My friend P told me that journaling/brain-dumping is what you do to avoid/manage/control anxiety.

I just figured out my own sleep issues.

To sleep you need to be three things:

• Tired enough
• Comfortable enough
• Safe enough

Right now I’m tired enough, but either not comfortable or don’t feel safe.

Comfort is the just right between pleasure and pain.

If I don’t feel safe, I’m scared of something and until you can identify what you’re afraid of, you can’t fact check if it’s a reasonable fear.

My spouse is snoring beside me and my child is in bed asleep, so they are all safe, comfortable and tired enough.

I know right now I can’t make good decisions because I’m too tired. So I need to document my choices.

I think I need to better define comfortable enough to sleep.

stub Jan 30 2023

Coming back to this in April 2023, the feeling safe enough seems key. After two involuntary hospitalizations I have been doing EMDR to recover from the trauma. This especially was impacting sleep as I had started to have nightmares, which I hadn’t had in years, maybe since starting on anti-anxiety meds?

It also reminds me of the book The Body Keeps The Score about how the body registers trauma. I haven’t read it yet, but I have heard good things about it.