- May 22, 2004
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I've had sleep problems as long as I can remember. It boils down to excessive brain activity. It seems that as soon as I hit the pillow, my mind goes into overdrive. I close my eyes, and a flood of thoughts erupt in my brain. It might start off with something on my mind that day, or something else I was worried or depressed about, but it's like my mind bounces from one random thought to the next for hours and hours, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with the original thought at all. I can't even say I'm ruminating on anything, and wish it were that simple. It's just that I feel like I'm thinking about a dozen things at once...
I remember back when I did group therapy for depression some years ago. We had to do a mindfulness exercise where we all closed our eyes in order to focus on breathing, and the instructions were simple. We did not have to stop thinking about things, but whenever a thought came, we had to take note of it and then go back to focusing on breathing. Kathy, the psychologist teaching us about it says for her, thoughts come along at least once every thirty seconds. Not only does it seem more frequent for me, but the flood of so many thoughts overwhelms me and makes it hard to sleep. At this point, the vast majority of nights, I at least have to take melatonin, and even that occasionally doesn't work, and I have to resort to cold remedy or anti-nausea pills to get some rest, and it's all because my mind doesn't turn off. It has been like that since I was eight years old, and I don't see it stopping anytime soon. Anyone else deal with this, and if so, what do you do about it?
I remember back when I did group therapy for depression some years ago. We had to do a mindfulness exercise where we all closed our eyes in order to focus on breathing, and the instructions were simple. We did not have to stop thinking about things, but whenever a thought came, we had to take note of it and then go back to focusing on breathing. Kathy, the psychologist teaching us about it says for her, thoughts come along at least once every thirty seconds. Not only does it seem more frequent for me, but the flood of so many thoughts overwhelms me and makes it hard to sleep. At this point, the vast majority of nights, I at least have to take melatonin, and even that occasionally doesn't work, and I have to resort to cold remedy or anti-nausea pills to get some rest, and it's all because my mind doesn't turn off. It has been like that since I was eight years old, and I don't see it stopping anytime soon. Anyone else deal with this, and if so, what do you do about it?
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