Invincible and Kathryn-please read and give input ;-)

Thanks for your response to post--I read them, and you made some good points and asked some good questions.

I have a counselor. He does it by avocation, what that means exactly, I'm not sure. But he loves doing it, he is a phone call away, and he's been with me for the whole time.(over 11 years) Since he does it gratis,(I have no idea if other people pay him or not) I try not to take advantage. He also is in school right now (a life long learner) and has a son getting married on the 15th, so I've hesitated to call, but I emailed him, and asked if "we" knew why I didn't sleep, and perhaps I just couldn't remember. I just got his answer tomight, and I'd like to share it. It'a little long, but its a thoughtful response, and I wanted to share part of it with you. If you have any insights, I know I'm not taking it all in yet....here goes-------------------------------------------------
"pj" (My edit, quoting your question to me....)
“But I'm thinking.........and that's why I'm not sleeping.”

The minds ability to respond to the need for sleep is inversely proportional to the minds need to think. I have exactly the same problem. When my mind is focused on thinking about something, I wake up about an hour later.The main thing is you have to turn off your brain to get it into RIM sleep.

As you begin to come out of these Depression states, your mind starts to think of all the things that you - need to do - want to do - are expected to do - etc. The mind cannot drop into a sleep state when it’s so busy thinking intensely about things you think have to be resolved right now. The answer to sleeping is to “stop thinking”.

How do you do that? Remove the need to find an answer. That means find peace with the way things are instead of saying I’ve got to find an answer to this dilemma. Find peace with the way things are, but you say things are not right. Things are the way they are because of decisions that you have made and experiences that you have gone through. That means given the decisions you’ve made and the experiences you’ve gone through, things are exactly the way they ought to be (remember that illness makes a difference). Being able to find peace in the circumstances that now exist is the first step towards choosing new circumstances. Making new decisions and initiating a new process can change the future, but you must find peace with the present before you can make an intelligent choice to change the future.

As I have said before, you cause most of your own problems. We all do. Your worth and value is great and has always been great, but because you’re measuring stick makes you come up short every time you measure, you perceive your worth and value to be low. That’s the problem. If you could see your worth and value was constant and high...that you are a daughter of God, then you would find peace in your current circumstances. Then your mind would stop churning on making changes and evaluating unpleasant circumstances. Then you could sleep at night.
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I edited it just a bit, and there was more following, but I think he is probably right. He's been trying to convince me for years that my worth and value are not dependant on what I DO, but on who I am. To love myself. I just can't seem to grasp it. But I probably have a good piece of my answer to why I'm not sleeping-- He doesn't deal with the chemical, medical, physical parts of my Depression cycle, but he can sift though my barage of words when I finally call.

The second part of his email is about the problems I have with my husband. You guys kind of guessed that might be an issue.

Well, I've got to get a little more sleep. It was nice 'talking' to you. I'll go see if I can shut my brain down. I need to be up in 2 hours.
pj

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