sleeping routine?

Is anyone else's sleeping routine really screwed up?  I am up most of the night these days and spend half my day dozing off.  I know I'd be asleep if I went to bed but I have to deal with a lot of nightmares and aches and pains so I tend to avoid sleep, but then when my kids need me and my family wants me, I can barely keep my eyes open.  I've completely screwed up my natural sleep rhythm.  As a result, I feel really displaced right now.  Any recommendations to get back on track?  Sleep is either an avoidance of dealing with anything or it's full of nightmares that leave me more exhausted than if I'd just not bothered going to sleep in the first place.  I've noticed in reading through some of the Fibromyalgia postings that this seems to be a symptom of the FMS and I do have FMS as well which does complicate the depression a bit.  I am addicted to being online and either playing games or being here.  It's another aviodance technique.  Plus it keeps me hands busy.  I've even lost interest in tv these days.  It doesn't keep my hands busy.  I'm sure that when I finally go upstairs to get ready for bed, I'll probably start picking at myself.  Being busy at the computer prevents me from picking and making a mess of my skin.  For the last six months or more, I wear my nails as short as possible to help keep the damage to my skin to a minimum, but I still manage to pick regardless.  I just feel caught in this vicious cylce of disrupted sleep, lack of enthusiasm, exhaustion, pain both physical, mental and emotional.  Today I'm feeling a real weight.  My son is 10 today.  He and I have been through a lot together.  We've been to hell and back as they say, together.  No one else knows what we've been through because no one else but us has lived through it.  I have battled depression since before he was born.  My depression through his early years involved a lot of anger.  And I look at my son now and I see an angry child with low self-esteem and I know that I made him that way.  It's a lot of guilt to carry because I know it shouldn't have been that way.  I should've been stronger for him.  But I wasn't.  And right now I'm failing him, my husband, my daughter and my family.  I'm incapable of managing my basic responsibilities.  I just want to snap out of it, but I've lost my way.  I know my doctor and the therapist my husband and I are seeing together are trying to help but nothing seems to be getting through.  I just don't know what to do.  I'm confused.  Misunderstood.  Angry at myself.  Angry at the world for not giving me more of a chance.  I don't take no for an answer very well but after ten years of being denied and pushed to the back burner of life, it's taken a heavy toll.  I want to feel important again.  I want to have some fun again.  But everything is over shadowed by financial issues or space issues or lack of resources, etc....  My life is a mess.  And today, my son's 10th birthday, is an avid reminder to me of just how messed up I am.  I love him dearly, I just wish I could give him so much more....  I wish I could give him a happier mother, with energy and a gusto for life.  But I just keep hitting brick walls every time I try to do something to better my life.  It's so darn frustrating.  Anyways, I really need to go to bed.  It's almost 4am.  I have to get up in the morning and put on a happy face and celebrate my son's birthday for him.  We have invited some friends over for pizza tonight and my son is really looking forward to it.  Today is about him, not me.  I can reflect on things in my own time, away from him.  I just wish I could cry.  I wish I had a shoulder to cry on.  Somedays I dont' feel strong enough to hold the weight of my body up and I just wish someone else would hold me up, bear the weight, the pain for a little while...  But my husband just doesn't seem to know what to do and is incapable of starting a conversation.  I want to so badly, but the words won't come out.  I've told him this.  I've told him I need him to take the reigns but he won't take the responsibility, and it's frustrating, because I have spent so much of our married lives looking after him and holding him up.  He's had a chance at a higher education.  He's working in a field that he chose, perhaps it isn't everything he was hoping for, but he chose it nonetheless.  He just doesn't seem to realize how many blessings and opportunities he's had at the expense of my dreams, my education, my happiness.  I know he'd like me to go back to school.  The financial situation is what it is.  We have to be patient.  I'm having  a tougher and tougher time managing patience.  I've been patient for 10 yrs. waiting for my turn...  I am tired of being patient...  Anyways, I need sleep.  But getting some of this off my chest may help keep the demons away....  Thank you for listening!

slowlygoingcrazy

yeah, I have a sleep aid too but I have to be able to sleep for 8 hrs when I take it, which isn't always possible. Plus I absolutely hate the taste sleep aids leave in your mouth the next day. So I use them sparingly, and when I do use them, they do help. If anyone has any alternatives to sleep aids, please feel free to suggest them. Thanks.

I jut wrote up a long post explaining my entire sleep patern and accidentally hit the esc button and poof gone.

So basically I stay up WAY to late 12-1am and alarm goes off at 6am. I am tired all day, come home and nap for a couple of hours and then of course I am not tired when I should be going to bed, and the vicious nap cycle begins. Even when I don't nap, I still find it near impossible to go to bed before midnight.

I take 1.5mg xanax every night, and it gets me relaxed enough to sleep and leaves no hangover.

I am a great sleeper, I just have awful sleep habbits that are very hard to break.

Oh I work. I work and I have two kids. It's on weekends I might actually be able to get a couple hours during the day, and I've been known to really fight sleep at work occasionally. Somehow I keep going. Maybe it's the yawning. It gives me a bit more oxygen!!! It's not because I'm not tired that I don't sleep. I start to get anxious right before bed. Because I know I run a very high chance of bad dreams that are sometimes worse than just staying up all night. Also, it's at night when I'm trying to go to sleep that my mind starts working through some of my issues and pain. If there was a time I was going to cry, it would be then. So it's more complicated than just because I have nothing else to do. Wish that were the case. I even have tonnes of hobbies I don't have the time or energy for. I want to start my own craft business even. But my lack of concentration doesn't help with the crafts either. Sometimes I just can't get into them, and sometimes I can't be bothered because it'll take me longer to get things out and put them away than I'll have time to work on anything. So it's not laziness. Plus I like the night time. I've always been a bit of a night hawk - runs in the family. The house is quiet, the kids are demanding my attention, I don't have to deal with my husband. It's nice. But it's all about avoiding the issues isn't it?..... Anyways, I just had to put a word in in my defence to that last one.

And to Wizzer120, I do the same thing. I stay up late, sometimes don't go to bed at all for one night, and then I'm so exhausted, I sleep a little more soundly one night and am a little more refreshed. Not much though.... And if it were just me, I could probably live with my sleeping issues. It's the family and the hubby. He gets frustrated if I doze off while watching tv or whatever. And the kids sometimes lack the supervision they need because I can't keep my eyes open.... So it's hard. I feel like I'm on both ends of the depression symptoms when it comes to sleep. I go between sleeping too much and not sleeping at all..... Very frustrating....

Anyways, thanks for the suggestions and in put.

slowlygoingcrazy