[suren]

Mac- The term sleep system in this instance was actually borrowed from Martin, and in the context of our exchange seemed to refer to how well I was sleeping (may have been informally used)

I also agree that insomnia is largely sustained by anxiety. Is it the root cause though, or is the anxiety fueled by our underlying thoughts and beliefs?

Like you, I don’t advocate meds. I only mentioned it as in my own experience, Xanax did not help me to sleep, not even once after repeated use- hence my skepticism.

While just an opinion and quite abstract, I also feel that the brain is highly plastic and that neuroplasticity plays a role. That there’s a subconscious training that occurs when the nervous system has been made to operate in a certain way for prolonged periods that has to be unlearnt.

[Daf]

Mac,

I think from a post you wrote a few days ago that the obvious solution is to have a TV in the bedroom. I will be doing that too as soon as I get round to it.
People who say don’t do that are the same people who confuse mild insomnia / sleep deprivation with proper insomnia.
If falling asleep while watching TV programmes works for you, then bring TV in the bedroom! Why not!

[Mac0908]

I don’t know Daf. I’m really not sure it’s a “solution”. I feel like just because I used to be fine when falling asleep in my bed while watching tv most of my younger years doesn’t mean it’s a cure for me. Bc at the end of the day even before my chronic insomnia started I was sleeping fine for a good few years without a tv in the bedroom.

Would a tv back in my bedroom help the situation? Maybe, yeah. But would it completely cure me? Doubtful. It would certainly cut out that semi anxious walk to the bedroom/getting in bed scenario. But i think the ROOT of what I was discussing was more of the fact that the bedroom used to be this comfortable place where I’d spend a lot of time and now it’s some sacred area that has an underlying weirdness to it, if that makes sense. This is all Bc of the conditioning I’ve gone through with learning that the bed is “only for sleep”.

Maybe before I start buying new tv’s and hooking it all up I’ll first try and welcome the bedroom back into my life more, like it used to be. Because again I have to say, as much as I’ve improved one thing has stayed the same and that’s that feeling, even if it’s small, of awkwardness when I get into bed at night.

[Mac0908]

To continue….

It really is interesting to think about and I’m going forward with it for sure beginning this weekend. One constant thing for a long time has been that before the bedroom walk. I have to shut the tv off, first put the recliner back in, get up and off the couch, sometimes I have to use the bathroom quick before bed (I try to earlier but often I just have to go, can’t help it), then get into bed and set my alarm (I absolutely often try and do this earlier in the day but sometimes I don’t get around to it), and then grab the covers and put them over me. I know this sounds drastic but for a person with chronic insomnia by the time my head actually hits the pillow I’ve usually done way too much to wire me up a little bit.

Point being, I’ve come a long way, and one of the things I’ve tackled largely has been that bed anxiety. I used to be 100% afraid of my bed. That’s not the case anymore. Now its at around 10% if that. So imagine if I was just already IN bed relaxing, whether reading a book or watching tv. Yes in the back of my mind of course some worrisome thoughts would still be there after 3 years, but being able to cut off any sort of chance for anxiety to grow with the things I just mentioned, is essential. So wish me luck Daf. For the first time in 3 years I’m going to start relaxing in my bed before I sleep. I predict that at first I will have some weird thoughts about it which will affect me, but like anything else I have to give it time. After all, its been 3 years of conditioning myself to think that the bed is for sleep and only sleep and that’s it.

[Deb]

Fell asleep last night without any problem. Hoping I’m on the mend. Mac, the great thing about ACT is that you finally learn to deal with any anxiety related to sleep. Even for myself, I’ve had to face the anxiety of a relapse and hopefully now having faced that, it will be less fearful next time and it won’t take me a whole month to finally get around to dealing with it! So the thing is to face all your anxiety, whether it is relaxing in bed before sleeping, sleeping in bed instead of the couch, etc. As we face and learn to deal with our anxiety, then it becomes less threatening and loses its power. Then we become more and more free to sleep under any circumstance, not being limited by our fears.

[Mac0908]

But Deb don’t you think that dealing with anxiety should be actions as well as thoughts? For example if the clock is giving you anxiety, take it out of the bedroom. If the sun creeping through your window is bugging you, buy dark curtains. Or in my case here if the pre bed walk/routine gives you some subtle negative thoughts, just cut that out by hanging in your bed early until sleep comes, even if that’s an hour or so.

