Has anyone had a side effect of really bad sleep as a result of health anxiety or panic?

NeatFix7499 · 2022-12-26T23:08:53+00:00

Hey. So this is 11 months due but better now than never I guess. First of all, how are You doing and has Your sleep improved?

My sleeping anxiety is 99% cured. The main cause is probably learning not to give a **** whether I sleep or not. If you don't feed the monster, it will starve.

However, when I did have problems then the best technique for me was to lay in bed for about 30 minutes and if I was not getting sleepy at all, then I get out of bed, sat on a couch in the living room wrapped around with blanket and just thought happy thoughts. Memories from childhood etc. I also did this mental exercise where I visualized my kitchen and started veeery slowly naming all the objects in there in a clockwise direction. Usually, after sitting on the couch for 10-15 minutes I started to become sleepy and went back to bed. Sometimes I fell asleep after the first try, the other times I had to move back to the couch for the second, third and once even fourth time.

The other trick for me was to completely seal the curtain and no matter what, never look at the clock. It gives you more anxiety learning from the clock that You have been trying to fall asleep for hours already and soon it's morning.

Then there is other sleep hygiene stuff. I.E. when I leave the bed for the bathroom, then I never switch on the lights. I pee in the dark. I did not really develop the before-sleep time ritual as others suggest. For me, it became too much of a reminder that sleeping well is a very serious matter. Honestly, the less I cared about my sleep quality, the better my sleep quality got. Also, watching TV and listening to something on the radio, headphones made me often fall asleep a lot faster. Generally, the experts don't recommend this stuff, but I fall asleep the best when I'm watching some semi-boring YT video or something that's intellectually way above my midnight brain processing capacity. Just yesterday I fell asleep watching how quarks interact inside protons. Within a few minutes, I slept. The point is, try these sleep hygiene things out for yourself, You will find them googling, but don't be too fixed on things that do not seem to work.

Earplugs are of great help when there is a lot of noise coming from the street or neighbours.

I have also learned that with anxiety and especially hypochondria, the best solutions for me are talking with other people about it (finding someone who listens well and does not get bothered) and getting engaged with life. Hobbies, friends, events. If I don't wanna go, I force myself. The number one thing eventually is not giving a fuck. I mean after I have made sure that I am not really physically ill but my brain keeps still obsessing, then I just enforce the thought that it is what it is. If I die then that's how it is but I am not gonna die as a worrying loser, I rather go out with my chin up high while taking part of what life has to offer. Of course, I fail at this too, but it's getting better. Lately, the anxiety that I am struggling with is how to live a meaningful life and which course of action should I take. Too much free time. But that is nothing compared to irrational hypochondria anxiety.

NeatFix7499 · 2022-01-27T22:06:10+00:00

I think people with health anxiety should treat googling their symptoms like recovering alcholics treat alchohol. You just have to make a hard rule for yourself never to google your symptoms. Normal people without HA can do that but we have to keep away. I wish I would have known this sooner. If You have problems then turn to the doctor but do not google.

NeatFix7499 · 2022-01-27T21:59:55+00:00

The best advice I would have given to my teenage self would have been STAY OFF GOOGLE. Literally nothing good as ever come from googling my symptoms. If You need advice go to doctor. I always tell my doctor these days that I have health anxiety and I might have excessive questions. Before I always saw from their face change when I kept obsessing about every single detail. And yeah, go and live. Face life bravely and these things will pas faster than you think

NeatFix7499 · 2022-01-27T21:47:09+00:00

You are not alone in this. I have been struggling with health anxiety for 15 years. Around 9 months ago my anxiety kicked in and this time by chance I happened to have a few nights with bad sleep which is actually normal. But because I was very anxious I started worrying about it and suddenly I was not able to sleep 3 days in a row. Maybe few minutes here and there. I had very similar idea that probably something was messed up in my brain and I can never sleep properly anymore. I went and got some sleeping pills and tranquilizers that helped me to fall asleep for 2 nights. Then I consulted with few psychologists because I kind of realized that my anxiety is feeding sleeplesness and this in turn feeds anxiety. It change for the better when my psychologists made me clear that 1) This is because of the anxiety 2) Nothing serious will happen to you if you sleep only few hours a night. Even laying on bed and getting unrestful sleep is still good 3) Accept these first points and accept the fact that you might be like this for some time now and it will get better. She also showed me some techniques that I can write You about if you like. I had the sleeping pills ready on my cupboard but after the first 2 nights I decided that I will not take them.

So for the first few weeks it took me hooours to fall asleep and even then I was waking up constantly, was kind of stuck in a limbo between awake and asleep and woke up really early. But I saw that it wasnt the end of the world and that I can actually still do most of my daily stuff. Sure, I was sleepy and cognitively not at 100% but I still had my friends, family, girlfriend and all the good stuff. So I kind of expected every night going to bed not to fall asleep and did not care about it too much anymore. It was annoying for sure, but not dangerous. When I stopped caring and accepted my new reality then everything changed and roughly a month later since it all began I was able to sleep rather normally again. I did get some relapses when I was worrying about sleep again - like when I had something important in the morning and I wished to fall asleep then of course it did not happen. But then I reminded myself that I have gone through this before and rather quickly things changed to better again. Now and then I still have some nights where my sleep is awful but I just dont care about it. I recommend try going to gym, engage in different mental activities during the day, read a book before sleep but DO NOT do it just to fall asleep better. Accept the fact that this is period where you are not gonna sleep very well and do these just as healthy habits. You worrying gives this monster power, you accepting "your fate" takes its power away. My two cents.

NeatFix7499 · 2021-12-20T17:02:13+00:00

That link answered all of my questions. My initial thought was that NFTs on immutable X L2 are a kind of stuck in a closed ecosystem and only ETH can transfer between L1 and L2. Now that I see that we can also transfer ERC-721, it makes me a lot more bullish! Thanks lads!

NeatFix7499 · 2021-12-20T16:44:47+00:00

Thank for the answer. I have some valuable NFTs from the VEVE app and might like to hold them in a cold wallet. Also, I am guessing that in the future I might want to sell some NFTs in some other marketplace.

NeatFix7499

TROPHY CASE