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Bad night

SpikeyMark

I had my first panic attack since my diagnosis last night.

I kept my wife awake too before a busy work week.

I did too much at the weekend and burned myself out and ended up ruminating all night about anything and everything.

I know others here don't like Christmas, but I love it and it is very important to me and I convinced myself I was going to ruin it.

I'm not looking for anything really, just wanting to offload and explain if I am a bit dis-jointed and random over the next few days. I didn't sleep at all.

  • I'm really sorry to hear that, SpikeyMark. I'm prone to night time rumination, too, and I hate how it feels to have not had enough sleep.

    I'm conscious that you're not looking for any advice, so please excuse me sharing a tip that I've mentioned here before, just in case it helps (I last used this just last night, when my mind was, once again, revisiting various past issues):

    One thing I've found effective (some of the time) is "cognitive shuffling". This involves distracting and redirecting your mind by scrambling your thoughts, so that they're not following logical sequences - which is what your brain does naturally during the early stages of sleep.

    One way to do this is to think of a word (eg "forest") and then to work through it, letter by letter, coming up with other words that begin with each letter - including creating mental images to go along with each word (or just recalling each word, if you can't visualise things).  

    I learned about it in this book Self Care for Autistic People - 100+ Ways to Recharge, De-Stress and Unmask! 

    If you feel like you'd benefit from having help with the process rather than just doing it all in your head, the author recommends the app mySleepButton (or others like it). 

    I hope you feel better soon x

  • Don't worry mate. Be kind  to yourself and you can work through it.

  • Whether you like Christmas or not, December is a tiring month for everyone. It's partly all the overwhelm of the lead up to Christmas (noisy shops, more to do to prepare for the holidays, etc) and I believe it's also partly due to the short days and long dark nights, which can affect mood.

    I have a Lumie alarm clock, which has a sunrise style light which comes on low and increases over 30 min before turning off. You can have a choice of sounds with it such as birds or ocean waves, or have the radio coming on. Although I'm now retired, since I had a mentally bad day a couple of weeks back I've started setting it again, just at a later time than when I was working, as I think it does help me.

    Just try to put this behind you and focus on making sure you have a schedule which includes breaks from everything, treat yourself to things you like, and look forward to the holidays.

  • I hope you know that rationally you’re not ruining Christmas for anyone. These worries about ruining something important to oneself sound very familiar, but please just make sure you don’t let those thoughts take over completely, cause that way you will feel miserable and while you still wouldn’t be “ruining Christmas”, you would probably enjoy it less. You deserve a happy Christmas and I’m certain that it will be. 
    It’s probably very hard for you to move on from those thoughts. That’s fine and it’s fine if you worry from time to time. You may want to make sure to share those worries with your loved ones so they can help you to make sure the irrational “what if’s” are kept in check and the rational ones don’t happen.