Rick_the_Rose

Are you a Batman villain?

Do you ever have trouble with people trying to eliminate their anxiety entirely? Like where they become anxious about having any anxiety whatsoever? I know a small level of anxiety is good when you need to perform (in whatever context). Yet, if you told someone suffering from GAD that, they might think you’re crazy off the cuff. Since to them, any anxiety might have become a threat to their day to day life.

Thanks for the long form explanation. I recently wrote a school paper on insomnia and how it relates to other disorders (which you probably know sleep-wake disorders are both caused by everything and cause everything). But anxiety comes up a lot in research, sometimes beyond what I would have thought. That something like 1/3 of CBT-I exercises directly involve lowering anxiety about sleeping would have gone over my head a year ago.

I didn’t think about the whole “person develops a sleep disorder, gets anxiety about sleeping, associates bed with sleep, which raises their anxiety, which in turn prevents them from sleeping.” But as soon as I had read it, I could see how it can be learned behavior just from any point in life.

I said it in a long, drawn out way, but I can see the parallels in my recent paper and your area of expertise where anxiety builds from essentially fear of anxiety.