HA messing with sleep schedule?

[heavyweightworrier]

So I don’t know about y’all but a large portion of my health related worries come at night. I then stay up for hours and hours in fear of dying in my sleep and no one noticing or showing up to help (I live alone).

Usually when I finally do go to sleep, even then I’ll set up some alarms and sleep in shifts, only half an hour up to two hours at a time, so I can wake up and check up on if my symptoms have gotten worse. I never have any trouble falling back to sleep, to be honest I barely even remember turning the alarms off in the morning, but it’s really messing up my sleep schedule (something I already massively struggle with even without HA,) regardless as I stay up sometimes for as long as 6am. It’s currently 3am as I’m writing this.

Does anyone have any tips on how to prevent this? I understand the alarms and the constant checking are a massive security blanket, and not the healthy kind, but I don’t know how to let go of these destructive habits :/ any advice would be appreciated and I believe could potentially help me majorly in the long run.

[actualWeeaboo]

My first ever fears and panic attacks were about dying in my sleep - those started when I was about 8 years old and I never knew why. But I think that's why I stay up at night now, and sleep during the day (even when I have school, I'd rather have less sleep than sleep at night unless I'm super tired).

5/6am is usually my bedtime, but I find the closer I get to sleep, the more anxious I become. I suppose I'm lucky that I kinda sleep pretty decently when I DO get to sleep, but I often find myself waking up of my own accord over various things (I especially freak out when I wake up due to my arm being completely numb 'cause I've slept on it or something, ahaha!).

But I would recommend not setting alarms, if you can help it. You'll definitely be okay, and sleeping better will more than likely make your symptoms BETTER, ahaha~ But if anything, I'd urge you to at least reduce the times between your alarms.

Honestly, if it helps, and it doesn't actually interfere with a job or school, I'd recommend continuing sleep during the day. I find the light to be comforting, and it might actually wake you kinda naturally sometimes if you really DO want to wake up every once in a while. Do you ever watch anything when you go to sleep? I can't sleep in silence, I need to have a Twitch livestream running to feel safer as I drift off.

[Mindprison]

I agree with actual, it might be a good exercise to stop using the alarms and if that is too daunting for you right now then try to wean yourself off them. Maybe try increasing the time between the alarms, slowly. As your mind begins to realize that nothing bad has happened, you'll eventually reach a point where you won't even have to think about it.

You're more likely to run into problems staying awake and depriving yourself of sleep than you are to somehow die in your sleep.

[WHITEDETH]

Yep, infact im doing it right now. The ridiculous part of it all is that ive been told im fine (heart related HA here) and yet im still like this due to my own inabilkty to believe. Sleep deprivation is actually bad for your health yet here we are worrying about things that are more than likely not real and depriving ourselves of the bodies need to rejuvinate. HA is a bitch