Discouraged

Hello friends. I'm back after a hiatus, because once again my subconscious is in overdrive.
I'm blessed to have overcome several debilitating rounds of pain, thanks to Dr. Sarnoff and tms wiki: back pain (1980s and 90s), plantar fasciitis (2011-13), and migraines (2009-17). But now I'm realizing that the insomnia that has plagued me for 35 years is TMS.
So while I'm grateful to have some tools with which to work, I'm so discouraged. I seem to be missing something, otherwise my subC would not feel the need to constantly seek new ways to torment me!
End of July is always hard, because I return to work in another two weeks. But despite working on feeling the feelings, I just get tired of the struggle with TMS.
Thanks for being here. I'm enjoying the new program.
Blessings,
Gigi

 

Gigi,

It's always lovely to see you. I only wish you were on better form and simply passing through. Hopefully something in the new program will hit the sweet spot for you and help you sleep like a babe. Or maybe being here will help in itself.

Blessings,

Plum x

 

Hi Gigi,
Take solace in the fact you are not alone. Last year, I was well on my way of getting my symptoms under control and knew it was just a matter of time that I would become pain-free. I was very confident. Somewhere along the line, I got distracted and side-tracked, and I must had reverted back to some old ways of thinking. I am starting to get my confidence (in overcoming TMS) back, and I am sure I will get there in my own time. The REAL key (for me) really is just knowing that I have TMS and it is harmless. My biggest fear is my Blood Pressure. I go back to the Dr on 8-2-2017. My fear is the conflict of getting my BP under control, but having to take a drug. I am conflicted, because I am not sure if taking meds is just a shortcut.
I think once you find some info on here that can help convince you that you can really overcome TMS, you will feel a lot better. Wishing you well to feel better.

 

Hi Gigi,

Sorry to hear you are suffering from insomnia, but it is always nice to "see" you on the Forum. You have provided much inspiration and support to many on this Forum over the years.

Insomnia was one of the most difficult TMS symptoms for me to get rid of. It took me years after getting over chronic pain. What I finally realized was the reason I could recover from fibromyalgia and migraines, but not insomnia, was because I couldn't apply the concept of outcome independence to my insomnia. I wrote the following awhile back about it:

"After several years of "trying" to solve my Insomnia problems. I finally stopped trying to do anything about it and just accept it. That helped a little bit. But it wasn't until I actually went even further and "embraced" it, that it actually resolved. Yes, it is paradoxical. But once I realized that I could do anything I wanted to do just as well without sleep as with sleep, a door opened up. I also read an article that said that sleep deprivation often alleviates Depression. I noticed that my mood was actually better when I hadn't had much sleep, as long as I didn't let myself fall into feeling like a victim. So, then I realized that life could actually be good without having slept well the night before. That was totally liberating, and my sleep has steadily improved ever since. I have no anxiety when I go to bed now, worrying if I will sleep or not. Now that it doesn't matter, I sleep well almost every night. "

Like most TMS it still comes up from time to time, but it doesn't last long anymore because I just ignore it and go about my day. I don't focus on the feeling of sleep deprivation, nor react to it as a horrible thing. I accept it and by doing so, I'm able to relax and it goes away.

Alan's new program will be useful to you in this regard. He has said that insomnia is a product of anxiety, and his program has focused a lot on dealing with anxiety.

Hope this is helpful. It is possible to recover from insomnia. Hang in there.

 

So good to see you, Ellen! Thanks for the practical advice. I was wondering how to work on the insomnia aspect of tms, since I don't know until I'm in bed for 30-45 minutes whether it will be one of those nights. This makes sense.

 

I always enjoy your posts, Plum. Hope all is well with you!

 

I've often struggled with medical/tms boundaries. When is it purely tms? When is medicine the prudent course? Wishing you all the best as you navigate your bp issues.

 

Hi Gigi,

I've posted this article in the past and maybe it might apply to you, I don't know, since I don't know the particulars of your case. Maybe your sub-c is rebelling against the culturally imposed sleep patterns developed for the industrial age, so everyone would be on time to work the assembly line. When I wake up from my first sleep, I now look forward to several hours of activity during the quiet hours, when the rest of the world quiet. I'll surf the web, or watch some TV to empty out the DVR, or do some productive organizing around the scatter. In the non-industrial world folks use the time for making crafts like basket-weaving, grinding acorns, or babies. Maybe a shot or two of Dr. Sarnoff's would help too.

The myth of the eight-hour sleep
Comments (321)
By Stephanie Hegarty BBC World Service​

We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.
It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.
Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.
In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.
Roger Ekirch says this 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam is evidence of activity at night
His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.
Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says.
During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.
And these hours weren't entirely solitary - people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.

Between segments

Some people:

• Jog and take photographs
• Practise yoga
• Have dinner...

• Ten strange things people do at night

A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".
Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.
By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.
He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.

