[Mac0908]

Thanks Steve. By book are you talking about Guy Meadows? First book I ever bought on the subject 3 years ago. Threw it away when I thought I was cured at one point. Only book I have now is Sasha Stephens’ and I will never get rid of that one. Helpful book imo, but not flawless.

[KarenP]

Mac, Steve-
I’ve been doing both CBTI and ACT, and they are not incompatible. The reason I have been successful with ACT is that I have a semi flexible sleep window. I go to bed almost every night at 10, and usually wake up around 6 am. I have a hard time sleeping longer than that. I would never go to bed before I had a reasonable chance of going to sleep. That would be counterproductive, and set me up for unnecessary anxiety. I don’t set the alarm, and if I sleep till 7am that’s ok.
I’d venture to say that Deb is practicing a version of SC when she gets up at night to journal for a few minutes. If, I could have gotten up for a few minutes on Thanksgiving night I would have. (House full of guests) if the anxiety is too unrelenting , getting up for a few minutes would perhaps break it up.
On a side note, I traveled to visit my mom last night and it took me 4 hours to fall asleep. Slept fitfully for 4 hours and felt pretty crummy today. Spent 4 hours practicing ACT and might have gotten some light sleep. The battle is real. My best to you all.

[Mac0908]

That’s kind of what I’m trying to bring out, Karen. Me going in my bed at 9pm is going to nothing but make me lay there for an unnecessary extended period of time and wake me at 3-4am anyway. I agree Steve that I must face the anxiety head on and all that, but I feel it should just be done naturally when the wakeups occur, and not have to almost force them with overly early bedtimes. There has to be other ways to help me tweak my mindfulness so that I start having better nights again. I was doing fine for quite a bit for a couple of weeks. I think the last couple of nights what happened was instead of remaining calm and welcoming what was happening (the early awakenings) I kind of let it get to me again…

[KarenP]

Mac- please read Guy Meadows book! And reread it and reread it! Don’t buy trouble, don’t go to bed until you’re sleepy. Practice mindfulness meditation every day. Several times a day if you can. That makes it easier to practice at night. Meadows’ stuff work! I was singing Happy Birthday to my fiery ball of anxiety last night. It sounds silly, but these methods help to separate yourself from your anxiety.

[Mac0908]

I remember the book well. I know about most of his techniques. I still come across some of his videos on YouTube. The thing is, I don’t have anxiety anymore when I lay in bed at night, or at least nothing at ALL that’s considered serious. I’m fine when I’m falling asleep. No anxious thoughts to sing to or give funny nicknames. It’s the early awakenings that get me. Gotta focus on them when they occur now. Thank you.

[Deb]

Karen – sorry you had a bad night. I know it’s very frustrating. But you recovered from your last relapse so you will again this time.

Mac – I agree with what Steve and Karen have said. Like Karen said, you want to have a flexible sleep window. Of course you don’t want it to be so flexible and wide open that you’re not tired at all, but with ACT, you don’t need to have a tight sleep window. Mac – you want to get back to the place where you were before the insomnia, when you didn’t have to worry about sleep drive and whether or not you’re tired enough. You just went to bed at the usual time, with the usual amount of tiredness and then fell asleep. That’s because you were completely relaxed about sleep. This is what ACT will do for you.

I think there’s still a lot of anxiety there underneath the surface and that’s why things continue to flare up for you. I agree with Steve that you really need to read the sleep book again so that you understand it more deeply. I’ve found that many times I go back to a book I’ve read before and find so many new things in there that I didn’t appreciate before and completely went over my head. I know that both Karen, Steve and Gdsmom have mentioned going back to the book to get help. Last night that’s what happened to me. I was so frustrated and tempted to take a sleeping pill, and then the page I opened to talked about how when you’re really tired your motivation and willingness to experience discomfort is lowered. That was me alright! The rest of that page was very relevant to me as well (pg 77).

