Hi AC45,
Have you tried analyzing your anxiety? I have had the same as you for years night after night that never ending cycle of turmoil and thoughts racing through my head, sometimes dragging on to spoil my day.
I remembering reading the cover page of Clair Weeks book “Floating through Anxiety”, note I only read the cover not the book. It was all I needed to realize anxiety was not bad for me, it should be accepted, welcomed even, as part of our psychology; indeed I have learned it is there to protect us.
I was trained and brainwashed through childhood to fear and reject anxiety as a negative trait to be avoided at all costs. Showing anxiety wasn’t manly in our household, it was unacceptable and wimpy.
I think going to bed, turning off the lights is a trigger for our brains to “defrag”; a computer term that fits in very well here. With nothing to distract us our brains get busy shuffling files and thoughts of all descriptions to the back and front of our awareness. Dr Sarno stated “we go a little mad when sleeping”, and it seems we have no control. Our biggest mistake is to reject and fear what is going on.
By analyzing my anxiety I have concluded that it is usually about the most trivial, irrelevant and unworthy of topics, total bullshit. Thoughts repeat themselves uncontrollably over and over again in my head. Perhaps these unworthy topics are being filed at the back of the filing cabinet where they belong.
If you are creative like me perhaps you have what I call: “Good Anxiety”. Many a night I have spent hours designing mechanical brackets in my head for a project at work. Hours and hours stressing over dimensions and tolerances, usually turns out a complete waste of time. On one such night I got up at 3 o’clock and started sketching, only to discover I had missed a major detail. I didn’t have the clarity of day to make good judgment.
I think nighttime anxiety is the hardest for us to overcome because there are no distractions, with eyes shut, TV turned off our brains are free to riot, each individual thought is the most serious, the loudest the most worrying. It is like a continuous argument that can’t be won.
I have analyzed most of my getting to sleep tricks to great depths. For instance my most obscure one was very unconventional; walking on dewy grass in the middle of the night. I only did this one time but the distraction worked very well. My feet got really cold to the point of numbness; I dried them off and returned back to bed and drifted off to sleep. I reasoned the next day that my brain had to focus on re-warming my feet back to norm. As my feet warmed there was an action of soothing, comfort and well being.
Over my TMS years I have tried many obscure activities to get to sleep, most of them oppose instead of accepting anxiety. My getting to sleep trick post that I once wrote still stands out as the best for me; I actually used it three times last night, acknowledging that it does not always work the first time. I was having good anxiety about the ins and outs of my first windsurfing trip this year. The last thing I remember was the flood of oxygen going to my brain similar to hyperventilating and going dizzy. I had quietly replaced the anxiety with a physical alternative – dizziness as a distraction, who really knows.
Since last August 2018 I have cast aside all distraction type tricks as they oppose anxiety instead of embracing anxiety. I no longer creep downstairs for juice or cashew nuts. I no longer play free cell read email or surf the web. I rely on my getting to sleep trick below, without the milk and cookies. It ties in nicely with Claires’ “Floating”.
http://tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7788
At long last I have put pen to paper about my anxiety, thank you for this opportunity.
AC45
