Saturday, March 24, 2012

On Not Sleeping

So I'm doing it again, where resistance to being present with suffering includes storytelling about how someone always has it worse, really. One of our friends goes several days in a row without being able to sleep. I'm not dealing with anything like that.



When the adrenals are slagged, while they may not work at full power, they also don't really believe it is ok to take a rest. Having been in emergency response mode for the better part of a decade, it is hard to convince them that the crisis (most of which was manufactured) is really not immanent.

What is happening is the experience of being tired and dizzy all day, working with random symptoms and trying not to panic about those. Having cut out any screen time after 8pm, filling that time before sleep with drawing, quieting the mind. Then finding that sleep just won't come. Breathing through that, counting breaths, finally asleep and something in the flow of our house (a literal catfight under the bed, for instance) will wake me again and then it's 45 min or more of working through annoyance at waking, then spinning on all of the above, about not sleeping, finally returning to counting the breath, calming the mind, and again sleep. But it's not a deep restful sleep.

The predominant description I am finding for this state on the adrenal recovery sites is "wired & tired."

So it was with great thanks that I ran across the below this evening,  from ZenDotStudio:  
I was reminded of a Gil Fronsdal talk on insomnia where he suggested rather than fretting about lack of sleep a person could lie there and appreciate that they were safe and comfortable, resting in the present, rather than building a story around sleeplessness.
So simple a prescription, will just be giving that a try in a few hours.

No comments:

Post a Comment