Sleep anxiety, my experience and tools I have learned to help
A little back story to start.. About five years ago I was at a job that was stressful. It was new territory for me, causing me to feel insecure about my performance. I would get extremely anxious the night before that I was going to make a mistake or not be good enough and so those thoughts would keep me up at night. Fast forward, I left that job but the anxiety and insomnia stuck around. I basically created such a fear that I was not going to be able to fall asleep that of course, I then wouldn’t fall asleep. I created a bedtime routine, supplements I had to take, where I had to be, what I had to be doing, and this routine became a prison. Anything that was outside my night routine like going out to dinner, having friends over, or traveling would throw me into an immediate panic. Derek would finish work and say “hey want to grab dinner out?” and my chest would immediately tighten and all I could think about was not being able to sleep. It became so bad that I would not leave my apartment after like 6:30 PM. The times I did go out I would come home and immediately take some sort of drug/sleep aid. There would be nights I would take a Xanax and still be awake so I would gulp down some Nyquil and still be awake. It just goes to show you how powerful the mind is.
It was very hard for me to admit that it was a mental thing, I wanted to believe there was some other reason behind it. I did everything I could to figure out a different reason for the insomnia. I did multiple rounds of hormone testing thinking it had to be my hormones keeping me awake, I worked with a hypnotherapist thinking I could just get snapped into sleeping, I did body realignment work thinking something was physically off with me and that was why, I went to an Ayurveda doctor thinking that would solve it. Of course, nothing helped until I finally admitted to myself that I had anxiety about sleeping. That was a tough pill for me to swallow.
So, I make this realization and now what. I decided to embark on a therapy journey and this experience was LIFE CHANGING. From this, I figured out the root cause of my worry about not sleeping came from protecting my identity. I saw myself as this example of health and wellness. These sleep issues also happened around the time Derek and I started dated. Things were fine before because nothing was a threat but once we got into a relationship he wanted to do normal couple things like go out to dinner, stay up late, hang out with friends and all of these I saw as threats. If I eat out then it will be unhealthy, if I stay up late I won’t be able to get a good workout in the next day, if I am tired then I won’t be good enough. And that right there was the biggest piece. IF I AM TIRED I WONT BE GOOD ENOUGH. I became so afraid of being tired because I feared I wouldn’t be enough.
Now that I have this figured out, how do I undo what I have done to my mind and my body. I decided to see a neurologist who specialized in insomnia. From all the stress and supplements I had been taking my body essentially didn’t know how to sleep on its own. She suggested sleep restriction therapy, the worst words I could hear, SLEEP RESTRICTION. She said she had seen great success with it and I was at the point where I would have tried anything just to feel normal.
With sleep restriction therapy, you are basically resetting your body clock and getting yourself so tired that you will naturally fall asleep. I had to pick a wake-up time that would be the same time every morning, I picked 6am. You start off with only allowing yourself 6 hours, so midnight to 6 was my sleep window. That doesn’t sound too bad but you are talking to a girl that would panic if she wasn’t asleep on the couch by 10pm and would pop any sleep supplement to make sure she would fall asleep. The other part of it is that say I couldn’t fall asleep, I couldn’t then wake up later, I had to still get up at 6am. So, if say I didn’t fall asleep until 1 or 2 then I would only get 5 or 4 hours of sleep. If you fall asleep at the time 75% of the week, then you can add 15 minutes but you can only add 30 minutes a month. You do this until you get to 8 hours.
This ended up being very successful. I got used to being tired. I got used to taking it easy some days and not pushing myself 100% all the time. I started to accept that not everything is in my control and that I can be tired and it is totally okay. By experiencing this, making myself be tired, the anxiety started to ease. I stopped thinking about sleep constantly and started living life again. Some nights were better than others, but the longer I stuck with it, the more progress I made. I can now go out to dinner at night, I can have people over and not be constantly thinking about when they will leave, and I can randomly leave the house at night without my chest feeling like it is going to explode.
Another huge part of healthy sleep and reducing sleep anxiety is practicing good sleep hygiene. My neurologist gave me some helpful tools on how to have good sleep hygiene. One of the top things was having a comfortable sleep space. Your bedroom/bed should be your sleep sanctuary, a place of comfort and calm. It’s not helpful to get into bed at night and be focusing on scratchy sheets, hot blankets or clutter everywhere. I have been using Sunday Citizen bedding for a bit now and I must say it’s made my bedroom just that, my sleep sanctuary. My favorite piece is the weighted blanket. Weighted blankets are known for helping to reduce anxiety and I must say it is true. During the nights of my sleep restriction therapy, when I would feel myself getting worked up and anxious, I would lay under my weighted blanket and it was like a big hug. I would drift right to sleep once under it.
Sleep is such an important aspect of our health, a reason why I think myself and others in the wellness world get anxious when they aren’t sleeping well. We know how it important it is, so we put so much pressure on ourselves to get amazing sleep all the time. For some people, that’s possible, but for many it’s not. The best thing you can do for yourself is to create the sleeping environment that feels the best to you. Sunday Citizen has helped me create my perfect sleep sanctuary and I know it can do the same for you.
