Bedtime Stress

This time of year is always difficult for me.

One of the major parts of PTSD is avoidance of anything that reminds the sufferer of the trauma. For many, that includes anniversaries.

The event that spawned most of my major PTSD symptoms happened in March 2000, and for many years, I was hospitalized in psychiatric wards or hospitals every April. I always begin to destabilize in March and it grows worse into April, then fades back to normal by May. It's a harrowing time of year for me, and some years are worse than others.

This has been an average year.

As I destabilized during March, I didn't connect it to the time of year. It wasn't until the beginning of April that I realized why I'm having so many more mood swings and an increase in PTSD symptoms.

I've had a few night terrors and had close calls with flashbacks. My anxiety has increased dramatically and my sleep is disturbed. Fortunately, I have not been hallucinating.

I'm most worried about the lack of sleep, because a lack of sleep can cause manic symptoms in me, and even cause manic episodes. I'm doing my best to get a full night of sleep no matter what time I finally fall asleep. I was trying to set a defined schedule, but with my consistent sleep disturbance, I was beginning to get manic symptoms because of my trouble getting to sleep and early alarm as I tried to force my body to learn a good bedtime.

For me, sleep disturbance is common when I'm having PTSD symptoms because my abuse always happened at bedtime, so bedtime becomes very difficult for me.

I've been listening to solfeggio, binaural beats, and sleep countdowns or body scans to try to induce sleep. The body scan video I've listened to for the last few nights has helped me relax enough to sleep even though I was feeling a little wired beforehand.

For anyone interested in solfeggio or binaural beats, Meditative Mind is a great YouTube channel for relaxing videos with hypnotic visuals. Many of my repeat watches are videos from that channel.

I cannot visualize in guided meditations, so they become stressful for me. I can only visualize situations I've created, like when I write, but not those created by other people, and that includes reading. My bedtime meditations are always sleep countdowns or body scans, though body scans are my favorite.

My recent watch is by Jason Stephenson, who has many good guided meditations and sleep music videos. He is Australian and has a calming tenor voice.

Another video I find relaxing uses binaural beats to calm the mind before sleep.

I cannot sleep without sound either playing close by or on headphones, and the most relaxing thing to me is the clack-clack of a train. The original video I found several years ago has been taken down, but I have several others that I enjoy. This is the one I'm currently loving.

I have several other train videos, some black screen and some with video footage like this one. I also have a steam train video that has a static photo. I like that one when I'm not using headphones, but when I am, I like more modern trains.

The mind works in strange ways, and self-care takes many forms. For me, the two most important forms of self-care are taking my medication and regulating my sleep, however that has to happen. They prevent many problems and are crucial to my well-being. I have other self-care rituals and things I use for improvement of mood and quality of life, but these two are the most important.

I wish you all good sleep and happy days. Here is a lovely sleep video that features the nature sounds of crickets and ocean waves by the Silent Watcher.