Off to Doctors, insomnia and self harm

[countrygirl]

Well I am at the worst I have ever been, anxiety over insomnia or insomnia causing severe anxiety, who knows.
I saw my GP 3 weeks ago after a week of only being able to sleep if I took over the counter nytol tablets. I get bad attacks of not being able to sleep a few times a year for as long as i can remember and its always accompanied with severe anxiety.
She gave me 2 weeks of zopiclone but when I went back to see her 2 weeks later I had been sleeping for 5 nights and had not taken the zop just the nytol and i stupidly thought it was over.
When my insomnia anxiety is at its worst I have self harmed as in cuts scratches etc in the small hours out of she frustration.
4 nights ago the insomnia was back big time plus constant daytime anxiety giving me racing heart and upping my normally low blood pressure and terrible feelings of dread and fear as nigth approaches.
Last night I didn't take a sleeping pill just some nytol and I only slept for one hour! My anxiety was off the scale, crying and self harming although nothing drastic, my poor husband tries his best but I am beyond reasoning with. I was in such a state at one point that I fainted which scared him and me so off to see Dr this morning as I really need something for the anxiety as there is no chance of me sleeping when I am this anxious.
My heart is racing, I am shaking and twitching and I need help:weep:

[swajj]

You have been here for a long time. I have seen you give others some great advice. Will your doctor let you have something like Amitriptyline? It is not addictive and doctors are more willing to prescribe it than Diazepam. It really can help with insomnia.

[countrygirl]

Saw a great young lady Dr who reassured me that they would not send me away saying no more sleeping pills and there were lots of drugs to try to help my anxiety.
Her plan is that I take max dose of zopiclone for few nights up to a week then reduce to min dose. She is hoping that getting some sleep even drugged sleep will make me feel better and then we can take it from there. She said long term I can try on of the ssri anti depressent drugs like citalopram ( I know this one can make you worse with anxiety and sleeplessness at first) but can be very helpful once the worst side effectsa re over for anxiety. I have only ever tried one mitrazipine which gave me severe heartburn so hoping that this does not apply to all of them.
She thought my faint with loss of vision was purely due to extreme anxiety and exhaustion from low blood pressure.
So at least I have a plan. She said what I was doing which was getting more and more frantic towards bedtime then laying awake for hours panicking before taking a sedating antihistamine was wrong thing to do and sometimes a short course of sleeping pills can reset the brain.

[LF87]

Aw no, sorry to hear you're having such a bad time. I can't remember if you said in previous posts whether you were waiting for CBT? I honestly think if you can retrain the way you're feeling about bed time and the worry of not sleeping all this will fade away. Defo good the doctors have given some tablets for the meantime though.

Feel better x

[countrygirl]

I'm waiting for a psychology appt but it will be months.