[Steve]

Suren – I forgot to answer your question. I have been doing ACT for about 10 weeks now.

[suren]

Thanks Steve. Very useful to know!

There is very poor air circulation in my bedroom. Last night I booked a room in a hotel to see if that would make a difference. Was a terrible and expensive idea. So from now, I will focus on implementing ACT from the confines of my apartment.

[Deb]

How’s everyone doing these days? – Burn, Mac, Delv, Featherly, Padron, TiredDad, JT, Borgesbi, Pam? Haven’t heard from you guys for awhile. I hope you’re all getting better.

Did you check out Daf’s interview with Martin? It’s under the Success Stories and was good.

[TiredTwinDad]

My rhythm has reset itself, back to a short but good quality 6 hours. So it’s been back to business as usual. I have another late gig this Saturday, that will put me home around midnight (usual bedtime is 10), but I’m not going to take any caffeine beforehand like I did last week. It’s new and challenging to read music so I won’t bored, and it’ll be plenty loud.

I’m wondering if this learned early arousal (which is all I have to explain it) is hereditary. My 6 year old daughter has always been on the short side of the sleep range for her age, but lately she’s been getting up earlier and earlier. Like 1-2 hours before her twin brother. She’s also a very defiant child, so that may play a role as well. She wants to do what she wants to do.

[burn]

I am still working on acceptance of wakefulness, which is the key for me. I think I overcame my my acquired habit of mental sleep effort, and now I am practicing just watching my wakefulness. It is quite hard sometimes. I know that if I overcome this obstacle my sleep will be normal. And because of this knowledge, sleep anticipation kicks in every now and then and becomes hard to let go.

[Mac0908]

Hi Deb, looks like I’m no longer getting email notifications for this thread so I signed in and I saw you were asking about me. Thanks, I appreciate that.

I’m still “settling” back into this latest phase of SRT at this point, now around 2 weeks into it, and I’d say it’s starting to work just fine as it always has for me. My sleep pressure is building and by the time it’s bedtime I’m out like a light the last couple of nights. It’s a beautiful thing. What’s not so beautiful of course is my problem which as you know is relapsing. When I wean off SRT and start trying to sleep like a normal person again, I’ll eventually have that bad night that will turn into two or three before it spirals and I’m back to SRT again. Special events the next day have been major triggers for me in relapses as discussed in my previous posts.

I’m thinking of starting my own thread to talk about relapsing and what others have done to try and help. In the meantime aside from watching a lot of Martin’s videos (he’s great) I’m really prepared this time more than ever to implement ACT once I begin weaning off this phase of SRT. I’ve come a long way since we started speaking at the end of December last year, but I’m still a good ways from where I want to be. I hope to finally change that very soon once and for all.

[Daf]

Hi Mac, yes for me I used both CBTi / SRT and ACT/Mindfulness approaches. They worked well together.

Do have a listen to the whole of the podcast in the Success Stories I did with Martin. Worth listening right through, especially don’t miss off the last 10 to 15 mins when I talk about how I think insomnia is really an obsessive/ controlling behaviour.

[Mac0908]

Do you have a link? Thanks

[Mac0908]

Hi Daf I ended up finding the podcast and gave it a good listen for the most part. Seems like you’ve been/were suffering for just as long as me, around 3 years.

Just a quick questions Daf… I know you spoke about how CBT-I helped you a great deal but I’m curious what would you say was the real turning point for you? As you may have read in my post above I’ve been big with SRT and it’s helped me, but I can’t seem to get past a certain point of being free of this for good. I always have to revert back to SRT.

[Daf]

Oh super, I’m glad you found it.

Please do listen to the whole thing, because all was relevant.

