10-31-2010, 05:35 AM
(10-29-2010, 01:48 PM)ronatello Wrote: I've had some nasty experiences with melatonin when trying to "cure" my insomnia a while back. It made me feel even more groggy the next day, along with more negative thinking and when I stopped taking melatonin, it made for a couple of nights of crappy sleep ( I call that rebound effect).
@ Ryan, where is 5-HTP obtained? Health food stores?
I've got the same problem with melatonin, the only thing I couldn't wrap my head around is that it's a natural chemical that already is being produced in the brain. Turns out that after taking melatonin you're starting to activate the pineal gland again to make more melatonin, which takes in serotonin to naturally produce the melatonin, hence why you feeling pretty much like arse the day after. But this should pass after you take melatonin on a regular basis.
Even with the risk of feeling like ****, I'm going to get some melatonin capsules soon to test it out again.
@Jackie
Great to hear that you're able to sleep well on your own strength, and I will definitely try out the beta waves in the morning. Great tip!
I was familiar with the thousand negative thoughts per day, I had the same told to me at an extracurricular course which had a stroke of NLP running through it, it was a great intro, but too bad he didn't tell us how to properly handle those thoughts throughout the course...
I also have used A.N.T.'s (Automatic Negative Thoughts) in the past when I still was seeing a psychologist, but wasn't something I looked forward on doing since it's pretty hard for me to write down my emotions, and every sentence I made wasn't good enough at describing it etc. (i.e. perfectionism).
One thing I have been trying out for the last few days is doing 'Morning Pages', which is basically outputting all your current thoughts on paper or a word document for three pages (I'm just doing one for starters) after waking up without holding anything back, and it's pretty funny re-reading it just to see incredibly impulsive and random your mind gets, along with how much of a class A arsehole you can be to yourself.
Even though it's been only a few days now, I can notice a small decline in negative sentences/phrases and probably since I've become more aware of it, but then again it could also be the sub improving my inner dialogue. Who knows, I will continue doing it nonetheless.