[gsdmom]

Hi Steve – October has been a very strange month so far for sleep and life in general. At the beginning of the month, I had a week of almost perfect sleep, then the following week started going back down to 2.5 – 6 hours of sleep per night. That week I really struggled at night and it was difficult to stay calm and relax. However, the long term benefit of ACT over the last two months has given me more energy during most days so I decided to apply for seasonal/Christmas help at a retail store 5 minutes from my house. They started hiring and training me right away! After training, my body decided to sleep 9 hours one night and then the next night I could not sleep at all which was the night before I would be working on my own, of course. But made it through an 8-hour shift on no sleep! This week I honestly can’t tell if I’m sleeping or not. I still struggle with sleep onset, maybe taking an hour or two to fall asleep, then I feel like I don’t sleep, but probably lite sleep for 2-3 hours, then the last 2-3 hours of the night I sleep pretty well and deep. I’ve been doing less mindfulness, I feel like if I do it too late at night it interferes with my sleep. So I’ll probably try and do 5 minutes in the morning. Journaling seems to be helpful and that is better to do before bed to clear my head a bit, but I still need to practice that more frequently.

Regarding your neurology appt, I know it is scary, but not knowing what is going on is even scarier. My daughter had a neurology appt yesterday, she an MRI and EEG earlier this month. If you need an EEG, the test is done while you are sleep deprived, they want you to only have 3 hours of sleep the night before, so that should not be a problem for you! My daughter has an abnormal brain from birth, but at least nothing abnormally new showed up, but she will need to start meds for seizures. But that is OK, she has much less anxiety after seeing the neurologist, knowing he will care for her.

[Steve]

Deb – Really glad to hear you are back on track again!

gsdmom – Thanks for the encouragement! I’m really not sure if they can tell me anything new. At the most, maybe it will just relieve some of my anxiety. I just hope she doesn’t just try to pass off my symptoms as being due to insomnia and then try to put me on meds. I am NOT going the meds route again. They did more harm for me than good. I just have to stay calm for the three more weeks until the appointment. Sorry to hear about your daughter. I hope the meds help her with the seizures.

[Deb]

Mac – yes, you can do external things too, but the internal anxiety has to be dealt with. As I remember you saying earlier, you tried a whole bunch of different external things before you heard about CBT-I and they didn’t really help. Since you’re cutting out the pre bed walk which gave you anxiety, don’t be surprised if the anxiety shows up while hanging out in bed.

[Mac0908]

Yes deb I know that and expect it to. But the point will be that long term I hope it brings down my sleep anxiety in general. Thanks

[Mac0908]

And Deb, sometimes I feel like SRT is nothing more than a tool that *forces* you to sleep. Builds your sleep drive up until you are so sleepy at bedtime that obviously it overrides any anxiety. Yes it builds your sleep confidence and for many might just be all they need to get back on track but for more serious cases like mine other action needs to be taken. That’s what I’m beginning to finally do, along with some ACT of course.

[JTthemillenial]

Mac, what protocol do you use when you implement SRT? How do you calculate your prescribed TIB? When do you know it’s time to add time to your sleep window and how much do you add? I just started restricting my time in bed from 8 to 7 hours. If I was doing full blown SRT it would probably be like more like 6 or 6.5, but I don’t necessarily want to rely solely on extreme tiredness to put me out. I want to keep using ACT tools with SRT just to give me a little boost.

Deb, glad to hear things are starting to turn back around! I hope you don’t still discount your previous success as a “honeymoon” period. It sounds like you’ve been doing all the right things and that you have actually been on a good track this whole time.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by JTthemillenial.

[Mac0908]

By trial and error I found out that a good window for me was 1130-6a. I don’t really go crazy with percentages in bed and all that. Basically if I’m doing well after a week and on top of that start getting exhausted more earlier (which will happen) like around 11 then I will call that my new time and so on. No matter what though I won’t go to sleep during SRT unless I’m very sleepy so a 11pm-6a night on paper could end up back to 11:30p if necessary.

Overall imo SRT is done to just build back up your sleep drive and your sleep confidence and I feel some of these super strict mathematical rules with moving back/up your sleep time are sometimes unnecessary . That being said you still have to follow the general rules to a very serious degree

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Mac0908.

[JTthemillenial]

Thanks Mac, that helps. Calculating my percentages gives me massive performance anxiety so I’m trying to analyze numbers as little as possible and just try to feel it out for a while to see how it goes. I am going to be strict with myself about timing, though.

[suren]

Hi Mac- So I resumed a 5.5hr sleep window and like you said, it really built my sleep drive to the point where I was sleepy upon going to bed. Also felt super sleepy in bed, but then fell into this very light sleep stage where I felt semi-awake with my mind jumping from story to story. So it’s like my mind is in this constant state of hyper vigilance.

In the past, this level of sleepiness would have provided me with some level of sleep relief, but in this instance – as sleepy as I was (and I was seriously sleepy!), it wasn’t enough to override the hyperactive state of my mind.

Do you think that with continued use of a strict sleep window, the sleep drive will eventually override my hyperactive mind? Prior to adopting ACT, what techniques helped the most with your anxiety?

Suren

[Author]

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