Have you ever been wired but tired?
I have been having trouble sleeping lately. I am so wired but tired and it is driving me crazy. All I want to do is sleep but I can’t seem to shut down my brain.
My doctor suggested taking the sleeping tablet Stilnox for seven days to try and coax my body back into a normal pattern of sleeping. I can hear my mum having a good old chuckle over this because I don’t think I have ever had a normal sleep pattern. She said as a child I was a nightmare when it came to sleep. I would often scare the daylights out of her because she would wake up during the night only to find me standing silently by the side of her bed staring at her. Apparently I was scared and couldn’t sleep.
I recall quite vividly that my bedroom was at the back of the house. My bed was set up near the door way and if the door was open you could look right down the hall way into the lounge room. Before I went to bed I would drag my bed across the open door way so I could see down the hallway. That way I could keep an eye on what was going on. I didn’t want anything bad to happen whilst I was asleep so I slept really lightly to be on alert.
Sleeping patterns can be ingrained from childhood
Fast forward to adulthood and this pattern of sleeping is so ingrained that I have never slept through the night. I am always envious when people say their head hits the pillow and they don’t wake up until morning. What does that even feel like!
Anyway back to the Stilnox. I took it for five nights in a row and I did manage to sleep from 9.30pm to 3.00am without waking up. That was pretty awesome! From 3.00am I did my normal routine and woke up on the hour until it was time to get up. The only problem was that I was too groggy to get up and exercise like I normally do. This made me anxious because my daily routine was all out of whack.
Stress can fire up the brain
So I gave the Stilnox a miss and decided I preferred my normal sleep pattern. The trouble was I couldn’t even get my normal sleep pattern back. Not only had the Stilnox raised my anxiety levels, I had some other things happening in my life causing extra stress.
As soon as my head hit the pillow the voice in my head started up.
“So what are you going to do tomorrow Claire? What time are you going to get up, what sort of exercise are you going to do? Are you going to jog, do a balcony workout, walk or workout in the playground? What are you going to have for breakfast, are you making lunch in the morning or buying it? Have you sorted out dinner yet? What’s the next blog topic you are going to write about? What about the venue booking for the next Diabetes event you are organizing; you haven’t finalized that, you had better get onto it real quick. Don’t forget you have to confirm final numbers for catering with Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre tomorrow. You are not going to have much time to pull that together, so you had better start on it as soon as you get into work. I wonder how Mum and Dad are going to be tomorrow? I hope Dad is feeling better. Will Mum be ok in the Taxi and what happens if Dad gets sick again and is put back in hospital. How are we all going to cope with that once more?”
AND this voice continued ALL night.
I was wired but tired.
I couldn’t turn it off and if I did sleep for a little bit my dreams were so vivid that I woke up exhausted from all the feelings they evoked. Anxiety pooled in my stomach and it keep rising until it felt like it was sitting in my throat. It was so uncomfortable. I would roll over onto my stomach as if I had a tummy ache. Maybe the pressure from my bed would ease the pain. I tried to practice my deep breathing but to no avail. I turned over in bed again, maybe a new position would bring sleep. But all I ended up doing was rotating like a pig on a rotisserie all night.
Finally morning would come and I would drag myself out of bed. How much longer could I operate with such little sleep?
But I did continue to operate and I got through the day, but as night approached I started to get anxious all over again. Would I have do endure another night of feeling hyper-aroused with my brain turbo charged and cortisol seeping through my body.
What is a normal night’s sleep for you?
Thankfully I have managed to turn down the volume on that voice in my head and I have had a few normal night’s sleep since my horror week last week. Normal for me is sleeping from 9.30pm to 1.00am and then sleeping lightly until I get up at 5.15am. I am saying this because a normal night’s sleep for you will be quite different to mine.
I have come to realize that I need to accept that my normal nights sleep is ok. I need to stop comparing myself to others, because this just makes me more anxious. I have functioned quite happily and effectively for 52 years on the same sleep pattern so why should anything be different now.
I need to make sure I stick to my normal routines. I like my healthy habits of exercising each morning, of eating naturally colourful foods, meditating when I get home from work, turning all IT off at 8.30pm and going to bed at 9.30pm most nights. These all help to reduce my stress levels and keep me sane.
Most importantly I need to take the pressure off myself and accept that I can’t control everything in my life. There are going to be nights when my brain is turbo charged and it will want to talk to me all night. That’s ok, it’s dam annoying, but it’s ok because there will be other nights when it will leave me in peace.
Sleep is crucial to your happiness
If you don’t want to be wired but tired all of the time put some healthy habits in place that you know will be realistic and doable for you. Be kind to yourself and most of all be aware of what a normal nights sleep is for you. As long as it involves at least seven hours of being horizontal you are on the right track. If this is not the case you may need to tweak it or it may need a major overhaul!
Oh and by the way STOP telling yourself you have had a crappy nights sleep. What you focus on becomes your reality!
Be happy, colour the world and sleep well.
Claire