When segmented sleep was the norm

• "He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream." Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840)
• "Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning." Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)
• "And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake." Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale
• The Tiv tribe in Nigeria employ the terms "first sleep" and "second sleep" to refer to specific periods of the night

Source: Roger Ekirch

• Roger Ekirch's website
• Find your personal sleep profile

In his new book, Evening's Empire, historian Craig Koslofsky puts forward an account of how this happened.
"Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good," he says. The night was a place populated by people of disrepute - criminals, prostitutes and drunks.
"Even the wealthy, who could afford candlelight, had better things to spend their money on. There was no prestige or social value associated with staying up all night."
That changed in the wake of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Protestants and Catholics became accustomed to holding secret services at night, during periods of persecution. If earlier the night had belonged to reprobates, now respectable people became accustomed to exploiting the hours of darkness.
This trend migrated to the social sphere too, but only for those who could afford to live by candlelight. With the advent of street lighting, however, socialising at night began to filter down through the classes.
In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by Lille in the same year and Amsterdam two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed.
A small city like Leipzig in central Germany employed 100 men to tend to 700 lamps
London didn't join their ranks until 1684 but by the end of the century, more than 50 of Europe's major towns and cities were lit at night.
Night became fashionable and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time.
"People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th Century," says Roger Ekirch. "But the industrial revolution intensified that attitude by leaps and bounds."
Strong evidence of this shifting attitude is contained in a medical journal from 1829 which urged parents to force their children out of a pattern of first and second sleep.
"If no disease or accident there intervene, they will need no further repose than that obtained in their first sleep, which custom will have caused to terminate by itself just at the usual hour.
"And then, if they turn upon their ear to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance not at all redounding to their credit."

Stages of sleep
Every 60-100 minutes we go through a cycle of four stages of sleep

• Stage 1 is a drowsy, relaxed state between being awake and sleeping - breathing slows, muscles relax, heart rate drops
• Stage 2 is slightly deeper sleep - you may feel awake and this means that, on many nights, you may be asleep and not know it
• Stage 3 and Stage 4, or Deep Sleep - it is very hard to wake up from Deep Sleep because this is when there is the lowest amount of activity in your body
• After Deep Sleep, we go back to Stage 2 for a few minutes, and then enter Dream Sleep - also called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - which, as its name suggests, is when you dream

In a full sleep cycle, a person goes through all the stages of sleep from one to four, then back down through stages three and two, before entering dream sleep
Source: Gregg Jacobs

• Gregg Jacobs' site - CBT for Insomnia
• Find out more about the science behind sleep

Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light.
This could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, he suggests.
The condition first appears in literature at the end of the 19th Century, at the same time as accounts of segmented sleep disappear.
"For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."
The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.
Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view.
"Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."
But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.

More from the Magazine

• Margaret Thatcher was famously said to get by on four hours sleep a night
• That put her in a group of just 1% of the population

• Can we really get by on four hours of sleep?
• Weird things people do in their sleep

"Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training and there are very few centres where sleep is studied," he says.
Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally.
In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams.
"Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, Depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up."
So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax. Lying awake could be good for you.
Craig Koslofsky and Russell Foster appeared on The Forum from the BBC World Service. Listen to the programme here.
Do you sleep in segments? Send us your sleep stories.

Last edited: May 22, 2014
Tennis Tom, May 22, 2014ReportBookmark
#23Reply

 

Gigi insomnia is very hard to deal with. I am sorry you have had it for so long. I also deal with it from time to time and brought the subject up with my tms therapist a while ago. Her advise was to go to bed and be reassured that your mind and body know what to do about going to sleep, that you do not have to worry about it or even think about it. Such a simple but true concept that completely alleviates the pressure when you get into bed.

Reassuring yourself of that fact can help with the anxiety during the day and help you get a great nights sleep.

 

The last two nights I've actually slept. Before going to bed, I tell my SubC that "it's time to rest and rejuvenate--so cut out the antics! But if you do feel the need to keep me up, I've got a great book!"
Thank you for all the helpful advice!

 

So happy for you Gigi! It's our relationship to TMS symptoms that is critical.

Pleasant dreams......

 

Gigi, You were so lovely and thoughtful to me when I was in a crisis. I won't ever forget that. I will say a prayer for you and send good thoughts to lift your discouragement.

It's disheartening to feel that our SubC's are out to get us. It helps me to not "fight" the message, but just acknowledge it and then say to myself, "I hear you. I understand what you feel, but it doesn't have to be true. I will take care of you and let you be heard. You are safe." I know it sounds remedial, but those of us who had emotionally unnurturing childhoods need to treat ourselves with some kid gloves, as they say.

 

What a lovely post. Thank you Marcia. Blessings to you as well

 

Gigi,

I saw this and thought of you:



May you sleep like the munchkin kitten

 

Cat nap savasana.

http://www.chopra.com/articles/why-savasana-is-the-hardest-yoga-pose#sm.0010iudvc142gda6wnu1w61mz3w97 (Why Savasana Is the Hardest Yoga Pose)​

 

I cannot recall a night in recent years, (other than my teenage years) where I sleep more than 4 hours without waking, and usually stay awake for at least an hour. I have often just gotten out of bed, drink or eat something, read, (check TMS site!) and then can go back to bed for another two to three hours. I used to think this was abnormal, but have since discovered that I am not the only one with this pattern. Unfortunately, in todays culture we call ourselves insomniacs. This article gives credence to this behavior and puts all of us insomniacs in good company.
Interesting article. Thanks.
Lainey

 

My daughter and my cat both sleep like this! It's a gift.

 

Very CUTE video, love cats, always had them--let's see it's headstand.

 

Hi Gigi, Checking in with you. I hope each day your spirits are lifting. Thinking of you.

 

Will a hand (paw) stand do?