Beat Insomnia and make Sleep your Best Friend!

Sleep is honestly the best medicine a person can have.  It is amazing just how much of an effect sleep can have on your mood, wellbeing and general health.  I never really discovered this until fairly recently because quite simply, my good night's sleeps were extremely far and few between until a few months ago.

I have always been a very wakeful child, or so I'm told.  I think perhaps some people are just naturally inclined to be that way but nonetheless, sleep, no matter how minimal, is still important for our minds and bodies to repair and recharge.  There was a clear point in my life though where my sleeping issues started to reach a whole new level.

(This was a difficult part for me to write.  Please skip this paragraph if you'd prefer.)

As a child, I was sexually abused and because one of the incidents of sexual abuse occurred when I was in bed at night and trying to sleep, understandably I developed a lot of anxiety around going to sleep.  This entailed a fear of my bedroom door being half open and I also developed a tendency to hold my breath for as long as possible when attempting to sleep.  I thought that if people couldn't hear me breathing from outside the door, no one would know I was in my bedroom and therefore no one would abuse me again.  As a child, I also developed a number of unusual rituals around sleep, in an effort to protect me from further abuse.  One of these involved positioning an 'army' of cuddly toys around my bed.  I would have to say goodnight to them in a certain order and tell them that I loved them before I would allow myself to try to sleep.  Another fear that I developed as a result of the abuse was a very intense phobia of other people seeing me asleep.  I would never fall asleep in public - in the car, on the train or an a plane, no matter how tired I was.  Throughout my life, I have continually begged the people who live with me to never open my bedroom door if there's a chance I might be asleep, even if they really need to get me up.  

From that point in my life onwards, sleep and I had a very troubled relationship.  My way of dealing with the problems I encountered in my life was to keep myself incredibly busy during the day so that I would never chance to think about them.  Inevitably though, this meant that all my anxieties would come back and hit me as I tried to go to sleep.  Something else which also caused a lot of disruption to my sleep was my dad's alcoholism.  Nights would regularly consist of searching the streets for him, receiving phone calls from either neighbours or the police informing us that they had found him in a garden or a ditch and if he ever did make it home, the chaos certainly didn't end there.  I became even more anxious about going to sleep because if he hadn't come home, I was afraid of what may have happened to him and if he had, I was terrified that if he tried get up in the night, he'd end up hurting himself.

As I think you can probably appreciate now, a lot of my sleeping issues are trauma related.  Characteristic of suffering from CPTSD, when I did sleep, I would suffer from night terrors and flashbacks in which I would relive the traumatic things that had happened to me over and over again.  For a good proportion of my life, this was an every night occurrence.  I would wake up drenched in sweat, shaking or dissociated.  While I may have been having roughly the right amount of hours of sleep, because my sleep was so disturbed, I would often wake up feeling anything but well rested.  It made me all the more anxious about going to sleep.  I mean, who is going to look forwards to falling asleep if every night they are reminded of the most traumatic events in their past?

My sleep just seemed to get worse and worse as my mental health deteriorated.  By the time I hit adulthood, I was a chronic insomniac.  I could go a number of nights without sleeping at all, despite feeling utterly exhausted.  Relatively good nights of sleep became almost like annual events!  I don't think I can even get across just how awful and frustrating it can feel to be so tired that you can barely keep your eyes open, can't think or function and yet you don't sleep.  Sleep deprivation at its worse is so crippling, it makes you physically ill, faint, lowers your mood significantly, impairs your reactions and ability to think.  I find it sad to reflect on the fact that for a long period of time, that was my everyday existence.  I walked around in a haze and most probably looked like a drug addict at some points.  

After ending up in a crisis last year and then committing myself to my recovery, my sleep gradually began to improve for the first time in I don't know how long.  I can't describe just how elated I felt the first time I woke up feeling as though I had finally had a proper night's sleep.  Sleeping well made such a difference to my recovery.  I was so surprised just how much difference it could make to my mood.  All I can say is I appreciate the value of sleep so much more now.  

I know a lot of my issues surrounding sleep have been trauma related and I know that people develop sleep problems for a number of different reasons.  However, I would like to share some of the ways in which I worked to improve my sleep in the hope that it may help others who have suffered from similar problems.  It is important for everyone to be able to sleep well, whether you're in recovery or otherwise, so some of the points I raise could be relevant to anyone really.

Make your sleep environment relaxing, comfortable and appealing.