I guess the keys were…
1. SRT does work….. I kept sleep to under 5 hours for a long time, so I always was v sleepy the next night,. Crawl to the bathroom to a cold shower, whatever, it takes, get up. This makes sure you are sleepy next night. Now I always try to never sleep more than 6 hours – works for me.
2. Realising I always slept after a nil-sleep night. Impossible not to (for me). After 2 and a half years, I guess I accepted that. (I understand that some people can go 2 or more nights with nil sleep – I feel for them)
3. ACT attitude – see the Kabat Zinn 28 minute video combined with “being in the moment”. I’m not a fan of getting up after 15 mins of not sleeping, though I might after an hour, if I had got stressed about it, which I try to avoid.
4. Realising that I was a slightly obsessive/ controlling person. If you met me, you’d not think so, but I am. Controlling sleep was just one of a series of 4 other things at other points in my life I had become obsessed about.
5. Even if I had a night of nil sleep and felt awful and depressed as a result, I always got thought the day and got stuff done.
6. Being kind to myself. Accepting I could do less than 100% if I had a bad night the night before.
7. Sleep on the flipping couch. I sleep there nearly all the time now as I find that falling asleep in front of TV works for me. It’s not in bed, but so what! I can still do the other fun stuff in bed!!! at other times 🙂 . One day I will spend the night back in bed with my wife, but it ain’t killing us not to… This works for me, so it’s fine.

Hope that helps.

[suren]

Daf, Your response is very insightful. You shared that your sleep window was under 5 hours for quite some time. Sounds super strict! Can you share for how long you used the 5 hour sleep window?

Also, did you ever experience light non refreshing sleep at any point during your recovery?

[Daf]

Sure Suren,
I used 5 hour sleep window for a month. Today, I try to not sleep more than 6 hours because if I do I’m not usually too tired the next night.
Night before last I was lazy and got around 6 and a half hours so last night I did not feel tired until 330am and only got about 3 hours sleep.
But I’m not bothered as I’m sure ill sleep fine tonight.
I think my average sleep time now is around 6 hours, but I have the odd 3 hours too and sometimes up to 7 hrs.
One day two weeks ago I had a nil sleep night but it was a one off.
I actually will say I find it v hard to be sure about sleep amounts. Often my wife and son tell me I’ve fallen asleep on sofa and have been snoring but I have no awareness of being asleep at all.
Finally one thing I forgot to say before was the support of this excellent site. Really good to read I was not alone and to share success and the hard times too. But do please take on board my point in podcast about the possibility that us insomnia sufferers are maybe a tad over controlling… So let go and accept and kick back.. that was a big factor in my recovery.

[Daf]

Oh and I often have light sleep. And I wake up between 2 and 4 times in night. Once I have got to sleep once I can nearly always get back to sleep OK.

When my insomnia was most severe I would either sleep OK or not sleep at all. At its worst I had regular months where I’d have 8 or 9 night of nil sleep. But these were never consecutive nights, thank God

[suren]

It’s so interesting to hear of your experience. I’m currently trying ACT so much more relaxed about my sleep window. It’s challenging to hear of your success with SRT and not want to implement it, but this time around I want to give ACT a good try. I just restarted ACT, so will resist the temptation to practice any other techniques for now.

This said, I agree about the obsessive controlling instincts. Are you able to share a link to your podcast? Debbie said it was really good. Thanks again for all the useful pointers.

[Mac0908]

Daf thanks for your response but I got to say I was shocked by #7. You do not sleep in your own bed? That to me is really a sign that you are not fully healed at all as the bed is where you should really be. Perhaps you are subconsiously trying to avoid facing your fear of the bed long term? I hope you understand.

In addition to this you say how you make sure you do not sleep more than 6 hours to make sure you are sleepy the following night. This is all good and I too know the feeling of always being able to sleep when you’re exhausted, but this shouldn’t be a long term thing in my opinion, should it? It sounds like you have a crutch. Are you just going to go on forever with the 6 hour window? Do you honestly feel well rested after 6 hours every single night? I bet that before your insomnia started you were sleeping more.

[Author]

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