the idea that the body would use sleepiness to block out unwanted emotions has always sounded completely wild to me because it seems like the "sleep system" and the "emotions system" are/should be separate things, but I have heard people claim this. is this a thing?
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@kasratweets
it’s definitely a thing. ain’t no systems that are truly separate. for me it usually shows up as lethargy/apathy. similar but distinct to the feeling of “it’s bedtime.”
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@grantbels
right. I've also seen meditation teachers talk about drowsiness as another kind of resistance to emotions that are about to bubble up
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@kasratweets
Your body is not a computer, it doesn’t have unrelated uncorrelated systems operating independently. Everything is deeply interwoven and cross-activating.
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@eshear
oh it's definitely not a computer, but I think it has both interweaving and lots of independent-ish parallelism, even within one organ like the brain
I just find this particular interweaving especially surprising/interesting
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@kasratweets
As far back as the early 2000's, we've seen research suggesting dreams help emotional processing - and you dream every time you sleep even if you're unaware of it.
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@kasratweets
Sudden onset sleepiness is super common way for freeze to come on. It’s energy conservation and immobility
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@jessicamalonso
that makes sense. I've also seen people make a connection to dreams and "letting the subconscious catch up", does that track too?
@kasratweets
As far back as the early 2000's, we've seen research suggesting dreams help emotional processing - and you dream every time you sleep even if you're unaware of it.
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@kasratweets
Imho “Body uses sleepiness to block out unwanted emotions” is a sort of over-opinionated, overwrought frame that makes it harder to understand what’s going on. The underlying mechanism may be simpler.
“Some strong emotions are followed by drowsiness” is a recurring thing for me…
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@kasratweets
I've seen it happen dozens of times
Anyway, why should they be separate things. It's not like the emotional state is irrelevant to the wisdom of sleeping - have you never been kept awake by an emotion? Anger or romance or?
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@PrinceVogel
yep definitely. I think I had some confused intuitions from thinking about it as “body suppressing unwanted emotions with sleepiness.” the connection between sleep and emotion feels more straightforward without that framing
@eshear
it feels intuitive to me that emotions regulate energy levels, e.g. depression/sadness inducing lethargy
the thing that seems weirder is for _suppression_ of an unprocessed emotion to occur via sleepiness. but some of the other answers have helped clarify this
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@kasratweets
Hmm not sure if I know about that specific example but our body is usually in two well defined states: fight or flight and rest and digest. There are a lot of emotions coupled with each
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@kasratweets
goes both ways for me
I've occassionally gotten suddenly sleepy as soon as someone wanted me to do something I didn't want and felt rude refusing
much more often, my first indicator that i'm sleep-deprived is a feeling of despair
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@kasratweets
The mechanism is depression. One reason people become depressed is when they are challenged with emotional stressors that they are unable to effectively process, so the body responds with depression. It manifests classically in women and as hostility/irritability in men.
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@kasratweets
Totally a thing, in my experience. When I started taking lion's mane mushroom to address my depression and ADHD, I was finally able to get off my meds. Now I have so much energy and insomnia sometimes, whereas before, I slept my life away because I used sleep as an escape.
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