Stress Center Peer Support

Hello,
I am on week 6 of the program. I would say I have made some strides. One of my main expectations of the programs was to cure my insomnia because it really affects my anxiety and depression for the last 10 years. I have no problem falling asleep but consistently wake up at 2 or 3 am. I have tried most sleeping aids from ambien, lorenzopam, nortitrytyline, restoril, and they all dont seem to give me a consistent result. I thought going thru this program would help me out quite a bit. I have a friend who just started taking seroquel and he had worse sleep issues than myself. He said he sleeps 5-6 hours per night now. My doctor will not prescribe seroquel and I am not sure why.

Does anybody have any advise.

Thanks
Jyoti

Hi Bogey,
I'm sorry to here that your having problems sleeping. I sometimes have problems due to stress or anxiety, my mind races at some time during the day about something bothering me. Then I have some type of strange dream such as red fingernail polish. Because I had to give a manicure for the first time the next day, worrying about it caused me to wake up. So sometimes we need to rest our mind and body before we go to bed. Or possibly it could be you're drinking too late before you go to bed. I stop drinking at 6 pm so I don't wake up in the middle of the night, thinking I woke up for some other reason and all I had to do was go to the bathroom. Eliminate the cause and you should get a better night sleep. As for prescription drugs, Ambien cr worked wonders, but it also allowed me to do things I normally wouldn't do. Such as driving to pick my child up from a friends house, or sitting and eating ice cream from the container. Forcing my child to wake me up off the couch when I fall asleep so I could go to bed. With her resenting the fact of doing it, she helped me up and let me walk to bed in a drunken stage banging myself against the walls. Now how much sleep did I really get, don't know until I wake up and start talking about my strange dreams and someone telling me it wasn't a dream it was a nightmare. Good luck and sweet dreams.

When I'm having a bout of anxiety, one of the biggest issues I have is insomnia. Like you, I usually fall asleep quickly but wake up at some ridiculous hour and can't go back to sleep. Then I just lie there trying to go back to sleep and my anxiety gets worse. One of the things that helped me a lot was getting rid of my clock. I found that if I wake up and know what time it is, I start stressing out about how much longer I have until I have to get up and then feeling pressure to fall asleep so I can get in a little more time. Now when I wake up, for all I know it's only 11pm and I still have hours to sleep so I don't get all stressed out.

I don't have an answer to stay asleep all night but I just wanted you to know that I am the same way. You're not alone.