Sister with severe insomnia - please help

Hi all

I’m sorry for the length of this post, but a lot has happened recently and I need to get this all out. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My sister recently began suffering from an episode of insomnia that is beyond my understanding or ability to help.

This started six weeks ago when one night out of the blue, she did not sleep at all. She didn’t sleep the next night either. The third night, she slept a few hours, and since then, she has gotten either no sleep or very little sleep. For the first few weeks, she suffered extremely intense panic attacks that were on such a level that I almost called an ambulance when she didn’t answer the phone. It was unclear whether the panic attacks and anxiety were causing the insomnia, or vice versa. She has never had issues with anxiety or depression prior to this illness, and the anxiety and depression she feels now are centered upon her inability to book work (she’s an independent contractor) due to fear that she won’t sleep and won’t be able to focus enough to deliver to her clients. Meanwhile, the rent needs to be paid and she needs to pay for costly medical bills. And there is no end in sight.

My dad was, until this experience, the worst insomniac I have ever met. He spent my whole life self-medicating to fall asleep; alcohol, pills, marijuana. Me and my sister have always been opposed to drug use from witnessing our dad, but now my sister has been getting drunk to fall asleep, or taking a cocktail of pills (Xanax, Ambien, etc.) and of course marijuana. And they rarely work. My dad’s insomnia was cured five years ago when he discovered Seroquel, and we were relieved when she finally got a prescription for the drug and it seemed to be working well. She realized after three days of sound sleep that she was allergic to the drug and had to stop using it. After failed trials with other drugs, she’s on Trazadone (200 mg) and it seems to be working some nights, but more often than not it fails.

She has become a completely different person in just six weeks. She was a competent, capable, happy person for her whole life and now calls me in tears, panic, despair. I honestly fear that she’s almost suicidal. There is no way of knowing when this storm will pass, or if it ever will, because we don’t know what is causing it. She’s been to several doctors and a naturopath, but sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to evaluate and correct a sleep disorder like you can with a physical illness, or even other mental illnesses. I don’t know what to do.

Hello Sleepless and welcome to the forums.

I have moved your post from the Significant Others, Family and Friends forum to the Insomnia forum. However, I have a left a shadow for you in SOFF. This means your thread is open in two forum at once and posters from each forum can contribute.

We find this is more effective than simply duplicating posts across various forums.

Take Care and good luck!

M

I was once your sister, it IS horrible going through what she is going through. I now know SOOOO much that I didn't before. I can try to help you guys, try by helping you with what I found to be useful and what I did not. A really good place to start is by visiting the Post under Sleep titled
Sudden loss of ability to sleep (no previous issue) https://www.psychforums.com/insomnia/topic201533.html
It's where I did some writing and am at the moment visiting with a woman with similar issues.

You Sister is EXACTLY where I once was. No one knew how to help me, and no one knew what the treatment should be. First thing is first, those sleeping pills caused more trouble for me than they were helpful, let me tell you that. I am BIG TIME opposed to the sleeping pills, but not so to beer, wine or pot if you can use them mildly to simply calm down, which is what needs to happen to her, calm the nerves, lower the heart rate, and relax, which feels like impossible when she is SOOOOO nervous about the simple act of falling asleep. She has to relax. I too would obsess all day long about whether or not I was going to fall asleep that night, I would watch the clock come 6pm and start to get nervous knowing that the moment will be coming here soon when it's time for the family to go to bed. When it got dark, I would get more nervous. Those nerves were what was killing me.

Sorry, I have to go sit down to eat with the family right now, I'll check back here shortly.

Thank you for the response. It's good to hear from you and others that pills are not the answer. But I have a father who found a miraculous cure in the form of Seroquel and so all of his advice comes from that perspective.

I think what I need more than anything is to figure out what to tell her to keep her going. Saying that ine day she'll laugh at all this, or take it one day at a time, stay strong, etc., these things wear thin when you say them day after day. How do you communicate optomism to a person who feels a level beneath hopeless?

So I take it you recommend that book in the post you linked to? I know she started sleep restrictive therapy this week, but no headway yet because it's hard to restrict what you don't have.

