Insomnia and Stress Response

[meowzician]

My first objective in this thread is to explore whether these things are stuff common to INFJ's (common doesn't mean universal). My second purpose is to listen to those who deal with similar issues successfully and glean from them how they achieve their success. Of course no one has to reply to this thread, but you would be so helpful if you did, and that includes the no's.

I seem to deal with stress in several ways.

The first is something called stimming, and is very common for those on the spectrum. (I'm diagnosed with High Masking ASD). Self-stimulatory behaviors are repetitive physical movements, sounds, or the manipulation of objects. People use stimming to manage emotions and anxiety, express feelings, or regulate sensory input. These behaviors are highly compulsive (no, it's not OCD); I become very unnerved if I don't do them.

When was a kid, the forms of stimming I did were slightly unacceptable, so I got teased for them. Like I would constantly be playing with my hair and looking for split ends to split. I remember getting into trouble with the teacher because I just couldn't stop tapping my pencil during a talk by a guest speaker despite repeated admonishing. I had a tic of crinkling my nose which is usually quite normal, but sometimes it got WAY out of control. Biting my fingernails and cuticles is the only behavior from this period that still calls to me. I will chew and tear until I bleed. It's why I get acrylic nails.

I worked very hard to eliminate these mild faux pas, but what I found is that today I simply substitute new behaviors that mimic normal behaviors. I will put songs on auto-repeat and use headphones so that I don't drive others nuts. There are times I just can't stop moving my feet even after they begin to slightly hurt from muscle exhaustion. I still mess with my cuticles (sometimes to the point of bleeding) but instead of biting them, I use a cuticle trimmer-pusher and cuticle snippers. It's pretty bad--sometimes I'll spend over an hour doing this and then have to reschedule other tasks. My fingers will compulsively feel my skin for sensory imperfections and try to scratch them off. It's embarrassing when it occasionally makes sores on my face. When in the presence of others I force myself to stop feeling my skin, but then I just start doing one of my other stimming behaviors.

Let's move on to my second problem. Transitioning to a new activity is VERY difficult for me (another ASD thing)--it causes me a LOT of stress. I'll just continue doing whatever activity I'm doing to avoid that transitioning stress. It's not that I don't like the new activity. I actually enjoy cleaning the home; it's a very zen thing for me. I love singing in the choir. I love visiting a friend. I don't dislike the doctor's office. Even doing paperwork has an odd sort of satisfaction to it. But it's very common for me to continue what I'm already doing,, and I mean to the point of dysfunctionality. I'll be late for appointments because I can't get off the computer. I'll have to complete projects at the last minute by pulling all nighters. I won't show up at a friend's home at the agreed upon time. I'll get my groove on cleaning my home tooth-brush clean, and then not get necessary paperwork done. But I'm caught between a rock and a hard place because when I DO act responsibly and move to the next activity, I go through a period of incredible anxiety.

I know that some of you (though I'm sure not all) struggle with these ASD things. Do you have any strategies how to deal with them?

The third way I deal with stress is withdraw into a hyperfocus. My difficulty coming out of it is so great that it causes me problems. Sometimes I'm writing an essay or composing music and my son will come and touch me on the should to gain my attention. I'll stop working and look at him and I can see him talking to me. But I can't "hear" a word that he's saying. I'm still in hyperfocus with my writing. I literally have to ask him to repeat what he just said.

And now for my biggest problem of all, the one I'm desperate to fix.

The worst result of the hyperfocus is that it interferes with my ability to sleep. I'll wake up at 3am and be unable to get back to sleep because my mind is going over and over and over a problem or planning something. Sometimes I can't get to sleep in the first place and I'll stay awake with my activity until the wee hours of the morning. Then I have to lose a day of work because I can no longer stay awake. If I only get two hours of sleep for several days in a row, or if I lose the entire night's sleep, I become so touchy and irritable that my son avoids me. OMG I get a good night's sleep maybe once a week. I sometimes stay awake all night working on music or a writing project, not getting to sleep until late morning, and THEN I'm a total emotional mess for the rest of the day.

But it's the severe effects on my mental and emotional health due to my chronic sleep deprivation that are the most concerning.

Mentally, it can cause impaired attention, concentration, memory, and decision making. My creativity and problem solving decline. My emotional regulation becomes much harder, leading to anxiety, depression, and terrible mood swings. It's NOT a good place to be.

