Suffering From Monkey Brain

Antidepressants do a good job on rumination and they are not addicting, or at least they do for me. Prozac turns off the "round and round" in my head..

honeybair, what you're experiencing sounds like a carbon copy of me, except that I've been having trouble sleeping for many years. I haven't slept well for all the reasons you mention.

My doctor prescribed .5mg Lorazepam and it works, but only for about half the night most nights. So I've given up the fight and just sit up two-three hours, then back to bed and eventually fall back to sleep. Fortunately, I'm retired so I can sleep as late as I want in the a.m. if I have nothing on the calendar.

I don't know why your doctor thinks you should get off the medicine but perhaps the info in this article is the reason:

These Pills Could Be Next U.S. Drug Epidemic, Public Health Officials Say

The article mentions Clonazepam (traded as Klonopin), diazepam (Valium) and alprazolam (Xanax)

As an aside, I've stopped taking Lorazepam nightly on my own. I found that my sleeping pattern is the same with or without the med, though this is not the case for you. Not saying I'll never take another one of these pills again, but I don't really want to do so regularly.

I wish you well.

As i have said, i have a long history with insomnia. Many nights i would just lie there with my brain in a whirl, thinking: "I'm not sleeping. OMG, I'm not sleeping! What if I can't sleep? OMG! I need to sleep. I need to sleep, but I'm not sleeping!" These thoughts would run in an endless circle for a couple hours until my brain finally shut off.

I have learned to do positive self-talk when my brain starts up.

BRAIN: "OMG OMG, I'M NOT SLEEPING! OMG!"

me: "its okay. You know you'll fall asleep eventually"

BRAIN: "OMG OMG SLEEP STOOPID BRAIN! SLEEP!"

me: "You're okay. Nothing bad is happening. You will fall asleep, i promise."

Brain: "But what if i don't fall asleep? I need to sleep!"

me: "You will. Trust me, you will fall asleep."

Brain: "But what if i don't?"

me: "Well, then we'll just lay here a while. Nothing bad will happen if you don't sleep. You're okay."

brain: "okay, but..."

me: "Its okay. Just lay here with me."

Believe it or not, this actually calms me. Occasionally it may take an hour or so for me to relax enough to fall asleep, but i no longer FEAR the insomnia. I know from experience now that nothing terrible will happen. And eventually i do fall asleep.

I'm a night person and if I stay up past a certain point, my brain will go in to overdrive and dumb things on the internet I typically have no time for become immensely important in my overtired mind. So my first rule of falling asleep is to try to do it before I get that "second wind".

Second, I've discovered that if I take a hot shower and get in bed before I am too tired, the drop in my body temperature causes me to get sleepy enough to fall asleep. Additionally, my sister insisted I started taking melatonin before bed...about 3mg, because an oncologist she knows recommended I take it. I've found it has cured me of myoclonic jerks that used to wake me as I would be falling asleep.

I have one more trick. Sometimes as I am laying in bed I will start to make a video blog about whatever is on my mind. I never finish them. I get too drowsy. Apparently I find myself boring :-)

I have used Xanax in the past. I use it now if I get into a bad sleeping pattern. First you must address the pain. Good luck with your LE therapist. I have it too. It stinks.

My best home remedies are listening to piano music and holding my thumb. I usually have a cup of sleepy time tea and spray my bed with lavender.

Good luck!

I got wrapped today too. It is a challenge. Glad you told him your fears and are getting it checked out!

it's down half a centimeter. Wahoo. Maybe only two more days wrapped. It's driving me insane. Just ordered new gloves and sleeves from lymphadiva.

Very hard to function and even less patience with my kids.

Glad you slept. That's s big deal.