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Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

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Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#51

Post by vinni2 »

koheripbal wrote: post #16
raghuveerdotnet wrote: post #3

Stress resilience is one of the most important things when it comes to knowledge work, also one of the most neglected aspect. Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep. Also the other thing people usually fail to note is the vicious stress-sleep cycle (lack of sleep induced stress stress induced lack of sleep). It took me years to realize that so much of my problems with be…

During a very difficult time in my life recently, I found it impossible to sleep. I would have stress nightmares and even when i did fall asleep, I would soon wake myself up with specific scenarios my mind was trying to work out. I was incapacitated by this, which exacerbated my situation. I eventually noticed that I could fall asleep if I sat with my daughters while they watched TV. This evolved to me falling asleep…

Reminds of days when I could only sleep with the Air crash investigations show running in the background. It was something about the narrator’s voice that put me to sleep.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#52

Post by yoz-y »

luos wrote: post #36
koheripbal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During a very difficult time in my life recently, I found it impossible to sleep. I would have stress nightmares and even when i did fall asleep, I would soon wake myself up with specific scenarios my mind was trying to work out. I was incapacitated by this, which exacerbated my situation. I eventually noticed that I could fall asleep if I sat with my daughters while they watched TV. This evolved to me falling asleep…

For anyone who is suffering from this, or on some days finds it hard to sleep I recommend Science and Futurism With Isaac Arthur podcast. It has "Narration Only" versions of all episodes and it is very interesting, so if you can't sleep you can listen to it but it will not have harsh noises. Also Philosophize This has the same properties (very old episodes have some loud music). Let me know if you know similar podcas…

+1 to Isaac Arthur videos as lullabies. The only thing I regret is that then I also need to rewind each episode multiple times because I'm genuinely interested in what's said.

Recently I've also started to listen to luetin09's Warhammer 40k lore videos. They are in similar vein that they could also be podcasts. Skeptoid is another one I've used.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#55

Post by mcbuilder »

closeparen wrote: post #40
raghuveerdotnet wrote: post #3

Stress resilience is one of the most important things when it comes to knowledge work, also one of the most neglected aspect. Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep. Also the other thing people usually fail to note is the vicious stress-sleep cycle (lack of sleep induced stress stress induced lack of sleep). It took me years to realize that so much of my problems with be…

I get a lot more done as a knowledge worker than I ever did in college, because in the real world nobody cares if something is a day or three later than the nominal deadline, and “this turned out to be harder than I anticipated” is a legitimate excuse. Consequently I never start the cycle of staying up to meet a deadline and then blowing the next deadline because I was trying to work on it sleep deprived. This is eas…

In the real world, 2 or 3 days doesn't mean a failing grade most of the time. However, when you start to get 2 to 3 weeks behind the deadline in the real world there is no escape hatch.

Worst case in college, you submit the later assignment, settle for a D, and vow to study hard for the final. In the real world, you manager calls you to his office, asks you why you're weeks behind, it's going down now in your evaluation. Maybe you're in a start up, you loose that crucial client, now you're wondering how to pay your expenses as well. You have a family, kids, the stress compounds, pretty soon you're a mess at home and at work.

And, I've got 12 years of higher education under my belt. When I made the final push for my PhD thesis corrections, I stayed up 4 days straight right before the deadline dotting my 'i's and crossing my 't's. 6 years into the "real world", I often look back on that time as the good ole days.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#56

Post by drewg123 »

koheripbal wrote: post #16
raghuveerdotnet wrote: post #3

Stress resilience is one of the most important things when it comes to knowledge work, also one of the most neglected aspect. Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep. Also the other thing people usually fail to note is the vicious stress-sleep cycle (lack of sleep induced stress stress induced lack of sleep). It took me years to realize that so much of my problems with be…

During a very difficult time in my life recently, I found it impossible to sleep. I would have stress nightmares and even when i did fall asleep, I would soon wake myself up with specific scenarios my mind was trying to work out. I was incapacitated by this, which exacerbated my situation. I eventually noticed that I could fall asleep if I sat with my daughters while they watched TV. This evolved to me falling asleep…

I had similar issues, and tried to solve them with a similar method. I fell asleep to an audiobook about the roman empire many nights. I finally realized that the reason I was having trouble falling to sleep, and trouble getting back to sleep after a noise, etc.

