New Member: 40 year old insomniac
I’ve always been an insomniac. I know I have a hard time sleeping because of anxious thoughts, which I’ve learned to let go of over the years by simply doing that: letting them go. However, because of the pandemic I started getting very bad bouts of insomnia again and decided instead of spending my time tossing and turning, I wanted to go and seek help for it, maybe find someone to talk to about it. I tried chatting to a listener but it wasn’t very helpful. So I decided to sign up as a listener. I found myself more useful there. So I’ve been spending my insomnia ridden nights here listening to people and trying to get them thru their day so I can get thru my night. 😊
Yea I can't sleep much either... Im not quite sure why I joined this app but helping people a bit even by just giving someone advice makes me feel a little less empty.
Sometimes even just talking about things not even related to whatever is bothering the member helps.
My insomnia comes and goes, it’s also effected by my anxiety. I take sleeping gels when it’s super bad but I often wake up in the middle of the night wide awake, I usually lie in bed for 10-20 minutes to see if I become tired then I get up and have a snack/drink and watch a video. These are things that help with my anxiety and help me relax so I can get to sleep easier. I really love ASMR videos, I listen to them almost every night, I dunno how I ever slept without them!
I had horrible nocturnal panic attacks for years and then discover that most of them were caused by food sensitivities messing with my gut. Elimination diet for rid of much of that. Then the insomnia that was left was diagnosed as mild apnea causing extremely fragmented sleep and was fixed with a cpap. But now I’m having health issues that have absolutely awakened my nocturnal anxiety after so many years in the clear. Hopefully we’ll figure out what system isn’t working so I can sleep again. I love that you put that energy towards being a listener. I used to cruise the reddit anxiety subs doing something similar, but I have too much on my plate now.
