[sleepykieran]

After 3 years of struggle with insomnia I’ve finally found a path back to normal sleep. I want to share it with you as I believe healing is possible for any of us.

My journey started 3 years ago with a big work promotion. I woke early a couple of mornings, got worried about not being able to cope, and you all know how it goes, the cycle had started and I lost my sleep confidence. The next 3 years were up and down, and culminated when I decided to give sleep restriction therapy a proper go. It didn’t work for me – rather than fix my sleep maintenance insomnia it gave me sleep onset insomnia too, which was petrifying. I was in a right mess. I was prescribed anti-depressants, which I took one of and decided they weren’t for me after feeling like a zombie for 48 hours.
I got some useful help from family, and was lucky enough to find an excellent book called ‘the effortless sleep method’. I didn’t fully follow this method to recover, but it lead me to the realisation of how I could return to normal sleep.

Any insomniac will return to being a normal sleeper when they think (beliefs), act (behaviours) and feel (emotions) like a normal sleeper. Easy to say right? But how can we get there? These three things feed into each other, and the lack of sleep makes negative emotions more common, which is why insomnia so often comes in ‘bouts’. We can’t easily control our feelings, but we can control our thoughts and behaviours. When you start thinking and acting like a normal sleeper you will start to feel like one too – and then you’ll regain your sleep confidence. Examples of insomniac thinking is anything from ‘OMG what if I have a terrible night’s sleep tonight’ to ‘Which of these herbal teas will most improve my sleep?’. Replace these with anything positive (and it doesn’t even have to be true – the fear comes from the subconscious which will respond to the repetition – it won’t respond to logic, as you’ve probably already realised!), such as ‘I’m a really good sleeper’, ‘I love my sleep’.

So for example, if you have a plan to replace as many of your insomnia thoughts with normal sleeper thoughts, or thoughts about positive thinking, you’ll be on the road to recovery. Consider meditation with affirmations, writing down positive statements in a nice notebook, long walks focusing on positive statements etc etc.

And a quick note on behaviours. I’m sure you all know about sleep hygiene, but don’t over stress it – any action you take that increases sleep-tension will probably not help. There’s a balance to be had because acting like a normal sleeper means not overplaying your bed routines, although having a consistent bed and wake time is probably going to help. And finally, live your life like a normal sleeper – never change plans because you’re tired. This is important to feeling like a normal sleeper again.

Good luck and stay safe 🙂

P.s. if you’re not currently exercising, consider 30 mins of cardio a day. It will help your body feel tired. If you are exercising, considering upping it, just don’t think ‘I have to exercise extra in order to sleep’ – these are not the thoughts of a normal sleeper.

[Deb]

Thanks for sharing. I found The Sleep Book, which uses similar ideas. It gave me tools to let go of anxious thoughts and “trying to fall asleep” by using different methods like pills. Then I started sleeping normally.

[LCF]

Your experience with CBT was exactly the same as mine. At the outset, I would fall asleep fairly easily but wake up after only a few hours. By the end, after five weeks of having to get up after 20 minutes of being awake, I also had sleep onset insomnia. I got so anxious about having to get up I couldn’t fall asleep at all.

I think there is a small percentage of us who need something a little less stimulating. Even our local sleep clinic claims only an 80% success rate.

[Mac0908]

Great post. Much props to you for coming on here to share. I too have realized it’s usually not one single thing that gets us back on track within a few weeks/months but rather a combination of things that ultimately slowly but surely allows us to believe we can be normal sleepers again without fear. Once those thoughts finally click in our head, we let go more and more and ultimately become more positive which leads to an eventual recovery.

[Dlupu]

Did everything help you to sleep?

[Jaran]

Thank you for this @sleepykieran!

[SleepWorry]

Can you go into detail when it started to get better? I also do not want to try SRT because I know what happened to you will surely happen to me, and I cannot risk that while employed. I’m currently dealing with the maintenance insomnia which I never had before.

