So What if You Don't Sleep

When you are on a journey to tame your anxiety, you inevitably will come across an article or two or fifty that advise you that good sleep or sleeping well, helps ease anxiety. By the time I got to article fifty or five hundred that offered this up as a ground breaking piece of advise for those of us suffering with anxiety...I started to get angry. I am not actively staying up and not going to bed. I DO try to sleep. This advice assumes you are just staying up at all hours of the night and then wonder why you don't feel good the next day!!! I'm guessing many people who struggle with anxiety and sleep issues are not doing this.

Sleep has always been a very delicate thing for me. I can't remember a time when I was not a light sleeper. Sleep is one of my very favorite things in life but it is also one of the most difficult things for me. Any number of things will wake me up, light, noise, movement, a bad dream, a thought, tension...or probably my own sleep talking or snoring. Sprinkle in stress or anxious thoughts and sleep is illusive. So for me...and I'm guessing for many others...sleep is complicated.

For me, my anxiety causes sleep problems and not the other way around. So advising me to get more sleep to help the anxiety just causes more anxiety. The pressure to get good sleep in order to feel better actually keeps me awake. I'm not arguing that sleep is important to the human body including our mental health. That is a true statement. But when someone's sleep is disrupted by stress and anxiety, telling them to get a good night's sleep to treat this disorder is not helpful.

My anxious sleep goes somewhat like this:

• Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep because of anxious thoughts.

• Hours go by ruminating and letting the anxiety thought train run continuously.

• Thinking about how sleep helps anxiety and then worrying that because you can't sleep you will be more anxious.

• Inability to fall asleep because you are worrying about falling asleep.

• Waking up more anxious, tired and irritable because of poor sleep.

This becomes a vicious cycle that feels impossible to break until you realize that the sleep advice in your case doesn't work.

So what helps when you are stuck in this sleep/anxiety/sleep/anxiety cycle? I'm no expert on the topic but this is one area that I feel I have made some progress. It is important to note that all of my sleep disruptions are not due to anxiety. Hormone fluctuations impact my sleep quality. Food intolerances can impact my sleep quality. Like I said earlier, sleep is a delicate thing for me. However, I have found ways to stop the anxiety/sleep cycle for myself.

The first thing I try to do is to stop stressing about not getting enough sleep. I know that sleep is not always going to be perfect for me. I am going to have nights I struggle to sleep. I try to accept this and forgive myself for not being able to sleep. "Weesa, it is ok you can't sleep, just remember your body is resting by laying here and you can always try again tomorrow night."

Another thing that I do when I am awake ruminating or thinking about things is to write down my thoughts in that moment until the brain quiets. Sometimes the list might be a bunch of things I don't want to forget to do the next day. Sometimes the list is just a bunch of random thoughts and concerns that make little sense. It doesn't seem to matter what types of things I am thinking about; writing them down until I run out of things to write almost always helps me to fall back to sleep. I think of it as a brain purge. My brain is overworked in the middle of the night thinking about all sorts of things and writing them down gets these thoughts out of my brain so it can rest.

I have also learned to not look at the clock. I have an analytical mind so looking at the clock immediately starts calculations. How long have I been sleeping? How long have I been awake? How long before my alarm goes off? Adding these questions to an already busy mind is just a recipe for disaster.

Last but not least, I just get up. If I have struggled and despite my best attempts, I fail to get back to sleep...I just get up. Typically this might be an hour or so before my alarm. I would much rather start my day as opposed to laying in bed for an hour or more stressing about getting back to sleep and mentally ticking off the minutes before my alarm goes off.

I just try to remind myself that many things can contribute to my sleep issues. Poor sleep can make you more anxious. Anxiety can cause poor sleep. If you are someone choosing not to sleep when you should be, then the advice to get more sleep to help anxiety will help you. But if you are someone who is trying to get enough sleep and it eludes you, this post is for you.

So what if you don't sleep tonight? Don't think about the long term effects of not sleeping. Just focus on the present moment. There is always tomorrow night...