The struggles of insomnia

I have struggled with insomnia for a good few years now and still can’t seem to get it under wraps. I will mostly be speaking on my experience for a change and what works for me, in hopes that it may help someone else.

There are a ton of different reasons why insomnia shows up in your life. Whether it be for a few days or having it as a sleeping disorder. For me at least, it started out as a few restless nights. I wasn’t too concerned but at the time I was in my teens and didn’t speak up on it much since I knew most kids at that age were up late at night on a normal basis. Unfortunately, I never grew out of it and I was diagnosed with a sleeping disorder, most often called comorbid insomnia. Comorbid insomnia is insomnia that pairs itself to another condition, medical or psychiatric. During early stages of diagnosis, doctors had said that it was just paired to high levels of stress due to school and extracurriculars which did make sense at the time. After graduating it became more common and it seemed like almost every other week I would have stretches of time where I would be awake for days at a time. The problem wasn’t just going to sleep, it was staying asleep. My anxiety ran rampant, the diagnosis scared me. The anxiety of finding out I have this condition and that it might not ever go away.

The thing is… most people assume that just because you have insomnia that you are always tired. And for some that may be the case, but not for me. I’m now in my early twenties and my insomnia still has me in a choke hold. No amount of medication and testing has helped, blood work is all normal. Makes me feel kind of hopeless. I got tired of going to all these different doctors and therapists who all told me the same things. “try this and come back in a month.” So I did, for years. And everything I took, which I will not be listing, did work in one way or another but never for what I needed fixed. It was always JUST for the anxiety or JUST the insomnia. Nobody seemed to be able to tackle both, so I gave up. I know it sounds stupid to just leave yourself untreated for something that drains you out like insomnia does. But I just got tired of it all.

My anxiety controls my day-time routine and my insomnia comes in to control the night. The never ending cycle that I can’t catch a break from. And it sucks, cause nobody is ever awake to talk to you. All you can really do is sit with yourself. I clean everything spick and span or rearrange heavy furniture to make myself tired. It doesn’t work. Not even the commonly used melatonin. And after everything is clean and there is nothing to do, I read books, I watch my phone, anything to pass the time. But when you are wide awake in the middle of the night, one night feels like five years. The worst part is when I actually lay down. I look at the time, count how many hours of sleep I would get if I fell asleep in an hour and then stress out about it, check the time, stress about hours of sleep, on repeat. Not to mention the restless leg syndrome, don’t get me started on that. It always starts to act up when I’m actually tired and falling asleep.

Another issue that commonly arises with my insomnia is that the days you are awake start to bleed together. You start to get the days confused, what you did on what day or what you need to do. It’s cause your body is craving the sleep, it’s tired. But, your mind says otherwise, “I feel fine.” Too be honest I don’t think most people know I struggle with insomnia and I think it’s because my face, my appearance and the way I act doesn’t come across as being tired. When in reality, I probably haven’t slept for three days. The longest period of time that I’ve been awake for was six days. No sleep, didn't even feel tired. I came home after work on a Friday night and randomly crashed and slept for thirteen hours straight. Yet nobody seemed to wonder where I was, asked how I am? At the time only my family knew of the issue I had in my relationship with sleep. But, now that I have others that know, they didn’t think it was weird that I didn’t say a word to them for thirteen hours? Not even my closest friends? Especially since I am a chatty, up beat person for the most part. But that thought still sticks with me now. Even when they know I struggle, nobody reaches out.

In more recent months, I have found that’s it’s best to keep myself on a strict schedule. On a random day I finally got myself to fall asleep for eight hours, I forced myself to wake up and fall asleep at certain times. Stop what I’m doing, prepare myself mentally and physically for bed. When the routine stuck, I realized that it had been working better than most meds I had trialed. It does somewhat make me feel like a five-year-old having to go to bed at 10pm every night. But since I have hard-wired my brain to feel tired at the same time every night, I haven’t had anymore more long stretches of time being awake in a good few months. No this did not completely get rid of the issues. There are still nights that I am awake up to sunrise but it’s not as bad as it was. Now saying all of this, I’m not saying you should give up on doctors if you are in the same boat I once was in. And I’m not saying that putting yourself in a routine will definitely help, but it’s worth a try. Everything is worth it no matter which path you end up taking.