Things I picked up, or worked out and kept, which help

[Beany Boo]

Repeated Regular Sleep

If you're not getting 7 to 8 hours a night of sleep on a regular basis then you are dropping a cartoon anvil on your foot every morning.

It may vary with age and medical condition.

If you're not going to bed regularly at a time that allows you to wake up naturally - rather than with an alarm clock - then you are fucking yourself.

You don't have to wake rested. You can be afraid of when there are no lights on. You can wake up in the night anxious and fight your thoughts until you drop back to sleep, or not. You can leap from your bed, in terror in the night. You can cry yourself to sleep. You can struggle with backache or stomach acid when you first put your head down. You can sleep at strange times of the night or day. You can have days where you sleep most of the day. You can have nights where you stay up all night. Just get enough regular sleep; enough that your overall pattern is regular sleep.

You can have a gross diet, parents who are assholes, a shitty job, a dickhead for a spouse and a tiny life with no future in sight. You can be lost to the world, in your wounded, limping heart. Just get enough regular sleep.

If you're not sleeping enough, many of your symptoms will simply be sleep deprivation. Needing to stay up late is a symptom of sleep deprivation. Yearning for rescue that never comes is a symptom of sleep deprivation. You'll have problems, or even devilish twists to your problems that you don't realise are symptoms - of sleep deprivation. Your anxiety and depression symptoms will be tweaking out on sleep deprivation. And your general resistance to adverse stimuli will be diminished - unnecessarily.

If you are not, or can't, get enough sleep, report it to your healthcare provider. Also report too much sleeping.

I can plot my recovery from the point I started getting enough sleep, on purpose, consistently, on a regular nightly basis. I go to bed early and I put the alarm clock to 8 hours later. I wake up before it.

[oak]

Well said!

I've put a good night's sleep up there with breakfast and dental care as very critical to failure or success. (Also foot care, which I picked up from that movie Forrest Gump. I thought Lt. Dan was a much better and more interesting person than Forrest.)

May I offer something that has really helped me?

It is called "No Screens After 10".

The idea is that screens (TV, laptop, phone, tablet) emit light/motion that excite our fight or flight response.

If that is true, I have no idea. But I am certain that when I follow it I wake up an hour earlier, ready to go.

Just my two cents!

[Beany Boo]

Oak

Good morning

I agree on all counts and would add eye care as well.

Thank you

[Beany Boo]

Clean Sheets

Keep your bed linen washed on a regular basis. Stale sheets and pillows can be enough to trigger anxiety in the night after an awful day. Or, be enough to hold you in your bed, before an awful day.

Depending on your upbringing they can also trigger flashbacks of neglect.

[Beany Boo]

Kite Therapy

Flying a kite in the park is one of the best things you can do, ever. The one I have retails @ $27. You need a wind of about 20 - 25 kilometres an hour at your back with enough space in front of you that you're not overflying trees, lines or roads. If you're cricking your neck, bring something to sit on. Bring sunglasses and music if you have them, a hat and some juice. Try to go when the sun is behind you; afternoons, after work are perfect. It feels like the wind is playing with you.

Half an hour is usually enough.

Oh, and you might think I'm suggesting this because its 'sweet' and 'fun'. That's fine, but it's also genuinely therapeutic in an easy but active and low cost way.

http://www.highlinekites.com/products/P ... -Haze.html

[Beany Boo]

Bedroom Oxygen

If you're bedroom isn't ventilated enough, a gradual build up of carbon dioxide can jolt you awake several hours after you fall asleep. The claustrophobia of a room full of carbon dioxide can also be enough to trigger anxiety before you even wake up. It is also enough to keep you cycling through hyperventilation when it may just be the environment is oxygen starved.

Crack a window and start some cross ventilation or turn on the air conditioning (if you can afford it.)

[Beany Boo]

Food Securiy

After a visit to, not a therapist, but a dietitian I discovered that my food issues were not overeating or poor diet but rather food security. In one session, while going through and improving my eating routine my dietitian said, "so about mid-afternoon, it is okay if you have say a chocolate flavoured yoghurt? If you want." I nearly sobbed like a child and would have if I hadn't been choking on the word, "thank you." It was then I realised that growing up, there was a lot of fearful emotion and body sensations around food security; having enough food, enough that was edible, poor quality produce, food that was embarrassing to show in public, dysfunctional food routines, food that was used as a bargaining chip for demanded behaviour and being shamed for hunger.

One of the things I do now is I buy pre-prepared fresh fruit and vegetables; pre-selected, pre-peeled and cut. It is more expensive and people accidentally shame you for being extravagant but, I realised something crucial in that dietitians office.

I don't dislike eating fruit and vegetables. But I do have trauma around preparing it. Flashbacks of not knowing how to feed myself, cooking burns, knife cuts, monotonous basic staples and expired food to name a few of the less gruesome contributing factors. This is in a house where one parent used refusing to cook as leverage to protest mistreatment while the other used 'treats' as a lure to pull us close and endure their nightly drunken intensity.

So I realised I can eat fresh fruit and vegetables so long as I don't have to go through (what is in reality for me) the trauma of anticipating having to prepare it.

Finally, if this rings a bell I highly recommend the experience of going to a dietitian. I didn't get the sense that mine was psychologically trained but I did get the strong feeling that she was fully aware of my issues.

And I still well up every time I recall her saying that I can have a chocolate flavoured yoghurt.

[oak]

Dude, thanks for sharing.

You are not alone.

Food insecurity is real. Real real.

I am glad to hear you are taking steps to face this. You are demonstrating lots of courage. I admire you.

For what my opinion is worth, I completely encourage you to buy packaged fruits and vegetables. Go for it. I support you.

[Beany Boo]

It's weird, whenever someone says to me, "you can have that food you want", I want to sob fat tears of gratitude.

Just reading you saying that, I feel it now. Thank you oak, it really means a lot.

[Beany Boo]

Trouble with Anxiety at Bedtime

Anxiety makes it difficult for me to fall asleep and sometimes I wake up in the night.

But I discovered that hyperventilation causes tension to accumulate in the muscles of the thoracic spine between the shoulder blades. I get out of bed and use a foam roller for 5 to 10 minutes. I lie on the foam roller and roll up and down slowly over that region, breathing easily all the time. Something about hyperventilation stops you sensing the tension there until you actually apply pressure to it. Once I'm done my breathing feels unrestricted and I find I can fall sleep in a relatively short time.

If you have mobility issues or have never used a roller before I insist you see a Physiotherapist first, to guide you. Saves you seeing one later, when you've fallen off it.

Never roll over your lumbar spine; the part below the ribcage because that area is too sensitive.

This is far and away the better solution to the one that people usually use which is to cycle through the thoughts that are worrying them. I gave up doing that several years ago and rely on this method instead because it works consistently for me. Although I do have a meditation that helps me with worry which I'll share at another time.

You could also use a breathing technique but given it might be the middle of the night, the foam roller is quicker. As I mentioned, you should be breathing easily all the while you are using the foam roller in any case.

I also use a second foam roller to support my head but that's just me.

Example:
http://www.apemedical.com.au/shop/detai ... m-roller-/