How to take care of your nervous system while tapering - a space for learning, sharing, and exploration

October 3, 2026··

Posted in:Miscellaneous Positivity Support Symptoms & Self-Care Tapering

If you're like me, you might have landed on an AD or Benzo because you already have a highly sensitised central nervous system (CNS) and found yourself struggling with insomnia and/or anxiety. Maybe we end up on an AD because we have a traumatic life history; maybe a difficult life situation or life crisis (or several) has pushed us over the edge; maybe a 21st stress level has done us in, or some combination thereof, as was the case for me. We go on the drug, hoping for relief, and when, for whatever reason, we decide to come off, many of us face the painful reality that tapering takes that already sensitised nervous system and puts it through the wringer. WD symptoms are largely the result of brain receptors freaking out and the nervous system going into shock with reductions, so I thought it would be helpful to have a space here where we can discuss how this manifests for us individually and share coping strategies and resources we've found that help. I have quite a list on both fronts, but will keep it simple to start with and kick off with one symptom / strategy / resource in caps in a separate post, so people can more readily locate a given symptom and CNS-care strategy. In my experience, learning about the nervous system and how to help desensitise as much as possible while tapering and learning CNS self-care skills in general can both reduce WD symptoms and help avoid, in the future, getting back to the place that put us in this pickle with ADs. I hope others with some experience and insight will chime in and contribute.

Mirtazapine — 0.12mg — 3 years, 7 months — active, but temporary hold to stabilise

1 Reply

Mcat2h ago

Mirtazapine · holding

INSOMNIA: Mirtazapine (my poison) is famous for the WD symptom of rebound insomnia - other drugs also have this WD symptom. While the cause is primarily due to the drug's action of blocking histamine and the reversal of that when tapering, this symptom has a big impact on the nervous system, which easily becomes a negative feedback loop in which your CNS gets more and more sensitive and reactive with continued inadequate sleep. I've learned the hard way that feeding into that with anxiety and trying to control it makes it way worse and perpetuates a vicious cycle. The idea is obviously to manage your taper to avoid this and other bad WD symptoms, but it's not always possible, even with the best tapering, and most of us make a few mistakes along the way and end up with more/worse symptoms than is reasonable at times. STRATEGIES: I take a few supplements 1-2 hours before bed that I think help a bit (what helps people is very individual), but my primary strategies for dealing with this are as follows:

Acceptance and doing my best to live mindfully in the present moment all throughout the day
Interrupting and reframing thoughts that want to focus fearfully on the issue of sleep throughout the day
Keeping my nervous system as calm as possible throughout the day (quite a bit in this; happy to give more detail if anyone wants, but I've mentioned a few of those things in other comments on other threads)
Eating a light supper with a bit of protein and healthy fat before bed
I take a 10mg 24-hr Zyrtec before bed - not sure how much it helps sleep, but I think it may help a bit, and I need to take it anyway since I get bad histamine symptoms from early afternoon on
My particular pattern is that I mostly go to sleep ok and sleep reasonably soundly for about 6.-6.5hrs, but tend to wake too soon and not be able to go back to sleep (btw, this pattern predates Mirt, and is likely due to hormonal and age changes, as I didn't have this problem before peri-menopause - it's hard to know how much current insomnia is due to Mirt WD and how much is a return to the original issue that led to taking Mirt, but either way, these strategies help
When I wake up too early, I do the recommended things in the resource posted below, but I add this in: I do lots of gentle self-talk and a reverse psychology thing on my brain where I tell it I'm not trying to sleep, just resting, and then I focus on a breathing pattern that calms the vagus nerve: four breaths in, six out - very often, I do fall back into a light sleep; if I wake too early yet again and still feel tired, I repeat the above, and often I go back into a light sleep

RESOURCE: This 20-min vid is very useful - this woman has a YouTube channel focused on CNS sensitisation and how best to manage it; a lot of her focus is on how a sensitised nervous system can cause neuroplastic symptoms, including anxiety (there's a thread in the Symptoms & Self-care forum along those lines), which may or may not be of interest to you (it's very relevant to my case), but this one on sleep would be worth the time of anyone here struggling with sleep; she even talks about insomnia as a drug WD toward the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W6DImPelyc&t=3s I could go on, but that's more than enough for now. I'll wait and see how much interest and engagement there is with this forum and give you all a chance to weigh in.

Mirtazapine — 0.12mg — 3 years, 7 months — active, but temporary hold to stabilise

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