Signing off for now. Thanks again for responding.

Sleepless1155: That book is an actual Program, it's not a book, and it's a whopping $50, or at least it was when I went through it. It was single handed the BEST by far culmination of advice and guidance I came across. Buy it for her now, or let me know and I will buy it for her. It's that important. I read countless books, countless audio books, countless so called pros of the field literature, and none of them lived through what your sister is going through and what I went through. I saw soooo many therapists, so many know it all's, that were just over priced people trying to help, but none of them wen through this. I was your sister, my life was falling apart, STRESS big time, work related issues BIG TIME, brand new family (children), mid-life, our livelihood was resting on my aging and broken down body, all of it, it all just hit me. Like your sister, and when you don't sleep, when you don't rest, your mind gets really screwed up. And, the most important thing for me, was that when my mind was messed up, those drugs to me, aka sleeping pills, they had a HUGE negative effect that I wasn't seeing, but my family was. Even small amounts have this negative effect. I had a jewelry scale that I was once using to weight and measure my sleeping meds as I was attempting to scale them back. I was in a bad place. I use to say that all I wanted was a WIN, that I just needed something to go well for me, because everything was a huge negative at the time. My recovery didn't just involve figuring out how to fall asleep again, it began with reshaping my life. Where I was at in life. When you have those drugs in your body, and you do not sleep, and you are majorly depressed from not being able to sleep, it's a devastating and horrible experience. I went through 3 different periods where I didn't sleep for four straight days. The last time it happened, I paid the co-pay and checked myself into the ER. Bad Move on my part, but I didn't know any better, I like your sister, did not know what to do, where to get help. I told the ER Doctor that I needed a drug to knock me out, and she gave me one, a highly additive one. I forget the name at the moment. She gave me a supply for 5 days, and then I went to my GP that gave me more. The thing with all these drugs is that they loose their effect, their potency. So while they worked the first few days, your body adapts to them and their effects change. For your father that's big on this Seroquel, I would bet you any amount of money that if you replaced his Seroquel with sugar pills, and he didn't know about it, I bet he wouldn't skip a beat. That he wouldn't know the difference. That Seroquel is IN HIS HEAD as the miracle cure, which is why he is yelling so loud to you and your sister that it's so great. First thing is first with your sister, she needs to find some optimism, people like you that are encouraging her, positive support to change her mood. She has to relax, which feels almost impossible when you are so stressed out and SCARED from not sleeping. The scared part is HUGE, as it was the big demon in me. Being scared, which no one knew but me, was rattling my inner cage, I vibrated with nervousness because I didn't want to go through another night of torture. And that's what laying there for 8 hours not sleeping is, it's torture. No one that hasn't gone through it understands this until they have gone through it, the horrible feeling of laying awake all night and morning, to around 6:30am hearing your kids awaken from a long well rested night, and here you are the same person/place that you were when they went to bed, you never fell asleep. It's horrific. It's flat out torture, and when the day goes on you obsess about wondering if it is going to happen to you again that coming night. This obsession, along with your nerves, is a killer to sleep, it kills you being able to relax to fall asleep.
The reason why I have been posting on this website is to help people like your sister, as when I was going through this I would have done anything to have met and visited with someone like me that too went through the same thing and came out the other side. I want nothing other than to be a help. I know very well how horrible all this is and if I can help someone get through it, I will. I'm going to shoot you a private message through this forum with my contact info. Give me shout and we can visit. And, I can in turn talk to your sister, I have no problem taking time out of my day to help her.

Just a note that meds really work for my insomnia. However, it did take a long while to find the right ones. I tried tons of different meds before I found one that worked well for me. As far as allergies, after years of trying this or that, my psychiatrist suggested this cheek swab thing that I did at the psychiatrist's office and he sent it in, and they test your dna's reaction to tons of medications. With this, you can find out what meds your body will react poorly too (such as what you say happened with seroquil).
Oh my goodness it was the best thing that ever happened to me!
Best of luck!

I have insomnia. I do not like this condition, I become irritable, sleepy and broken. I usually go to the doctor and he prescribes sleeping pills to me.