Bedtime restlessness

Does anyone avoid going to sleep? I get nervous each night because I know I might not sleep?

So I get anxious at bedtime.

Do you get racing thoughts involving not sleeping? Or being up all night? I definitely do. That keeps me from actually laying down and trying to initiate sleep, and then when I do try to sleep my sleep meds have already mostly worn off and sleep is a lost cause, then the anxiety kicks in even more.

Well said. Exactly what i feel.

Well, I don't know what to tell ya. We're in the same boat! I should be sleeping right now. I took my sleep meds 2 hours ago but here I am on the internet.

Exactly. I take them hours in advance and then wake up a few time each night.

Hi ValentinaVVV

Yeah, I can relate.

I get anxious thinking about this human activity called sleep when I've been manic for a while and I actually begin to miss sleep (yes, manic for a while - mania is fun at first then its just like oh well annoying)

at this present time all my body seems to want to do is sleep...but sleep is giving me nightmares.

I go to sleep but with quite a bit of uneasyness,, sort of fear..

It is this weird combination of dread or feeling missing something important.

I think it may be guilt over relaxing. Yes, I think it is manic related.

I get mad guilt over relaxing. Like I need to be doing something productive all of the time or something bad is going to happen. You think it's manic related? Uh oh.

Yep. I am in a manic episode. Slowly coming down, finally.

At least I get this way when manic. Otherwise, when I am depressed, I sleep. When I am manic, I go-go-go.

Out of the past 14 days I have gotten more than zero hours of sleep for only 3 days. I've been motivated enough to study math for 28 hours in two days (my days off) and I hate math, and I've gotten out of bed 8 hours early or so to study for my math final most days so that I can study for 8 hours before work most weekdays plus meeting with my professor three times, and going to the tutoring lab twice. I haven't had this kind of motivation in ages. I've been depressed for the last almost year. But the stress of finals triggered something in my mind and sent me in a different direction. I've even taken 8 trash bags of garbage out of my hurricane zone bedroom in the past two weeks. And I never clean my room. My psychiatrist also just increased my antidepressant dosage. I don't feel especially euphoric, but I feel different. Like I'm headed toward something. And I definitely have been having a LOT of drug cravings which I never get unless I'm manic or headed toward mania. (I haven't done drugs since my undergraduate degree, and I wasn't into hard drugs, but that's what I crave). So I don't know if I'm in trouble or not. I'm not hyperactive and but I do have some psychomotor agitation.

When my psychiatrist saw me last week he saw that I was calm and speaking rationally, so he wasn't too worried, but he was a little worried that I was headed toward a mania so he switched my sleep med regimen. I'm still not sleeping though.

Sleep is essential. Sounds like mania is on the way.
How many manic episodes have you had?

I am rational and manic. Just nuts and agitated.

I honestly don't know how many manic episodes I've had. I've had probably 20 hypomanic episodes since high school. And maybe 8 or so manic episodes since I started college. It's so hard to tell because manic episodes for me usually turn mixed pretty quick, or I go into psychosis and then I lose track and have little memory of what happened. My ex psychiatrist called a lot of things manic episodes that I wasn't sure were manic episodes, but he's the expert. I guess I was just thrown off by the fact that I was still able to remain rational and functional and wasn't super spazzy or hyperactive.