6d ago

What do I do when it hurts too much to sleep?

I have struggles with PTSD. Some very terrible things have been done to me by people I loved and trusted.

I can be very distracted during the day. I have a very active mind, lots of coping mechanisms and most of the time I’m fine. But it’s trying to sleep that is impossible.

Weed can help, but there’s this pain that hits late at night. It’s crushing. Weed will quiet flashbacks, will help me get to the point that my parasympathetic nervous can kick in and I don’t feel afraid and hyper vigilant, but it can only sometimes help the pain.

Drinking helps. It’s making me sick at this point but I don’t know how else to cope with the black pit of despair. Doomscrolling and drinking all night at least stops the rumination.

And so I pay for help with this and see the therapists I can. There’s barely any options for therapy and I try to journal and do all of the things but it just doesn’t help when I feel like my heart is bleeding out and I need to sleep.

It feels almost physical, a gaping wound that needs a beer to hold it together.

18 comments

you're not going to believe me, and i can't believe that i'm making this suggestion given what you wrote, because it seems so cheap. so much "wow thanks i'm cured"
but please at least try this. you have nothing to lose and it's free.
take a DEEP SLOW breath. all the way in. slowly. should be "one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus..." do it through your mouth.
hold it for a sec. however long you want.
then, let it go. do it through your nose or mouth or both. make it take just as long as it took you to inhale, but take some extra time if needed to make sure you got rid of all your air.
and then take a sec.
and then do it again.
you'll quickly be hit with an oxygen buzz, and it'll be your decision to keep breathing or just go to sleep.
edit - didn't realize where i was posting, and it's funny because i'm one, too. this is what i do. breathe in for 5 secs as much as you possibly can, hold it for a sec or two, then exhale completely. repeat. do this five or six times and you'll get a buzz. and it will make you want to sleep.
- something like this?
  4-7-8 breathing
  
  looks like it. it's a really common and simple technique that's used in a ton of different breathing and meditation techniques. nothing particularly spiritual or supernatural about it in its base form, just a really therapeutic exercise.

Been there for a brief period of my life. It was... Brutal. There's not much else to say. I tried blasting music with lyrics to preoccupy my thoughts, but it didn't work much. I found some new friends and tried texting them all night long, but tbh I just annoyed them.
The only thing that worked was letting time heal. I wouldn't recommend smoking weed but I won't blame you for it.
One thing I did not try, but I would try now if I was there again, is getting into running. If you run long distance, you sleep like a rock. It also has loads of health benefits to get fit.

Society used to get up in the middle of the night and make a snack, read a book, have conversations. Maybe at the time it affects you get up for a bit and do something? Just long enough to reset your thoughts.

I used to blackout drink every night for similar reasons. It took a while but I developed the stupidest coping mechanism, but it works - When I'm in bed and start ruminating, I stop myself and visualize "swiping left" on the thought as if on a dating site, throwing the memory away. Then I visualize a fun fantasy adventure, like putting myself into the shoes of a character in a book I'm reading or a game I'm playing. It takes a lot of effort to focus on, and the bad memories try to come back but I just repeatedly toss them aside and focus on my epic quest. I manage to fall asleep within 30 min with this strategy.
I know this is really stupid and probably only works because I'm such a visual thinker, but figured I'd share in case anyone finds it helpful.
- I love this. Thanks for sharing!
- I know this is really stupid and probably only works because I’m such a visual thinker, but figured I’d share in case anyone finds it helpful.
  how does it go? "If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid." 😁
  I would caveat with "if it's stupid, it works and it's not dangerous, then it's not stupid."

I find that Trazodone works really well for me. I'm not going to try to compare my shit with yours, but some of what you said resonates with my situation. It isn't an OTC medication, though, so you will need a prescription, but it is one of the most prescribed meds out there for anxiety-related sleep conditions.
I find this med to be a real godsend, because it's the only medication I've ever taken that's managed to reliably allow me to sleep without any of the associated grogginess or brain fog the next day. As for how it works for me... I find that it doesn't actually make me sleepy; it just sort of tells my brain to knock off its bullshit for a while so that when I am sleepy I can actually sleep without it fucking my shit up. As far as I'm aware, it's pretty non-addictive.
So yeah, I'd recommend asking your doctor about it. Not sure if a GP will prescribe it; might have to get referred to a psychologist first. Good luck!
- It's going to sound shitty, but you don't sleep
  Eventually, fatigue will win, and you will sleep
  It's going to feel like absolute hell, but if you keep going back to the bottle or other substances, then that's what you will keep doing
  I have done dry July and other things, just to make sure that I'm not an addict, but I still can't go more than a couple of days without drinking
  I want to. And I know that it doesn't really help me sleep, but it's the lie that I keep telling myself
  I'll do it one day
  Exhaustion will get you to sleep eventually. Drying out is a much, much longer process
  
  Please bear in mind that deliberately depriving yourself of sleep can be extremely dangerous to yourself and to others.

