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Who Needs a Therapist When (Pt. 2)

I'm anxious even in my dreams.

By Haybitch AbersnatchyPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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Image Courtesy of Christopher Campbell CC

Me. I need a Therapist. Thank you internet for being one. All tips will go to someday affording a real professional.

So I have sleep issues. Just not the sleep issues that any of my medical and therapy professionals have expected. I'd tell them I had nightmares and they would prescribe sleep aids and talk about insomnia solutions. Only, the nightmares never woke me up—if anything, they caused the opposite. I am, and have always been, a champion sleeper. Pretty much at will, I can sleep 10, 12, or even 14 hours. I can wake up in the morning, do necessary things like walk the dog or take the trash out, lay back in bed, and be asleep in minutes. I'm great at napping, and it takes a Herculean amount of anxiety and stress before it impacts my ability to fall asleep. Even then, a "sleepless" night is any night where I get less than six hours.

It's the waking up that I can't quite get the hang of. Dreams linger and bleed into reality until everything is one long, tortuous stress dream. These aren't nightmares, but hours and hours of anxiety and stress and frustration. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes the dreams are even good. There's occasional triumphs and satisfaction and sometimes even success.

But the battle never seems to end. So I sleep and I'm drowning. I crawl my way up onto the beach but there is a battle there and then I am hunted and then I am scavenging and then my parents are there and are fighting and arguing and we are on a boat only the boat is sinking and no one will believe me and the zombies are coming in the east door and we must hide and I am saving someone important even though I am being attacked, attacked, attacked. And when I wake up, the world is a fog of stress and nerves and anxiety and I don't even get the satisfaction of forgetting it all later.

When things get really bad, like when I worked in Germany and literally had to get up at 6:30 and couldn't go to bed until 10:30 (I know, eight hours, but apparently it wasn't enough), I develop sleep paralysis. I had sleep paralysis for about eight months that year, and I still have stress dreams about that time. Every now and then I'll have a single case of it, and it ruins me for about a week after.

So, since it is possible that a significant number of my depression symptoms have to do with chronic fatigue, my doctor wanted to try to rule out sleep issues as causing my depression. This is also why I'm off meds right now—depression meds do stupid things to your sleep cycles, and you can't test for anything when everything is wonky from side effects. (Also, I kept having to quit antidepressants because they made my dreams even MORE vivid! Such fun).

But those tests never happened, because of loss of insurance (interesting fact—the C-Pap sleep apnea test costs almost $300 without insurance! And I'm sure I don't have restrictive sleep apnea, but I have to do that test before insurances/doctors will consider more expensive/more thorough sleep tests!), so I've been trying to treat my sleep issues in my own way: back to restricting eating times (no food four hours before bedtime), worshipping at the altar of sleep health (dark rooms, regular bedtimes, temperature regulation!), and a little something extra on the side.

Because, you know what works best? Weed! Fun fact, THC levels are directly correlated with reduced REM sleep! Guess what I want to kill with fire? REM sleep!

The only problem is building up the level in my blood without also causing issues in my personal and professional life (waking up high is not really better than waking up sleep deprived). I've never been a smoker, but gummies last about 4 hours longer than I'd like them to. And I keep having to visit Utah for family things—which means I lose all that build up every couple of weeks. Eventually I'll get there. I'm just sick of being tired, already.

In the meantime, I will continue to spend my nights rescuing princesses, breaking up fights, and trying not to drown in the wasteland of my dreams. Wish me luck on my self-medicated journey, internet. I'll need it.

Part 1

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About the Creator

Haybitch Abersnatchy

I'm just a poor girl, from a poor family; spare me this life of millennial absurdity. I also sometimes write steamy romances under the pen name Michaela Kay such as "To Wake A Walker."

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