Sleep, Interrupted Part 2 (Breaking the Cycle)

***Disclaimer*** I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV. I didn’t even play “doctor” as a kid. So, please, don’t take anything I say as sound, medical advice. The following is just my own experience of what worked for me.

So, we’ve gotten the super icky part out of the way, on with the helpful stuff! Once I figured out that the sleep disturbances at the beginning of the night were just the twitchies (a.k.a hypnic jerks, which are made worse by stress) and not a life-threatening sleep disorder, I had something to work with. Since my body was registering a threat that I wasn’t aware of on a cognitive level, it took a little time to figure out what was triggering my anxiety. A pattern finally emerged and I realized the biggest triggers were high intensity cardio and interpersonal conflict, especially if those coincided with PMS (there’s just gonna be a lot of TMI in this one, buckle up).

High intensity cardio: intense exercise releases endorphins, but it also releases cortisol. From what I’ve read, the brain can’t tell the difference between cortisol produced while running on a tread mill and that produced while running from a tiger, and the effect is the same. My body was telling me that it had had enough; it won’t let me get away with pushing myself physically as much as I used to.

Interpersonal conflict: does this one need an explanation? In order to manage this source of stress, I’ve released certain people from my inner circle: the types who think being constantly critical is cute or who can’t understand pain or weakness in others. I can accept them as they are and I’m back to the point where I have the mental and emotional energy to be polite, but I can’t allow myself to be vulnerable with them.

PMS: maybe this just happened as I got older and it’s a cumulative thing, I have no idea, but somewhere along the way, my progesterone levels got way off relative to my estrogen. I might get a lot of disapproval for this choice, but I didn’t go to a doctor to be tested; I figured this one out on my own through tons of research on sleep and the menstrual cycle. Before, I had horrible night sweats and crippling depression (as in, curled up in the fetal position for hours crying and thinking, “I hate that I was born. Why can’t I be dead?”) while on PMS. I’ve started using progesterone cream at night during the last half of my cycle and I have no more night sweats and I’m only mildly frustrated with the fact of my existence the last week of my cycle. Progress!

So far, I think we’ve established that anxiety has a physical as well as a mental component. A shortage of necessary minerals can wreak havoc. Apparently, my magnesium was super low because I noticed instant improvement when I started using it both topically and internally. A friend gave me enough magnesium crystals for one bath and that night I got 8 consecutive glorious hours of sleep and woke up refreshed for the first time in a month. I immediately ordered a huge container of magnesium bath crystals. There were days when I was so exhausted that all I could do was lay on the couch and cry, but at least I knew I could enjoy a magnesium soak that night. A friend recommended Natural Calm magnesium drink, but I wanted to limit my fluid intake before bed in order to increase my chances of sleeping through the night. Fortunately, Natural Calm makes magnesium gummies! The first time I had one, it hit me like a glass of wine – I felt incredibly relaxed and melted blissfully into sleep.

A friend mentioned that her daughter was having trouble sleeping, so I sent some gummies home with her. She reported that they helped her daughter a little bit, but her husband tried one and started taking them, too. He said he’s getting the best sleep of his life!

Getting the physical side of the equation straightened out was crucial, but I still had a long way to go to sort out the mental component of anxiety. By the time I figured out what the problem was, sleep itself had become a source of severe stress, to the point where I started getting panicky at around 8 pm most nights.

I found several guided meditations that were calming in general and worth a try. The creator of these videos is a Christian, so they may or may not be of use to you, but I created a playlist for anyone who wants to check them out. They gave me some mantras to repeat to myself while falling asleep which took the edge off the anxiety.

This guided imagery video knocked me out pretty consistently, but it wasn’t a silver bullet. Her voice is so amazingly soothing. Do not listen to this if you have anything else you need to get done today or if you’re driving!!!

From there, I discovered the channel of an amazing woman who provides a wealth of guided meditations, as well as a series on how to meditate. She also created two yoga nidra meditations. I don’t know of any studies that back this up, but the theory is that yoga nidra takes your brain through all of the stages of sleep and that 15 minutes of it is the equivalent of one hour of sleep. I don’t know if that’s true, but it really does feel like taking a nap without having to fall asleep (which is great for me, because I can lay down for a nap for two hours without being able to fall asleep). She also uses Christian imagery, so if that isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other resources on mindfulness and yoga nidra.

Breathing meditations are useful, but body scans combined with practicing gratitude really helped me keep calm through the twitchies. I had pushed myself way too hard one day – a contractor friend needed an extra hand on a job and asked me if I was interested in picking up a little interior paint work. I had been sleeping a bit better, so I took him up on it. This job had 5 foot tall me rolling paint on 12 foot ceilings. My body was not happy with me. It repaid me by a return of the more severe version of the twitchies, which had been absent for a few weeks prior. The twitchies lasted about an hour before I went out to lay on the couch (I’m not usually very good at stimulus control, e.g., getting out of bed if I’m not sleeping, but I managed to do it that night). I started to do a body scan and decided to practice gratitude for each body part as I went. It came out as something like this. “Right big toe: I am so grateful that I have a right big toe and that it’s not in pain and that it works. Second toe: I am so grateful that I have a second toe and that it’s not in pain and that it works,” and so on. I don’t remember making it past my kneecaps before I was out.

I can’t remember which video I heard this from (probably most mindfulness videos mention it at some point) but I absorbed the idea of observing each sensation in my body with curiosity and compassion. Each time a twitch or some other weird sensation occurred, I would try to allow my mind to linger on it with curiosity instead of trying to ignore it or being frustrated that it happened.

Pretty early on, my Bear came up with something hypnosis-esque. We called it “talking to me,” as in, “Honey, I’m going to bed, do you have a few minutes to talk to me?” He would stand next to the bed, hold my hand, and have me repeat things like, “I’m safe. My body needs sleep. My body wants to sleep. Sleep is safe.” That was pretty helpful – sometimes I fell asleep while talking, which was a really funny sensation. That wasn’t really sustainable, though. I also tried a little self-hypnosis – supposedly, you can put yourself into a hypnotic trance by cycling through all 5 senses enough times. This was only effective maybe one in four times that I attempted it.

There are a ton of resources on sleep hygiene (have a routine, have a set sleep schedule, get out of bed if you haven’t fallen asleep in 20 minutes – but don’t look at a clock!, make sure the room is completely dark and quiet) and that is definitely a great place to start. However, if you adhere to all of those guidelines and you’re still having trouble, it’s worth investigating whether there are physical factors as work (e.g., hormone imbalance or mineral deficiency). It’s important to take stock of all your stressors (let’s face it, they’re part of being alive) and see if there are any that can be reduced or removed. And finally, explore the vast wealth of resources on meditation and mindfulness that the internet provides to help you learn to quiet the monkey mind. It’s possible that none of these things will work 100% of the time (none of them did for me), but what have you got to lose, except sleep?

Next up: how I finally got back to some semblance of normal functionality.