[Deb]

P.S. If I find that this is just too hard and I can’t seem to completely relax and accept things, and it’s not getting any better, I might go back to CBT too.

When I did ACT back in July, I told myself that I would give myself two weeks and if it was just too hard, I could always go back to CBT. That was like a safety net for me and it helped motivate me to try it. But that time it turned out to be relatively easy. Not this time.

[Daf]

Folks, I think you have to just accept a night of poor sleep, even good sleepers sometimes have them.

I never get those nil sleep nights any more, which is great, but sometimes, for some reason (maybe a bit of underlying worry about something), I get less sleep than usual.
For example, the day before yesterday I only about 4 hours net sleep.
But these can happen. The following night, last night, a whopping 7.5 hours net sleep. I don’t expect to feel tired tonight, but that’s OK.
I cant always expect to get my “average” sleep of 5.5 to 6 hours, it can just happen that life is not like that. When a “bad night” comes, use techniques from CBTi to not catastrophise it.

Also, another key is accepting it and learning to not obsess about it, which is why mindfulness and ACT can help too (combined with SRT to get you back on track, where necessary).

See my story in the success podcast interview I did with Martin.

Have a lovely weekend.
Daf

[Mac0908]

A little better last night. Went to bed thinking a little bit about just how horrible of a zombie day it was. This is something we’re all familiar with I’m sure and is why relapses happen. Just not that easy to get such a bad fresh experience out of your head. I had another early awakening but this time remained calm as can be. Didn’t look at the clock, and slowly but surely drifted back off to sleep. May not have been the deepest sleep but it was some form of sleep, until my 6am alarm. Tired today, but nothing like yesterday’s zombie day. I really think its extremely difficult in general for those with insomnia to come off a zombie day and go right into a complete full night of refreshed sleep. You can’t expect it. Just like you can’t expect months or especially years of insomnia to go away overnight or within a few days. Everything in this process takes time. Time to unlearn the bad habits. I’m optimistic that this weekend I’ll have two good nights and hopefully that will carry over into most of next week. Still a work in progress IMO but progress is and has been made with me since implementing ACT.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Mac0908.

[Deb]

Yes it is hard after a bad night like I had again last night. But trying to find a way to stay positive today and not focus on how I feel physically, and then bring that to bed with me tonight. Glad you don’t have any nil nights anymore, David. That’s great and you have certainly come a long way!

[whitelori]

I am struggling so much, but all of your positive posts are so helpful to me! I think I am going to have to go back to CBT-I and try it again. I’m not doing well with just laying in bed and accepting. I feel I have accepted and am accepting, so I don’t know why I can’t fall asleep. My arousal system is just way too strong. I really don’t like sleep restriction or getting out of bed, but I don’t know what else to do so I’m going to give it a go.

[Deb]

That sounds like a good idea, Whitelori. I’m trying to accept too and it’s hard. If I just can’t do it, I’ll go back to CBT-I too.

[Deb]

Well, I feel more hopeful about ACT again after last night. I’m finally accepting the insomnia I have right now instead of comparing it with how it was before. I laid in bed again calmly for hours. Eventually when I realized it had been hours, I started to get a little agitated and frustrated again. But this time I let it go. I fell asleep right after that. I woke up after 8:00 so got at least few hours of sleep and feel halfway decent today. I can deal with this.

Whitelori – just a comment regarding one of your posts on a different thread. You said that when you’re laying there in bed for hours, you never notice yourself getting sleepy. This shows me that you’re monitoring yourself which will never lead to sleep. Before I fall asleep, I don’t notice myself getting sleepy – the sleep just takes over me. So if you can, just let go and allow your mind to relax and wander, just like before the insomnia.

[delv-x]

Hello Deb, Mac, Daf and everyone else.

Been awhile since I’ve posted. The past few months have been pretty good. I would say almost normal. Most nights are good. Some a little less so but know my body can cope and if I need to take a 20 minute nap, I may just do that. I do hope this stretch continues but know life happens and there will always be some rough nights especially if a lot is going on in life.

Everyone is different but what’s worked for me:

– Limiting reading the forums. Reading posts with people suffering with 20+ years of insomnia, a massive list of meds they take each night scares me. I do commend Martin with pointing out success stories.

