A twitter rant I posted the other night regarding my sleep...
You know what I hate most about being tired? This whole getting-to-sleep thing. It's supremely time consuming and I'm crap at it :(
Unless I'm pass out style drunk it takes me at least 2 - 3 hours to get to sleep. Every single night. Since I was 12.
It doesn't matter where I am, how tired I am, what time it is, what side I sleep on, I close my eyes and my brain just doesn't turn off.
I've tried music, reading, meditation, breathing techniques, counting sheep, none of it works.
Hell even sleeping pills don't seem to work on me properly half the time.
I know other people have problems sleeping, but 2 - 3 hours just to get to sleep every night for 14+ years?
It feels like everyone else learnt this ability and I somehow just missed it.
Like how I don't walk right. Somehow it just came out wrong in me and it's too late to really do anything about it now.
I don't understand how everyone else can sleep so easily and sometimes I want to practically cry about that it's so bad.
I just want to be able to sleep properly. One night every 2 weeks even.
At least then maybe I wouldn't feel going to bed was such a battle. That at least once every 14 days I could sleep right.
And I'd have that to look forward to. But somehow, I'm broken. Again.
Monday night/daytime I actually slept about 12 hours, including a solid period of 8 uninterrupted hours. This is the first time I've done this in over a month. |In fact over the last month I've been averaging less than 3 hours sleep a night and the most I'd had in one 24h period was 5 hours. Of course the 12 hours were completely full of bad dreams but at least some kind of proper sleep was something. And then naturally Tuesday night I was wide awake at 5am and unable to sleep again.
And yes, I've been to the doctors, I've told them about this, I've told them I work with high voltage electricity and a month's severe sleep deprivation (relatively speaking by my standards, technically I'm probably always sleep deprived given how bad/absent my 'normal' sleep patterns are) is having noticeable effects on my ability to do things, reaction times, thought processes etc. They refused to do anything about it. Well technically they told me to come back in 2 weeks (this already being 2 weeks since I first went to them with the problem). So I went to book an appointment. The doctor has no appointments before 4pm for the whole of April. I start work at 4.30pm each day. I love the NHS, but I really hate my healthcare at times, it's a constant battle against the multitude of ways in which I try to seek some actual help. And people wonder why I hate going to the doctors.
Not even sure how this blog popped up for me, but try doing mindfulness relaxation exercises. I had nearly a year of bad insomnia when I was younger, and this was the only way I was ever able to fix it. To put it briefly, breathe in and out on a specific count (7 seconds in, 7 out works for most people but it varies with lung capacity)' and with each breath try to relax a different small piece of your body (each toe individually, your left ankle, right ankle, etc) from feet to head. The most important thing is to move as little as humanly possible while doing this. Often you still won't sleep but you will feel tremendously better rested regardless.
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