Weird Anxiety Experience

So, I took an Ativan before sleeping last night because I'm just used to doing that. It helps take the edge off of any unease so I can fall asleep. And I had two left from the old prescription that I wanted to finish off. No big deal.

Today was okay. I decided to try not to take anything. That's easier to do when you know you have a backup (it was all terrifying when I was running out which just made the anxiety worse). It also helped that I was distracted by the football game again and my oldest son being in the room to watch with me. And things were fine after that as well. I worked on some Japanese lessons on DuoLingo but not much else. As far as I can remember, I felt pretty calm.

But around 4pm, I was so sleepy, I could barely stay awake so my husband told me to take a nap for an hour. I set my alarm for two hours (my usual nap length) and tried to get some sleep. Of course, the cat had other plans for me, but I got him out of my room after the first fifteen minutes and tried to fall asleep. That's when things got annoying.

For some reason, the anxiety decided to appear while I was trying to fall asleep. Usually, when I go to bed, I spend time coming up with stories in my head to entertain myself. I was sort of doing that, but I kept drifting into actual sleep. That's fine. That's what I wanted. But every few minutes, I'd wake in a sudden panic--full heart racing, chest tightness, sick feeling, etc--over nothing. I'd calm myself down and think about what set it off and there'd be nothing I could pinpoint. Usually. Sometimes it had to do with the story in my head. Like a character having an anxious moment that somehow manifested in my own body (ugh). Other times I randomly started thinking about something stressful like if I did this or that that needed to be done (which had been done as far as I remember).

It was awful. I could not sleep. Like every ten minutes, I would get the panicked feeling and be jolted awake, breathless with my heart pounding and all that. I finally gave up at some point and took one of the new anxiety pills that are supposed to be fast-acting. I'm only supposed to take half at first so I'm not sure it did much. I've taken it twice and don't recall any side effects, so I might try a full one next time. I can take these as needed up to one every six hours to control the anxiety.

Anxiety is such a frustrating thing to deal with because nothing and everything sets it off. And sometimes there's not much you can do to help it. I try to distract myself before I turn to meds, but it's impossible sometimes because of the physical symptoms. I can't type or even sit still, let alone forget about the anxiety causing the restlessness. It sucks.