My sleep has come back slowly. One of the few MDs I’ve worked with who has been helpful has a specialty in sleep medicine. When I met him I was lucky if I slept one hour a night and I didn’t tolerate anything (supplement or psych drug wise) to help support sleep…he assured me that what he called my “sleep architecture” would come back…(he also is familiar with the sort of iatrogenic brain injury we get from the psych meds) … in any case his words stay with me even now and I have a palpable sense of my body reconstructing my sleep architecture over time…now I can take a few supplement supports and herbs as well…but time, also, really continues to matter. I went from 0-2 hours a night (a few years of that) to 2-4 hours a night (a couple of years) and now I’m at 4-6 hours and occasionally sleep 7 or 8 hours…it’s been a trip! I continue to heal.
The seriousness of this issue is largely not appreciated…people cannot function during the years it takes for some to heal from these injuries. It’s simply not largely appreciated except by those who’ve had to go through it.
Because sleep is so important and so many of us are critically injured in this way patience is really important too. It takes time. Learning to reorient myself and reframe the situation was very important.
I’m sharing a bunch of posts that include information about how I did this below.
This is also an IT GETS BETTER post…from the IT GETS BETTER series.
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Reframe your insomnia
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Help for insomnia…
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Insomnia? Or is your body just asking to sleep like our ancestors did?
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It gets better: Sleep, insomnia and iatrogenic injury
*it is potentially dangerous to come off medications without careful planning. Please be sure to be well educated before undertaking any sort of discontinuation of medications. If your MD agrees to help you do so, do not assume they know how to do it well even if they claim to have experience. They are generally not trained in discontinuation and may not know how to recognize withdrawal issues. A lot of withdrawal issues are misdiagnosed to be psychiatric problems. This is why it’s good to educate oneself and find a doctor who is willing to learn with you as your partner in care. See: Psychiatric drug withdrawal and protracted withdrawal syndrome round-up
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