sleepiness / torpor / sloth

[FAD]

Hi John, hi all

Resonated with the book which i finished recently - thank you. Will be purchasing your audio program at month end.

Backround info. I am 30 years old. Depression issues for 12 years, anxiety for 3. Unfortunately i am on anti depressant medication (have been off and on during those 12 years) - whenever i've have tried to come off (always very slowly and carefully), i've ended up falling to pieces a few months down the line and having to return to them. Have tried many alt therapies and spent many years in western psychological therapy with various therapists with no success. I am one of those people who you described in a previous post on “emotionalism” and have been since childhood. Even on the medication I can be very emotional (aside from a couple of years where I was so heavily dosed that I felt nothing at all bar a general boredom and dissatisfaction with life), It took me a long time to realise that in spite of all my histrionics and anguish, and possibly even as a result thereof, I might actually be suppressing my emotions. Googling on ways to fully release and experience emotions lead me to this website.

My question relates to a problem I experience alongside the depression that is equally disabling – excessive daytime sleepiness. This started about a year into my starting on the medication about 11 years ago. I found myself unable to stay awake in my university lectures. In the years since then, I have fallen asleep at work and in my car numerous times. Soon after the sleepiness started, I began using sleep as an escape from my emotions as well. I can sleep almost any time anywhere on command. Sometimes I think that as soon as my mind experiences something it doesn’t like, doesn’t want to do or doesn’t want to feel, it brings on this intense sleepiness that is very difficult to fight. My eyelids just start dropping, I can’t stop yawning and I yearn for sleep. My entire brain starts to not function –even if I don’t give in to the bed, I’m walking around in a zombie like haze. The sleepiness varies in intensity, going in cycles of weeks or even months alternating between manageable and unmanageable levels. At times it renders me completely non-functional. Depression triggers sleepiness, sleepiness makes me depressed.  I feel as though I have slept the last ten years of my life away – which I regret terribly, but at the same time all I want to do in almost any given moment is sleep some more – which makes me anxious because I know I have a life to live and things to do. Meditation is obviously difficult as I struggle to stay awake or resist the urge to lie down and then fall asleep – movement helps.

What do you think? Any advice? Should sleepiness be observed like any other bodily sensation or emotion? Any tips?

Thank you
Regards Fiona

[John Ruskan]

It's a giant step to realize that suppressed emotions are probably the major factor in the depression. If you start working with the process, looking for the feelings, it's only a matter of time until you see some results. I'm wondering if the medication can be the major reason for the sleepiness. A side effect usually is drowsiness. Maybe discuss this with your doctor? Maybe a change of meds.

Sleepiness and torpor can be an unconscious attempt to avoid unpleasant feelings, and there may be some of that here, but it seems like something else is influencing you. Maybe something like inability to take in revitalizing energies because of the defensive shielding that suppression creates or some other subtle disfunction in the energy body that would be hard to see. I would use the light and earth visualizations to start to align the energy body and protect yourself from the possibility of psychic interference, and then expect that processing negative suppressed energies will eventually bring the energy body into balance.

It wouldn't hurt to start with the physical. Make sure your diet is good, no caffeine or junk, and exercise so you sleep well when you do sleep. Exercise may  also wake you up. Witnessing the sleepiness wouldn't hurt and may help, but since it doesn't appear to be a core feeling, I wouldn't expect a change just from witnessing.

[FAD]

Thanks for your feedback John