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Hi. I am in my early 60s and have had insomnia for as long as I can remember. I rarely have trouble falling asleep when I first go to bed but I always (100% of the time) wake up after about 90 minutes – then that may be it for the night. Last year I spent the night in a private sleep clinic, but they found no cause for my problems, which was both reassuring and frustrating.
My current sleep patterns are something like this:
After my evening meal I often feel so tired that I have given up fighting the drowsiness and I just go to bed, say around 7.30. Seems to make little difference what I eat (tried all kinds of exclusion diets) or whether I have wine, coffee or not. I may sleep for two hours and feel OK within 15 minutes or so of waking up. (I have no TV/PC or whatever in my bedroom BTW, just the bed+ orthopaedic mattress).
I then to go to bed again sometime between 12 and 2am, when I feel I need to. But no matter what time I go to bed (or whether I slept earlier, after dinner, or not), although I generally do fall asleep again, after around 90 minutes I am awake, and often that is it for the night. As I write this, I have been awake for four hours (it’s about 7.00am here in the UK now). I don’t feel too tired, but I do feel kind of ‘washed out’ all day. I don’t have to work in the mornings (I have arranged my life over the past 30 years so that I have almost never had to, due to the insomnia, working afternoons and evenings: I just do some private teaching, at my own convenience now, a few hours a week) so that’s not a worry.
I may or may not go back to bed for an hour at some stage during the day. Whatever, I can never sleep for much more than 90 minutes at a stretch.
So I have just shrugged my shoulders and kind of ‘go with the flow’. But my quantity (sometimes as little as 3 hours daily total, rarely as much as 5) and quality of sleep are pretty low. I wonder if by sleeping so little and so erratically I may be causing health issues. I already have slightly high BP, for which I take tablets. It’s not a case of seeing a doctor by this stage – I don’t think there is much more they can say or do.
Any thoughts on any of this? Thanks,
MartinA couple of things I forgot to mention: if I feel tired around this time (say 6 or 7am), go back to bed and manage to fall asleep, I can then sleep to even 11am. Seems I can only sleep for longer than 90 minutes at that time of day.
Tried (following advice from the consultant at the sleep clinic I attended) to ‘force’ things by going to bed at the same time every night.. I chose about 11.30. Weeks and weeks of hell really as it made no difference. I would fall asleep OK, wake up at 12.30am and then be awake for hour after hour (I always get up and do something: was told not to stay in bed, as bed should be associated only with sleeping. Chance would be a fine thing!).
Feel kind of ‘spaced out’ all day (lack of sleep, I assume!)…
Hi @martinlest!
Welcome to the forum and for sharing your story. In your second post, you mentioned that your sleep window began at 11:30pm, but what time did that window end? Keep in mind that the beginning of your sleep window is simply the earliest time for you to go to bed. If you’re not sleepy at the start of your sleep restriction window, I’d encourage you to continue engaging in relaxing activities instead of trying to force sleep. The harder we try and more effort we put into sleep, the more difficult sleep is to obtain. When you were implementing a sleep window, what type of activities were you doing when you’d get out of bed? Are they activities that was intended to generate sleep or were they enjoyable activities like watching tv, reading a book, journaling, etc?
If you can shed some additional details on the roadblocks you experienced with implementing some of the techniques the consultant provided, maybe we could troubleshoot it for you.
Scott J
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Hello Scott, thanks for the reply.
To answer your question, the consultant I saw recommended that I tried to go to bed at the same time every night, to get into a habit. But I can’t say that that worked for me. I would wake up anyway after 90 minutes and read, or watch TV or use the PC. I didn’t notice that the TV or PC light made any difference.
In the event things have changed and even over the past few days my sleep patterns have become quite different. Since, for whatever reason, for almost a year now I have felt an overwhelming desire to sleep very soon after my evening meal (have tried food – and alcohol – exclusions to little avail), I have reluctantly started to give in to it and go to bed when that level of sleepiness overtakes me.. around 7.30 usually. Until three nights ago, when I woke up a couple of hours later I would get up. But I thought I’d see what happened if I stayed in bed. And I find that I fall asleep again quite quickly, rather than lie a wake for hours, as happened before. I do wake up three or four times, but quickly fall asleep again. By around this time (3.00am), I have probably had almost 7 hours of sleep and wake up feeling, not exactly refreshed, but reasonably OK. I could doubtless sleep some more, I could push it to 8 perhaps, but I don’t seem to want to go to sleep again after I have had about 7 hours.
To sleep from say 8 to 3 is not ideal in many ways, ‘socially’ and not something that I really want to get into the habit of in the long run. I currently look after my 94 year-old mother on a full-time basis, living in her house, and have done that for 5 years. Came back from living and working abroad to do this over five years ago now.. quite stressful and to a degree, quite depressing. I try to eat with her at around 6.30, but I suppose I need to push my eating times later, to say 9.00pm. I’d than be going to bed, falling asleep already, as I do now, at around 10, and getting up at around 5.00am. That would be a little less ‘crazy’.
Be interested to hear what you think of this! Good job I don’t have to get up for work in a morning – in fact I have engineered my working life around my insomnia for over 30 years, not working mornings mostly, but working (teaching) late into the evening instead. I used to be a ‘night owl’, but the totally overwhelming tiredness I feel these days soon after my meal (doesn’t happen at lunchtime!) has put paid to that!
Martin
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