[Danzer]

Had insomnia for several months up until about September-October 2021. Since then, I’ve learned cognitive and sleep behavioral tools that have helped me in turn sleep through the night most nights: acceptance of whatever happens and delaying my sleep time until I start feeling sleepy no matter what time that is (thanks to Martin’s newsletter).

The only issue I still find myself running into is occasionally waking up in the middle of the night for 10-30 minutes a few times a week. I usually fall back asleep afterwards so I’m not up very long. But often end up groggy after that broken sleep the next day.

What do you recommend doing to push through the entire night? Is even caring about this part of the problem?

[Chee2308]

Hi @danzer!

All suffering, including about sleep ones, are the result of wrong perceptions. Try to do some deep reflection within yourself. You said something about whether caring how you sleep helps. If you think you care, then what is the actual basis of it? Is it even worth caring about when it’s supposed to be natural? Or if you don’t care, is this really true? Could it be possible you somehow still care obessesively but you are just kidding yourself that you don’t because that’s what people here or everywhere else told you this helped them? Think very deeply about this. It can also be applied to other things in your life. Just deep reflection, examining any ideas or notions that you have then observing really carefully and without prejudice whether this actually reflect true reality.

That said, waking up throughout the night is normal. So could it be possible that you are overstressing yourself over issues that many people don’t perceive as problems at all? Could all this “suffering” actually be self-inflicted just because of a wrong perception or notion? Good luck!

[Martin Reed]

Hello Danzer! As Chee said, waking during the night is a normal part of sleep. If we find it hard to fall back to sleep then we probably aren’t sleepy enough for more sleep, or we might be putting pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep or putting effort into falling back to sleep.

You might want to ask yourself what you are unable to do, that you would otherwise be doing if you did sleep right through the night. How would this change your life? Is your life affected primarily by how much time you spend awake at night, or by the things you choose to do during the day?

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