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Tonight I’m having a bad night. I cannot sleep for the life of me. I am bunged up with a cold. I can’t breathe, I’m so tired and my eyes practically want to glue themselves shut. But of course, my brain just won’t shut off.

Every time I close my eyes, I’m bombarded with thousands upon thousands of thoughts. Some irrational, some not so much. And that may be an exaggeration but… Even so, it’s driving me insane.

I just want to go to sleep 😫 I am so tired of being tired. It’s hopeless. I’m also completed starved and I’ve no decent snacks in the flat. What’s a girl to do?

If the weather wasn’t so naff, I’d walk to the 24 hour spar but that’s just a bit too much effort and it’s almost 6am. I want to try and get a little shut eye before dawn.

Maybe I’ll dream of donuts…. 🍩 or cookies or cake 😋

I would love a chocolate brownie right about now actually.

Tbh I would also just like to get some proper sleep.

Someone please save me….

Sunday Rambles

Happy Sunday my fellow bloggers,

I hope you are all having a lovely evening before the Monday Morning Blues set in.

Tonight’s blog isn’t a traditional weekly meme, I didn’t find one I particularly fancied to write this Sunday. So I am improvising. I like this idea of having one day out of seven where I have a ramble about the goings on into my life, and whether you’ll like to read about it or not, it’s refreshing for me and clears my brain.

Today’s been a strange day. I didn’t sleep very well last night, in fact according to my fitbit, I had 3 hours sleep – what a nightmare. I have spent most of the day in a daze. I’ve done some work. although whether it makes any sense will be another thing I’ll assess in the morning. However, to keep myself awake, I’ve been doing household chores as well. I’ve done three loads of washing, cleaned the bathroom and I stepped back into the past and hand washed some socks – I will never be doing that again. My hands are raw and every time I twist my wrist, the pain!

Washing machines are such an amazing invention… I can’t believe I’m blogging about how much I like washing machines. I really am sleep deprived.

On another note, I’ve started watching the TV show, American Horror Story – probably not the best show to start watching whilst I’m running on so little sleep. I’m honestly not sure what I think about this show just yet – it’s creepy. it’s crazy, it’s somewhat sexual; but I can’t stop watching it. I’m so intrigued, I just can’t stop watching… I’m probably not going to have the best sleep tonight either, due to nightmares, but it’s a risk I’m going to take because I’m a binge watcher.

What does everyone else think of this show? I can’t make up my mind. I’m only on episode two, so I’m sure I’ll form an opinion soon enough. But on that note, I am going to snuggle in my fluffy blanket, have a hot cup of tea and watch the third episode,…. and the fourth and maybe the fifth unless I fall asleep, or get attacked by ghosts.

A vicious cycle of Anxiety and Insomnia

Hands up if you’ve ever had a sleepless night ✋✋

Yeah. Happens to the best of us. For some people it only happens occasionally, for others very rarely, and then for the unfortunate, it happens practically every single night. I fall into the latter category. I’ve had sleep difficulties for the past five years. Yup, it’s probably to do with some past experience I never dealt with properly blah blah queue Freud, but it is also the cause or a symptom of my anxiety too – I’m not sure which – insomnia is apparently a symptom of another disorder, but anxiety can also be caused by lack of sleep so who knows what is what, but whatever the case, It absolutely sucks all the same.

I recently got given a free course on sleepio.com, a website that has actually proven its use to help those with sleeping problems. You have to pay for the course usually – I was lucky and got onto the programme for free due to my university doing an experiment on sleep in conjunction with professors at Oxford. But this sleepio course does actual wonders.

There is a little professor and his dog Pavlov – yup if you know psychology, you’ll recognise Pavlov as the little guy who learned how to behave through classical conditioning. A technique professor sleepio uses to help you understand and reconnect your brain with sleep. Due to this course, I admit on a good occasion, I’ve managed to get a good nights sleep – the best night I’ve had in the past five years. But it doesn’t come without a price. A price that includes; a consistent sleep pattern, goals, rules and hard work. It takes time to retrain your brain, and most of the time when you’re so fucking tired you can’t be assed quite frankly. But most of the time I did what I had to.

It proved to work well enough, I do the techniques and I try the relaxation methods, but even with this under my belt, it still hasn’t fixed me completely. Of course, I’ve tried sleeping pills, they don’t work – they just make my body so heavy I feel trapped in my skin but my brain just won’t shut off. I also walk around in the morning like a zombie or like someone crashing from a drug high. It’s that bad. Sleeping pills are out.

The trouble is, I’m an overthinker. My mind goes into overdrive at night and I can’t shut it off no matter how hard I try. It’s always on the go and it hits supersonic speed at night. I think about what I did that day, I think about what I’m going to do in the morning, how I’m going to get from a to b, who I’ll talk to, who I won’t. And then the worry comes. That rush of the ocean that breaks away from the rest of my thoughts and carries me to my full induced panic mode. And I’m stuck on a rock far out to sea, crying all alone. There is nobody to save me. I’m drowning in my own thoughts.

Nothing is scarier than that.

But then morning comes and you’ve exhausted yourself so much, that as soon as day breaks, your eyes droop and you’re ready to fall into a deep needed slumber, but the alarm clock won’t let you and you have to get up. A vicious, endless cycle that never ever ends.

My advice for nights like that, to both myself and others: nap when you can, relax as much as you can, and get all your negative feelings out of your head by writing them down before you even attempt to fall asleep. It does work.

But if you are like me, you’ve most probably learned to deal with the average three to four hours sleep a night and function just well, minus the horrendous mood swings and occasional yawns throughout the day. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing, and I most definitely would love to learn to sleep better, but I’m also saying that insomnia and anxiety do not define me, they do not hinder me from doing my day to day tasks. I’m proud of myself and how I manage.

I just hope that other people can find the strength to help themselves feel proud of who they are too. You are not alone ❤️

This post was drafted at 3am and it’s now 8am and I have to dash off to an old weekend job to help out. Commitment to the blogosphere here I go!