I'm driving myself crazy!!!

[ghall]

I'm driving myself crazy. Lately I haven't been able to sleep because my mind is always focused on negative stuff. I can't help it, no matter what I do nothing seems to help. It's so maddening, not to mention I average 6 hours of sleep a night because of this. I tend to worry alot, which is part of it, I guess. I just don't know what to do about it, since it's ruining my life by making me sleep deprived I have to do something.

 

[shinji]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qigong ?

 

[iMacZealot]

I'm driving myself crazy. Lately I haven't been able to sleep because my mind is always focused on negative stuff. I can't help it, no matter what I do nothing seems to help. It's so maddening, not to mention I average 6 hours of sleep a night because of this. I tend to worry alot, which is part of it, I guess. I just don't know what to do about it, since it's ruining my life by making me sleep deprived I have to do something.

Six hours, eh? I'm dealing with an average of three.

But I know where you're coming from; about a month ago, all I could think of were random negative thoughts--- I kept thinking of times I had offended people or times I was offended by others.

How did I get over it? I don't know, it's a hard mindset to shake. It eventually just went away. Perhaps because I started focusing on enjoying my life more.

Hope that helps.

 

[LizKat]

This is just stuff that works for me, suggested at various times by counselors and physicians (and siblings involved in health care):

1. Turn off the TV and commercial radio.

2. Eliminate alcohol intake. It's a depressant. Withdrawing from it as it metabolizes out of your system is a cardiovascular stressor and elevates the physiology of anxiety. In short, if you habitually use much alcohol, it puts your body and brain on a rollercoaster. If you use much alcohol, don't abruptly stop using it or you may have seizures. Get some help from a physician who knows something about alcohol dependence.

3. Reduce caffeine and sugar intake.

4. Get some exercise, even if it's a stroll around the back yard or the block.

5. Spend more time with people, less time online or on the phone or texting etc. Being with other people and talking with them really helps put things into different perspective.

6. Yesterday is toast, tomorrow not here yet, today's what there is and if I cannot do anything about something today, try not to rent space to it in my head! I have a still life of Buddha with an empty red bowl next to him in my library. I look up at that sometimes and take some gnarly ol' problem and visualize putting it in the red bowl. Just for now. I tell myself I can take it out when I come up with some practical way of dealing with whatever it is. Meantime, let Buddha have it and move on.

7. Count blessings or fortunate circumstances: we all have some.

8. Confide in a friend that you're a bit off top form and would he/she be honest about remarking to you on any changes in you that seem worrisome to him or her.

9. Play music for awhile every day. It's medicine since ancient times.

10. Make a difference in someone else's life: give a shirt or a pie plate or a portable radio to the Salvation Army, shovel an elderly neighbor's sidewalk or mow their lawn, go to the supermarket and scarf up stuff on one of those ten-for-ten-bucks sales, then truck it on over to the local food bank.

Well that's enough from this preachy bee. Still, this stuff works for me.

 

[jaydub]

This is just stuff that works for me, suggested at various times by counselors and physicians (and siblings involved in health care):<snip>Well that's enough from this preachy bee. Still, this stuff works for me.

An excellent list of suggestions. Also, I know that many people also need varied amounts of sleep to feel good. My girlfriend can sleep for 8 hours and not feel 100% rested, whereas I can get 6 and feel just fine. For me, sometimes getting too much sleep is what messes me up. Still, I think the key is to balance out some things.

I particularly like the bit about counting whatever blessings you do have. It might be simplistic on my part, but every night when I go to sleep, I'm thankful that I've had a good day (or even a bad one, it was still one where I was alive!). I'm not what I would call an optimist, but I always think things can get worse, and if I pine away waiting for it to happen, it's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy.

Good luck to the OP though. It's not always easy to overcome those things. I used to have a lot of problems with my sleep patterns when I was going through a particularly nasty part of my life earlier this year. I found that the best thing I could do is to get in some naps during the day wherever I could, to at least help me feel more rested. It didn't always make me feel like I had a good night's sleep, but at least I wasn't physically drained. Eventually, it passed and I'm sleeping better than I ever have (and I truly mean that, the last 11 years weren't always kind to me...).

 

[MACDRIVE]

Negative thoughts? That's nothing. I've got a voice in my head that tells me several times a day to blow myself up, but I don't know how to make a bomb.

 

[Mr.Noisy]

I'm driving myself crazy. Lately I haven't been able to sleep because my mind is always focused on negative stuff. I can't help it, no matter what I do nothing seems to help. It's so maddening, not to mention I average 6 hours of sleep a night because of this. I tend to worry alot, which is part of it, I guess. I just don't know what to do about it, since it's ruining my life by making me sleep deprived I have to do something.

Sleep deprivation is down to 2 things, anxiety or excitement, either your worried about something, usually money or a partner (if anything like my wife then you worry about both ) or your over excited about something (like making a purchase), best way to get a good sleep is a nice milky drink (or several beers ) before turning in, and read for a while, macworld or mac format or alternative good book (no 18+ stuff, sleeping will be hard beg the pun),till your eyes start drooping, also excessive caffine or noise from music or people can be a pain, try cotton wool in your lugs (remember to take it out when you wake) i find sleeping hard but i work all hours of day & night, when i'm working days i get about 7.5 hrs sleep or if working nights then 6 hours but a friend of mine goes to sleep at 0100 and gets up at about 1730hrs next day, i don't know how he can do it, but at work he complains he is tired