Mac – I know that there is a place for SRT, but it seems to me that it’s possible that at this point for you it’s become a crutch. Because it helped you sleep in the past, you automatically think that’s what you need to do in order to sleep. But you know through experience that you’ve gone back to it over and over again and still did not get the results you wanted. It’s time to do something new. Stop worrying about your sleep window and give yourself enough time to get the rest that you need. And then if you wake up, practice ACT – accept whatever happens and over time you’ll start falling back to sleep more easily. I think that’s how it’s been for Steve. Steve – am I correct?

[KarenP]

Mac-
When the early awakenings happen, do you get angry, sad , frustrated? These are the feelings you need to work on. Whatever feelings you deal with when you awaken early. Happy birthday Frustration? It must be hard not to focus on some of these feelings.

[Deb]

Steve – please share with Mac how ACT has worked for you. You have had sleep maintenance issues like Mac, unlike me, who has had sleep onset insomnia and couldn’t fall asleep in the first place. Mac thinks he has no sleep anxiety because he has no problem falling asleep when he goes to bed. But it must be there because it’s waking him up too early and then won’t let him fall back asleep. I think for you it was the same. Through ACT your sleep started lengthening instead of waking you up so early and it also became easier for you to fall back to sleep when you did wake up. Am I right?

[Mac0908]

Deb – Thank you for all that input. I really appreciate it. Watching some Guy Meadows video’s on YouTube as we speak. So just to ask you flat out – you think I should go in my bed extra early tonight not that tired at all? (i.e. 9pm?)

Karen – I’d say it’s just frustration for the most part, at least on the times where I don’t have a better mindset. There have been a good amount of nights that I’ve had a slight awakening but was able to control it by doing the usual ACT routines, and then I drift back off to sleep. But some nights, for whatever the reasons, the frustration just takes over. Last night was a night like that and I know it was because this was my third poor night in a row, second flat out BAD night in a row. Now I’m at that point again where i’m “catching” myself in my frustrations. The goal is to eventually get so relaxed and “accept” it all so much that I break this cycle.

[Mac0908]

Deb just to let you know, I absolutely know there is underlying sleep anxiety in me. This causes the awakenings. But yes it is not there on the surface enough to bother me with sleep onset.

[Steve]

Mac – Yes, we suffer from the same type of insomnia in that mostly, we can get to sleep okay but have early awakenings. I have to admit that it is disappointing when I get them. A lot of times I think I have slept longer than I have only to look at the clock and find it’s only been an hour or two. But I practiced the tools and meditations and gradually, even though I still had these awakenings, it was easier to fall back asleep again. I also went to bed at the same time no matter how tired I felt, and as we both know, a lot of times, once bedtime approaches, you no longer feel tired. I let the awakenings happen and confronted them by using the tools. Some times I still didn’t fall back to sleep and I awoke really tired the next day. But since I stayed in bed and didn’t practice SC, I had more energy the next day. Gradually over these last five months, it has been easier to fall asleep, even if I’m still not getting enough sleep. These last couple of nights have been pretty good for me. I estimate I got about 6 hours each of those two nights and last night, I got about 7 hours +. I feel really good today. The point is not to avoid your anxiety by going to bed later hoping you won’t have to deal wit it. You will never get rid of the anxiety that way. So yes, got to bed around 9:00 knowing that you will have some early awakenings. Deal with them as they occur using the tools.

Karen – Deb can correct me if I’m wrong but she did not practice SC. Yes, there are times when she got up to write in her journal, but only now and then. Mostly, she stayed in bed like ACT tells you to do. I’m sorry to hear about your relapse but Deb is right. You beat it once, you can do it again.

