It's 11:40 PM. I should be in bed. When you have ADHD, you are supposed to have a set sleep and wake cycle. I am supposed to be in bed by 10pm and wake up between 5 and 6am. I'm a morning person, and that's my schedule. My brain, however, had other things in mind. I'm lying in bed, listening to the rustling slumber of my dog and my fiancé. I graze my arm with my fingernail, searching for the rough and bumpy texture of that scab I've had on my arm for the last two years or more because I won't stop picking at it. My throat is dry, craving the instant satisfaction of nicotine to enter my body and make me feel calm, or relaxed, or whatever it is that my intense nicotine addiction does for the chemicals in my brain. Did you know that adults with ADHD are twice as likely to be long-term cigarette smokers than non-ADHD adults? This makes sense. Stimulants, and stimulation of the brain in someone with ADHD does not make them feel like they are driven by a motor, or hyper. You see, stimulants have the opposite impact on us. While we sit up at night, unable to fall asleep because we have a thousand thoughts circulating through our brains at once, while we suppress the urge to give in to unhealthy compulsions or repetitive behaviors (skin picking, nail biting, hair pulling, anything that for a moment gets us to focus and drown out the background noise in our heads), stimulants silence the noise. The thoughts, the worries, the anxiety, racing thoughts, a jumbled mixed of "did I remember to turn off the light in the office?" to "I really need to call the doctor about that appointment I keep putting off and forgetting about.". Everything is happening in our minds all at once.
It doesn't happen to me every night, but when it does, I know I'm in for a struggle. I usually sit in my bed for 30 minutes to an hour, going over in my mind why it would be good for me to get up and do something, and why that also might be a terribly bad idea. Finally, I decide to get up out of bed because I can't stand lying there anymore not sleeping and staring at the ceiling while I involuntarily rip at the skin on my arm. If you want to know more about body-focused repetitive behaviors, I am posting a link to my Hubpages article that I wrote about this topic a few days ago, by the way. Check out that interrupter; that sentence that I inserted there for no particular reason except to remind myself that if I didn't write it, I would forget to tell you about that entirely and I would crawl back in bed and right before drifting off into a slumber, my mind would awaken to the thought of forgetting to tell you about that article and sharing the link with you. If you are wondering what exactly goes on in the mind of someone with ADHD, read this second paragraph over once more. It will begin to make more and more sense. I need printer ink.
Circling back to my point here is the obvious correlation between ADHD and insomnia, and mental disorders and insomnia. Among all types of mental disorders, sleeping problems, insomnia, or disruptive sleep tends to be one of the key symptoms. My brain is perfectly flawed. Every day I push myself to unreasonable standards, striving to be perfect, when indeed I am working with a brain that just doesn't function at the level of a normal brain. Normal isn't perfect, but sometimes I think it's pretty darn close. Sometimes I wish I could stop the incessant thoughts and repeated patterns and behaviors, and the nights where I can't get to sleep because I can't turn my mind off. Did you know that about 80 percent of persons with depression report disrupted sleep patterns regularly? That's a large percentage. It speaks volumes. It speaks to the ongoing struggles of mental disorders, the never-ending symptoms, the things people don't think about who are on the outside because they haven't experienced it quite in the same ways as those with mental disorders. It sucks. The things that take others not too long to do typically take me twice the time and effort to complete, including getting myself to fall asleep at night. What a challenge it is to go inside my head and tell everything in there to quiet down. It kind of makes me think of the Pixar movie Inside Out. That is my favorite Pixar/Disney film to date. I resonated with that movie more than I've resonated with any movie in my life. The girl and those characters (emotions) in her head; it reminded me of myself at that age. It speaks to mental illness in such a powerful way. But before I go on a whole tirade about how awesome the film Inside Out is, let me put that on the back burner and save that for another post.
My eyes are beginning to burn at the intensity of the computer screen. I need a cigarette, a granola bar, a Gatorade, and sleep. Most importantly, sleep. Before I leave, let me post the link to the article so you can get a better sense of what I'm referring to here when I talk about body-focused repetitive behaviors: The Most Common Types of Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors - YouMeMindBody
I was pretty proud of this article because it was one of my features, and I hope it provides you some good insight into the topic.
I had hoped for this blog post to be organized, but it sort of just turned into a jumble of one thought after the other. Insomnia-induced ramblings. But I think that was the very point I was getting at with this post, now, wasn't it?
Comments
Post a Comment