– Knowing that I can sleep without any assistance. Sleep drive is powerful, very powerful. If your sleep drive isn’t strong enough or arousal system is to active, sleep aids can help but know that they can only do so much. They can knock you out but if something is bothering you or just not sleepy enough, you will just wake up a few hours later disappointed.

– Trying to sleep. As Dr Jade Wu mentioned in her recent talk with Martin, sleep is like your pretty girlfriend. If you try too hard or annoy her or spend too much time with her, you will scare her. I believe Guy Meadows is also right with the pills and props. The more you think or try to sleep, the less likely sleep will happen.

– Breaking routine (take a vacation). Yes, I was CBT-I obsessed and followed it to the letter and that was bad. CBT-I was helpful somewhat, but all the sleep hygiene, sleep window, stimulus control was making my anxiety worse. What really helped was going away for 14 days with 7 hour jet lag with no sleep meds with me. The first night or two was rough but by the 3rd day I was adjusting and enjoying my vacation and build my sleep confidence. I realized that I can sleep away with different to bed and rise times. I would go to bed anywhere between 11-1:30 am and up between 7-10 am. I would say that anchoring your rise time is something I normally do and recommend though.

– Sleep hygiene/blue screen/Internet clickbait articles. Sleep hygiene isn’t as important as they make it out to be. Yes sleep with comfy sheets, limit light and noise, put the cat in another room etc but really I was obsessed with screen time, blue light, 8 hours of uninterupted sleep. All this wasn’t helpful and set me back. Just have a nice little wind down for 15 minutes or so.

– Mindfulness and meditation. Helpful to just calm your body but I find it much better earlier on and not before or in bed. Practicing mindfulness in bed to me is “trying”. Sleep should be effortless. What works for me is reading for a bit to clear my mind and then put the book away and relax. Sometimes Ill watch a bit of TV in bed and just close my eyes and when I feel I am sleepy, Ill shut the TV. Thinking about my day, friends, family helps my mind wander and drift.

– Sleep logs. If you are doing CBT-I, you normally note your to bed, time in bed, awakenings, rise time etc. I think it made it worse. I was paying attention to roughly how long it took me to fall asleep, guessing how long I was up in the middle of the night, what time I woke up and what time I stuggled out of bed. After so many ups and downs, I stopped logging and I believe its helped. It was self monitoring for me. Now I just try to go to bed roughly around the same time and get up around the same time. I leave an appropriate sleep window and just leave it as that. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I lay in bed and relax. I eventually drift back. If I am really tense and know sleep ain’t happening then Ill get out.

– Listen to your body. If you feel sleepy, take a short nap. If it’s late afternoon or evening then try to push it off until your bed time. If you are wide awake before bed, maybe stay up a little bit longer.

I think the overall path out is to slowly spiral in a thought pattern of who cares, whatever, keep busy with fun/life, everyone has sleep issues from time to time and mine may be bad at times but trying to fix it or control it doesn’t work. I didn’t want to live a life of supplements, sleep stories, hot bath or deciding if a banana is a good idea before bed.

[Daf]

Delv, I completely agree with everything you said in that last post. Bang on the money… as usual.

[Deb]

Delv – Great to hear from and so glad you are doing well! It’s been a little over a year now that all of us have been been on this journey together and we’ve all made a lot of progress since then. I agree with you that being too strict and worrying and obsessing about the rules – sleep windows, sleep diaries, naps, sleepiness level – whatever, can backfire and just make things worse. That’s why I switched to ACT.

Speaking of ACT, I just finished my third night of implementing ACT. After talking to Dr. Kat last week I was finally able to let go of comparing my insomnia healing in July with what I’m experiencing now. I realized that this was getting in the way. Also, I was experiencing a lot of resistance to doing the therapy. I was really afraid of dealing with long, long nights and being a zombie the next day. One night I could deal with, but the thought of this going on for a week or two felt completely overwhelming and I thought that I just couldn’t handle it. But I decided to take it one night at a time and so far it’s turning out to be not too bad. The first night I was awake for a long time, just resting and letting my mind wander. At one point I realized that hours had passed and I started to feel some frustration. But this time I let it go and then I felt asleep shortly after and slept a few hours. I was halfway decent the next day and was able to deal with things fine all day. The last two nights I think I’ve been awake a few hours and then maybe in light sleep, or in and out of sleep. I’ve woken up tired, but halfway decent again, so I can function fine. So at least the last two nights I haven’t had the conscious awareness of being awake for hours. So that’s an improvement. We’ll see where it goes from here.