This may sound a bit basic but if you suffer from insomnia or sleep deprivation, you first have to eliminate every possible factor you can that may be stopping you from sleeping.  Make sure your bed is comfortable - it is amazing what a difference a new mattress can make!  It's always good to have a bedside lamp so you can start to dim down the lights when you're getting ready to sleep.  I am also a big fan of having candles and you can pick them up so cheaply!  I am currently loving the Red Berry and Jasmine pink tin candle from Primark.  It burns for 28 hours and releases such a lovely, sweet scent.  For £3.50 it offers great value for money!  Make sure your room is at a suitable temperature for you to sleep in.  I prefer my room to be on the colder side, with a bit of fresh air and then I can wrap up a bit if I need to.  If you are having a really bad time with sleep, it can be really easy to start hating your bedroom, bed and anything related to sleeping.  When I have felt like that, it may sound silly but I found that if I went out and bought a new set of pretty bed covers and some cosy accessories, it made my bed seem a little more appealing again.

Have some wind down time.

When you get into a bad pattern with sleep, winding down time is something that can become easy to overlook.  You can find yourself falling into the trap of thinking: Well I'm not going to sleep anyway so I might as well just keep on going and get a load of stuff done!  I've been there but in truth, taking that kind of approach is only going to make things worse.  It is actually really important to give yourself some time to wind down ready to sleep as it trains your mind and body to get ready to sleep.  I have found that a much more helpful approach is to think: Well even if I don't sleep well, at least I'm giving myself a chance to rest and relax because that's important too.

I usually aim to give myself at least an hour to wind down ready to sleep but I often find that I sleep much better if I've had a lovely relaxing bath earlier in the evening.  Don't worry about spoiling and treating yourself if it helps you sleep.  So get out your favourite candles, bath bombs, bubble bath, bath melts etc.  The bath bomb I have shown in the photo below is the Twilight one from Lush.  It was the first time I tried it and I have to say, it is right up my street.  It starts off by fizzing gorgeously, floral scented, pink foam around your bath but then releases blue glittery swirls which leave your water looking like a clear blue sky, complete with clouds.  I am always changing my bath candles around but at the moment I am tending to reach for this lovely lime one that a friend got me and it gives off a really fresh scent which I think makes it work best as a bathroom candle.  The peachy one is a sample Yankees candle which I put in an old candle glass purely because it was the only thing I could find to stand it in!

Wear your favourite pyjamas and fluffy socks.

This one kind of links back to making sure that your sleep environment is comfortable.  Similarly, I always find that knowing that I'm going to be trying out a new pair of pyjamas is a little thing that makes me more excited about sleeping.  My current favourites are a pair of cute, fleecy, Bambi pyjamas that I got given for Christmas.

Do something relaxing before going to sleep.

I have definitely been guilty of not thinking carefully enough about this in the past.  You can't just jump into bed after frantically rushing around the house tidying up and expect to fall asleep straight away.  I really enjoy reading before I go to bed but quite often I am too tired to be able to read - this probably sounds a bit unusual coming from an ex-insomniac but it is the truth.  The two books on my reading list at the moment are Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth because I absolutely adore the Call the Midwife series and have read all her other books, and Girl Online by Zoe Sugg because I'm interested to know what all the hype is about.

If I'm too tired to read then I usually watch something easy going on my tablet.  I've learnt that I have to be quite careful about what I watch directly before I go to bed though as I am better off avoiding anything that may trigger a PTSD response.  When I was really struggling with sleep, I found that the best thing for me to watch was vintage episodes of Bernard's Watch on Youtube.  For any of you who were not children of the 90s, or were deprived of the wonders of Bernard's Watch, it was a children's television show about a little boy who could stop time with his pocket watch and would use this function to help others.  It had a soft, calming, narrator's voice throughout which seemed to be present on all the children's television shows at the time.  If anything is going to send you to sleep, Bernard's Watch will definitely do the job!

Another relaxing activity I like to do in the lead up to bedtime is painting my nails.  I have been loving quite pale and neutral tones at the moment.  I have been using the Gelly Hi-Shine nail polishes from BarryM in the Coconut and Almond shades a lot recently, as well as the Rimmel 60 seconds polish in Ethereal.

Cut out caffeine completely and have a milky hot chocolate before you go to bed.