Physically, it weakens my immune system, making infections more likely. It disrupts the hormones that regulate my hunger. In the past my appetite would increase and I would obsess about food., Cravings for fat-carb combos (think donuts and ice cream) drove me nuts. I gained a lot of weight. OR it can do the opposite. Today I am unable to get up and get food--I'm actually receiving medical care because lack of nutrition is so bad that it's making me too thin, causing muscle pain, and causing other ailments. It causes insulin resistance, and I'm convinced it caused my diabetes. Chronic sleep deprivation also increases inflammation throughout the body, which contributes to my arthritis pain, chronic headaches, and back pain. And it puts me at risk for a heart attack, stroke, irregular heart rhythms, and heart disease. Ay, ay, ay.

Last night I couldn't get to sleep and was awake until almost 6am and THEN couldn't attend an important zoom meeting this morning because I couldn't stay awake. What was I doing all night? Organizing files on my computer and my Chrome bookmarks. (The hyperfocus can come in the form of organizing or cleaning things.) You know, I KNOW how to fall asleep. I eat a magnesium gummy and take a prescribed sleeping pill and I'm out in 20 minutes. But I can't even get myself to pause and do that. I feel this enormous emotional resistance.

Sometimes the hyperfocus is because it's just an activity I love like composing my music. And sometimes it is stress related. The reason I got into trouble last night is because earlier in the evening my choir was practicing new songs for High Holy Days. Singing is actually up there with my several most favorite things to do. But learning new songs is work and I go into a kind of hypervigilance that is extremely draining.

I'm sight reading so I have to see every note and its timing and gage the interval from the previous note. I have to listen intently to all the other parts because their notes are part of the cue whether I am hitting the right note or not. My Hebrew isn't worth shit and I sometimes change it to a similar word I already know or miss a consonant here or there or even just temporarily drop out because the new words just come too fast for me. And I have to practice the parts of all of the sections, so it's like learning four songs for each single piece of music--I'm the person in the choir that if too many people are sick or the part of a particular section is too difficult for that section our director will temporarily move me to that section.

Now imaging doing this for two hours straight. I love it. But I came home so exhausted that I couldn't do anything worth shit. Instead I went into hyperfocus on my computer. So that's what happened yesterday and is the reason I opened this thread. SMH Oy vey.

You guys, I'm so desperate to get a good night's sleep. I'm hoping and praying that someone in here will tell me the secret of how to break out of hyperfocus. Ribbono shel Olam, azor li: Master of the Universe, help me--send someone who has an answer.

 

[Asa]

I never know what to say when people ask for help with sleeping. I was an insomniac until my mid-twenties, and I was unbothered by it because I hate sleeping. Since then, I have only occasional trouble sleeping and usually sleep through the night. In my thirties, I had the opposite issue where my progesterone was so high, I'd fall asleep as soon as I felt tired, no matter where I was. People called me rude. In cis women, progesterone affects sleep. Low progesterone can cause insomnia, and high progesterone aids in sleep. Dropping progesterone as we age can cause issues with sleepandmsot middle aged and senior women experience sleep disruption because of it.

I cannot fall asleep without zoning my brain into a world-building exercise. I need to focus on the details of the place I'm imagining. I guess this is like counting sheep because focusing on the details lets my brain unwind. If my brain focuses on real-life problems, I can't sleep because my brain revs up like an engine. For me, building a ritual where my brain knows when it needs to shut off the day helped

I can only destress if I'm completely alone. The hours I need to be alone have increased with age due to stress factors and permanent burnout. -- A lot of high-masking neurodivergent women get permanent burnout at midlife after a lifetime of constantly working overtime to fit in.

We share some stims. Hair and nail stims are really common for women. I choose to hyperfocus on my work.

 

[John K]

I really feel for you @meowzician - you sound like you are in permanent jet lag: mentally exhausted, derailed from routine, and hyperactive. I have had trouble sleeping too in the past, particularly before I retired and there were things from both my work and home life preying on my mind and emotions. I’d fall asleep, wake up at 2 or 3 am with my mind racing with both thoughts and anxiety, and, and, and ...

I don’t have any eureka solutions.

