My Unstable Relationship With Sleep

If we have ever had a conversation in person you have probably heard me talk about my sleeping hours, most likely saying something along the line of "I just want to sleep normal human hours". Unfortunately my relationship with sleep is nothing close to normal. 

When trying to describe my problem sleeping to people I often drift towards the word insomnia but that honestly isn't the case. I can sleep, I could be a professional sleeper, that's just not the problem. The problem is the hours I spend sleeping and the quality of my sleep. I normally end up sleeping from about 3 am to 8 or 9 am and then fall back asleep around 10 or 11 am and wake up again anywhere between 1 and 4 pm. I often waste my day sleeping and I hate it. I dread night time when everyone else goes to bed because I know I will be laying there wide awake for hours fighting sleep. Even worse is when I am tired and then the second I lay down in bed I am suddenly wide awake. I also sometimes will randomly become terrified with sleeping and the idea of being asleep. I blame most of this on my "drug dreams" as my mom would call them. One of the wonderful side effects I experience from being on Lexapro is extremely realistic dreams that are more often than not unpleasant. I have watched my brother be shot dead, I have been in a war zone, and I have had to walk the streets with a gun in my hand to make sure I stay alive and every single one of these situations feels so REAL. Who would want to go to sleep when the possibility of that is on the table? It's not even just the bad ones that haunt me but the good ones can too, because at this point I sometimes can't tell what is real and what I've dreamt. I often will reference a conversation or someone being at the house just to find out I dreamt it.  I've even dreamt a memory from my childhood that never happened. Sleeping messes with my reality and I dread it. Before bed every night I sit there wondering what will happen and if I'll be able to handle the dream thrown my way. This is something that I am working on with my therapist but it still sucks. I can't avoid sleep but my brain sure tries, and then when I lay awake all night I sleep all day and then the day is wasted.

The other thing that goes against me is that when I do sleep I am not getting restful sleep. I have one of those fit bands that tracks my sleep and according to the way that tracks sleep it's been said that your deep sleep should equal about 45% of your total sleep since the bracelet can't account for the difference between deep sleep and REM sleep. I average at least eight hours of sleep, usually it's nine or more hours, and according to this fit band I average less than an hour of deep sleep. So am I sleeping? Yes. Is my sleep restful? Not at all. I blame this on my dreams again but honestly what do I know. I also sometimes get anxious in my sleep which is the worst. I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this but I'll wake up in a full on panic. I'm just learning to control my anxiety when I'm awake but I can't fight it when I'm asleep which just adds another factor to my dreading sleeping.

I've tried a few different things but none seem to work out for the long term. I try to wake up early and stay awake but I eventually get so tired that I feel physically sick unless I sleep and then any progress I made is gone. I try reading before bed to tire my eyes out but then I just get too wrapped up in my book and stay awake for hours. It's getting to the point where I am desperate to fix this but I'm at a loss for how to do that.

If anyone has anything that they've had work to help them fall asleep easier I would love to hear them. I will take anything that you think could possibly help me work towards fixing this problem and getting to sleep normal human hours again. 

Until next time. 💜