[Edgar]

Hi, all,

Insomnia is driving me crazy. If I fall asleep immediately, around 10 p.m., I am up around 3:30. If I struggle to fall asleep and finally manage around 12 or 1 a.m., I am up at 5 or 6.

This has been going on for too long now. I can’t take a rest on free days or weekends,the same thing happens. I can’t nap, so I am constanly exhausted. I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t live like this, I need a pill that can fix this.

I understand not being able to fall asleep, I’ve struggled with that my whole life, but WHY THE HELL DO I WAKE UP TOO SOON? I am only 31. I have a job as a teacher, I have to be alert and communicate with kids, colleagues and parents, and I look and feel like absolute s*it!

Today I am up since 3:45.

I feel like I am the worst insomniac, since I feel everyone at least sleeps in from time to time or grabs microsleeps, but not me. I have just lost the knack, I don’t know how to sleep anymore. With my MS and epilepsy, I feel my brain is damaged beyond repair, and somewhere in that damage I lost the ability to sleep, too.

I keep trying to stay positive, saying “This will be the night that things change”, but night after night I wake up to the same realisation that it’s still dark outside, that not even birds are awake yet. Then I try to get back to sleep, but I slowly hear first the birds,then the cars, and realise I’m fighting a futile battle and I get up.

By the time 10 a.m. rolls by, I am already exhausted beyond description. Colleagues are happy, chirpy, and I am staring at them like some lunatic, faking a tired smile. I even avoid looking at myself in the mirror, I don’t even want to see what’s there.

I am ranting now because I am so sad, after three nights of struggling to fall asleep last night I finally fell asleep immediately, only to wake up at 3:45.

It’s like my brain is stuck in this constant loop of sleeping between 5 and 6 hours and I can’t get it to go back to what it used to be like.

[Edgar]

Oh yes, and I cant make love to my beautiful wife, which adds to my misery. I wish she never married me, she doesn’t need this. I should just crawl away somewhere like a sick animal and freaking wait to die alone, not disturbing anyone else’s lfe.

I am not usually this drastic in my communication, sorry, but this whole week even my Valium doesn’t help put me back under, and I am at my wits end. If I had the energy, I would cry, but insomnia takes even that away from you.

[Martin Reed]

Hello Edgar. I am so sorry to hear about your ongoing struggles with sleep. It is no surprise that you are feeling very depressed and frustrated by these issues you are facing.

Waking during the night is actually not uncommon — so this, in itself, is not unusual. If you wake during the night and find it hard to fall back to sleep, then that is something that can be addressed and tackled.

When you do wake during the night, what do you think is stopping you from falling back to sleep?

—

If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.

The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

[Edgar]

Hi, Martin,

 

Yeah, I’ve heard that waking up during the night isn’t uncommon, and that we actually wake up during the night more than we think, but fall back asleep without knowing.

I wake up around 4,since I go to bed around 22 or 23. Like I mentioned somewhere before, and like another user also mentioned, I get around 6 hours of sleep a night (sometimes less, which I hate) which doesn’t seem so bad in itself, but it is not enough for me. And the main problem is that it is a sleep debt that can’t be made up for, since I can’t nap, and can’t sleep in even when I have the time. It’s like my brain is set to wake up after about 6 hrs and that’s that.

I don’t know what is stopping me, sadly. I just don’t fall back asleep, unless Valium succeeds and I get an additional hour or so. If I had to bet I would say I’m too focused on sleep in the mornings, perhaps. But it could also be organic, I have MS and a small cyst on my pineal gland, so…

In the past, I was nervous about sleep and it led to problems with onset of sleep. This problem escalated during my college years, I guess due to obligations,stress and college life.

Eventually, I learned not to worry and my problems went away, I would fall asleep  9 nights out of 10 (but,again,never in the daytime) and there were never any early awakenings.

It is the awakenings that I can’t find a solution for. It’s as if I use up all my melatonin and there is nothing left that could put me to sleep again.

Sorry for the long rant, just wanted to add a little history with my insomnia. In short, falling asleep initially (knock on wood) is almost never a problem anymore, but staying asleep is a problem each and every day, no exceptions.

[sleepcoach]

Gosh, I wish I knew the solution to your problem. It would sure help me with mine, which is a similar problem of early awakening.

Last summer, I decided to just stop getting upset about it. I made an executive decision. This, miraculously, did help me. For months, the problem went away because I made a pact with myself that even though I couldn’t control my sleep, I could 100% control whether or not I got upset about the fact that I wasn’t sleeping well.

After a few months of good sleeping, I had a bad night, and the cycle began to come back. I’m doing better than I’ve done in the past, but I still struggle (when I’m stressed) to sleep 8 hours a night. I feel like if I could recover that Pollyannish attitude it would help tremendously. I’m trying, but my is it difficult.

It sounds like in the past, an attitude change helped you too. I wonder if we both should give it another go.

 

Wishing you so much success.

[Edgar]

Hi,

yeah, there is always that possibility that we simply gave sleep too much power over our lives again.

However, saying “I don’t care how much I slept, I will live like everything is OK and eventually it will be” is a lot harder now then it was 10 years ago, since now it’s a lot tougher to actually go through the day like this. At least for me.

But you’re right, we owe it to ourselves to give it another go. And another, and another. 😉

Wishing you all the best as well.

[Sailguy]

I have a similar post describing the same early morning awakening problem.  Last night I went to sleep around 10pm and was awake at 4am. And this is after taking a boatload of medications. I know the trick is to not worry about the problem but the act of trying not to worry is stimulating and leads to anxiety which is the problem in the first place. I have found extended release or meds with the sleepiness side effect to be more effective than a sleep onset med like ambien. I also have found that the act of journaling during the day takes away some of the power of the fear. I hope we can all find relief.

Good night and good luck

 

[Martin Reed]

Hello again, Edgar. Are you typically very sleepy when you go to bed at night? Do you sometimes struggle to stay awake until it’s ‘bedtime’?

—

If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.

The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

[Edgar]

Sailguy – I agree that anxiety is probably the culprit behind all this. Too bad there isn’t much to do when it wakes you up in the middle of the night or too early in the morning. I hope we can all find relief one day, too. As I keep saying , maybe this will all go away one day as abruptly as it’s come.

Martin – I do struggle, yes. But not quite to stay awake, I struggle with general fatigue from not being able to sleep. I know most people struggle to stay awake and so doze off, leading to trouble going to sleep at night. I would love to be able to doze off, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t. I guess I’m a neurotic, like Woody Allen.

The only time I can drift away relatively easily is the night, and that worked just fine most of my life, but for the past 2.5 years I can’t stay asleep long enough anymore.

What I need is a magic pill that puts me back to sleep once I wake up (Valium has some 50/50 efficiency in this), or simply a pill that can keep me asleep the whole night without waking up.

Or maybe I just need a new brain, I don’t know.

[Author]

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