Recovery from Chronic Insomnia

Best of luck to you - I went through a bout with insomnia during my "peak TMS period" in 2018 and I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone. One bad stretch I went through a 3 week period where my sleep tracking device said I recorded a total of 3 hours of sleep. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

As with most things TMS related, once you figure it out, it resolves itself. I sleep great now but I am grateful and thankful that I do as I know how it is when sleep doesn't come. I'm actually surprised insomnia isn't more common for TMS sufferers actually, it's almost always due to anxiety, over-worrying, ruminating, catastrophizing, etc. All of those are key TMS traits.

 

Hi ALL. Havnt been here for a while ... Just letting you know i beat imsonia long long ago. Now I can still drink cola, coffee and sleep like a baby. If it makes sense to my brain, it becomes a habit and thats all to it.

You can all do it! back when i was suffereing, it broke alot for me, relationships, jobm friends, that hurts alot! i cried alot and really the anxiety amd fear or never sleeping again got me baaaad for many many months. i lost alot of weight, depressed, tried every pill...thought about ending my life few times...until...i got so tired of it all and GAVE UP! what i mean is i gave up the fight! Thats it.. this was YEARS years ago. I promised myself if i ever beat this, I will be the best version of myself I can be..! and till the day going strong. I do have tms issues here and there...new symtoms all the time but they dont stay. Crazy how anxious people are probably the healthiest (blood work, phsyically etc)...its just out personalities and minds that we need to work with thats all. Take care all. gnite..or morning... who cares!

p.s. GET RID OF EVERYYYYYTHINGGG thats has anything to do with sleep! any rituals, books, meds, yoga, sleep with socks or off, drinkin tea before nighttime, pillows, comforters, sleep monitors, turn off your laptop or computer..shut it down! that helped me alot ...lifted a load off my shoulders..and like i said..little by little i started drowsing off..2 hours 1 day 3..then 4 then back to 2...then 3 then 8 then 5 ...until it became regular 6-7 hours.. i had off nights.. sometimes i still miss 1 or 2 days because i want to work or has stuff on my mind but then goes back to my reg sleep schedule. i dont fret or worry ever for many years now..the sleep fear ghost left me long time ago. I kicked his asss back and he is scared of me now. He left me long ago, i keep inviting him back but he doesnt want to bother me anymore lol

 

Never been a good sleeper - remember lying awake in bed aged about 5 being unable to sleep. And I remember having to share a double bed with my dad one night when we were on a trip, I would have been about 10 and didn't sleep for one second because there was someone else in the bed. But I would never have described myself as having insomnia - the worst thing would be a night with 2 awakenings or just taking a while to get to sleep. But moving in with my girlfriend when I was 28 caused huge sleep anxiety (someone else in the bed again!), it would take ages to get to sleep and I often had somatic hunger soon after going to bed. We had a traumatic breakup which made things worse as I would go to bed at night and ruminate and get angry. This then developed into a fear of my alarm clock - either it not going off, or being startled by it, and I would frequently wake up before it went off, this would lead to me feeling very bad the next day. I developed a safety behaviour of charging my phone to 100% every night and repeatedly checking that the alarm was on (including when I got up in the night). Things are a little better now - now that I've learned about TMS I basically tell myself that I will not invite unnecessary tension into the body. I've stopped the safety behaviours, and I've stopped wearing ear plugs (I wore them basically every night for the last 8 years until 2 months ago). I do still wake up at least once per night but will generally sleep through to my alarm.

I'd never regarded this as a TMS-like issue so thank you for your post. I'm speaking to a mind-body practitioner tomorrow and will make sure I mention it in amongst the other issues I have.

 

Best thing I have ever read on insomnia. Well done!