Would you give this a try? I don't have PTSD, but maybe, just maybe, this is a tool that might help some?
How to trick your brain into falling asleep, Jim Donovan

i feel this, I drank for relief from PTSD stuff, medication can help like others pointed out but it was never enough for me. what helped me was the 12 steps. doing a very thorough searching sometimes excruciating step 4, getting all me deepest darkest secrets on paper and spending 9hrs on the phone with my sponsor on the other side of the planet going into great detail about each one. I have no idea how or why, but all my shame guilt fear remorse resentments vanished after step 7. the steps aren't for everyone, but at the same time they really are. anyone can do it and I highly recommend, been an absolute game changer I no longer walk around obsessing over alcohol, because I don't have that negativity eating me alive anymore. I see a lot of me in your story my friend, I really relate. all the best.

Sometimes medication is an important step. You may need to find a psychiatrist. Medication in combination with therapy is more affective than either alone. Talk with your therapist, and psychiatrist, trust their plan but be honest with them off the bat on how you medicine is affecting you. If the first on they prescribe doesn’t work. Don’t be afraid to try another. Don’t let them give you anything crazy though and always take you medicine as prescribed. Seek second opinions or find a new therapist if anything feels off
- Seek second opinions or find a new therapist if anything feels off
  A huge trigger is psychiatric abuse. My mother “has” (?) Munchausen by proxy. What she did to my younger brother is more equivalent to Gypsy Rose. With me it was primarily psychological (although I had lots of strange and invasive testing for all kinds of things too.)
  She found shitty inpatient facilities and therapists that would allow her to read WebMD and had me diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at 14. When the facility or the therapist figured out what she was doing, she moved me onto the next one. No step down or taper off on any medication - my body was a pharmaceutical playground of Seroquel and Wellbutrin and all of that other shit, and with no continuity of care, it was just “ope, we’re doing Resperdal now”
  At one facility, they put me on such heavy doses of antipsychotics (which was by no means ever justified by my behavior - the only thing I ever did “wrong” at that facility was trying to escape a moving car when I was being attacked by other patients - not the best move, but considering 4 years before they tortured me, they had let a kid get killed by other patients…) that I couldn’t stay awake for more than a few hours at a time. They would then punish me for sleeping through “Group” or “school.”
  The big big problem with PTSD related to mental health care is that it makes it hard to trust therapists or providers. I don’t understand why no one spoke up. I do not understand why I had to take my own braces with pliers off when I was 17 because she took away my orthodontics appointments as a kind of punishment and I went years without any form of dental care as a teenager. If professionals couldn’t see that then, what do they even know?
  I just don’t know if I’d feel safe working with a psychiatrist. I don’t want to experiment with medication because my finances and living situation are tenuous. I went to an inpatient facility due to ideation last year and it cost me my job, and I got physically assaulted again.
  It’s the PTSD core belief “the world is evil and no one loves me” - which was not at all helped by my marriage and divorce.
  
  That’s definitely a rock in a hard place.
  I’ve been in a similar situation from a bad experience that I’d rather not get into here that lead me to have panic attacks related to ingestion of any “substance” or drug. Even ibuprofen or Tylenol. I thought it’d give me a heart attack or my skin would fall of all sorts of stuff. Couldn’t even drink caffeine or I’d panic so hard I’d pass out and loose feeling in my limbs.
  Was a difficult time. What ended up helping me was exposure therapy. Over several years exposing myself to triggers in a safe setting. Teaching my logical mind to soothe the monkey throwing levers up there.
  Don’t ever blame yourself for your trauma. It’s ok to take things slow. Mental health care in the US sucks. I’m sorry you’re going through this. I couldn’t imagine not being able to sleep
  A coping mechanism I will share from dealing with my own pain is running. Long distance specifically. I find it really helps clear the mind, and exhaust the body. Helps to sleep when you can’t

18 comments