- Date posted
- 2y
Relationship between OCD and sleep patterns
Do you experience sleep disturbances as a result of OCD? If yes, then how often? Do you agree that sleep disturbances are a result of OCD symptoms?
Do you experience sleep disturbances as a result of OCD? If yes, then how often? Do you agree that sleep disturbances are a result of OCD symptoms?
I had it at time when my OCD was more severe, nowdays I do not have it so much, so I can sleep good...
Yes indeedy! And going on a daily and nightly schedule helped immensely. As in, go to bed every night at the same time e and go to sleep at the same time.
I remember even through my early teen years in my brain I would scream shut up because I couldn’t get thoughts to stop and I was desperate to go to sleep. As I got older I just accepted it and let my brain do its laps. I didn’t realize I had OCD or anxiety at the time, I just thought it was normal.
I have, alongside my other OCD themes, an intense fear of insomnia. Although this has been improving somewhat — partly thanks to medication and The sleep school on YouTube — I still find myself ruminating about it throughout the day when I have something important the next day, I get stuck in the fear that everything will be ruined — for both myself and others — because my mind is so preoccupied with sleep. + a fear of depression coming back. It honestly feels like a form of sleep OCD. I'm not sure if that’s an official thing, but that’s how it feels to me. A form of erp is the idea of befriending wakefulness. That works great tbh. Things like sleep hygiene, meditation, etc. — tend to backfire because my OCD latches onto them and becomes too obsessive about “doing them right.” I’m genuinely wondering whether ERP — for example in the form of a worst-case-scenario audio loop (imaginal exposure) — could be helpful in this case. I’m hesitant to start unless I know it can actually help. Is there anyone who has experience with this or thoughts about it? I’m not looking for reassurance or tips to fall asleep — only for ideas on how ERP might be applied in this situation.
Does anyone have any tips on how to sleep with harm ocd, I’m always so tired but I can’t fall asleep until it gets to the point my eyes won’t stay open, I’m scared that I’m gonna do something in my sleep or my thoughts just eont shut up and it causes issues with sleeping, advice needed please
My OCD diagnosis is still very new, but now that I know what it is, it is clearly something I’ve had for as long as I can remember. Contamination/bugs and health have been a consistent theme since childhood, but religious/existential themes emerged during adolescence. Around that same time, there was also a good deal of trauma, and during middle school I started experiencing hallucinations. Tactile (like bugs crawling on me or biting me, an eyelash being stuck in my eye, but nothing was really there); visual (like moving shadows or things that would dart past in my periphery, and then I would just have intrusive thoughts of scary things around corners or under things); and auditory (an angry male voice that grumbles or yells indistinctly, or a high pitched noise like a microphone/speaker feedback but muffled and less sharp). Because of the religious denomination I grew up in, I initially assumed these were demons and tried to address it that way, but when I was 14 or 15, it occurred to me that those voices/sounds sounded like the way I felt, and the visual/tactile experiences happened during times of stress too — and so all of those experiences could just be seen as an expression of a fragmented part of myself. That acceptance didn’t make them go away — I still experience them now and I’m in my 30s — but it made those experiences less scary and more manageable. I also see now how these all pop up specifically when OCD obsessions are super triggered and when I’m super sleep deprived. Anyway! Since this diagnosis, and talking about the hallucinations at all, are new to me, I am wondering who else has had similar experiences. I don’t really know how much of the hallucination experience is OCD versus trauma, but it seems like this might all make sense under the “quasi-hallucination” label.
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