I removed old beliefs to stop draining my energy by expecting my energy to be drained. This is not as simple as just stating, “I will stay awake in this movie” but it is a process that anyone can learn. When I change my beliefs about things, the outcome also changes. I can decide anything from whether or not I like the taste of a food, to whether or not I think I can succeed at something new. Then I learned I have control over all of my beliefs. I used to think beliefs were just about religion and I made those choices accordingly. I worked to clean up my ANTs or Automatic Negative Thoughts so that my head is a happier place to be. Most of those thoughts mean nothing at all but a huge percentage of them repeat day after day. All-day long we are bombarded with somewhere around 80,000 thoughts. Why wouldn’t you do the same for yourself? I try not to think of clean eating as a punishment, but instead as an expression of love to myself. You buy expensive food, or even take special care to make sure it eats at optimal intervals. I know you may be resisting this but hear me out! If you have a dog or cat that isn’t quite well, you may treat it to a special diet. It may just mean eating intuitively, but try different things to see what works for you! This doesn’t have to mean following a specific diet. But for people with narcolepsy, I see it as even more important. Eating healthy food is good for everyone. So if I can use intermittent fasting to increase my focus, I do that. That’s because even when I eat clean, there is always a chance my food will increase my sleepiness. If there is no time for a nap, there is no time for food. Skipping breakfast is a tool I use sometimes when I know I need to stay focused throughout the whole morning. I try to leave at least 3 hours between food and bedtime. Its an invitation to the nightmares, and for crappy sleep quality. But instead of reaching for food to get more energy, I go to sleep (if possible.) For me, eating before bedtime is a bad idea. Of course, I get the munchies when I get tired, like many of you probably do. I have learned this is a real thing, called a “coffee nap”. This superpower allows me to live with narcolepsy! Avoid food before sleepģ. This allows the caffeine to come into effect as I’m waking up. Also, if I anticipate it may be hard to wake up in my time range, I drink a cup of coffee before sleeping. But I took the time to figure it out and now it’s like a superpower! If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. I know that is really short and specific. In my case, its 5-20 minutes, and usually between 7-12 minutes is the most effective. I did nap training to find the “sweet spot” for my naps. Then I have an extra hour in my day to read a book, cook something fun, or even catch up on Instagram. I tend to wake up groggier than if I just got out of bed earlier. Once I wake up, the sleep I get afterwards is not very pleasant. Even if its an hour earlier than I need to be up. But you might want to try some if you haven’t already. I’m not saying they will work for everyone. Here are some of the things that I have integrated into my routine. If you are interested in that, you can find more here. This has nothing to do with the lucid dreaming or coping with hallucinations that we focused on in the talk. So I’ve tried to list them out simply below. I know there are plenty of things that I didn’t think of mentioning in the hour we had Live. Things that I just see as part of my habits and daily life now are actual strategies for treating Narcolepsy. Our conversation helped me realize that I have done a whole lot more than I ever realized to live with narcolepsy. Then, Julie Flygare asked me some questions about how I manage narcolepsy and what my experience has been like. On Sunday, I was on a Facebook live chat with Project Sleep to share how I live with narcolepsy.įirst I read an article I wrote as part of the Rising Voices of Narcolepsy program.
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