I found that trying to force myself back to sleep was impossible. It really depended on the level of anxiety what happened next. I should say it's not just anxiety but a mind that won't stop thinking, too. Often not trying to sleep for at least an hour and sitting up, reading a stress free book acted as a circuit breaker. By stress free, for me I mean maybe a book about cosmology or the ice age or human evolution sort of thing, rather than (say) an abduction detective story. Simple breathing exercises can be really good circuit breakers as well. I bet you've tried these of course, by the sound of things

I used to listen to short wave radio too in the small hours - the Chinese 5 year plan update in English at 2:30am was a fantastic way of calming me down LOL, but sadly they haven't done those since they went more capitalist. Another was the British shipping forecast on BBC long wave radio at about 12:40am. It was preceded by this lovely little old tune:

Classic BBC Radio Theme ~ Shipping Forecast (Sailing By)

(If the BBC has stopped this from appearing in the USA look for Sailing By by Ronald Binge)

Then here is several hours of the forecast, but each live broadcast only lasts about 10 minutes:

Definitely I found messing on my iPhone or computer on social media or news channels in the middle of the night was a crap idea and simply added to my over-stimulation and anxiety.

But these tricks didn't work for me if I had high levels of anxiety. At its worst I’d get up and watch an old familiar film I’d seen many times before and liked a lot. Sometimes I’d stay awake all night even if I started to nod off a bit and try not to sleep until the following night. This often worked - our subconscious may relax if we can only let go of the sheer obsessive compulsion to sleep, which just adds to the anxiety. Of course this at the expense of my being spaced out and having to avoid nodding off in the following daytime - like jetlag.

But if this sort of thing hadn’t worked for me sufficiently to get by, I’d have been seeking help. And maybe looking at significant life style changes to move me away from the triggers as far as possible. A major milestone was when I hit the age at which I could choose to retire if I wanted - simply knowing that such an escape was possible made a huge difference to the following 9 years - it was security similar to when we paid off the mortgage on our home. Not that work was the only external source of stressors for me, but it was a significant one and that milestone reduced its significance for me.

This is really important because if you look at your life you may find that there are several different aspects of it that make up the cake mix of your sleep problems. The impulse is to see this as a single huge issue, but that’s a hell of a hill to climb all at once. I learnt that it’s a threshold problem - you add loads and all is well, but then just one extra little thing pushes you over an inner cliff edge and you fall to the bottom. Once over the edge you have to climb back up and that takes effort - just removing one stressor may not help immediately. It's often no one thing that helps but a combination; life style changes, medication, exercise and therapy may be necessary - but once back on top of the cliff we can drop the extras as long as we don’t throw ourselves back over the cliff by adding too many stressors again.

I'm not saying this will work for you of course, but it describes where I have been. I wouldn't say all is fine now, but I have a lot less going on in my life than I had a couple of decades ago and that has made a big difference. In MBTI terms, I think gentle Se is good for INFJs with this problem unless they are totally in a grip, when the best path to manage it may be via both Se and Fe with help from others.

 

[Wyote]

As a fellow night owl, it's tough to find the right cocktail of things that might work for any individual
For you I might try to consider the things that put you into that hyperfocus state and then avoid them in the evening
Aromatherapy can be helpful for some if you find the right scents
Also consider Bright Light therapy in conjunction with Red Light therapy

My dad has had really bad insomnia off and on his whole life and I've inherited it so it's been a challenge for me as well
I've resolved to being a night owl to some extent, I'm never going to be a person who is asleep by 10pm or even 11 most of the time
But having various rituals before bed has helped me at least get enough sleep to survive relatively normally
Figure out how to hack your own circadian rhythm, not trigger yourself into hyperfocus mode, and also consider taking various vitamins
Attacking things on multiple fronts is a good practice, as one or two things may not be sufficient

 

[Fruiteloop]

I think what you need is a metronome.

Not a literal one but something that will keep you off the anxiety long enough to calm it down.

You may wish to listen to beach noises, the waves on the ocean in earphones.

I had anxiety a long time, I kept busy because of it because I could not sleep.

I believe I kept busy because otherwise I'd think too much about Life Problems.

If that is the reason you keep busy then you need something else besides work to keep the anxiety away.

So maybe relaxing tones and sounds.

You can do it in bed in the dark or something, but work is not good if it keeps you away from the anxiety.

What ever you find that helps you I wish you the best.

Mittens might help with the nails if you decide to listen to soft tones.

Just remember that you need to relearn ways of coping with anxiety that are beneficial. It is like an addiction that needs something else in place.