Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain Fuels My Insomnia

As someone living with multiple chronic conditions, I'm unfortunately not a stranger to 1 condition impacting another. When my insomnia rages, I often experience Crohn's disease-related flare-ups. When my anxiety increases, both my Crohn's and my insomnia are dramatically affected. And, when I struggle with physical pain from Crohn's or rheumatoid arthritis (RA), my insomnia is immediately aggravated in the most frustrating way. I feel like my chronic arthritis pain fuels my insomnia symptoms.

Arthritis pain

During the winter months, living in the midwest I tend to struggle more significantly with RA than I do in the summertime.

For me, personally, this looks and feels like agonizing pain in many of my joints, swelling, redness, stiffness, challenges in changing position, getting in and out of bed or in and out of the car, and bone-deep fatigue that's sometimes impossible to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. This fatigue causes all sorts of challenges with my awake/asleep routine, and as you can imagine, this throws off any semblance of normal I have previously established with my dear foe – insomnia.

This season usually requires naps during the day, curled under my heated blanket and nestled amongst pillows and my heating pad to escape the raging discomfort taking over my body. And naps, while helpful in the moment, clearly throw off my nighttime sleep, causing me all sorts of struggles that only insomniacs are intimately familiar with.

Chronic pain fuels my insomnia

Pain prevents me from sleeping. Naps are a necessary evil when living with chronic pain and also with insomnia. There are points during the day that I just can no longer function without some rest. The time to fall asleep is usually relatively quick, but the sleep only lasts an hour or 2. Sometimes I wake up feeling a little less foggy and a little more alert, but other times I wake up feeling worse than I felt before.

At night, regardless of whether I've napped during the day, I find myself laying in bed focusing on the throbbing pain in my knees, my hips, my wrists, my fingers, and honestly in several other places. I struggle to find a comfortable position to lay in, to get my body to the right temperature, to relax physically or mentally. I think about all of the frustration I have living with chronic illnesses, and how much I'd rather be sound asleep rather than staring at the ceiling.

Pain and my meds

Sometimes, the medication I use to make the pain bearable can help me fall asleep, but inevitably, I wake up 2 or 3 hours later and I am both alert and anxious, the pain back at high levels and the desire to sleep far behind me.

These are the nights that I leave my husband and our dark, quiet room, and I creep downstairs to snuggle up on the couch with a movie I've seen several times before. Sometimes I doze early on, but often I'll finish the whole thing before I can fall back asleep. When the sun streams through the windows, waking me up far before I'm ready, I can't help but to feel groggy and uneasy, almost as if I feel sorry for my body and the night we experienced, along with some extra dread about facing the day ahead.

If you live with chronic pain or chronic illness, can it fuel your insomnia? Help others and share in the forums how you cope with dreaded painsomnia.