Help with insomnia

[peragrate]

Dear Everyone suffering from Insomnia,

I too have have a very hard time with this affliction. And I've self-medicated with alcohol to get to sleep. The only problem is I would wake up still intoxicated or without any rest, or both!

There are three things that are helping me overcome insomnia, and while it is not foolproof, I hope it will work for someone else here.

The first is prayer. And it's simple prayer. I reflect on the day, and confess my daily and forgotten sins, asking for forgiveness. I also ask to be shown who has sinned against me that I should forgive (perhaps I'm carrying buried grudges against someone). I also ask God to help me get some rest. If it doesn't "work" then I pay attention and try to listen for something I missed in my prayer session.

The second is simply telling myself to relax. And I have to do this a few times, because I'm usually carrying tension in ways I don't know.

And the third is called mindfulness. I am not a Buddhist, but some of their tools have helped a great deal with insomnia. I've noticed that as I'm lying in bed, hoping for sleep, my mind is usually racing between the past and the future. But I'm very rarely aware that I'm simply lying in bed, in the present moment, and I'm falling asleep. I'm usually in some other time zone. By simply reminding myself that I am where I am and of what I am actually doing, a great peace has come over me and I'm sometimes asleep within twenty minutes without realizing it. Waking up the morning with real rest, and knowing that it happened so easily, is a great blessing.

Prayer is definitely the first thing I do every night (and in the morning too,) but staying in the moment, and realizing I am no where else, certainly has helped.

Since I have started this, which includes reading Scriptures daily, I have not had a drop of alcohol, have had no real desire to drink, and have been tempted only once in the last three weeks. Praise Yashua!

I hope this might help someone.

Marc

[Timetowakeup]

I finally had a unusual dream last night. And I know it was not real! That's good news for me since most of my dreams could be real, I never know if my dreams are reality or reality are dreams.

Anyway, I was re arranging the rocks inside my pond outside and moving plants around. I have 2 turtles and was hoping that they were not bothered by this. Just as I lifted up a pond plant, a rock was stuck to the bottom of it and so was both of my turtles, but there were stuck upside down on the rock, lot's of steem came up with them and the rock, (I guess it must have been really cold outside and they were warm), I freaked out because I did not want to hurt the turtles. I tried to peel them off the rock and noticed that each turtle had grown an extra neck and head coming out of their backs. They were screaming at me like little children and wanted to go back in the pond. I was so scared for their safety and tried to put them back in , but they kept floating up to the top of the water upside down and were dying. I kept pushing them back down, but they kept popping back up and upside down. I didn't know what to do so I started crying out loud and my husband came outside to see what was wrong. He told me to wait a minute and he would be back out to take care of it. A few minutes later, he came back out but all he had was a beer for me, as he gave it to me he told everything would now be ok.


That was a very unusual dream and I don't want to analyze it. I am pretty sure that I know what it meant!!!

[clixx]

thanks Marc, great post especialy the 3rd part i can completely relate to that, i think this may help me, thanks!

[fultang]

I never know if my dreams are reality or reality are dreams

There's really no way of knowing the difference between them.
The brain doesn't know the difference between what it's experiencing in realtime and what is remembered.
They're the same thing because they're both interpretations of electrical and chemical signals in the brain.
When the brain is examined in a lab, it produces the exact same signals in the exact same areas when something is actually experienced and remembered.
Which leaves you to wonder what reality actually is.
And how can we ever know if we're actually experiencing something or if we're receiving an artificial signal that describes the experience we think we're having?

Anyone who says different doesn't really understand what I'm trying to say.

[FreeinMilwaukee]

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