Sleepless in Seattle (ha!)
Jun 10th, 2009 by heidi
Three nights in a row I’ve woken up this way, startling awake as if something were terribly wrong, only to find myself in my quiet bedroom with nothing out of the ordinary except, perhaps, Ciaran stirring on the monitor.
I lie there, heart beating a little faster, feeling hot and sweaty under the covers and a weirdly pervasive feeling of anxiety about some unidentified thing. It’s like when I used to struggle to get to sleep in grad school, only then I was worrying about projects due, finances, etc. and these days, while I’ve got plenty of worries, they are not the things popping into my head. It’s just weird, formless anxiety. I can’t figure out where it’s coming from, so I can’t fix it!
Trying to do relaxation breathing has become unexpectedly difficult too. I used to be the queen of controlled breathing; when I was giving birth to my son, I had access to nitrous oxide for pain relief (blessed, blessed NHS) and they were impressed at how well I was able to control my breathing and take the deep, measured breaths in and out that make the nitrous most effective. 42 hours of labor and no epidural was, in large part, due to my ability to regulate how I breathed and work on relaxing. These days I’m struggling to keep my breaths deep and even. My lungs seem to squeeze inward and I find myself tensing muscles with anxiety.
I should invest in one of those meditation CDs and load it into my iPod for 3 AM listening. Any ideas on which ones seem to be effective? The meditation tape that I got in my relaxation class at UT was invaluable but is, of course, a tape…I think I have a tape deck somewhere but the last thing Graham needs to hear at 3 AM is a tape deck blaring away that you should take deep breaths in and out and imagine yourself in a safe place. I’ve never been one to feel like I needed to share my insomnia with my loved ones in order to fully enjoy the experience.
This is one of the things I’m going to mention to my doctor this afternoon. Are these panic attacks? Panic attacks, as described by folks like the ever-articulate and fabulous Sherry, sound terrifying. During one of my many plane flights in the past, a lady in the row across from mine had a panic attack that, to her, felt like a heart attack. This isn’t like that. I’m not feeling chest pain or having my world close in to a pinpoint…it’s just formless, occasionally overwhelming fear that makes me feel like SOMETHINGISVERYWRONGOMG! only…nothing is wrong.
Perhaps the therapist can help too. When I’m tired, I’m irritable. When I’m tired, it’s all that much harder to put all of myself into parenting, working, doing classes, trying to be a reasonably present wife, and so forth. I find myself wanting to hole up in my office, close the blinds to the hallway, and mindlessly devour fiction or browse the Internet. I have a hard time concentrating on the things that need my attention and that makes my depression even worse as I miss doing the things I should be doing (at home and as a mom, natch, because of course I invest lots of energy in my work so that, you know, I don’t get laid off) and feel like a failure.
I really, really miss sleeping well. This insomnia malarkey is not fun.
In more cheerful news, at least I had leftover chicken satay and a Caesar salad for lunch. If you haven’t visited my Food page, I’ve got some good recipes posted there that are worth a gander if you like to cook (and have as little time as I do to actually do so).
“it’s just formless, occasionally overwhelming fear that makes me feel like SOMETHINGISVERYWRONGOMG! only…nothing is wrong. ”
I don’t get panic attacks, but my fiance does, and this is exactly how he describes his.
I get panic attacks like that. Other times it feels like there’s a giant hand hidden behind the sky, and when I least expect it, it’s going to crush me. Just this big formless dread looming over me with no escape.
Hi! Have you tried EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)? It’s tapping on various points on your body and saying a little mantra like… ” I deeply love and completely accept myself even though I’m having a panic attack” or “even though I can’t sleep” or “even though I’m awake right now” you get the picture. The idea is that it retrains your subconscious. You could tap before you go to bed about sleeping through the night or allowing your body to accept the rest it needs quietly…that sort of thing. It’s kind of woo woo I suppose but I tap on everything from my feet hurting after walking to grieving the loss of a loved one to healing a childhood trauma. It just makes it better…
Perhaps it’s not for everyone, all I know is that it works for me. And I don’t mean to sound like an infomercial!
http://www.emofree.com
I’m sending you soothing energy for peaceful nights.
Sarah
A little doohickey to connect the headphone jack of your around-here-somewhere tape player to your computer so that you (or Targaff) can digitise it is fairly cheap — under $10, I think, so competitive with a new, will-this-work-for-me CD.
This sounds like a panic attack to me. I remember my very first one. In the 80’s I worked at The Gap, yes I was a Gap Girl, and there I was folding sweaters when all of a sudden I had an overwhelming feeling that I had to get out of there or something awful was going to happen. I felt sure the ceiling was going to fall down on me. It was exactly how you explained it formless unspecified anxiety. Now anxiety (or panic) attacks like to sneak up on me in new and inventive ways so that I only realize about two hours later that when I thought I was going to die, or pass out, or vomit, that it was actually anxiety, and I think to myself, very sneaky anxiety, you got me agian. My advice would be to mention it to your doctor, if you have a psychiatrist all the better. And as mentioned above, relaxation techinques do work, but for me I have to be able to identify the anxiety before it gets me completely worked up for them to work. Kind of like a diffusion method if I can catch it fast enough. I hope you get to the bottom of it…