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[cooper730]

Its 2 am in the morning

Ever since Covid, I developed a horrible sleep pattern. Nothing like being isolated and alone in a place with no friends or family to start questioning everything around you. I believe it largely started due to being laid off right at the start of the pandemic and starting off 2020 in Colorado where I new very little people. I am a very competitive person, especially when it comes to hustling in the job market. I excel in opportunity. I always have. I never feel like the odds are stacked against me. But rather this is my opportunity to shine. "I'll show em all" type of mentality. From the people I interacted with through various internet and social media forums in quarantine, it seemed like they weren't even trying. It was like apathy or something on an extreme level. Like if the world is going to shit we might as well have fun and drink and stay up all night. My personality type would never allow me to do this. From the point of being laid off, I hit the job market. Insanely enough I was getting a shit ton of hits. At one point I was interviewing with 5 different companies a week in 2020 from Feb until about July. I interview with Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Nutanix, Dell Computers, some start ups, ServiceNow, Google. You name em, I interviewed with em. As glad as I was to be interviewing with these companies, I had never faced such harsh and critical components of the hiring process. I was doing mock sales calls, presentations, behavioral, case studies, etc. Never had I had to try so hard for a job than in 2020. But I was in pure survival mode. That's the way my mind and body was trained. I don't give up. There has to be a tomorrow. As I went through this process, the realism of the surmounting "End" came to the forefront of my mind. I started to feel like I couldnt breathe anymore. Every day was pent up anxiety. We weren't meant to live this way. No hope. No future. Every interview would last up to about 5 to 10 stages. It was always wind up something like "Our HR departments gave us new numbers, what was once 10 positions for this role, is now only one, IF that" I was chasing ghosts while I was wasting away So much of this, it truly started to affect my sleep. I'd go to bed with nothing in my bones except anxiety and hopelessness. Every day for 6 months straight, I'd wake up between 2 am and 3 am with a huge shot of adrenaline and start obsessing over anxious thoughts. I didn't even remember them half the time the next day. Finally I would get up walk around and analyze the clock. I wanted so much to feel home. To feel warmth. To feel family. I would watch YouTube videos of Texas football media at those hours. Highlights of the boys in burnt orange always brought me happiness. Turning on a show or a movie was completely out of the picture because any little point of negativity would send me down a negative spiral. Because of my love for youtube research, I started to really research my sleep anxiety. What I found was the "fight or flight response" "The fight or flight response is an automatic physiological reaction to an event that is perceived as stressful or frightening. The perception of threat activates the sympathetic nervous system and triggers an acute stress response that prepares the body to fight or flee."-Psychology Today As I did more research I found that in order to conquer my sleep anxiety, I would need to regulate my emotions, not let my emotions have control over me. I needed to use my prefrontal cortex to determine what is rational and what was not. Are these crazy anxious thoughts I am having at two am rational? Is the world gonna end? Was that bill paid? Is my car gonna break down, again? Am I going to go into debt? Will I ever be able to afford the life I wanna live? Will this pandemic ever end? Will life ever be normal again? Did I really miss my chance at happiness by not going after that girl I really liked? Are these things I can solve at 2 am in the morning? No. Even if I was awake could they be solved tomorrow? Probably not. I did more research on regulating the physiological symptoms of anxiety. I feel like I was trying to outsmart my anxious thoughts by creating more problems, inadvertently of course. What I learned? BREATHE SPENCER, JUST BREATHE By allowing oxygen into my brain and control my breathing, I came to discover that I had my control over myself. Fight or Flight. Allowing oxygen into your brain will allow you to think rationally. Think about it. If you are choked up or have a stuffy nose are you usually thinking clearly? Not really. Allowing oxygen into your brain on a regualted level will allow you to have so much more peace. Once I started doing this. I came to find that I was able to sleep better. Waking up at 2 am still happened but by breathing I was able to get back to sleep and get better rest. I know it feels like the world is on fire most days. Take a deep breath and enjoy life every once in a while is what I've learned.