It sounds like your sleep problems began at menopause. You migbt do well to have your hormones checked and to read about the use of natural progesterone.

If your sleep problems began after a traumatic stress, you may be depletes of GABA. Benzos work on gaba receptors. Instead of taking addictive medicine you can replenish your GABA levels with he ami.o acid GABA in powd3r form (i like Billie Jay Sahleys protocol and her informative little books. Or you ca. Raise GABA even more naturally with an hour of yoga a day. (sorry, no print source for that one but it has worked for me, for ptsd in a very stressful environment with physical pain as Well).

I would ditch the psych nurse and therapist. You could roll a sevwred head into a "psychiatric professionals" office and get It filmes back to you with a dx and rx, thats how much they think about the body's role in psychiateic conditions.

Mental health minions confused my doctors by charting that I had borderline traits and probably bipolar. Yeah right. I developed a personality disorder at the age of fifty and have severe mood swings every twenty eigbt day right before my period. Ridiculous people.

Do your own reading about natural remedies for trouble related to menopause and the role of GABA in ptsd and sleep.

I once tried SSRIs and benzos and trazadone and sleep medicines in all kinda of combinations. Cash out of pocket. For more than a year. Nothing worked. Unless I washed it down with whiskey. I could have died from the amounts I drqnk. I quit It all in disgust and eventually tried GABA. All trauma hurts. PTSD kills. It kills through sleep deprivation, psychosis, suicide and alcohol abuse. Sometimes Ir kills through violence and sometimes reckless accident and sometimes our prison system. GABA can fix all that. Thats my soapbox story. If Its real PTSD you dont need your feelings validated and if Its menopause you dont need benzos. You need to bring your body back to Its.own balance.

You can get your feelings validated if you want. It dont hurt nothing. But its not how you get some natural drugfree sleep.

Check out Peter Levinex David Berceli and Bessel van ser Kolks endorsement of yoga for ptsd too.