I turns out that the only time when I was not doing something that occupied my mind was when I was trying to sleep. Eg, I'm either working, consuming media such as Netflix or podcasts, talking with people, etc. I'd even listen to podcasts while taking walks. So when trying to sleep, I'd be stressing out over my problems, and trying to work through them.

For me the solution was to find a better time to remove distractions and think about my problems. Eg, taking walks without podcasts, driving without the radio on.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#57

Post by raghuveerdotnet »

koheripbal wrote: post #16
raghuveerdotnet wrote: post #3

Stress resilience is one of the most important things when it comes to knowledge work, also one of the most neglected aspect. Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep. Also the other thing people usually fail to note is the vicious stress-sleep cycle (lack of sleep induced stress stress induced lack of sleep). It took me years to realize that so much of my problems with be…

During a very difficult time in my life recently, I found it impossible to sleep. I would have stress nightmares and even when i did fall asleep, I would soon wake myself up with specific scenarios my mind was trying to work out. I was incapacitated by this, which exacerbated my situation. I eventually noticed that I could fall asleep if I sat with my daughters while they watched TV. This evolved to me falling asleep…

Take whatever I say with a grain of salt, but I feel intentions(not to be confused with intentionality) help a lot here. They play a distinctive role in the etiology of attention(and the subsequent process of resilience building), one of the fundamental aspect of dealing with psychological issues. For eg, Whenever you become aware of these nightmares, try to observe the casual chain, eventually your mind will be inured to these episodes and will become much better at threat detection. Something like a mindfulness(Vipassana) retreat can help with this a lot.

My experience has been that most of the psychological issues can be resolved to a great extent by employing the "redundancy of potential command a.k.a Self-Organization"(See McCulloch). Meditation does this by asking you to bring back the wandering mind again and again. But you can also do this voluntarily by repeatedly observing the stress inducing conditions such as nightmare(in your case), which can help your brain better adjust and detect patterns.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#59

Post by hh3k0 »

waihtis wrote: post #10

I had great success picking up a consistent meditation habit with the greasing the groove-approach[1].. in essence, every time I would feel a bit foggy in the head, I would take a 3-15 minute meditation session. It usually results to 3-5 sessions per day. It's such a great mental reset, and I haven't since experienced the kind of complete depletion that you get from pushing yourself hard through the day. I bet some Z…

> … every time I would feel a bit foggy in the head, I would take a 3-15 minute meditation session.

Hey, that's what I do too! I've never read anything meditation-related and consequently do not know any of those approaches but I once realized that lying in bed/on the couch/on the floor for a few minutes while freeing my head of all thoughts really helps with mental fog (I have ADHD and fog tends to build up even with meds). I tend to jokingly refer to the process as 'clearing my cache'.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#60

Post by dudeman13 »

xyzelement wrote: post #45
koheripbal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During a very difficult time in my life recently, I found it impossible to sleep. I would have stress nightmares and even when i did fall asleep, I would soon wake myself up with specific scenarios my mind was trying to work out. I was incapacitated by this, which exacerbated my situation. I eventually noticed that I could fall asleep if I sat with my daughters while they watched TV. This evolved to me falling asleep…

I am a little surprised that so many responses suggested optimization to your technique but not how to solve the problem at root. I am neither a shrink nor your shrink but I think it's probably safe to say that whatever is affecting your sleep is probably affecting other parts of your life too, and while you mentioned a very difficult time - our bodies and brains don't by default react in most helpful says (eg - keep…

The very best way of dealing with stress isn't internal, it is making the source of stress go away.

Unless the internal changes fundamentally change how you view the world ( i.e. the source of stress no longer causes stress, which is the kind of change you'll very rarely see in adults ) it will only be a paliative measure.

Being better able to cope with crap is useful, but I don't think it can be considered solving the root of the problem ( due to lack of neuroplasticity in adults ).

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