- Hi, everyone.
In today's video, I am going to be discussing
why I don't like going to sleep.
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Hi, and welcome back
to the Living Well with Schizophrenia channel.
If you're new here, my name is Lauren,
and I make videos about what it's like
to live with schizoaffective disorder, or schizophrenia.
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Okay, so sleep is a big issue
when it comes to managing mental illnesses,
like schizoaffective disorder, or schizophrenia.
And I think it's important to kind of share a little bit
about why sleep is so difficult for me.
So there's the typical issues around sleep,
where you can't sleep enough,
or you sleep too much, and those kinds of things.
But there's also another factor that I want to talk about,
which is the factor that I just don't like going to sleep.
I don't want to go to sleep.
This is for a number of reasons,
but I think the most obvious one
would be that when I close my eyes,
I tend to have a really overactive imagination,
or maybe it's hallucinations.
It's hard to tell,
because I'm closing my eyes, and I can't actually see it,
but I do see it in my eyelids, hard to explain.
But I guess basically, an overactive imagination,
and I see patterns, or shapes, or things,
or scenarios playing out in my mind when I close my eyes.
This can be fairly mundane,
but it can also be a little bit scary at times
if I'm envisioning more, I don't know, scary things.
And I think I'm feeling particularly vulnerable
when I'm alone at night in the dark.
I'm trying to enter subconsciousness.
It's a little bit more vulnerable.
And this kind of feeling also happens
in instances like when I'm in the shower,
when I close my eyes in the shower,
I get the same sort of hallucinations
on the backs of my eyelids sort of thing.
And my imagination runs wild there too.
And I think it's this feeling
of being a little bit more vulnerable.
And so this is kind of why I've fallen into the habit
of waiting for my partner, Rob, to go to sleep,
because it just feels a little bit more safe and secure.
Of course, now this also impacts the amount of sleep
that I need, and thus not getting,
because I'm going to bed later when my partner goes to bed.
Rob also wanted me to mention
that it's impacting our relationship,
because I'm forcing him to go to bed earlier,
and maybe it's fostering some more codependence,
but I don't know, that's another video.
And so there's this feeling
of kind of being a little bit unnerving,
experiencing this stimuli when I'm trying to go to sleep,
and I'm closing my eyes to go to sleep.
For me, this feels pretty frustrating,
because it's a time to kind of quiet your thoughts,
and calm down before you go to sleep.
And my mind is just not always capable of doing that.
It's kind of racing through a bunch of things,
and showing me a bunch of images and stuff.
And it's hard to get into that state
you need to get in in order to fall asleep,
which can be frustrating.
And then on top of all this,
I think another big reason
that I just don't like going to sleep
is the kind of ingrained feeling around going to sleep
that was ingrained in me
when I was dealing with really
serious periods of depression,
where I would make it through a day,
be up at night, and nighttime felt kind of safe for me.
And it felt like if I didn't go to bed,
it could last forever.
And I would just never have to engage
in things I didn't want to engage in in life.
And it just felt like a safe time of day for me.
And so I dreaded going to sleep,
because then that nice safe period would end.
And also it meant that I would have to wake up again
in the morning, and kind of do it all again.
And I think that other people
who may have experienced severe depression
kind of understand this feeling of dread
about having to get up again the next morning.
And there are even times where
I just wish that I wouldn't wake up,
and so going to bed became this really kind of
awful experience,
and something that I really tried to put off,
and avoid as much as possible.
And so, I'm not in that place anymore
where I dread losing that safe space at night,
or dread waking up in the morning.
But I think that some of those feelings, thoughts,
and feelings about going to bed have kind of lingered,
and stuck around.
And so all of this kind of culminates in
me avoiding bedtime still.
And this has a few impacts,
because I'm a person who needs quite a bit of sleep.
Generally I need about nine or 10 hours
in order to function well the next day,
and in order to keep my mental health in check,
and maintain wellness.
When I'm moving my bedtime back,
I still have to get up with my infant, and my kids.
And so it really cuts down on the amount of sleep
that I can get, which impacts my mental health,
which also impacts the quality of sleep that I'm getting
when my mental health is deteriorating.
So it kind of ends up being this bad cycle
where I go to bed later,
which decreases my mental wellbeing.
And then that impacts the quality of sleep I'm getting,
which further decreases my mental wellbeing,
which makes me want to stay up later, and not go to bed,
which, it just keeps spiraling like that.
Another kind of factor about why
I don't really like going to sleep
is that sleep is often something that I struggle with.
I think probably because of my illness,
and maybe medications or whatnot,
but sleep is definitely something
that I struggle at times with,
whether it's waking up frequently throughout the night,
or not being able to fall asleep, or waking up early.
And it just kind of becomes this overwhelming task
that I am not always capable of doing a good job at.
So to kind of address some of these things,
I have tried sleep medication in the past,
but I don't really like this,
because I don't feel that I get
the greatest quality of sleep when I take that medication.
And also when I wake up in the morning,
I wake up feeling very lethargic and groggy,
even more so than I typically do,
because of the meds that I'm on, which isn't great,
and doesn't serve me well
in terms of functioning well throughout the day.
So some other things that I found
have been important in terms of addressing this
not wanting to go to sleep at night,
have been keeping up with really good sleep hygiene.
And if you want to learn more about what I mean
when I say sleep hygiene,
you can check out our video
going over what sleep hygiene is, and why it's important.
Another thing that I've recently tried
that I've actually found kind of helpful
is a weighted blanket.
So what I was talking about about feeling more vulnerable,
or unsafe, or whatnot, when you're going to sleep,
that kind of helps with it.
I've found that the extra weight on me
helps to calm me down, calm my mind down,
and make me feel a little bit more safe and secure.
I really only use this for napping though,
because I think I move around too much at night,
and it's kind of hard to move around
under the weight of the blanket.
So maybe that's a potential con of it,
but it might be nice for just getting you into a state
where you can maybe fall asleep,
and then removing it, and going to sleep.
So I always kind of thought
that maybe it was just me who struggled with
the idea of going to sleep, and not wanting to go to sleep,
but recently through chatting with other people
on our Discord community,
I found out that I am not alone in this,
and this is something that other people struggle with too.
So knowing how important sleep is
to maintaining good mental health,
I would love to hear if you have any other tips
for addressing this,
if it's something that you experience too.
If you'd like to share those in the comments below,
we would love to hear from you.
So I hope you found this video helpful,
or insightful in some way.
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make sure to subscribe.
Also just a quick reminder
that if you'd like to help support the creation
of these videos,
to please check out the link to our Patreon page.
Thank you so much again for watching,
and as always, wishing you and your loved ones good health.
See you in the next video, bye.