About Jason E Johns Expertise I can answer any question on dealing with stress in your life and changing your lifestyle so that stress is no longer a problem for you.
Experience I regularly run Stress Management courses and work one on one with clients to help them reduce their stress levels. I'm the author of the Free Me From Stress program and have recorded a Stress Management audio CD.
Organizations General Hypnotherapy Register
Education/Credentials Certified Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming
Certified Master Hypnotist
Diploma Of Hypnotherapy
Expert: Jason E Johns Date: 12/20/2007 Subject: stomach disturbs sleep
Question stomach disturbs sleep 1
I have problems with sleeping.
These problems started with a series of psychological traumas in 1982,
when I was 31 years old.
Probably it is irrelevant what caused it, relevant is the fact that
any problems that affect me tend to reflect on my digestive system,
and, on the other hand, digestive problems affect my sleep.
I also should add that
I am now not psychologically traumatized, I mean that
those problems affected me psychologically during less than one year,
and then those questions remained completely solved in my mind.
So, the psychological part disappeared, but
the digestive consequential problems remained forever.
Before that, I always slept 8 hours a night, like an angel.
Exactly 8 hours a night, not less not more, and I was ready for a new day.
My problem, since 1982, is with contractions in my stomach.
I need to have my stomach full, otherwise I cannot fall asleep.
After falling asleep, I wake up every 1 or 2 hours, I go to pee,
I eat something (e.g. half an apple), otherwise I cannot fall asleep again, and so on.
This might seem strange, but the fact is that
I have managed well like this for 25 years.
I mean that usually I succeed in sleeping 9 or 10 hours,
so counting interruptions it may mean 8 hours of sound sleep.
But in these last months
(because of new stressful situations in my job, I am a university professor)
I have difficulty in sleeping more than 4-5 hours each night.
( Notice that I am not under stress right now, since during this academic year
I am on sabbatical leave doing research abroad and I live a very quiet life here.
However, the last academic year was very stressful because
there are many conflicts in my department,
because I was supervising 1 master thesis and 1 PhD thesis
which have reached their sucessful completion last June,
and because I was all year long away from my wife.
This year I am supervising 3 PhD theses, but there is no stress
since they are just at the begining, we have 3 more years to go.
Notice also that this year I am with my wife,
we have been married for 5 years and I feel very comfortable living with her.
There were stressful situations in relation to her during the last 6 months,
because she was very agressive at times, but this was just
the effects of stress in her, since she was completing a PhD.
Now she has completed it, 2 weeks ago, with the highest mark possible,
and she is very sweet again now, and I feel great with her.)
Typically now I fall asleep 1 or 2 hours after dinner, sleep 1 hour, pee+apple,
sleep 1 hour, pee+apple,sleep 1 hour, pee+apple,sleep 1 hour, pee+apple.
Then I expect to fall asleep again but I don't, I start
to feel contractions in my stomach, my mind wakes up,
ideas start flowing in my mind, and then I stand up and start my day,
because I feel that remaining in bed would be a waste of time,
since I will not sleep again until the next night.
However, I spend my day as a zombie, half asleep.
What puzzles me is this: what is the cause for such contractions in my stomach
which prevent me from falling asleep again ?
How can I prevent such contractions from happening ?
Notice that I am not even sure that these contractions are in my stomach,
but this is what I think. I feel a kind of vibration, more or less
at the same rythm as my heart-beat. Such vibration can be felt also in my head,
but I feel they originate in my stomach.
(I guess it is like when one feels anxiety,
but I am not an anxious person, on the contrary,
I have lots of self-confidence in general, maybe even too much, some times).
(Strange as it might seem, my impression is that I am somehow
different from other people, in the sense that
anxiety is usually a response of the body concerning the future
(i.e. fearing stressful events that possibly will happen in the future );
while the physical symptoms I have look like an anxiety response,
but they are a response to stressful events that already happened.)