Mac – how was your weekend sleep?

[Mac0908]

Wow Delv what an amazing informative post. I related to it very much. Love when people come back with success stories and info to share. It’s so unbelievably helpful to those who are here all the time. Hi Deb. My weekend sleep wasn’t bad. Not perfect, but I definitely moved in the right direction after last week’s sudden slipup. Coming out of the weekend, last night was solid night of sleep. Hope to continue that throughout this entire week. Wishing only the best for you in the coming days, Deb.

[whitelori]

Deb-that’s great news!!!! So happy to hear that. Has it been 1 or 2 weeks since you’ve restarted ACT? Are you doing mindfulness during the day? As far as not feeling sleepy, I have fallen asleep without that feeling and was surprised so I know what you mean. The problem is more often than not, my mind is stronger and doesn’t want to sleep no matter how much I acknowledge them and let them go. No matter how much I relax. I tell myself the body will sleep when it wants to, but it really doesn’t seem to want to in my case! If I am laying awake all night, it is with my eyes closed and the thinking as if I am working all night. Last night I was so fed up, I did get up and just sat downstairs and wrote things out but also just let my mind think as much as it wanted.Then I went back into the bed even thoug I did not feel sleepy, thought I drifted off but then noticed my husnand’s breathing whichvis loud and so I went to the guest room where I think I slept some then went back to my bed after my husband got up for the day an I think I slept an hour and made sure I was up at 8. Another problem, sometimes if I am going off I wake up to my own snore. I am thin, don’t sleep apnea, but I do snore so between the excessive thinking, the snore sometimes, the occasional hypnic jerks, and restless legs, I mean what a battle! My rls though is on and off too so I am not always plagued by everything all the time except the mind thinking. I am sorry to sound negative and I truly do want to get better! Thank you for pointing that out though about not necessarily feeling sleepy and still the body will/can take over. It is true.

[Deb]

Hi Whitelori – I attempted to start ACT many times since my relapse last several weeks ago, but I never stuck with it. I would give up and take an Ambien or have a drink. Also, I kept comparing my experience with how it was back in July when I had light sleep before I recovered instead of these long sleepless nights. The comparing was making me frustrated that I was having all these long nights instead of falling asleep soon and having light sleep like I did in July. Also, like I said, I was really afraid of having a bunch of long nights accompanied by zombie days and didn’t think I could deal with it.

This time I’m sticking with it. It’s only been 3 nights. I’m lucky in that I know how to get to that place where I’m just resting and not worrying about anything, and my mind is wandering. It sounds like you’re not there yet and it’s hard for you to settle down your mind. In that case I would really recommend you work with Dr. Kat. I’m sure she’s worked with other clients who have high anxiety and can’t seem to settle down their minds at night. It’s either this or doing stimulus control (SC) which is not easy either. But I’ve read it’s the best therapy for sleep onset insomnia, where it takes forever to fall asleep. Probably in either case it would help to get more support than just us folks here on the forum.

Mac – hope you have a good week of sleep like last night!

[Deb]

Whitelori – I really haven’t had to practice much mindfulness to help me with sleep because I can get to the place of acceptance relatively easily where I’m not anxious and just lying there in bed resting. But I realize that it would probably be a healthy practice in general to help me be more calm and centered. I tend towards activity and pushing myself to do things instead of relaxing.

[Mac0908]

Morning everyone. Deb how’d you do last night? Steve, what’s been your situation as of late? Had another “ok” night last night. Still in a (rather good) phase of not experiencing many bad nights which I will gladly take right now. However this coming Thursday after work I have a commitment, call it a “special event”. This will be a real test for me as some of you may know just how much I struggle when it comes to “special event insomnia” so to speak. I know even discussing it like this on here is probably wrong and may only feed the thoughts on my head, but truth is I really would appreciate a few pieces of advice that anyone may have.

[Author]

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