Living with groundlessness

[AntoniaB]

Thanks, Beatrice!

Ok so I had my doctor appt and here is some info if it helps anyone.

I did get a script for ambien to be my "fall back" med if I have too many sleepless nights in a row...but first, she told me this: to FACE The sleeplessness. She said that the subconscious is often so active when we sleep, and that for those dealing with a lot, the subconscious can go haywire at night, and that sleeplessness sometimes is the brain's way of "protecting" you from sleep because you have "too much to work through"! She said if this persists night after night, you need some kind of prescription help usually, because night after night of no sleep is physically detrimental. But she suggested that I go to sleep without taking anything and if/when I wake up, to find a quiet place in the house, either the bed or elsewhere, and FACE my tension, and actually invite the tension all through my body. I feel my tension is in the shoulders and neck and head. She said I am actively resisting moving it through me and out of me by "carrying it like a burden on my back." So I should sit there and center myself almost meditatively, and be receptive to the tension and let it flow all through me and really feel it, and "make friends with it." She said I have done the "make friends with the negative emotion" very successfully in a ton of other ways...I did it when I went full-on into seeing XH for the funeral, I did it by saying to my XH "we WILL face this and it WILL hurt like hell but we WILL get through it and be ok." So she said I have to simply do this with the tension that is waking me up at night.

She said "ask yourself WHY your subconscious might want to keep you awake...what is it that is SO hard about going to sleep or staying asleep..." But think of sleeplessness as "instructive" and "a friend"....to a point.

She told me I could sit up and write, as I often do, but to only write about sleeplessness and not go into other things. Then the next day, when I need a nap, do NOT give in to the urge, and repeat the pattern the next night. If things don't calm down, take the ambien a night, then try again.

It's an interesting theory...so I will try it out tonight and not go to the ambien till tomorrow night if necessary.

Oh and she said I could read if I woke up and to reread the Four Agreements if I wake up and meditate on being in the present. She feels an enormous amount of my tension comes from still being such a forward thinker, a future thinker. I've been able to quiet a lot of the past thinking, but not future thinking.

There was other advice too about dealing with my parents that really is just DB 101 and breaking the codependency.

She said that twice I used the word "gift" in reference to my XH cheating/divorcing me, and she said that was a HUGE "reframing of the trauma" and one of the most important milestones I have passed.

So I hope some of this might help some of you too...it cost me 195.00 and it would be nice if it would help more than just me, ha ha :-)