How I beat Insomnia. The real root cause of Insomnia

 

My Extreme Insomnia before my suicide attempt: https://youtu.be/dCxefGPTjLo

My Story: my failed suicide attempt when I was 18. https://youtu.be/xi-on4PmKuE My Experience in a Psych Ward. https://youtu.be/_a4jdSX_CJ4 Download a free PDF of LEAP at: http://nancyxia.com

Are you somebody who lives with chronic insomnia, and do you feel like you have racing thoughts at night that keep you from falling asleep? Are you taking sleeping pills on a regular basis and are they becoming increasingly ineffective? In this video, I want to share how I have successfully recovered from my chronic insomnia.

The first time I realized that I had trouble falling asleep was in grade 5. It was the night before school restarts after a summer break. It wasn’t an exciting or meaningful event for me, yet I stayed awake for the entire night. This continued to happen for the next couple of years. It didn’t bother me because my energy level was great the next day, I didn’t have a headache, I was able to function normally. However, things changed for the worse by the time I was in high school. I felt like I had this enormous amount of mental energy all the time. Especially at night, I couldn’t stop thinking. And the thoughts were so potent as if they were audible. And most of those thoughts were random and meaningless. I had very little control over them.

My insomnia became increasingly frequent as I grew older. My sleep was easily manipulated and disrupted by events happening in my life. For example, if I had to do a school presentation the next day, I would not be able to sleep the night before.

Although my mental health breakdown officially started at the age of 18, now I think about it, my insomnia was one of the early signs of mental illness even when I was a child.  Okay let me tell you how I am right now. I have been taking and staying on bipolar medication since 2007. My bipolar disorder has been successfully treated and maintained and managed. My insomnia along with other symptoms of Bipolar Disorder has been properly managed.

Right now, it’s easy to fall asleep, my sleep is deep and robust. I no longer have an excessive amount of mental energy. The pace of my thoughts is much slower, I have better self-control on what I want to think about. And the quality of my thoughts is much better, brighter, and more positive. In my case, I did not specifically take medication to treat my insomnia, rather, it gets better because my mental illness is treated.

To make my point clear, I want to talk about another woman’s story. Her name is Makiyo, and she is a lovely Asian actress that I adore. Recently I watched a video of her talking about her insomnia. In the video, she said, “I started having insomnia in elementary school. My record was not sleeping for 60 hours straight. Though my body was tired, when I lay down, I had many thoughts running in my head. Am I going to brush my teeth tomorrow, what I am going to eat, should I take a shower? I told myself not to think about such pointless thoughts. I often had a conversation with myself. The reporter asked, have you been taking sleep medication for a long time? Yes, since I was 18 years old and it’s been 18 years. I can’t quit them cold turkey. I have had 2 or 3 seizures as a result of trying to go off them. I would have anxiety and other withdrawal symptoms. In 2012, during a low point in my career, I think I had depression. I thought about jumping off a building. But I live on the first floor, so I couldn’t do it.”

Based on what she shared, it’s exactly the same as my experience. However, the difference is, she started taking sleeping pills at 18, whereas I started taking psychiatric medication at 18. It’s likely that Makiyo also has a psychiatric condition, could be a mild case of Bipolar. If that’s the case, taking sleeping pills or sleeping supplements will not treat the root cause of insomnia. Because her insomnia is one of the symptoms, not the actual illness. For example, if someone has a stuffy nose when they have the flu, the stuffy nose is a symptom, the flu is the actual illness. If they use a nasal spray, it can alleviate the symptom and help them breathe better, but to cure their stuffy nose, they must recover from the flu first. Therefore, by the same notion, using sleeping medication might help you sleep better for the time being, but to cure your insomnia, you have to treat the underlying mental illness first.

so to conclude, insomnia can have many types and different causes. But one of the reasons is that you might have an underlying mental health condition that you are not aware of. Therefore, taking psychotropic medication might be the key to your recovery. You might not need a lot of it but just enough to help you sleep better.