[JTthemillenial]

Dazzio, I am having the exact same problem. I want desperately to solve this, but I haven’t yet been able to accept the fact that I can’t control sleep. Only influence it and hope for the best.

[Dazzio]

How you get on last night JT?

[Deb]

Sorry about everyone’s rough night. I’m still not fully recovered from the relapse and last night I was awake for a long time even though I went to bed exhausted. But overall I got enough sleep and feel fine today.

I think I’m lucky in some ways because I’ve always had only onset insomnia. So I’ve learned to accept whole nights of wakefulness, unlike you folks with sleep maintenance who wake up too early and then practice acceptance for a few hours. So when I go to bed I accept that I may not fall asleep the whole night. When I’m not able to sleep it could be 2, 3, 4:00 or even later before I finally fall asleep. I don’t know for sure because I don’t look at the clock but I can tell it’s been a long time. Somehow I manage to get enough rest though, whether it’s a few hours at the end of the night or maybe I’m in light sleep part of the night, thinking that I’m still awake. That’s how it was last night. I’m fine today.

So from the very beginning of the night I’m accepting that I might not sleep all night. But through experience I’ve found that if I have this attitude of complete acceptance and letting go of any expectations, eventually I do fall asleep or am in light sleep and wake up feeling pretty good the next day.

I’m saying this to try to encourage those of you like Delv and others who get frustrated. Frustration doesn’t help. Acceptance is the key.

[JTthemillenial]

But you have to be able to accept frustration too, yeah? And all the negative arrivals? I can accept the possibility of a sleepless night until I’m blue in the face. That doesn’t make me okay with it, and I feel like part of acceptance must be sitting with that extreme discomfort. I just haven’t gotten past the point where arrivals stop appearing. No where close.

[burn]

While I am not in the position to teach anybody acceptance, since I am still learning it, I think any degree of acceptance is beneficial.
As we know, our sleep system is not broken and never was and it doesn’t need any fixing. It is arousal that need to be fixed. Arousal can be fixed either through growing sleep confidence with CBTI or through releasing expectations of sleep with ACT. I think even alleviation of frustration if not complete extinction (I can’t do it yet) is beneficial. Fueling frustration and reactivity will not help for sure.

[delv-x]

Thanks for the motivational bump Deb!. Yep, still having some troubles this week and today I am more zombie than usual. Also more nervousness and edgy which moves into the night and wakes me up. I should be incorporating more relaxation in the evening (meditation, stretching) just to feel more relaxed and enjoy that feeling. What happens is once I feel better I stop from my routine and act more like I do before all this and it works.. until it happens. Perhaps it’s inevitable and I just need to be able to use techniques to reduce the severity.

Speaking of light sleep, nothing wrong with that if that’s what your body is allowing. Plus it’s better than hearing the clock tick. I used to worry more about deep, light and REM and I find that some nights I feel like I get no REM but wondered how 5-6 hours just happened magically and so quickly. And on other nights I feel like it’s all light and then some nights feel like hours and hours of dreaming. It seems to balance itself out. Perhaps not optimally in one night but over the course of a few it seems to.

So for my lesson today is not to be optimistic or pessimistic on how I will sleep. Just lay down and let it be.

[delv-x]

Burn,

Exactly. It’s the arousal/hyperarousal that’s more “broken” and preventing sleep. On bad nights, I swear a pindrop a mile away sends a wake jolt. Also, self monitoring plays a part of that system. I would be open to hearing suggestions or successes on how to tune it so it still does its job but does not impact our sleep quality as much as it should. I think they are common sense but so far I have.

1. Build a stronger sleep deficit. This ALWAYS works but difficult and the thought of continually keeping a strong deficit doesn’t sound appealing. Your sleep drive will eventually overpower your arousal though.

2. ACT. Have no expectations. Be less rigid. Stop worrying or caring. Let thoughts come in, have no judgement and let it pass by. Removing performance or expectations. This works but needs commitment and not always 100%.

3. Also part of ACT and CBT-i is overall stress reduction. Mindfulness, relaxation, hot bath, tai chi, yoga, have fun, enjoy life.

4. Drugs, alcohol, meds. They can help numb/tune out and assist but they all have their disadvantages and wouldn’t recommend as a long term solution.

If anyone has any more to share, please do.

