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I've always slept poorly due to anxiety and sleep apnea, even as a kid, and it only got worse when I became a teenager and my night anxiety really kicked in and the apnea ramped up. I was very poor in high school and college so both went completely untreated, which, in retrospect, is totally insane to me because the amount of suffering I went through was extreme. I had agonizing headaches most days, I was almost always tired, and my general mental health was terrible, depressed and on-edge most of the time, and at night when I couldn't sleep I would spiral into violent panic attacks. ACA meant I was able to access sleep therapy, and was given a CPAP, which literally changed my entire life overnight. The headaches went away, I could think clearly, and I could get through an entire day unfogged and energized. A couple years later, I moved to Canada, and one of the first things my doctor did was prescribe me Zoloft, which, with the CBT I'd been doing previously, lifted a huge amount of mental stress off my shoulders, mostly by giving me the ability to process my emotions before reacting to them. Now, if I can't sleep, it's more of an inconvenience. I can feel the irritation, but instead of exploding immediately into boiling rage, I can rationalize it and just get out of bed for a bit, or put on a chill youtube video, etc. I think the primary collective effect of sleep therapy, mental therapy, and Zoloft is that I now have the mental wherewithal and actual physical energy to take better care of myself, which in turn allows for better sleep (and a better life). The amount of suffering people go through because they don't have access to these things is so loving sad. Over a decade of my life was arbitrarily handicapped by two health problems.
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Nov 24, 2020 18:50
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 07:46 |
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