[healthwork] further (brief) mutterings regarding insomnia

[kaberett]

Thank you all for your comments on my last! Which I still want to reply to, but words-brain is currently mostly going on thesis, but--

-- I think it worth noting for the record that I have been consistently Doing My Breathing Exercises once in bed (count heartbeats to somewhere between 300 and 500, or, on bad nights, 1000, while breathing in for five and out for five; attempting to visualise a counter ticking over is sufficiently challenging to my aphantasic brain that it mostly keeps me from wandering off, and also helps keep me from losing count) and... have only actually ill-advisedly stayed up til 3am reading a book the once, in recent memory. Mostly the tedious exercise does seem to be enough to get me sleepy enough that I then can and do drift off fairly quickly (at least, you know, in combination with the increased dose of amitriptyline I've been on for about the same amount of time...) instead of actually waking back up to the point where I want to pick up a phone or an ereader or something to distract me from the noise in my head.

More Data Needed (I am... not looking forward to dropping my ami dose again), but. So far so useful. And on the one hand I suppose it's not surprising that I have to consciously learn how to go to sleep, given how many other Things I have to consciously learn, but I'm still mildly annoyed no-one [begin meme] told me about child psychology and I just had to read about it in fanfiction on AO3 for myself [end meme].

On which note! To bed.

Comments

[davidgillon]

[[hugs]] sleep well.

[vass]

Sounds like you're doing good work on this.

I'm still mildly annoyed no-one [begin meme] told me about child psychology and I just had to read about it in fanfiction on AO3 for myself [end meme].

Right?

Also, idk if this affects you or not, but flagging it up as a possibility: this (learning to put yourself to sleep) can be one of those self-care things that brings up old pain about not having gotten the care you needed in the past. So... you know. If that was you, you deserved comfort and sleep and having your needs met, and I'm sorry you didn't have it, and you deserve it now too.

[kaberett]

<3

[haggis]

I'm still mildly annoyed no-one [begin meme] told me about child psychology and I just had to read about it in fanfiction on AO3 for myself [end meme].

Is there an AO3 fanfic or is that just a joke? If not, what's the fic?

[sporky_rat]

Probably not a joke.

(I figured out learning to self-soothe was a thing from fic)

[kaberett]

I was in fact thinking about the collected works of recessional! Particular shout-outs to the conversation between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in Chapter 5 of your blue-eyed boys; also Chapter 4; and, perhaps most of all, Chapter 1 of part 2:

And Steve knows that mostly, Bucky sleeps in broken chunks, one REM cycle at a time if not less. He knows he's never seen Bucky this deeply asleep, suspects that if it's happened at all in all the time Bucky's been with him here, it's only been a handful of times.

You wouldn't think you could forget how to fall asleep, how to stay asleep. Steve still thinks that's got to be one of the stupidest tricks the human body - enhanced, unenhanced, who cared - could pull. But you could, and Bucky did, and it's enough of a relief here to see him sleeping that Steve pulls a page from the cliche handbook and stays where he is and stays awake to watch him, at least for a few minutes.

[lilysea]

I frequently wish I had a Baymax, whose job it was to tell me it was time to go to bed, scoop me up and tuck me into bed...



I am Not Good at putting myself to bed

All the times I have spent hours tossing and turning in bed with pain or restless legs doesn't help, either,

- I now have going-to-bed avoidance...