Q: I am anxious and cranky and not sleeping. On top of everything I am overweight and worry about that too. I feel totally overwhelmed by my life at the moment. What can I do to find relief right now? Of course I would carry on working at it but I need some relief right now.
A: I think I see exactly where you're coming from? Are you are more than willing to do whatever longer term work is necessary to obtain relief from your anxiety and feeling of being overwhelmed and you would like some form of 'triage' - immediate relief - to make life more bearable right now?
This makes good sense to me and I recommend trying the following steps:
1. Ask your doctor about melatonin and start using it - I recommend 3mg taken 2 hours before sleeptime. This is a natural supplement and will help re-establish healthy sleep patterns for you. Once you're sleeping well, everything will look brighter and more optimistic
2. Find out about a couple of aquasize lessons a week? Some sort of exercise is a good idea and will help not only with general health but also with your sleep. As your metabolism gets better so it will become easier and you will enjoy all physical exercise more. Walks on beach/sand are great too.
3. Take some little peanut butter sandwiches or other high protein snacks to work and have a snack every hour or hour and a half at most - One slice of bread/half a sandwich or a fistful of almonds (best nuts) or 1/2 avocado or a few spoons of guacamole dip Reduce portion sizes a little to account for snacks
4. Ensure that all your food is made a little higher in protein - add low fat cottage cheese (a spoonful to soups or mashed potato etc) or soy sauce or meat or beans/wheat (beans and wheat have to go together to make a protein that the body can assimilate) or an egg (within the egg there is lecithin which emulsifies the cholesterol)
5. In the longer term, get the NVC book and follow the articles and exercises there. As a first exercise, make a list of 10 - 15 'needs' that are really important to you. Notice how everything you do - and everything others do - makes you feel? Try and connect those feelings and guess what you might need?
6. Wrap yourself with a blanket - quite tightly - while you watch a movie and eat plain popcorn sprinkled with a little yeast (delicious and good for you). This will help calm you ready for a good night's sleep with melatonin.
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