Nightime Anxiety

I count myself lucky that on the whole - my anxiety limits itself to the day or specific situations and it hibernates at night leaving me to relax a little

On Friday night I had three drinks and I struggled to fall asleep until about 2am and was up earlyish with my daughter. On Saturday night I didn't drink anything and I struggled to fall asleep until 2am and woke up at 7.30am as OH leaving for work woke up daughter

I therefore thought I would be set for a cracking nights sleep last night. I had five units of drink over the course of the evening doing some christmas shopping research online and then had two cups of herbal tea as I had started to feel flustered

I got into bed and felt a low level panic attack coming on My breathing went a bit hyperventilaty , heart felt fast and I felt a little confused and started the usual thoughts of what if this isn't a panic attack - what if I cant breath normally for someother reason .All the usually what if suspects

I know better than to just lie there after it hasn't gone away after 20 mins or so so I diverted my attention to wandering aimlessly round upstairs , plucking my eyebrows and took two Kalms tablets . All the things one does at 1am on a Monday morning. I felt the panic attack feeling go although the anxiety was still there and so I fiddled on my phone for a bit then put Iplayer radio on and listened to some comedy , went down and made a cuppa and dropped off about 2.30am

The point of this post is that I did good. I'm learning. I remembered to give the kalms tablets a try , I made an effort to remind myself that not sleeping isn't a major drama and tiredness the next day while inconvenient wont be a disaster

I think the only thing I would add in next time is trying to do a guided mediation or something

I dont feel anxious this morning really - some other times I have felt anxious about the fact I felt anxious and panicky and was tense incase it came back the next day which makes a cycle

I also think I know what kicked it off. Two things

The main one was I was writing in my private journal online about things not going so well with OH at the moment and the fact I dont know what to do about it. I think admitting there are problems out loud ( or on paper / screen ) made things a little more real and set off some low level panic. There has been quite a bit of sitting in silence tension between us this weekend and some tears on my part which no doubt aren't the key to relaxing

The second thing is silly but true. I was messing around with a mini breathalyser I have in the drawer and tested it and it showed a BAC result of 0.06 which shocked me a little as I felt that was high for consuming the equivalent of half a bottle of wine over four hours and I started to have some irrational thoughts about being drunk. After a cup of herbal tea the reading was nearly zero ( I tested it a few times and got the same result ) and I now realise I took the 0.06 reading straight after swallowing a swig of barcardi and coke instead of waiting 30 minutes so it was a false high. I am **fully** aware that this paragraph shows how odd this anxiety makes me at times

Okay off to stumble my way sleepy eyed through the day. I plan to be kind to myself today and I'm looking forward to bedtime already - its 9.48am !