How to sleep when in pain?

The past couple of nights i haven’t been able to sleep because of bad upper stomach pain. The Dr. thinks its functional dyspepsia. He gave me some elavil but I have yet to try it. Anyway the insomnia makes the anxiety worse which makes the pain worse and its a cycle. Anyone have any experience with this and what helped?

 

Thanks Jan. I know I sound like a broken record. Its just the diabetes angle gets me stuck. I will say since my stomach issues came back my POTS symptoms are gone.

 

@JanAtheCPA is absolutely correct.
The symptom is the pain, the genesis of the pain is anxiety and stress. You will naturally have some stress about the diabetes, but over time, this can lessen when you recognize that treatment is really helping you manage it.
If you are doing the work, you may be having a symptom imperative - which is a good sign. If you aren't doing the work (you avoided Jan's question) then your TMS symptoms are doing what they do - moving around, and finding a "louder" way to get your attention to do the work.

I'm sure someone has mentioned Claire Weekes to you before. In Hope and Help For Your Nerves she talks directly to insomnia. Now, her mentions of pain are not very pronounced, but they are there. She recognized some of her clients had physical pain as a symptom of anxiety so she didn't focus on the pain.
It doesn't address TMS in general - and Dr. Sarno suggests we deal with our stressors and emotions in general (not just related to the pain) by doing the work he outlined for us consistently. That doesn't mean it can get rough, it just means to keep your eye on the end goal, which is to recognize the TMS mechanism as being temporary but that the internal crap is permanent unless we work through it.

When in my more difficult times I have used earphones and listened to meditative music and just breathed, focusing on the music or the breath and recognizing how my thoughts are influencing the perception of my stress and pain.
Similarly, I use meditation - there are many free guided meditations and some are hours long eg. guided yoga nidra etc. Don't expect perfection, but expect a calming voice and times when you can try to follow direction. Be kind to yourself when you can't and simply redirect your thoughts back to listening.
EFT tapping - it's a great way to help regulate your nervous system and get your mind out of a freakout and back to a bit of a more rational state.

What I have not done is stress or freak out about the lack of sleep. It's a common symptom of anxiety, and as with all TMS symptoms it's temporary if you are doing the work to manage your stress, nervous system, mindset/thoughts etc. You can train yourself to react differently to symptoms over time, and learn to respond to them by engaging in the things that soothe your nervous system and remind you that you are safe.

 

Thank you. But Jan is right. I dont do any of the work because I dont believe this is TmS but come on this website and ask for reassurance. I need to make a decision on what I want to do about this. Thank you both for your kind responses.