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EMDR for insomnia


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Hey guys,

 

So IDK if anyone else has tried it, but im an adventurous type and am starting EMDR for insomnia. My biggest problem is that im so afraid of not sleeping all night from a stint 10 years ago, that fear of not sleeping causes my insomnia. Basically i got PTSD from not sleeping 10 years ago when tapering off of valium. I had some real bad stretches of insomnia where i got zero sleep for days, id sleep a night our of pure exhaustion, then back to no sleep for days...and the cycle went on and on to the point where i had such high anxiety from not sleeping all night that next morning all i could do was walk all day long. It was literally a living hell. At this point since my xanax stopped working, instead of taking more im drinking alcohol to fall asleep. Yeah i know not good.

 

Anyways, i have had EMDR therapy in past with very high success when it comes to other types of trauma. EMDR works very well with phobias, and that is what this is...a fear at this point of not sleeping. So ill tell you how it goes, if it works for me maybe it will work for some of you. Its not easy though, anytime i go in for this therapy for about 24hrs after i have pretty high anxiety, and your mind and emotions are all stirred up. I just had my first session last week, and today is my 2nd. She said it would take quite a few sessions to nip this in the bud but that she was confident i could in the end beat the insomnia by losing my fear of it, by having no emotions tied to not sleeping. Now what happens is if i stay up all night next day i have super high anxiety i cant get rid of.

 

Last night i tried not drinking all day and night just to see if my first session helped...well after not sleeping around 3am i drank a beer or two and fell asleep, woke up at 7am for work....sigh. So far after one session nope. She did say dont expect it to work right away. If i could sleep even 5 hours a night none of this would be an issue....people that sleep dont understand insomnia and how bad it can make EVERYTHING. It can literally make or break you. Im sure you all agree that even these tapers would be tollerable if we could magically sleep every night. Its really the lack of sleep that kills me, and i havent even started tapering yet! I Just got to the point where the .5 of Xanax stopped working completely about a month ago, so im back to the original state i was and why i started taking xanax (insomnia due to a divorce after 26 years)

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  • 2 months later...

Thanks for sharing this. Do you have any updates?

 

I was at one point curious about EMDR for other issues, that Im feeling like I'm in a good place with now. I've had great success with other forms of subconscious work such as hypnotherapy and NLP for emotional well-being, anxiety, depression, trauma, etc, so I'm generally very interested in things like EMDR. My partner keeps suggesting I try it for my insomnia, but I've actually been reluctant to make the investment because I suspect it wont work in this situation. My logic being: they say that the main reasons why something like hypnotherapy wouldn't work for someone is if they either don't believe in it, or, they have some sort of brain damage. Personally, I consider what I have to be brain damage. Hypnotherapy healed my lifelong anxiety, depression, and obsessive reliving a traumatic event I had witnessed (all pre-benzo use). Since my benzo horror show, none of my sessions have helped my insomnia.

 

On the other hand, you're seeking to heal the anxiety ABOUT insomnia... which could invite more success.

 

Either way, I'm curious about any updates you have.

 

Best.

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Thanks for sharing this. Do you have any updates?

 

I was at one point curious about EMDR for other issues, that Im feeling like I'm in a good place with now. I've had great success with other forms of subconscious work such as hypnotherapy and NLP for emotional well-being, anxiety, depression, trauma, etc, so I'm generally very interested in things like EMDR. My partner keeps suggesting I try it for my insomnia, but I've actually been reluctant to make the investment because I suspect it wont work in this situation. My logic being: they say that the main reasons why something like hypnotherapy wouldn't work for someone is if they either don't believe in it, or, they have some sort of brain damage. Personally, I consider what I have to be brain damage. Hypnotherapy healed my lifelong anxiety, depression, and obsessive reliving a traumatic event I had witnessed (all pre-benzo use). Since my benzo horror show, none of my sessions have helped my insomnia.

 

On the other hand, you're seeking to heal the anxiety ABOUT insomnia... which could invite more success.

 

Either way, I'm curious about any updates you have.

 

Best.

 

I have done EMDR many times for other subjects, it works everytime. Its got nothing to do with if you believe in it or not...and i started to try it for insomnia but i stopped. Problem is with EMDR it can really stir up alot of stuff. Yes i do believe it can help with insomnia for this reason only: If the reason you are having insomnia is because you are worried about not sleeping so it causes anxiety then causes insomnia. That or past trauma. It will not work if your having insomnia just because of tapering off of drugs. I stopped after my first session because for me it can cause me to have a ton of anxiety, anger, blah blah blah issues for a few days or a week until your brain resorts stuff out. At the time, i was drinking....taking xanax....just got divorced my life was a living hell. I was barely hanging on, last thing i needed was to add an additional layer of stuff on top of it.

 

So to sum it up, yes def try EMDR for insomnia if what you have is a fear of not sleeping, or if you get anxiety from not sleeping and that is whats keeping you awake. Basically with EMDR what will happen is you just wont care anymore if you stay up. So say you try to go to sleep, and cant......instead of the anxiety building (which makes you stay up even longer) it doesnt bother you AT ALL so I believe you would be able to at some point fall asleep. What keeps me up is anxiety from not falling asleep...i basically have PTSD from 10 years ago getting off this shit that caused such high anxiety if i cant fall asleep like in first hour.

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Thank you for the explanation. This jives with what I was suspecting about EMDR with this issue / how and why I altered the goal of my hypnotherapy session, and how I'm trying to direct the work that I'm doing with my coach. Im just coming out of the darkest 2.5 weeks since this "began" all based on my expectations and perceptions of whats happening. My baseline is much better than a year ago, yet recent windows of success then closing, along with discoveries of new sensitivities I didn't notice before left me absolutely leveled. So then I turned to the sleep aids that I've been trying to go without. Which then stimulated more anxiety and despair and left me getting tiny bits more rest but leaving my physically unwell. Basically my frustration about the experience created this snowball effect. I'm finally leveling out after a recommitment to the practices that keep me grounded and at peace with my situation. But so much of it has to do with humility, acceptance, and embracing a different version of my life than the one I had dreamt for myself.

 

I've recently been trying to better understand and address the surges of cortisol/adrenaline/blood sugar at night/during the early morning when I wake. I think our paranoia about sleep is real, but then the imbalance of stress hormones in our body both perpetuates the lack of sleep AND the paranoia/frustration/anger/resentment that might come up. I'm such a stable person most of the time, but the despair that I feel during those early morning cortisol/blood sugar/adrenaline spikes just feels so different than my baseline. I've found some helpful threads on here and I'm trying some new supplements.

 

Good to know that you've had success with it and can always come back. There's so many tools for healing but there's a time and a place for them. And with this rollercoaster ride we're on, its helpful to keep in mind that there will be chapters to this story.

 

Wishing you well.

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