If you suffer from insomnia, caffeine can become a bit of an essential just to get you through the day but if you want to resolve your sleeping problems, you just have to completely cut out caffeine from your diet.  Similarly, you won't be able to sleep on an empty stomach.  As an anorexia sufferer, this is something I know too well, your body just won't let you sleep if you are starving.  Even if you are struggling a lot with your food intake, it can make such a different to just have something before you go to sleep even if it's small.  A hot drink can help a lot, sometimes I have a cookie as well before I go to sleep.  Some people find that they have to avoid dairy before they go to sleep so just find a snack that works for you.

Give herbal remedies a go.

This is not something I am a great believer in but I think it is definitely worth giving anything a try.  Do your research first though as I have heard of some herbal remedies disagreeing with people.  The only herbal type remedy I have ever found remotely helpful is lavender oil.  I would say it sends me to sleep but if I dab a little bit on my skin, it does help me to relax a little bit.

Work on dealing with your anxieties during the day so that they don't come back to haunt you at night.

This is a difficult one because you can't just click your fingers and everything will be okay, recovery and life in general is a journey but my point is, as long as you are working on it, things will get better.  I certainly found that as soon as I started to feel as though I was coping with my anxiety better and working on improving my mood during the day, I could sleep a lot better.  Following on from this, when I began to cope better with the PTSD symptoms I faced during the day, I found that the symptoms I faced at night, such as the flashbacks and night terrors, gradually just seemed to lessen.  I would say that I still have quite unusual and on the whole unpleasant dreams but not quite to the extent of reliving my traumas every single night.  I can't really describe just how good it feels to be freed from that terrifying existence.  I have also read that if you continually rehearse your night terrors during the day and add a positive ending to them, the night terror you experience will eventually resemble your rewritten version.  This has never worked for me so far but it may well work for you.

Still can't sleep? Here comes the tough bit...

Force yourself into a sleep pattern

If you have suffered from insomnia for a long period of time, your body can really struggle to get back into the pattern of sleep, quite simply because it is not used to it.  You therefore have to almost just continually go through the motions of having a normal sleep routine until your body falls into line and I'm not going to lie, it is really tough!  What I mean by this is quite simply that you give yourself the opportunity to sleep at night and stay awake during the day.  Easier said than done!  This means that even if you only get a couple of hours of sleep, you still have to force yourself to get up at the time you had planned to get up and worse if you don't get any sleep at all, you have to keep yourself awake during the day.  This is really hard, I know that when I haven't slept properly for a number of nights, the urge to sleep can just consume me and it feels as though I can't keep myself awake for any longer.  It is definitely worth sticking at it in the long run though.  The only advise I can really give is that you can't fall asleep all the time you are moving - you don't have to be doing a lot but just keep moving!

If you are really struggling to establish a sleep pattern, medication can help as an aid.  I say an aid because it is not a solution to the problem.  Prescribed sleeping tablets can only be prescribed by doctors in the short term and for good reason.  You can end up either becoming tolerant to them or very dependent on them.  This can mean that when you eventually stop taking them, your insomnia may be worse than before.  By depending on sleeping tablets, you may also start ignoring all the other factors that may have caused your insomnia.  Sleeping tablets help with the symptoms of insomnia but they don't address the source of the problem.  If used in the right way though, they can be really useful in training your body to get back into the pattern of sleep.  There are also some sleep aids that can be bought over the counter.  I decided to go for this option first as it was cheaper than having to fork out for yet another prescription.  The one I used was the Nytol blue packet and I was pleasantly surprised with the results.  It is basically an antihistamine tablet and so induces drowsiness.  The first couple of nights I took it, it just made me feel ill but once my body got used to it, it started to work.  If I was extremely anxious, it wouldn't work but most nights it would and by taking those tablets, I started to be reminded of what a good night's sleep should feel like.  If you take other medications, it is important to talk to your pharmacist or doctor before taking over the counter sleeping aids as they can react badly with certain medication.  

My closing thought on this one is that sleeping tablets should only be used as a sleep aid and should be used alongside making efforts to improve your sleep through other methods like the ones I have spoken about above.

Have a teddy to keep you company!

This one may not be for everyone but I am not ashamed to admit that I am 23 years old and I still sleep with a teddy!  You'll be pleased to know that I don't have my full army of cuddly toys like I used to, now that really would be too crowded!

I still struggle with sleeping, I have bad nights but I think everyone does.  I hold onto the fact though that my bad nights are not nearly as bad as they used to be.  All the past struggles I have had with sleep have just meant that every time I wake up now after having a good night's sleep, I appreciate it so much more than I ever would have done if I had always slept well.

I wish you all a pleasant night's sleep :)

The One Day Seeker.