Insomnia link with my anxiety?

[phil06]

For months I've been feeling fatigued, down down, unrefreshed, waking up during the night.

My sleeping pattern last night was:

Went to bed just before 2am. Was due to get up early today at 8pm. Woke up at 4am disturbed sleep, woke again at 6pm and woke at 7.30pm and half slept until 8.30pm.

Other nights:

Go to bed between 12am and 3am usually closer to 3am. I'd say average about 1.30am as I have a pattern that I can't sleep until 3am (distracted by over active mind, google, browse the net until that time..really should stop. Find it hard to pull myself off the pc earlier too. On a night like this I sleep on until 12pm or later.

So maybe I'm sleeping on too much? going to bed to late is that also insomnia?

Today it was particularly bad as I had less sleep..could barely function, had to go for a sleep for an hour oversleeping I also feel more tired. I keep worrying it's an illness feeling run down ect..but could it be insomnia? (Just to add depersonalization wakes me up during the night too).

[blueangel]

Well, we are programmed with what is known as a circadian rhythm (or commonly known as a body clock), which governs when we sleep and wake. The usual pattern is that we sleep at night and wake during the day, but I realise that this is a bit simplistic in the northern hemisphere as day length varies a lot between summer and winter. However, the basic premise still fits.

For most people, our body clocks are programmed for us to sleep around 6-8 hours out of 24, but this can vary a lot depending on our individual needs for sleep. We all have a sleep : waking ratio that works for us.

The problem is, if you mess with your body clock it will disturb your sleep; people who work shifts are well aware of this one. Also, anxiety and depression both disrupt sleep and a very, very common symptom of anxiety is disturbed sleep, particularly waking early in the morning as we get too much stress hormone (cortisol) in our systems, which causes us to wake before we should.

Ideally, you need to adjust your body clock back to a more normal rhythm, so that you can sleep from something like midnight-8.00 a.m. It's not easy to do this suddenly, so I suggest you do this gradually, say by half an hour or even 15 minutes a night. Also, it's best to resist sleeping during the day unless you're one of the people that functions well by powernapping (i.e. you can wake up quickly after a short sleep and be alert).

Hope this helps.