[sleepykieran]

Hi @SleepWorry

I’ve written a couple of others posts since this one, I hope you can find them.

I checked the notebook I bought to write down positive affirmations, and I’ve filled about 12 pages. I saw progress after maybe a week, and it seems I felt I didn’t need to write in the book anymore after a couple of weeks.

How long it takes you to return to normal sleep will depend on how quickly you can get used to only thinking and saying positive things about sleep (e.g. when you get out of bed and think ‘I only slept 4 hours last night’, flip that thought into ‘I slept well for 4 hours last night, that could have been worse! And I got to lie down for a whole 8, and I felt slightly less anxious than…’) These can be all lies that you don’t believe at first, it doesn’t matter, the subconscious will respond to the repetition. As you’ve probably worked out by now it doesn’t respond to logical arguments! Once you get used to this habit, it becomes more natural, and the positive sleep stories become your reality. You relax, and then can sleep 🙂

One more thing, I hope you don’t mind me mentioning, if you can, change your name from @SleepWorry to something neutral or positive – every little helps!

Best of luck 🙂

[Liliana]

Thanks Sleepkieran for sharing your story.
When you said Sleep Restriction Thereapy did not work for you, what did you do instead of?
Sorry I am confused…
I am in week number two of Sleep Restriction time and 11:30pm -5:30am and it’s has been so hard. 6 hours window to sleep but I am not even sleeping 4 hours. Thanks for your feedback.

[sleepykieran]

Hi @Liliana

I realised my negative thought patterns had trained my subconscious to keep me awake, dragging me into a spiral of anxiety. I worked on replacing these negative thoughts with positive ones about sleep (even if I didn’t believe them – it didn’t matter, the subconscious responds to the repetition, and does not register what the conscious mind believes to be ‘true’ about the situation)

Probably the most useful thing I did was to buy a lovely blank writing book and fill it was a page an evening of positive sleep affirmations (in the present tense)). I only needed to fill about a dozen pages of this before before my sleep was improving enough that I didn’t need to do this anymore.

During the day, I worked on catching negative sleep thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. Try this. Don’t worry if it feels ‘not true’, we make our own worlds.

I’m sure your sleep will improve 🙂

[Dlupu]

I found some vitamins that help me to sleep the name is RELAx

[Tlusebrink]

SleepyKieran –

Thanks for the sound advice! I’ve had a rough past few weeks with sleep (generally, roller coaster nights where I won’t sleep much and will catch up on the corresponding day). That being said, i’ve shifted my thinking in the past week or so to be much more positive during the day, even if I’ve had a negative experience that night (last night was a rough one for me mentally, but i’m in a great mood today).

Loved the advice about journaling and writing affirmations. I went and bought a nice journal on lunch and just filled front and back of page 1 with affirmations, gratitude, and concerns.

This is new, but certainly something I know is beatable!

[sleepykieran]

Great to hear @Tlusebrink, sounds like you’ve found the right path 🙂

Interesting to hear your rollercoaster analogy, it’s very true there will be ups and downs with every recovery path. The key is to remember the down parts are ok too, and to simply stay positive and allow the way up to come back naturally.

[Ksenija]

Hi Sleepykieran,

Just wanted to say that what you wrote is very helpful. I think my main issue is negative thinking pattern, mainly catastrophizing. I think a lot about negative consequences of insomnia and finding it hard to trust my body with sleep. In my head sleepless night will lead to something awful. For example, I imagine myself getting into a traffic accident, or dropping something on my little baby, or making a full of myself by saying something stupid or inappropriate.

[sleepykieran]

Hi @Ksenija

This is so common, in my case my fears were around work and my ability to cope with extra responsibility when tired. It took me a few years of struggle to work out that the fears would go away if I stopped feeding them! Of course that’s easier said than done – and it’s so hard to try _not_ to do something!
So I think it’s really important to remember that when we gradually replace our negative thoughts with positive ones, the subconscious will respond, even if we doubt the positive messages.

[Author]

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