[Gemma2906]

Hi
I have just been reading someone’s post about sleep anxiety and I am literally in the same boat. Reading posts where a bad night sleep is 2- 4 hours and wishing this was my situation. I am generlaly missing 2 nights sleep to get a 6 hour sleep in between. I spend all night going up and don stairs only to give in and sit on the sofa watching TV. At times like last night I don;r feel anxious but then go to bed and 30 mins later realise that I am not asleep. I feel so rubbish today, no matter how I try to pretend to ‘cope’ and carry on with noral liffe the tiredness is horrific! How the hell do I get myself out of this viscous circle I just cannot see the light through the tree’s.

[Rubylight]

Don’t know if this will help or not, as I’m just beginning too, but I did try CBT-! for the first time last year and had to quit in the third week because the constant getting up and going back to bed and getting up, and worrying over the passing time, checking for sleepiness every twenty minutes (nope!) only made things infinitely worse. It turns out I’m one of those those people who find it a lot easier to tough out a no-sleep night by just staying quietly in bed and waiting out the time, trying to stay as comfortable as possible and talking gently to myself. And once in a while I actually do fall asleep for an hour or so. Using this technique this time around instead of stimulus control was a godsend for me. It took away so much stress. I guess both methods have their champions, but just lying in bed and “resting” seems to melt away a lot of anxiety, for me anyway. Maybe it would help you too.

[Martin Reed]

Hello Gemma and welcome to the forum — I am glad to hear you realize that you aren’t alone and that the insomnia struggle can be remarkably similar from person to person!

As suggested by @Rubylight, have you tried allowing yourself to be awake in bed? Getting out of bed just because you’re awake or getting out of bed in an attempt to get rid of wakefulness or difficult thoughts and feelings might be setting you up for more of a struggle since sleep, thoughts, and feelings cannot be directly or permanently controlled.

As you shared, difficult nights can make us feel rubbish the next day. We’re not looking to pretend otherwise! So, I hope you are able to continue to acknowledge how you feel — and perhaps you might also be able to practice being kind to yourself when things feel difficult and commit to doing things (no matter how small) that matter to you each day. Things that are aligned with your values and that keep you moving toward the kind of life you want to live, even when things are difficult.

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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.

[Gemma2906]

Thanks for the reply but now I am really confused

Day 7 advised the following: Ultimately, the only way to change this learned association is to get out of bed or do something more pleasant whenever nighttime wakefulness doesn’t feel good. Over time you will break the association between the bed and unpleasant wakefulness and learn to associate the bed with sleep — but only if you are consistent!

So I am starying bed or getting out of bed!???? This has made me feel even more stressed and anxious as although keep getting up is a bit of a pain at least I felt I was foing something to take back control.

[Rubylight]

Hi Gemma. I understand your confusion perfectly, because when I first tried CBT-I, I was told that getting out of bed when I couldn’t sleep was an absolute necessity, that I would never break the bad associations otherwise. And I really, really tried, but it only made the problem worse. Getting up, going back to bed, getting up again, etc, etc, just made me crazy with anxiety. In the third week I quit the programme entirely. On my second go-round, several months later, when I learned there was an alternate technique, where you could just stay in bed and rest, without trying to monitor yourself, it was a godsend. I found it so much easier to just lie there and do my best to accept the situation. I still had awful anxiety for a few weeks, but gradually it has seemed to lessen its hold on me. All this to say that this is what worked for ME, and might not necessarily be the way you want to go. But it’s certainly a valid alternative. I think that none of these rules are written in stone, that we can adapt them to fit our individual personalities. Otherwise we go nuts trying to do it “perfectly”, which defeats the whole idea of learning how not to chase sleep. I hope this helps.

[Gemma2906]

So even if you are anxious you stay in bed? I had an email from the Insominia Coach yesterday advising if you are associating the bed with unpleasant wakefullness to get out of bed so I am now really confused.

I was so hopefully and prepared to me so committed to this process I feel even less confident and more confused!

