Having both insomnia and hypersomnia
I haven't found someone who experiences both like myself. I've had insomniac tendencies for at least seven years. And have had hypersomnia for at least three years.
It's a tough struggle because some days, I will have trouble sleeping at night and it will go on for a few days. For some reason, when I am feeling this way, I tend to eat a lot. On days that I suffer sleeping too much, like sleeping ten hours, and taking hour long naps through out the day and still getting a sound sleep the next night, I become less hungry even though I know I have an empty stomach.
Occassionaly, on insomniac days, I get a lot nightmares, and sleep paralysis. But those usually happen on my hypersomniac days. The sleep paralysis is specifically Hypnopompic- which is waking into a numb state. I've only ever experienced the other, Hypnagogic, which is waking up as you fall asleep, a few times recently in my life. Usually, it is the first I experience often.
The worse part of it is, I am a vivid lucid dreamer. So... you can just imagine all the images that run through my head and me being conscious of those images.
Does anyone suffer a similar thing to me, I wonder?
Hello. Your story sounds almost exactly like mine, except I don't suffer from sleep paralysis. Do you take psychiatric meds by any chance? 'cause in my case my sleep disorders started when I went on Sertraline, many years ago. Being off serious meds now has helped me a lot (though I still oversleep sometimes). What I'm trying is hypnosis, deep sleep programming, binaural beats, chakra music, all that stuff. I know most people don't believe in that but it's done wonders for me.
:0 sertraline dug a hole in my soul too
@nosoupforyou Sorry for such a late reply. I actually didn't take Sertraline until this year. So, even before, I've already been having strange sleep patterns.
It's too bad that Sertraline didn't work for the two of you ( @KnighTerrA ). It's been a great help to me. I do hope that you both find the right fit for you!
@bleubellejune I joined the group in order to respond to your thread after finding it in an online search. I'm probably breaking a rule by bumping such an old post. Normally I would read all the rules first and not break a potential one with my first post, but I think this is an important and almost completely unresearched subject.
I can definitely tell you that you're not alone. I have had insomnia since childhood and have no internal clock to speak of. I can go for days without being able to fall asleep, on some of those days I'm incrediby tired but still can't sleep. Other days I'm just not tired at all. I have Fibromyalgia and they stressed how important sleep was when I was diagnosed. My doctor at the time had me on sleeping pills to help ensure that I fell asleep. Some days they worked, some days they didn't.
While I still have issues with insomnia over the past few years I have started needing to sleep more and more. This was somewhat expected as a result of the Fibro, but not the extent that it's occuring. I will now sometimes fall asleep at Midnight, wake up at 3:00 in the afternoon the next day, and then doze off and on on the couch until my boyfriend drags me back to bed for the night where I promptly fall asleep and can still easily sleep until 1 or 2 pm the next day and would probably sleep even longer if I didn't force myself to wake up.
It would at least make some sort of sense if the days of hypersomnia followed the days of insomnia and I was making up for missed sleep or something of that nature. That's not the case though, it's completely random and now the hypersomnia is increasing in severity to the point where I will literally fall asleep in my food, while on the phone, etc. That part probably isn't actually technically hypersomnia, but is obviously related to my complex sleep issues.
I'm having an in lab sleep study done in three weeks, though there's no telling which type of sleep day I might be having at the time and I suspect, assuming I sleep at all, I'll simply be told I need a CPAP and sent on my way. While I try to deal with the majority of my issues without medication, in this case I REALLY want medication. I feel like I need a proper sleeping pill to help me fall asleep on insomnia days and some sort of stimulant so that I can actually function on the hypersomnia days which are become so regular that I'm useless for all intents and purposes. Even when I'm not sleeping or struggling to stay awake my energy level is so low that I'm not really functional.
On the subject of medication, Sertraline has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread. I have taken in it the past, though it was many years ago and I don't feel that it has any relation to my sleep issues. As I remember I had a really fun first week on it, I suspect it kicked me into a semi-manic state or something similar as I had tons of energy and felt great even though they say it takes so long for these meds to build up that we shouldn't start feeling anything that quickly I most definitely did and it's not something I have experienced with any other antidepressant. My body adjusted to it quickly though, things levelled off, it worked well for me for a while, and then eventually stopped working as most of these type of meds seem to do with me.
I suppose I should also mention that the only medication that I'm currently taking is Gabapentin and I have been taking it long enough to have gotten past it's initial sleepy side effects. I have taken this medication for years in the past without it causing anything like this. I have also taken a break from it for almost a month to see if it would improve anything and there was no change at all....no real change to it's effect or lack thereof on my Fibro either for that matter.
@bleubellejune I also experience this kind of situation but I tell you. Meditation really works in any mintal illness.