse has resolved. I also tend to get fewer bouts of profound sleepiness in the middle of the day, which is nice. My relationship with sleep may be strained at these times, but I am really productive when I start to come out of the anxiety with a "normal" sleep pattern. It's never long before I'm cleaning the house late at night and reading until the sun comes up again, though.

If you suffer from anxiety and have a hard time sleeping, open up to your docs about it. They say sleep is one of the most important things you can do for your mental health, so seek ways to have a healthier relationship with sleep. Good luck!

Waking Up With Anxiety

To Sleep, Perchance to Wake Up Calm
Courtesy of Vzor495

Waking up with anxiety sucks. It starts the day off with an unwanted bang and makes lazy mornings feel like torture. One of my several mental health care professionals assures me that anxiety is always worse in the morning. She's right, of course, but it being typical doesn't make it any more comfortable.

For me, there are two ways to wake up with anxiety. The first is with an anxiety attack. This can happen any time of night or morning. If you've ever woken with a full-blown panic attack, I'm sorry. I truly feel your pain. You know it's fine. You know it's just a panic attack, but you also just want to freaking sleep, not fumble around the house looking for your medication or cling to your sleeping spouse like he's a life raft on stormy seas. The second way to wake up with anxiety is what I've been living with lately, which is a slowly boiling anxiety that begins with the realization that I have to start another day and live through it.

When it comes to the slowly boiling morning anxiety, I usually have two choices. The first is to stay in bed trying desperately to get a relaxation technique to work long enough that I fall back asleep. The second is to get out of bed and begin a marathon of distractions to get me through the morning and into the typically calmer afternoon. I tend to choose this latter option, which makes my days a little tumultuous. I flit from one activity or chore to the next, switching whenever I feel anxiety, hoping with each new activity that I will have hit the sweet spot of relief for the day.

I don't know about you fellow daily sufferers, but I would give a lot to be able to wake up, stretch my limbs out to find the cool spots on my sheets, smile at the morning sun, yawn and contentedly snuggle back up in bed without any urgent, unwanted feeling compelling me to "GET UP NOW AND DO ALL THE STUFF!" Maybe one day soon I'll have that again. I hope you do too.