How do you guys deal will anxiety-induced insomnia? Often when I try to sleep at night, my mind races with intrusive and stressful thoughts. I see a lot of advice to focus on breathing, turn off thoughts, etc. But every time I try to do this things I just overthink them and end up frustrated and awake. Has anyone else dealt with this? What can I do?
The biggest thing for me is to bite the bullet and accept that I’m not going to sleep that night. As important as sleep is, the reason I get so anxious is because I know I have stuff to do the next day, but it’s going to be harder to do it because I’ll be sleep-deprived. It really helps to remind myself that I CAN get through the day without sleep, I’ve done it before. Once you take that pressure off move to acceptance, it becomes easier to sleep.
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I recommend getting into mediation of some sort. TM and other forms of meditation train you to have better control of your thoughts. If you can master that while awake, the methods you mentioned such as focusing on breathing and turning off your thoughts will be easier.
I don’t know if I have a great answer for you, all I can say is avoid becoming dependent on benzos like xanax, I definitely made that mistake in the past.