[Steve]

Delv – I would add watch what you ingest. I just found out today the asthma inhaler I’ve been using can cause insomnia. There is a whole forum from parents who can only give this med to their kids in the morning or afternoon because if they give it to them before bedtime, the kids and some adults who take it are wide awake and become hyper. I’m not sure if this is the problem I have been having lately. It might be preventing me from falling asleep for awhile like I have been doing lately but after a couple hours, you would think it would be out of my system so it doesn’t explain why I can’t get back to sleep three hours after taking it. I am going to try not taking it tonight as the last time I took it was before I left for work. I know another popular drug that can cause insomnia is the steroid Prednisone.

[burn]

JT,

I thought a bit more about your question on paradoxical intention. Perhaps there is little bit of paradoxical intention in the approach that I am practicing. I try to add just a little bit of this intention to stay awake to balance out potential sleep effort. It is my way to remove the idea that I need to sleep and stop subconscious self-monitoring. But it is important not to overdo it and not cause hyperarousal.

[Deb]

Just curious, Burn, why don’t you just let your mind wander? You said you would love to be able to do this.

Jamie – Acceptance with extreme discomfort will never put you to sleep. So you need to find a way to calm yourself in bed and during the day. That’s where mindfulness and welcoming come in. Maybe do what Borgesbi did. She worked on her negative thoughts and feelings before she went to bed. At first it took her 2 hours. Within a few days it took only 15 minutes and even less after that.

[Deb]

Jamie – just one more idea that came to me concerning you. Maybe for you at this time it might be better to just completely focus on doing SR & SC and doing it religiously for at least four to six weeks. It might be too much for you right now to think about trying to change your thoughts and practice acceptance.

Martin said that when doing SR & SC, you should do like a ROBOT, without thinking at all about it. It’s just something you have to do every day even though you don’t feel like doing it like driving to work each day during rush hour. Don’t think about anything at all and JUST DO IT (like the Nike commercial). It might be better for you to even get off this forum while you’re doing it so you don’t get confused with all the conversation about ACT, changing our thoughts, acceptance, etc. (Or you can just ask for get help with CBT-I. We’ve all got plenty of experience). Then your mind can relax because you know that you’re doing what you need to do and that’s all that matters.

It might work really well for you like it has for many. There are lots of testimonies on this website from people who have recovered using only CBT-I. When I did CBT-I I started sleeping 5 out of 7 nights which was a huge improvement. My anxiety went way down because of that and my confidence in my ability to sleep went way up. Maybe this would be more helpful to you right now. You could always come back to ACT later if you wanted to. But it seems that right now you really need help to get your anxiety down and CBT-I might be better because you don’t have to think about anything – you just do the program.

[Deb]

Also with CBT-I many people see results fairly quickly. In my first week I was sleeping 5 out of 7 nights. My body seemed to love SR and it fell into the groove of the strict sleeping schedule quite naturally. Results may not come quite as quickly for you, but they may come quicker than using ACT. Seeing progress will do a lot towards reducing your anxiety.

[burn]

Deb,

Only when I tell my mind gently in the beginning of the night that my goal is rest and I am not expecting sleep, it starts to wander sometimes. Otherwise, I think my mind is too focused on sleep. So telling myself that the goal is rest is my way of “letting go of the idea that I need to be asleep”. To make it clear, I am not focusing hard on the idea of rest for a whole night, but in the beginning of the night, that’s what tell my mind to liberate it little bit from performance pressure.
I think mind wandering began happening little more often recently, which I consider a good sign.

[JTthemillenial]

So I did just SC for my first three weeks, which didn’t seem to work well for me as I stressed about getting out of bed every 20 minutes and ended up interrupting light sleep because of it. Not saying it wouldn’t have eventually been effective; it was just counterintuitive. When I read the Sleep Book, I appreciated Meadows’ philosophy about SC and not leaving bed in the middle of the night. So I experimented with that and it seemed to get me far. When I started slumping, I decided it was time to try SRT to see how well it works for me. When I told my sleep therapist all this, he advised me that I need to pick something and stick with it (fair enough, but he’s also not the most attentive guy). So I’m sticking with SRT and ACT tools for now. I appreciate the insight. I’m just freaking out slightly because sleep drive doesn’t seem to be overriding anxiety, at least not at this point. I still need the ACT to help with acceptance when I don’t sleep. I’m just in a rut right now.

[Deb]

That is a good sign, Burn.

Just keep venting here, Jamie. We’re here for you!

[Author]

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