Such vibrations seem to be in my stomach
because this is what I feel also before falling asleep,
at the begining of the night, while my digestion is working;
the difference being that these are more in the background,
in the sense that if I make a slight effort of concentration on my stomach
then I feel it is vibrating, as explained; but if I do not concentrate
on it then they fade away in the background and I can fall asleep.
However, such stategy does not work after 4 hours of sleep,
I will feel then stronger contractions
(I guess they are at a slightly faster rythm also,
or at least are felt with a stronger impact)
and they impose themselves on my mind, I can't find a way of
making them fade away and disappear, to fall asleep.
This problem seems to be connected somehow with the mechanism of
anxiety (I mean: the physical mechanism through which one feels anxiety,
not the psychological mechanism that triggers anxiety reactions)
because in some rare days in which I am really
a little anxious before going to sleep,
for some very definite reason in my life,
then I feel the same more strongly, and it may happen sometimes
that I cannot sleep more that 2 or 3 hours in total.
It is as if I must be too tired to overcome what prevents me from
sleeping, but after 4 hours of sleep I am not so tired anymore,
and what prevents me from sleeping wins over.
(Or, whenever I feel anxiety, hence with a stronger mechanism preventing me
from sleeping, it wins after 2 or 3 hours of sleep only.)
Another question is: why do I wake up so many times ?
One doctor once suggested it might have something to do with my prostate.
That my prostate wakes me up because I need to pee (but just a little bit).
I have problems with my prostate now, but not very pressing.
But the fact is that I keeping waking up so many times since 25 years ago,
while my prostate only started giving me problems 4 or 5 years ago.
A doctor suggested that my perturbations could have something to do with
blood sugar levels. I told him that he was right somehow, in the sense
that I had diabetes 3 years ago ( I mean that my blood sugar level
was higher than 400 for some weeks ) but such problem
was then corrected with better food and lots of physical exercise.
Since then my level is always below 100 (hence normal).
I exercise cycling 10 miles and swiming half-mile, daily, to avoid problems.
I avoid sugar (including sweet fruits), meat and industrially processed food,
and I only eat natural and whole foods, including yogurt, cheese, eggs and artic sea fish.
But my problems remain. I should also say that I had no bigger problems in sleeping
while I was diabetic.
My sleeping problems are usually started by stressful situations,
and when they start it is hard to make them disappear,
usually they will tend to begin fading away slowly,
along several weeks of tranquility.
I have looked now at several sources, and I have the impression
that my problem is essentially anxiety/excitability/stress sensibility.
What I mean is that I am not an anxious person,
however that psychologically traumatizing stress 25 years ago
provoked in my body all the symptoms of a physical anxiety response.
I found very interesting e.g the article on anxiety in Wikipedia.
I mean that I have the physical symptoms of anxiety,
because psychologically I believe I am not, and have never been, an anxious person.
In this article they speak about palpitations, and I thought whether what I feel is palpitations; but the way palpitations are described seem to be connected with irregularities in my heart rythm, which I do not have.
I seem to have a very good heart, its rythm is 55 to 60 beats per second, my blood pressure is great also, about 7/11.
Answer Hi Antonio,
Thanks for your question. It sounds like quite a complex issue and I must admit my first thoughts on this is that your psychological trauma's are not resolved. They may be on a conscious level, but the fact you are still having the problems with your stomach would say to me that there is still a problem on a sub-conscious level.
I would recommend seeing a clinical hypnotist who specialises in analytical hypnosis as this will very quickly get to the root of the problem. If they say you need more than 5 or 6 sessions then speak to a different hypnotist to get a second opinion.
You can try and get yourself into a decent routine for bed and train yourself out of the nighttime routine you are currently in, but I still think the problem lies in the sub-conscious mind.
You could look at Louise Hay's book, You Can Heal Yourself as I think this will help you in this instance with this issue. Really you need to communicate with your stomach and understand why it is acting that way and help it act in a more empowering way.
I hope that helps you out and sorry I can't give you more specific advice at this time.