[Mac0908]

Thanks for the long post there, Steve. Made me understand things a bit more. That’s rough that you’d have awakenings as early as one or two hours into your night. For me it’s always been towards the end of my night. So basically you’re just going through the motions of ACT and that can explain your recent struggles? Or were you slacking on mindfulness? (I remember just the other day you were complaining about some pretty rough nights questioning things)

Last night I spent a half an hour listening to a podcast of Guy Meadows on YouTube. Such a bright guy. Knows his stuff when it comes to ACT. As bad as this week has been for me (last night was my first halfway decent night since Saturday), it’s crazy just how night and day things are for me with ACT vs SRT which I was just recently on. I’d be on my couch at 10:30pm, knowing I still had to stay awake another hour, making sure I brushed my teeth and washed my face EARLY so it didn’t wake me up doing it just before bed, then the somewhat anxious WALK to my bed when 11:30pm finally came. Sure it worked a lot, but for some, including myself, I admit it can be a crutch. That being said it does work and I think its an important and often necessary part of healing an insomniac, but that being said, for those with underlying anxiety, ACT is usually the big picture imo and I’m glad I’m trying it.

One thing I’ve been guilty of that I can tell you is not doing mindfulness during the day like I was in the beginning of ACT. I’ve just focused on it at the very end an hour or so before bed. I think Deb Steve and others would agree this is nowhere near enough. I’ll tell you one thing and Guy Meadows said or at least implied it himself, it’s really not an easy thing to tackle, at all.

[Steve]

Mac – There’s no question I have had relapses and probably will have more to come. That’s just the nature of the beast. And there are times I have slacked off on doing the tools and meditation. No question about that either. But when I have had the bad nights. I knew I had to go back to the ACT principals. Hopefully I will keep using the tools to stay on track. And that includes even after I am “cured”. This is now about three good days in a row for me. Hope to see it continue.

[Deb]

I practiced SC when I was first doing CBT-I with Martin, but hated it. I stopped doing it when I started ACT. Like Steve said, I just get up once in awhile and journal to clear my mind when I can tell it will just be a waste of time to stay in bed with my mind all stirred up with anxiety.

Steve – glad you’ve had 3 good nights. Hope it continues for you. Just curious, have your awakenings shifted at all to being later in the night since doing ACT? So are you getting longer amounts of sleep before you wake up or are you still waking up after just a few hours? What’s a typical night for you? When do you go to sleep, when do you set your alarm for, and when do you usually have the early morning awakenings? How has your sleep improved since using ACT?

About mindfulness, I was never that great about practicing it even though I took an 8 week class on it for $400. But I was good at getting to the place of acceptance of sleeplessness. But sometimes it took writing in my journal to “catch myself in the act” of struggling and then shift to acceptance.

I slept well last night. Crossing my fingers that this continues.

[Steve]

Deb – Glad to hear you are doing well again. BTW, any new videos of you singing on YouTube? As for me, I try to do everything that needs doing before I go to bed before 9:00. So I am in bed between 9:00 and 9:15. The alarm is set for 5:15 so that is about an 8 hour time period I am in bed. Of course on weekends and days off, I usually stay in bed another half hour to an hour, which is what I used to do when I was a normal sleeper. I still wake up mostly about an hour after I initially go to sleep. Not sure why. Usually it doesn’t last long and I can get back to sleep rather quickly. Then I used to wake up around 2:00 to 2:30. A lot of times I would get back to sleep and then wake up again around 3:00 and again at 4:00. I could mostly get back to sleep if I woke up around 3:00 but if I woke up at 4:00, I could never get back to sleep. Probably there was some stress in there about the alarm going off. Within the last two weeks though, I have been sleeping longer into the 3:00 and 4:00 hour time periods. Like last night, I woke up about 3:00, went to the bathroom and came back to bed and fell right back to sleep. I then slept until about 4:45, went back to sleep right away and then woke up for good at 5:00. I still am a bit tired today along with some other symptoms but nowhere near as bad as when I get less than 5 hours of sleep. In fact, I feel pretty good today. Not really great but much better than I have been . I hope it continues. I know there will be some relapses in there but I will take them as they come and accept them like I have been doing.

As for mindful meditation, I admit it’s hard for me to practice that. I mostly practice the tools of welcoming the unwelcome thoughts and feelings as well as the noticing your senses tools. Those are really easy to practice for me with the time I have during the day. I find it’s better to practice them during the day than just before I go to bed.

[Author]

Posts