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Copied and pasted this post of mine from another thread... Just wanted to write down my thoughts right now on the insomnia I am dealing with....Larry 2 , I am hoping you will see this and possibly respond. You are one of the few people who has ever been able to understand when I share this journey. If you don't see this then I suppose it will work as a journal for me. It is always helpful to look back and see how we have grown. My insomnia started when my daughter went through a suicidal period a few years ago. She is gay and atheist, and whenever she has a breakup the fallout is just devastating. Every breakup seems worse than the last, and she barely survived the last one. She isn't a dramatic person and so by the time I hear about it, things are pretty bad. She has been dating her current girlfriend for over two years and recently moved in. They are moving out of state to attend the same graduate school. And my daughter has been talking more about her depression and anxiety. So I imagine I am likely to have to go through this again in the future. When she became suicidal, I apparently was trying to control and prevent the suicide by praying too hard. And so I started jerking awake. Eventually after she improved, I became afraid of the insomnia. I tried so hard to fix it. I made myself really, really ill doing that. A counselor said to me that what God wanted from me in this was to try not to fix it or figure it out. I am so much improved from last year. But I am hurting badly today and the last few days. This ironic thing has happened where I am afraid to try to fix anything (thinking God wants me to apply this lesson in other areas!) or else I will not sleep. But the very act of not trying to fix thing ends up being me trying to fix the sleep. One of the major things I try to work on is my health struggles. But then I become afraid that working on it is costing me sleep, and so I think you can imagine the vicious cycle I get in. I try to remind myself that I do believe that God wants to fix this but there is something more important for me right now than sleep. I just feel like such a failure at understanding what He wants from me in this. I want to sleep so badly. And yet I believe He loves me and is doing this for my good... Anxiety will sometimes hit me during the day. Usually, ignoring it turns out the best. I don't always know why it hits, though I suspect it is usually fear about not sleeping. Sometimes I try to think if I have tried to problem solve my heath issues or other things too much and if that is the source of the anxiety...always hoping I can stop doing something if it is producing anxiety in my life....Then I become afraid to do things thinking I will make my sleep worse. I never know whether I might be trying to fix something and that causes a problem or if I am actually unconsciously trying to fix the sleep.... I think probably when I am afraid to do something then I need to do it anyway because the fear is really just about the sleep. I don't know... A few months ago, I would sing my favorite Christian songs when I couldn't sleep or sometimes I would say a verse in my head.....but it made things worse. I suspect I was unconsciously trying to fix the sleep just as I was trying to fix my daughter's struggles with prayer. So now I have to stop myself whenever I start to sing at night. It's just such a nice distraction from thinking, but I guess it is me trying to fix the anxiety which always makes things worse! So then I get upset and I often ask God to take control of my thoughts. He usually pulls my mind off everything and then I usually get 6 or so hours of sleep. This probably sounds completely crazy!!! I am thankful for any encouragement you might have...This is such a difficult journey and just when I think it is about to end then things get worse again... Your sister in Christ, jen Statement of Faith Terms of ServicPrivacy Policy CMake an Online Donat Copyright 1999-2017 Worthy Christian Forums - A division of Worthy Ministries.Powered by Invision