Sleepless nights: racing thoughts and looming questions?

I hate those long sleepless nights; those dark nights where your thoughts prey on you.  Every time that your head hits the pillow your heart races and those dark thoughts crawl out.  Those dark thoughts that hide in the dark corners of your mind, lying in wait til you turn off the lights, then they come slinking out.

I've been dwelling with them so often lately that I've come to categorize these dark thoughts into two distinct types.  Of late I've had two different types of sleepless nights.  Perhaps the best way to explain them is to describe all these dark thoughts as insects.

The first type of sleepless nights is what I'll call chaotic ant style.   These are the nights where you turn off the lights and a million tiny questions that have been hiding in the corners of your mind run out and race around.  Your heart races and thousands of questions run across your mind, hurrying in and scurrying out.  Barely giving you time to even answer the question for yourself, you are just subject to the barrage of thousands of questions running around you now that the lights are out.  It's overwhelming, your heart races at the sheer number of things you've been pushing back into the corners to deal with later.  You can't sleep.  The questions are not friendly, but they are not weighty.  They run around your mind the way that a mass of ants runs around after it's line has been disturbed.  A nice little train of thought in the daylight, the second the light goes off you've wiped your hand across the ant line and chaos ensues.  All the little questions you were ignoring or putting off til later run around frantically and confused, not sure where they belong or how to get back to normal.  By themselves each question is harmless but in such numbers, the situation is overwhelming. You panic.  The questions run around your mind panicked.  You don't sleep.  It could end there or the tiny questions could get nastier and start to bite you. Who knows what is in store for you on chaotic ant style sleepless nights.

The second type of sleepless night is very different and I'll call it looming spider style.  This type of night is usually dominated by one looming question.  It has hidden deep in a web in the corner of your mind.  You know it has to be in there somewhere but you haven't seen it.  It doesn't just get frantic when the lights go out the way that ant style thoughts do.  No, no.  This is much more sinister.  This question is the big ugly kind.  It hides in the day because you're actually afraid to ask it.  You don't want to know the answer because of the three possible options for answers.  You've tried not to think about it because you know the answer to this dark question is either bad or worse.  Despite your attempts to not think about it you've come up with roughly three possible terrible answers to this looming question.  But at night, you discover it has more legs.  More ugly ways this question could be answered.  This questions fears discovery.  It preys on your mind in the darkness.  Slowly.  Methodically.  This is less of the heart-pounding overwhelming problem and more of the lie awake, cry, or be forced to get up and beat back that question with light and activity.  I have a few of these looming spiders I'm afraid to say.  One of them is named How.  He creeps out whenever there is a tricky situation that I don't know how to deal with.  How lurks around when I'm trying to figure out how to mend a relationship or how to get out of a jam.  He is often accompanied by his buddy What.  He lurks around with "What just happened?" and "what should I do about this?" situations.  Sometimes How and What creep around together, sometimes one comes out and then trades places with the other.

But the looming spider I'm most afraid of is bigger and uglier than that.  He likes to wait til it's extra late and I'm extra tired and he looms over my bed.  His name is Why.  I fear him and he knows it.  He is the biggest, the ugliest and the as yet undefeated monster of my sleepless nights. For those of you who like Lord of the Rings, think of Shelob the spider.  The only respite from the looming Why is on nights where it has already fed before I try to sleep.

Don't get me wrong there are some facts that keep me up at night.  Not everything that makes me bleary-eyed and cross in the morning is a question.  But it seems that facts and darker realities can be met with some amount of peace and acceptance.  It is the questions that truly haunt me when the lights go out and the questions that rob me of my rest.

Therapy might just be therapeutic... who knew?

Today I went to my first ever therapy session with a psychologist.  Don't worry, I'm not going to air my dirty laundry here.  I just want to muse over the idea of visiting a therapist.  I found it an interesting experience and I would like to consider it as a thing unto itself.

I have to admit that I was nervous to go there and share my story, or rather all the stories that add up to my story.  I mean, I know it's a psychologist's job to be supportive and non-judgemental, but my experience with people is that they aren't always what they are meant to be.  So, how can you trust them with some of your darkest thoughts and closest guarded feelings?

Well, I mean, it helps that you can tell that this person was genuinely listening.  You can tell when people are distracted or don't really care.  Or perhaps worse is when you are going through something and someone points out to you that it could be worse.  They invalidate your pain, your struggle, your suffering.  It's not about how it could have been worse or how somebody else has gone through worse.  Your pain is real and it's your pain to deal with.

Perhaps that was the most surprising part of this for me.  I sort of expected the therapist to be professional but more distant.  I expected them to calmly and matter of factly tell me that what I was dealing with wasn't that bad and could be dealt with.  What I did not expect was for the psychologist to close their eyes like they were suffering on my behalf.  What I expected less was for them to explain to me that layers and layers of trauma were informing some of my outlook on the world.

Trauma.

That sounds like a harsh word.  But honestly using the word trauma was freeing.  It made me feel like I was allowed to be as crushed and upset as I am by what I've been through.  I don't have to compare or stand next to a measurement and be found wanting on a scale of who has dealt with the worst things in life.  It is irrelevant how many worse things could have been done to me.  The only thing that is relevant is how the trauma, my particular trauma, has left scars and what to do with it now.

In a way, acknowledging that my pain is real, was the kindest thing anyone could do.  And letting me know that it really is hard to sort through these things is in a strange way a reassurance too.  It means that if you struggle to fix it on your own it's not because you're broken.  It's because some things are too big to be dealt with alone.  And that's not some failing on your part.  If it was as simple as do x, y, and z, you would have done it already.

So, I very stereotypically cried through a majority of this, the very first session.  But it was cathartic in a way.  It felt more productive than the times I've cried over these traumas with friends.  Maybe because I was allowed to be completely and unabashedly traumatised by them instead of trying to keep it together and present a strong side so as not to worry anyone. 

So, I hope that seeing this professional will help me deal with my trauma going forward and help me reclaim my life a little bit.  I refuse to let past trauma and fear rule who I am today and in the future.  I don't know if this resonates with anyone but that has been my experience today.