What should I do to get free from insomnia, migraine and anxiety

Dear Jimmy,

I am so glad you were willing to reach out and ask for some guidance with the present issues in your mind and body.  It is so challenging to live with less sleep and physical pain through migraines.  And then the anxiety is very debilitating at times when it affects your emotions as well as how you are speaking.  It is also one thing to have these issues affect you emotionally and physically, but it is so deeply challenging when those issues then leak into your work environment.  

Today, in my response to you, I want to talk about some potential issues that are going on for you and then some action steps.  Because we are not sitting down together, I know that some of what I say will not resonate, and some of it will.  So please know that ahead of time and know that you can skip those things that are not a part of your story and seek to hold onto the things that you need to step into and do differently.  

First of all, I wonder if you have had a full medical check up.  You may have some sort of physical health issue that may be going on and bringing about these symptoms.  It is very important to go to the doctor for these issues and see if there are any physical health issues that need to be addressed. And then make sure to follow through with the plan that your doctor lays out for you.  

Secondly, I wonder if you have taken time and energy to focus on your mental and physical health issues.  You have described that you have anxiety and that emotional distress is now leaking into your ability to talk and articulate your words.  It is clear to me that you will need a space to talk about what you are feeling in your anxiety and potentially other emotions too.  The way that we as humans deal with anxiety is through talking it through and being honest about what is going on in our lives and in our minds.  This is essential for healthy mental and emotional health.  You can't do this work on your own.  I would encourage you to take the steps to go to therapy to talk through what you are feeling and what your body is doing in the midst of this anxiety, insomnia, migraines and struggles with speaking.  These issues are very important to look at and feel and move through.  

It will be very important to talk openly about the anxiety that you are having.  It is also important to open up about all nuances of your mental, emotional and physical health struggles so that the person coming alongside you can help you the best way possible.  

Third, it will be important to grow some skills to help you with the specific struggles connected to anxiety, insomnia, and migraines.  I have many skills that help others to deal with anxiety and I will describe some of them.  And I do have some things I can guide you towards with insomnia. 

Let's start with anxiety.  Anxiety is a body based emotion that needs body based calming skills in order to help you to move towards calm.  So that means you have to build in ways to calm the body to bring about a felt experience of calm.  The first one that I teach folks and encourage them to do OFTEN is deep breathing.  When you deep breathe, it is important to have your belly move outward when you are inhaling.  This is what activates the part of your nervous system that calms your body. So it is important to have your belly move outwards.  It also helps some people to visualize places or experiences that have had calm in the past.  Other folks like to repeat a mantra or statement to focus on that can help calm the mind.  

Another body calming action that helps many people is bilateral stimulation music.  You can find bilateral stimulation music on all music platforms including youtube.  Here is my favorite track of bilateral stimulation music.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu_kSaFzSR0&list=RDEu_kSaFzSR0&start_radio=1

One more body calming action is movement.  Many people can find good feelings connected to moving their body regularly.  

One more action that can be helpful for anxiety is grounding exercises.  Grounding exercises are seeking to bring your mind to this present moment and seeking to accept things for where they are at without judgement.  Grounding can be done well using your senses.  Seek to focus on one of your senses.  So if you pick noticing what you hear - seek to notice and focus on all that you are hearing.  And seek to be with those noises and label them.  Seek to bring your mind to the present moment.  You can do this to help your mind running away with anxiety.  You can tune into any of your senses to help you with this activity, but seek to just focus on one sense at a time.  

The actions that help with insomnia is seeking to build a routine before bed time.  Seek to do the same routine each night.  Another is to keep a distance from your phone and any other electronic devices for at least thirty minutes before bed.  Seek to also do calming actions leading up to bed time.  You may have tried that and if you have, I would encourage you to talk with a therapist about the combination of anxiety, migraine and insomnia.  They may be feeding off of each other.  

I wish you the best of luck and hope you take some steps to help yourself by digging into your emotional struggles!
Paula