Anxiety over not sleeping in regards to situation I'm in for only this week.

[Seaster]

To be honest, I SHOULD NOT be worried but yet I am. So my parents are away so I have the house to myself with the dog. The dog has been getting very worried and anxious about the situation. Plus, since it's 4th of July time of year over here in US, there's fireworks which animals do NOT like.

Last night was the first night dealing with it and everything worked out okay. I kept waking up like every other hour but I managed to cobble together enough sleep, even if it wasn't a uninterrupted night. But that's only one night. I have tonight and 5 more nights after that.

I've done this thing before for when my parents went on a cruise. They were gone for 5 days but I don't recall any problems, though I was stressed then too.

I'm mostly just stressed about not sleeping at all. I have had nights where I go all night with no sleep but it's usually in certain situations like pain or something really bad keeping me up.

I give my dog anxiety medicine but it doesn't help a whole lot while the fireworks are ongoing. Just hope they stop at a decent hour so my dog can calm down eventually. I take sleep seriously so anything that threatens that stresses me out.

[serith]

The best way to get good sleep is to not think about it. You should not have to "take sleep seriously." Sleep is an automatic body function. It will happen automatically, unless you think about it too much, stress about, worry about it. Your attitude is setting you up to get bad sleep, which then starts a cycle of bad sleep and worrying about sleeping, which just makes you sleep worse, which leads to more worry, and so on.

Try this: don't think about how many hours you sleep. Don't calculate it. If you wake up feeling shitty and tired because you didn't sleep well enough, don't worry about it. Just go on with your day. Do whatever you would have done otherwise. I promise you, stressing about being tired is way worse than actually being tired. Just put sleep out of your mind entirely. It's a non-issue. You don't have to think about your heart to make it beat, you don't have to think about your stomach to make it digest food, and you don't have to think about sleep to make your brain go to sleep.

How old are you? From your post it's really hard to tell exactly what's stressing you out in this situation. Just your dog being afraid of fireworks? Barking a lot? I'm sleeping poorly while also managing an orchard and an apiary (which I know very little about), and a house full of disabled adults. That's stressful. I'm only saying this to draw attention to the fact that you seem to be having an extreme stress response to virtually nothing (nothing that you mentioned in your post, anyway). Why do you think that is? Have you tried to bring mindfulness to this extreme anxiety and extreme stress response?

[Seaster]

I don't sleep well with situations that's different than what I'm used to. The dog being in my room is just different for me. Thing is, my dog pants a lot at night despite air conditioning and a ceiling fan at full blast. It's just annoying and stresses me out listening to it. I just remember laying there most of the night unable to sleep at all. I even took sleep medication as a back up plan but it didn't help me. Though, there was roughly an hour of time I don't recall last night so possible I dozed off.

I'm just stressed about the dog in general to answer your question. It shouldn't be giving me this much trouble but it is. I'm either having a rough patch of sleep or the panting really is bothering me. I haven't been sleepy today but I do feel a bit stiff body wise.

I was pretty calm about everything last night too, which is why I'm frustrated with how last night went. I shouldn't have gone most of the night with little sleep. I'm up like every hour it seems like. I'll go to bed around 12 am, lay down and relax, then I get up because the dog is panting loud and it's 1:53 am. I went to let the dog outside. I'm not used to dealing with the dog at night because the dog sleeps with my parents.

Only have to put up with it for Thursday and Friday night. I'm just hoping I'm sleeping at all. No sleep is worse than minimal sleep, though they are both bad. I'm 33 and was supposed to move out but series of medical events postponed that. I'm recovering financially but moving out when I can.

[meant2live]

Are you able to get the dog out for several walks during the day? Maybe, if you exhaust him, he’ll just fall asleep and not pant as much.

[PUGLETMUM]

I’m new here - well I was on this forum about 15yrs ago for a good few years ��

I have this too but for different reasons - this amount of days with little to no sleep won’t do you any damage - could you gets a supply of sleeping pills for when this happens - I have them & that alone can stop me from needing them ?

dogs disturbing your sleep is real too - I have 2 pugs & a cavalier - one pg sleeps on my bed & if I’m sleeping badly he just adds to it - earplugs?

[serith]

I just feel compelled to keep trying to challenge your thinking here.

. "I shouldn't have gone most of the night with little sleep."

This sentence doesn't make any sense. What do you mean by "shouldn't"? It happened, so it's real. There's no point in saying that something that happened "shouldn't" have happened. When you do that, you're adding more stress to the situation, which makes it all worse.

It's totally normal to have trouble sleeping when something is off or different in your environment. The human brain is designed to be more wakeful when things seem a little dangerous, and a sudden change always could be dangerous. Obviously, in this case, it's not dangerous, and in your conscious mind, you know that. But in your deeper, older, reptilian mind, which controls sleep, you don't know that. So getting poor sleep sometimes is totally normal, totally natural, nothing to worry about.

However, you ARE worrying about it with your obsession over how many hours you have slept. And this obsession makes your sleep worse. I know I'm repeating it all, I said it in my previous post, but I don't know if you took it in. I know it's hard to change, but just try. Do NOT obsess over how much sleep. Do not count the hours. Don't even think about it. It's out of your control, so what's the point in thinking about it?