[daveka]

I initially did Martin’s free course via email and then hired him as my coach. Things were progressing fairly better with improvement in falling asleep right away, and then getting more straight sleep. Then, after a happy, but stimulating Thanksgiving week, things began to deteriorate. After falling asleep instantly for weeks, this went away entirely with seemingly no ability to fall asleep unless I got out of bed after 45 minutes to an hour, and read for 45 minutes until I became sleepy. This now happens a couple of times each night. This has now gotten to where I am getting only 4-5 hours of sleep now after having been doing so much better initially. I am staying the course doing the same principles of the CBT-I program, but so far, things have not begun to improve. I know that I now think too much about falling asleep, when I wasn’t at all when I was falling asleep instantly the prior month or so, but have trouble not thinking about it now. Seems like I”m falling back into my old patterns. Is this a common thing and what will it take to get back to falling asleep again without lots of walking around, reading, etc., and losing hours of potential sleep time? I am still going to bed much later, set the alarm for much earlier, and seem to wake up prior to my early wake-up time regardless. Appreciate any help. Thanks.

[Chee2308]

Hello @daveka!
The solution to this is paradoxically not seeking to improve anymore. Sounds twisted but so true! Your body has already shown you it can sleep, is capable of improvement so what more do you ask of it? That it gives you 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every single night? You know that is impossible so when will the lesson ever be learnt that nobody controls sleep and nobody controls waking up either.

Everybody will have bouts of poorer sleep after a stretch of good nights. Think of it as reduced sleep drive after getting so much good sleep so naturally your sleep will get poorer, there’s nothing wrong there and no troubleshooting is required. This is critical! The faster you realise that you can’t control sleep or waking up, and the less you do to try to control it, the faster you leave the struggle with insomnia. True recovery isn’t necessary about getting good sleep at all, it is really about your relationship with poor nights and how you feel or think about them.

[daveka]

Thanks, Chee for your comments. IT was just so bizarre to go from falling asleep within minutes to go not falling asleep for 1-2 hours every night. WTH?? Anyway, I have been trying to adopt “acceptance” to what is, regardless of what happens and how much time I spend awake, or how early I wake up. I will just stay the course and try not to get upset when things happen that are not to my liking. Hopefully, my sleep drive will increase and things will get back to at least where they were. It certainly can be upsetting when sleep becomes so wacky.

Do you think that these sorts of extreme changes are common in this journey?

Many Thanks,

DK

[Chee2308]

Hi DK!
I can only say some differences are to be expected from night to night. They are also much more likely to happen at the beginning of the recovery. But at the end of the day, sleep is just sleep, and there’s no way your body can do it wrong.

I can understand where you are coming from, it is very human to want to do something to achieve some form of control, but therein is where your issues will stick. The more you do, the more attention you pay to it, the more struggle you will get. Try to be neutral and non judgmental about any kind of sleep you get. Be friendly to wakefulness as much as you can. Only then will your mind settle down to rest. Are you a bible person? It says God rested after 6 days of work. It didn’t say sleep. So as long as you allow yourself sufficient rest in bed, and not worry about sleep, you should be well rested. Sleep becomes a by-product of resting quietly in a comfortable place and you don’t actively strive or force it to happen.

You are only truly recovered when you stop seeking answers or asking questions after a perceived poor sleeping experience anymore. It comes from a realization that any sleep, good or poor, long or short, no longer has any hold over you.

[daveka]

Thanks Chee. Last night I went to bed an hour later than I had been and while still not great, things seemed to have changed a bit. Got more sleep, albeit more broken, but after waking, I did fall back to sleep more quickly.

I appreciate your advice. Thanks,

DK

[Chee2308]

Hi DK!
Are you avoiding your bed until bedtime? In this instance, I would recommend you spend more enjoyable time in bed instead, doing things you like such as watching movies on your phone, play games or anything you like, try to reestablish that loving connection with your bed. Don’t try to use cbti as a tool to generate sleep, because nothing can generate sleep except sufficient wakefulness so it doesn’t really matter how and where you spend that wakefulness. Dont obesess over what time it is because cbti says so. Go by what your body is telling you. If you lose focus repeatedly then it’s time for bed. Your ability to sleep is independent of cbti or anything else you use to try to achieve this end. What did you like to do before bedtime prior to your insomnia? Then continue doing that! Restoring your personality will help regain your confidence and find that joy again. Best wishes to you.

[daveka]

Hi Chee,

Well, things have started to turn around again for the better. I decided to narrow my time in bed window further and now get into bed at midnight, rather than 11, and have the same wakeup of 7 am. This seems to have helped as I am really sleepy by midnight. I used to get into bed at 10 pm.
So, I think I’m back on track to get to a more normal sleep pattern. Last night doing this, I slept straight through until 5:30 AM, was up for a little while, and then fell back to sleep again until 7 am. Overall pretty good and am optimistic that going forward, things will be better. Just getting rid of the anxiety about sleeping is a major plus. Thanks for your help and advice.

DK

[Chee2308]

@daveka
Yes your future nights will be full of cycles of like these, stretch of good nights, followed by not so good, then back to good again and the cycles keep repeating. I got so used to them so they don’t bother me anymore. And I couldn’t be bothered to do any strict SR like what you are doing because they don’t keep the bad nights from happening anyway nor guarantee a good night either. I frequently take naps during the day whenever I get sleepy and/or go to bed at night whenever I’m not that sleepy also, I couldn’t be bothered to be obessesed over what kind of sleep I get on any night, it simply doesn’t matter! If I sleep badly on any night, I know it’s just a matter of time I’ll get the good nights back so why fret or get unnecessarily anxious over it.

[daveka]

Well, Chee, you were right. Last night I stayed up again until after midnight with a wakeup time of 7. Unlike the night before, I had trouble falling asleep, got out of bed for a while, and eventually fell asleep for 3-4 hours. This was after falling asleep twice on the couch in front of the tv. I try not to do that, but I just pass out and can’t control it. So, I slept about 1- 1/2 hours before bed, then 3 1/2 hours in bed until I woke again at 4:45, up again for an hour, then off and on for another two hours. I don’t feel particularly bad, so I guess my body is OK with the sleep I got. For me, as you noted, the trick is to just not care what happens and I have already shown myself that I will eventually get what sleep I need regardless of how it happens, right?

[Angeli]

Hello Chee! Very good to read your posts and guidelines. I’m sure it helps a lot of people just as it has helped me. So, you no longer use a sleep window? Do you go to bed when you are already very sleepy no matter what time it is? And that doesn’t interfere with the biological clock and the time to wake up? Dr. Daniel Erichsen says not to look at the clock 1.5 hours before bed. In fact, the rigor of a sleep window and RS ends up becoming a huge effort to sleep better.

I once asked a person who sleeps so well what did he do to sleep so well? She said that when her head fell on top of the computer she would crawl into bed practically already asleep, she didn’t even know the time. She woke up every day at 6 no matter what night she had. And I still asked: And when you don’t sleep well? What are you doing? Nothing, she said. I know I will sleep well next night. It didn’t even shake her.

This is the sleep recipe. Not care about.
We overvalue insomnia. We talk, discuss, study, seek, help, … And it gets bigger, more important and has the main place in our lives. Maybe forgetting about this subject… maybe she will disappear.

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