
Sleep, Anxiety, and Not Giving a Fuck
I haven’t been sleeping well. Each night, I find myself getting maybe three or four hours of sleep, despite being exhausted from the day before. I keep thinking that one night, I’m just going to crash and wake up refreshed, but so far that hasn’t happened.
I feel like I go through this once a year, usually when my anxiety is elevated. I try meditating and melatonin, but nothing seems to help. Instead, I just have to survive. I have to be patient with myself, understand that I’m not going to have the energy to do certain things, and wait for this to pass. It’s frustrating, but what can you do? It just reminds me of The Narrator in Fight Club and his insomnia.
There is some truth in The Narrators dealing with his insomnia in relation to real life. He finds sleep, once he begins attending self-help groups and feels heard. He sees his pain is not as real as others, but in a way, he finds the authenticity lacking in his own life.
Television couldn’t offer this sort of connection, nor could buying stuff from Ikea, but in a dark, dingy basement of some nameless church, The Narrator found salvation through connection with others. He found a way to release his burdens and sleep like a baby.
I’m obviously not going to begin attending random self-help groups, but I’ve spent some time thinking about how to properly manage my anxiety. How can I release my burdens authentically?
The first night I couldn’t sleep, I did what I usually do which is toss and turn for hours, until finally I get up, grab a Sprite Zero and sit down at my computer. I feel guilty for not journaling as often as I should, and then I pour my heart. I tell all the things on my mind and what may be hindering my sleep in hopes that exorcizing these thoughts will somehow provide enough room for peace and slumber to move in. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
I realized in my desperate attempt for sleep that the things I wrote about were not as straight forward as usual. These were instead broad ideas and generalizations that couldn’t be fixed with an Amazon purchase or a few minutes of my undivided attention. I won’t bore you with the personal details, but I realize that I need to change how I think. I need to focus on letting go and caring less.
I read about a Worry Outlook Journal as a way to document your concerns. By writing down what you are worried about, you can then reflect upon past worries to see that most of the time these things do not come true. This sounds like an exhausting way to try and show my mind that my worries are unfounded, but I’m going to give it a go and see what happens.
I’m also going to go through each topic I wrote down in my journal and explore them in the utmost detail. I’ve done some therapeutic journaling in the past, and I’m thinking I need to approach some of these ideas in a similar fashion. I need to exhaust every thought in my head regarding these situations so that I can hopefully let go of some of this anxiety.
I’m also trying to put the idea forward of not giving a fuck. I give way too many fucks lately, and it’s weighing me down.
One of the ways I’m going to stop giving a fuck some is I’m going to write on this blog whatever the fuck I want. I think I handcuffed myself a bit due to unsavory individuals, but I’m done with that. By exploring topics, such as this one, it gives me an outlet, my own self-help group if you will, and provides me space to organize a plan like the one I just wrote about it. It’s the first step in trying to fix something in my life, and by not writing in such a way I’m doing a grave disservice to myself, as well as to anyone who may come along and is experiencing something similar.