Victoria
Senior Member
- Messages
- 1,377
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
Jenbooks,
I used to dread going to bed 5-6 years ago. I also was in a constant state of anxiety & stress back then.
No matter what time I went to bed back then, I would always wake up 2 hours later in extreme pain (mainly bowel/stomach pain). It would last for 4-5 hours. Sometimes I contemplated getting up, dressing & calling a taxi to the local hospital emergency dept & asking for a shot of serious pain killers. After a couple of hours of this excruciating pain, I would wish I was dead. I would drift off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, just before the alarm rang for me to get up to get ready for work.
I would be so exhausted that I knew I wouldn't be able to think straight & would ring my boss & leave a message that I would be late for work. I then lay down to get a few more hours sleep & would arrive at work at 10-11.00am. But 2.00pm my back pain would be so severe that I would sometimes have to leave work & get a taxi home. (Can't remember how I kept up with my workload back in those days).
Then I started getting up & writing a diary in the early hours (waiting for the severe pain episode to run it's 4-5 hour course). This writing down (what I was thinking & feeling) not only passed the time, but gave me a 'voice' to express my frustration & anger.
Even though I knew that each nightly episode would be over in 4-5 hours, I dreaded going to sleep.
It must have been about May 2006, that a muscular/skeletal specialist who was doing the nerve blocks on my spine who finally diagnosed Fibromyalgia & my GP presecribed Amitryptiline to help me sleep. I DID sleep much better after that, but it wasn't the whole solution to my problems. Note: I had already been diagnosed with IBS back in 2004. And had been diagnosed with severe spinal disc disease also.
I must have written about 300 pages of misery & anger over a course of about 2 years. I was thinking about transcribing it into a book at one stage (but the thought of re-reading all those words was depressing in itself LOL).
Unless you can resolve your anxiety, or reduce it to a manageable level, your physical symptoms are not manageable either.
That's my theory.
You have to treat the mind as well as the body. They are totally interconnected.
I cannot stress enough how resolving your mental health is of the utmost importance.
I used to dread going to bed 5-6 years ago. I also was in a constant state of anxiety & stress back then.
No matter what time I went to bed back then, I would always wake up 2 hours later in extreme pain (mainly bowel/stomach pain). It would last for 4-5 hours. Sometimes I contemplated getting up, dressing & calling a taxi to the local hospital emergency dept & asking for a shot of serious pain killers. After a couple of hours of this excruciating pain, I would wish I was dead. I would drift off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, just before the alarm rang for me to get up to get ready for work.
I would be so exhausted that I knew I wouldn't be able to think straight & would ring my boss & leave a message that I would be late for work. I then lay down to get a few more hours sleep & would arrive at work at 10-11.00am. But 2.00pm my back pain would be so severe that I would sometimes have to leave work & get a taxi home. (Can't remember how I kept up with my workload back in those days).
Then I started getting up & writing a diary in the early hours (waiting for the severe pain episode to run it's 4-5 hour course). This writing down (what I was thinking & feeling) not only passed the time, but gave me a 'voice' to express my frustration & anger.
Even though I knew that each nightly episode would be over in 4-5 hours, I dreaded going to sleep.
It must have been about May 2006, that a muscular/skeletal specialist who was doing the nerve blocks on my spine who finally diagnosed Fibromyalgia & my GP presecribed Amitryptiline to help me sleep. I DID sleep much better after that, but it wasn't the whole solution to my problems. Note: I had already been diagnosed with IBS back in 2004. And had been diagnosed with severe spinal disc disease also.
I must have written about 300 pages of misery & anger over a course of about 2 years. I was thinking about transcribing it into a book at one stage (but the thought of re-reading all those words was depressing in itself LOL).
Unless you can resolve your anxiety, or reduce it to a manageable level, your physical symptoms are not manageable either.
That's my theory.
You have to treat the mind as well as the body. They are totally interconnected.
I cannot stress enough how resolving your mental health is of the utmost importance.
