Insomnia Support Group
Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...
Hello everyone,
this is my first time on this site and the first time I’m joining a support group online. But I’ve struggled with chronic insomnia for the past 8 years now and I’m reaching a breaking point. I also have OCD and generalized anxiety disorder and I’ve heard that those tend to go hand in hand with insomnia.
I joined the anxiety support groups on daily strength as well. But the worst part of all of my disorders is the insomnia. It’s taken so much from me at this point that I barely remember who I was before the insomnia.
I’m finally taking some time to really heal. I’m taking short term disability from my job to deal with both the anxiety and the insomnia. But it’s prevented me from doing so much. It’s impacting my job and my social life. I’m 32 and I don’t want this to impact me forever. I’d love to hear any advice from people on how they’ve coped and survived. Thank you and I look forward to sharing more soon!
I'm sure you've heard all the suggestions too by now! Have you been to a sleep clinic or therapy for insomnia?
I wish you luck and a good rest. You're not alone.
I'm currently 38 years old. Since my mid 20's, I've had bouts with insomnia here and there but it'd always break after a couple days or a week at most. The past 7 months have been a relentless, frustrating time and I've only been able to achieve a full 7-8 hours of continuous sleep a handful of times - even then was with the help of medication, such as trazodone, Ativan, Seroquel, Ambien, etc.
It's even more frustrating since insomnia itself can have many causes, whether that be physical, psychological, etc. and ruling out each and every cause is time consuming and expensive, not to mention near impossible. I started getting migraines either from a lack of sleep or independently shortly before the insomnia started but either way, the insomnia is even more difficult to treat when there's a vicious cycle of pain/discomfort involved too.
I've tried CBT for insomnia techniques such as sleep restriction, light therapy in the morning, etc. but nothing has really been effective for me. Strangely, I feel terrible from the lack of sleep but I can't say I feel overly sleepy or drowsy from the time I wake up to when it's time to go to bed. The sleep drive is just not there for me.
I find that massages, guided breathing exercises, and adult coloring books relax me a little bit but that hasn't necessarily translated into deeper quality or quantity sleep - it's just gotten my body relaxed enough to give me a chance to sleep for the night.
Either way, I know it can be frustrating and I want you to be assured you're not alone in this.
I had to stop working because both conditions have obliterated my ability to function well enough to hold down work. I've tried every avenue to recover: meds, CBT, exercise, pretending it doesn't exist, I even went back to uni to study psychology to see if that could help shed light on what's going on.
I find the problem is that there is (in my experience) a belief in the health sector that insomnia is caused by underlying mental health problems, which may be the case for some, but for me I was actually in the midst of the best time of my life when it hit. So the focus then becomes trying to resolve unrelated issues and ignoring the insomnia. Therapists have often grasped at straws to try to "explain" my insomnia, which I prefer to call "sleep anxiety". Prior to the onset of my sleep anxiety I used to really enjoy bedtime and sleep and had only had a handful of sleepless nights over the previous 20 odd years but they were only ever one night at a time and resolved quickly and with no lasting impact. As soon as I experienced proper insomnia/sleep anxiety everything changed. Now it's the opposite; the majority of nights sleep is extremely problematic.
I wish I could find the answer to this issue, but one thing that my experience has taught me is that treating it like it doesn't exist and pushing through the tiredness has made me worse so whenever I see someone advising to just carry on as normal it frustrates me. I can't think of any other situation where sleep deprivation exists where the advice would be to "just get on with normal life" (eg post-natal mothers, shift workers).
I'm sorry I haven't painted a positive outlook for you to hold on to, but I am only one person and maybe others have more encouragement to offer. I know my current bleak outlook is heavily affected by the current block of sleepless nights I've been experiencing.
I really want to thank the three of you, and others for sharing your stories. I'm so sorry that you all are struggling with such similar things, but it truly does mean a lot to know that I'm not alone. I feel like I've been struggling with this so long, and although I've had support from great friends, most of them can't relate to what I'm going through because they haven't experienced it.
It becomes so hard to even just enjoy things sometimes with friends and family, and to do the things that I love to do like writing, playing music, and such. I just started a new medication for anxiety that I'm hoping will be helpful, and then I'm adding a supplement called L-theanine to it, so we'll see if that helps. I start my medical leave from work the last week of this month. Hoping that I'll be able to get some help.
None of you are alone in this either. And Tired4TooLong, I totally get struggling to have a positive outlook with the insomnia. And I agree that just pushing through isn't helpful. Have you ever had a sleep study? And blueflower4, I did get a sleep study and they didn't find any sleep apnea, restless leg or anything like that. So I'm glad I was able to get that. And those are great techniques tiredprofessional23. Meditation and breathing techniques do help me with my anxiety. I'd be curious to hear more about how all of you cope with depressed moods when you haven't slept. I find that sometimes it makes everything seem so bleak.
Right now I'm feeling really scared for my future and what it will look like if I can't get through these things. Glad to have the support.