I had a session with my counsellor this week. I thought I’d share some advice she gave in case it is useful to anyone.
Leaflets to read on sleep, bereavement, anxiety, depression and stress
https://web.ntw.nhs.uk/selfhelp/
She also explained about how the brain works and how our logical part of our brain will keep trying to solve this heavy emotional distress we have or trauma but it never can and so gets kinda stuck as logic can never do anything useful towards the problem of emotional trauma, only our subconscious does that (which we need the sleep for but it’s normal for sleep to be abnormal after things like we have all witnessed and our new crappy lives without our loved ones).
She said when I notice my mind whirring like this I should try to distract that brain (easier said than done i know).
In the day of course it’s less difficult because you can do a task but the worst is in the middle of the night waking. So she said to either imagine my dream house in detail if i was building from scratch by magic or to play a game going through the alphabet thinking of for example girls names and imagining slowly with chalk writing the name on the chalkboard (eg. Amanda), then rubbing it out and writing each letter of “Belinda” and so on through the alphabet to give my brain a task it can solve instead of a never-ending one that cannot be solved and panics me.
I didn’t crack it yet but sharing just in case anyone finds something useful…