Hi. Sorry to hear of the anxiety. Anyone can say they feel anxiety (it's just an emotion), usually a professional will diagnose if there's a disorder or not. What you describe sounds pretty miserable. I'm glad you have a therapist you can work with. Maybe talk to them about your concerns about the applicability of the program you are in. I've had sleep anxiety before. I used to take sleep pills. I've had panic attacks. Here's some of my 2 cents. Consider the following things and ask yourself if they make sense. The body has different modes of behaving, there's sleep, being listless, being alert, being focused, anxious, panicked, angry, enraged sad, joyous, excited, physically active, feeling relief, etc. Each of these and others makes us more or less alert, focused, and physically or deliberatively minded. They each have a flavor, a feeling, and are generally positive or negative to various degrees. Anxiety as far as I can tell is a mode that the body has for maintaining vigilance over a situation that is currently or might soon threaten an important goal. So thinking of anxiety that way, it is not a bad thing, in fact it's kind of cool. It's a multifaceted problem solving system. Maybe next time you are feeling anxious, try and take a mental step back and see if you can observe some of these aspects: a feeling (probably a negative one), moderate to high alertness, focused thoughts (as opposed to wondering thoughts), physically alertedness. Try not to make judgements about the observations w.r.t. sleep but instead judgement w.r.t. being successfully vigilant. Just think about how this is just a mode, like exercise or sleep, and these are simply the mode's characteristics. Notice that nothing bad is happening according to your senses (not as opposed to your feelings). The next part now, what do you think would happen to someone who thinks something positive vs. something negative about some roller coaster ride? The person thinking negative thoughts will probably be feeling nervous, the other will probably be excited. What they feel now is based on what they expect to feel now and in the near future. So, I am just guessing, but do you think that you might be negatively overthinking stuff near to when this nervous sleeplessness occurs? Like thinking about expecting to feel bad or be awake? It's just like the roller coaster ride. So how do you fix it? There are lots of ways and they mostly involve different forms of learning. Consider a child that needs a tooth pulled. What do we do? We tell them ice cream comes after. What does that do? There's an expectation of something negative but now there's a positive expectation that follows it. What we feel now depends on now and the future, the future looks brighter, we feel better. Public speaking is another good example. People typically dislike and are afraid of it. However with practice the fears go down and are replaced by skill. There is no longer a need for vigilance when the situation is well known and practiced. Third example, pretend that there's a mean dog on someone's lawn that a kid walks by on their way home. They get really anxious and scared about the walks over time and dread them and don't know what they are going to go do. What if you told the kid to walk a different route home that doesn't go by the house, or to take dog treats so they can become friends with the dog more each day as they walk by. The kid's anxiety will go down because they have a solution that addresses the problem (even one that they didn't see dispite bring anxious over many walks). So to get over your sleep anxiety, think positively, about now, what comes next, and what comes next after that. Think about getting something that you want (maybe like a good night's sleep) as a reward like ice cream instead of something that anxiety is in conflict with. Anxiety is a problem solving mode, stop confusing anxiety for a problem and it goes away and said turning on. Sorry that this comment is crazy long. It's hard to want to share something useful but not know a shorter way to convey it. Anyway, I sincerely hope you conquer this challenge soon and gain a lifelong skill and new comfort by it. Wishing you some good rest.
