Posted by F43 on November 30, 2008 at 12:22:02:In Reply to: What can I do? posted by Somniphobe on November 30, 2008 at 11:03:29:
You will have the most insight of anyone into why you have a phobia about sleeping. So, start with this. What's your understanding of your fear? What approaches have you taken to address your fear of sleep? What has worked for you? What new or additional stresses have come into your life recently that's made your phobia worse? How can you take some of these stress off yourself?
Fear of falling asleep has played a role in my insomnia. I believe I developed a fear of letting go of control after an incredibly stressful period in my life, when in one fell swoop, I became a caregiver of my dying mother, a lawyer, an accountant, a home-owner, a property manager, and a trustee, with no experience in any of these. This consumed me for two years. Other events happened that blew up bombs in my life. When the dust settled, I was unable to fall asleep. Partly this was my nervous system in overload, unable to wind down after two years of stress and grief. Partly this was psychological: I couldn't let go even at bedtime, when everything in my life for the last two years had depended on me taking charge of things I had never managed before. It was as if I believed I had to monitor even my own breathing while I was sleeping in case that too malfunctioned. Hypervigilence.
But I think I developed another fear, that I would be annihilated if I fell asleep. It wasn't a fear of the act of dying; it was some association I had made between falling asleep, and the end of life. It was as if I reasoned falling asleep was being complicit with the end of life, as if I was somehow siding with death as the inevitable outcome of living, and sooner rather than later. (I was in a panic about getting on with living life and doing everything I had postponed for years, so I think I rejected falling asleep to reject the principle of opportunities coming to an end.)
One piece of information that reassured me came from my psychiatrist: we wake up dozens of times each night as a survival mechanism, to monitor our immediate environment. In other words, even while our conscious minds are conked out, our bodies are still doing their jobs impeccably during this period when we are really are vulnerable. With that bit of information, I started having a conversation with my conscious mind at bedtime, saying, "You're off sentry duty now. You can relax. The body knows what it's doing, and will take over from here. It can manage monitoring all the vital signs better than you ever could."
- Re: What can I do? Somniphobe 19:15 11/30/08 (1)
- Re: What can I do? F43 04:52 12/01/08 (0)