I promise you, I will make this quick; if you’re like me, anxiety is not a topic I want to stay with for too long. A few nights back, I couldn’t sleep (not an unusual state). It got me thinking (not a helpful activity in this case) of how long I’ve been a tried and true partner-in-hand with insomnia. She’s been my bedfellow for the last five years, ever since I ended my experience as a foster mom and proceeded to pick apart my life strand by strand.
I suppose the trade-off for a whole new “you” may be a loss of sleep.
Anxiety and insomnia fed into each other in the nastiest of symbiosis. The anxiety made my thoughts spin, which made it hard to sleep, which in turn made me tired, and less able to cope, which then made me tired the next day, and more befuddled when headed to bed.
I’m sure you get it. Despite the occasional bout here and there, I’m happy to say that I’ve found a workable place with my insomnia. When I get the opportunity to share my struggle and success, I invariably am asked the million-dollar question: What is your secret?
I can tell you it wasn’t what I expected. Though exercise, meditation and a light amount of melatonin did help, what ultimately gave me power over the anxiety was by learning to play along with its game – and then win.
The first night in this constant waking nightmare that I recall actually feeling like I calmed myself enough to sleep naturally without simply riding the wave of the anxiety into eventual physically-induced oblivion was the night I asked myself the question, “Can anything good come from this?” It was a rhetorical question; I was angry and despairing of ever getting better without heavy medication or intense therapy.
But I tried a completely new technique. I forced myself to come up with ways insomnia might make me a better human being. Or make my life stronger. Or be braver. I honestly don’t remember, it was 3 am.
Here is the thing to remember about anxiety: It’s a fucking liar. It will pull the most classic mind trick on us in the book: Your insecurities aren’t insecurities; they’re the truth.
If anxiety uses lies to incapacitate me, why not trick it into thinking it’s a useless load of mental garbage? So I reasoned.
For example, one thing I often remind myself is that if I just completely can’t sleep and I have to roll out of bed after tossing and turning and then go teach a couple hours of yoga classes and I manage to do it, and well, HOW BADASS AM I? And how much resilience am I learning? I also decided one time to just get up out of bed and do some important things. How important? I don’t know, but it tricked my brain into thinking anxiety was making me productive.
If anxiety can create opportunities or make us productive, it is possible it may lose its greatest potency – to make us afraid.
However, the whole process engages in some heavy-handedness with the concept of “truth”. Some of the things I tell myself to combat anxiety are at best sketchy and at worst about as reliable as the anxiety itself. But if we can accept anxious thoughts as truth, it may be possible to trick it into losing its power.
Anyway. These are my thoughts. I often get the impression that folks who ask about how I calmed down and lowered my blood pressure, etc. want me to tell them it’s deep breathing and meditation, and it’s not NOT those things. I teach them and advocate them.
But honestly, for me, more than anything…it was lying :D Or at least, bending the truth a little.
That was my experience.
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