RLS: ideas for concentrators

[Guest guest]

If you swear you can NOT use concentration to successfully respond to your

RLS attacks, then please DELETE this before reading it. It'll just

irritate the heck out of you.

This letter is for those of you who have been successful using

concentration and are working on improving your skills with it. It's

definitely a skill that has to be experimented with and practiced. It

actually gets easier with practice. I wrote this information to Lee,

in a private email this morning, but I thought it might help others,

too...so...here it is.

-------------

Yes,...planning for your RLS attack IS necessary. In fact, I find that

when I go on a driving trip and have my suckers, vibrating seat pad, aroma

oils, etc....I tend to never need them. But if I DON'T have

them...YIKES!!! It's also the case that I do worse when I'm staying as a

guest at someone's house, or if someone else is in the hotel room (like

kids) and I have to stay still and can't walk around.

Try this one. Set a timer. If you HAVE to get up, do it, but set a timer

for 20 minutes. Then go back to bed. Use the idea that " even if there's

still some RLS going on, you've at least knocked the edge off it and you

might be able to listen to the music or concentrate on something and

overpower it. " Don't always expect it to be gone. I go to bed MANY

nights, these days, with RLS attacks in progress, but I just overpower it.

Note: " overpowering it " is VERY different than " ignoring it " ....or " just

relaxing with it " . The last two ideas are impossible. In fact, they are

guaranteed to make it worse. Your brain has to be " yelling louder " or

concentrating harder than your legs are " yelling " .

The rest of the idea with the timer, is that IF after about five minutes,

you can't sleep, then get back up, set the timer again, and do the same

routine (maybe having a cup of Tension Tamer tea).

Keep up this pattern until you finally get tired of getting out of bed.

Eventually, you will train your body OUT of the habit of " RLS attacks, then

I'm up all night " and into the habit of, " RLS attacks...darn it..if I get

up, I'll just be up, then down, then up then down...might as well just stay

here and overpower it, now. "

Here's the thing....if your body knows it can keep aggravating you and

getting you up for the night, then that's the pattern it will go with.

That's what you've got now. Legs wiggle and you're up for a LONG time.

But if you just get up for a SHORT time, then back to bed, then up, then

back to bed, etc...then you're body (whatever is doing the RLS thing)

eventually weakens and is more manageable. I KNOW that some people in the

group would tell me I'm insane, but this is a concept that can make sense

and work for some of us...NOT ALL. It's used with disciplining of

children. But it has to be done right. If a kid misbehaves and is then

put in the corner for an hour...that's too long and not effective in terms

of preventing future problems. But it DOES work if you put the kid in a

" time out chair " with a timer for 5 min.....then let him go back to

playing. If he does it again, he goes right back to the chair, but this

time for 6 minutes...then back to playing, then for 7 min, etc.

Eventually, it just becomes a nuisance to misbehave at all. The kid will

think to himself, " If I do this naughty/fun thing, I'll have to go sit in

that damn chair! It's not worth it. " I swear the body and mind do the same

thing. Last night, I was driving home, as a passenger, with my daughter

from Phoenix. Picture a long day of shopping, 11pm, my tailbone is so sore

I can't hardly sit for some reason, I've got the vibrating heating pad

going, and my legs start to want to wiggle. I immediately feel it my arms,

too, and I know it's going to be a full blown panic/RLS attack. I said to

myself, " JILL!!! Ya know what? If this gets going, you'll have 30 minutes

of sheer hell going home. Damn it! Don't go there and do that! " At that

point, instead of worrying about the RLS, I just started getting into a

heavy conversation with my daughter, rubbing my leg gently, and next thing

I knew, we were home. A year ago...even six months ago...I would have been

miserable.

If any of these concentration ideas are going to work, they have to be

ideas that make sense to you, and fit your kind of thinking. If anything

here makes sense and helps...use it. If it all seems totally impossible,

then don't feel badly about it....just keep working at it in your own way.

It's all hit and miss for a while, but sometimes we get lucky and HIT more

than we miss.

Good luck,

Jill