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things that have helped me

Posted by tomwith2cats on February 08, 2006 at 21:58:23:

I'm not fully recovered from insomnia but I've been
working on this long enough that I can say there are
a few things that have helped me. (Not in order of
importance.)

(1) Giving up drugs.
When chronic insomnia first began with me three years
ago, I continually used drugs to mask it -- ativan,
ambien, anti-histimines, whatever. The dependency on
drugs was a measure of the grip, of the fear, that
insomnia had me in at the time. But I found these
drugs invariably only made things worse. I wasn't
dealing with what was wrong.

(2) Seeing a cognitive behavior therapist.
Anxiety contributes to insomnia. For me, however,
it was hard to tell if I was anxious or not. I can't
tell introspectively, by how i feel, if i'm anxious
or not. I seem to be able to tell only after the fact,
looking back at my behavior. So I often suspect that
there are sometimes unconscious causes of anxiety.
Lately, for example, my therapist persuaded me to stop
writing a sleep diary or tracking my sleep in any way.
It didn't seem consciously to be a cause of anxiety
but with me that's no proof it isn't. So this is a test.

(3) Meditation.
I couldn't really "get" how to do this just from reading.
I took a class for six weeks, based on the writings of
John Kabat-Zinn ("Full Catastrohpe Living"), which was
very helpful. I started doing meditation twice a day.
I'd seek out an empty conference room at work during
lunch time to do it, and then later in the evening
before bed, and if I found myself wide awake in the
middle of the nite. Most often, I could get myself into
a very relaxed state...and sleepy in the evening.

(4) Keeping active.
I found that I'd be so fatigued in the morning last year
and the year before that I'd have a hard time getting
going, and I'd tend to put off doing things like
exercize, or going out. But I fought this by forcing
myself to keep to my routine, to stay involved in
my social activities. Keeping active also takes one's
mind off sleep, and helps to fight obsessing about
sleep.

(5) Regular exercize.
Lately I've been doing power walking uphill on a treadmill
every day at the gym. Before that I did 4 to 6 mile walks
in the evening. Whatever your favorite form of exercise,
I think this helps, both for the reasons I mentioned
above under keeping active, as well as getting into a
more relaxed state. I just feel better when I do regular
exercise. It helps my state of mind.

(6) Dealing with high blood pressure.
I had the problem of being wide awake often between
3 AM and 5 AM. Once I discovered I had chronic
high blood pressure, and was put on anti-hypertensive
drugs, I no longer find myself wide awake in those
wee hours of the morning. I've had friends tell me
of having the same experience. I had had increasingly
frequent heart palpitations up til last fall, which
contributed to keeping me awake at nite. Once I started
taking the anti-hypertensive drug, these heart palpitations
went away.

(7) Avoiding alcohol.
I found that alcohol tends to give me heart palpitations
or make them worse. This is because alcohol raises the
blood pressure.

(8) Getting up at the same time every day.
This has been very hard for me to live up to.
But when I allow myself to stay in bed til 10 AM
or 9:30 AM, and then try to get up at 7:30 AM other
days, this flip-flopping only contributes to a foggy
mental state, a feeling of being jet-lagged. For
over a year I tried a very restrictive form of
Sleep Restriction, trying to squeeze my sleep into
a small time frame. It helped maybe marginally but
not really very much. I decided also that focusing
so strongly on trying to do that only contributed
to obsessing about sleep. It became another cause
of anxiety. Now I'm back to going to bed at times
that were "normal" for me before insomnia began,
between 10 and 11:30 PM. Going to be earlier makes
it easier for me to get up regularly at 7:30 AM.
Anchoring my body clock to that 7:30 AM get up time
has helped my sleep somewhat, I think.

I can't say these techniques have enabled me to
recover from insomnia. I'd count myself as maybe 60 to
70 percent recovered at present. Nonetheless, things
have definitely improved.

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