[Rubylight]

I know, it can be really confusing. But please, please don’t give up hope! I felt exactly like you when I first started this, and I finally chose the “stay in bed” option over getting up just because there was slightly less anxiety when I stayed in bed. And it’s worked out…my anxiety, which was ferocious, has gone way, way down, and I’m only in my third week. It gets better, it really does! I never would have believed it. I think, if you are receiving the regular emails from the Insomnia coach, that he will eventually talk about this issue, about having a choice as to whether or not to stay in bed, because that’s where I learned about it.

[Chee2308]

Hello everyone!

@gemma2906 when you feel you have to make a choice between X and Y and you do this because
it’s driven by the sleep factor, always ask yourself the intention, are you doing it in the hopes of sleeping more & better, or is it because it’s genuinely want it and it’s not because of sleep?? Always choose the latter, if you get up, it’s because you have more interesting things to do, perhaps you want to watch a movie, catch up on a series, sew, have ice-cream, pat your cat, do your laundry whatever! Or if you have nothing that you want to get out of bed for, then just STAY In, even if it means you get anxious over not sleeping, get used to the anxiety in bed and it becomes something you eventually grow out of because it happens so many times and nothing bad has ever happened, your body just starts recognizing it’s a false alarm and that’s indeed what it is!

Don’t chase the end-result, ie, sleep. Forget about what you think normal sleep should be like! Focus more on the process and the things you can control like:
1. Consistency. Get into and out of bed at consistent times helps form the bedrock for your circadian rhythm, so when you are up X number of hours, you will get sleepy roughly by Y o’clock. Not an exact science but mostly it works like this. Stop thinking sleep as some mysterious, indecipherable black box that you have to keep figuring out. It’s not and it’s really simple: you will get sleepy when you are up long enough.
2. Focus on your comfort and keep your bedroom cool, comfortable and relaxing. Start associating your bed as a place where you leave everything behind, your worries, anxieties and yes, even sleep itself if that makes you worry excessively. Focus just on resting even if you can’t sleep, tell yourself you are only human and you cannot control everything so there’s no point to be obsessive about anything if it does not turn out the way you want it. Life isn’t always a bed of roses and that’s okay!
3. Get over the fear, this is the ultimate objective of every insomniac and the hardest part of letting go. To sleep well, you must, at some point, stop fearing poor sleep, start accepting wakefulness at any time of the night and you must stop obsessing over it. You can still think about sleep but that doesn’t translate into actions or excessive emotions anymore. It just becomes a neutral item, like the sky is blue and the forest is green, you appreciate it as it is and you make no attempt to change it to your bidding.

Good luck. The correct mindset leads to the correct actions which leads to a place where you are happy and content with things just as they are. People who recovered from insomnia don’t necessarily sleep a lot better, it just means they have abandoned the struggle with it.

[Martin Reed]

The traditional CBT-I approach involves getting out of bed after a certain amount of wakefulness. The idea being that being awake in bed can reinforce an association between the bed and nighttime wakefulness.

This approach can be helpful — evidence proves it.

Some people struggle with it, though — especially if getting out of bed becomes a sleep effort. Something that is done in an attempt to get rid of wakefulness or make sleep happen.

In my experience, the problem here isn’t that the brain associates the bed with wakefulness (after all, think of all the people who sleep well and yet they spend a lot of time awake in bed watching TV, reading, scrolling on their phones, etc).

The problem is that the brain can associate the bed with struggle — and it’s the ongoing struggle that makes sleep more difficult, generates difficult thoughts and feelings, and draws us into a battle that can put our brains into overdrive!

So, what might be helpful is to practice moving away from struggling with wakefulness and any difficult thoughts and feelings that might choose to show up.

Instead of trying to fight the wakefulness and any difficult thoughts and feelings that come along for the ride, we can practice acknowledging their presence and allow them to come and go as they choose.

We can also engage in a more pleasant activity if that will help us experience wakefulness with less struggle — and since the goal is simply to practice moving away from the struggle, it probably doesn’t matter whether we stay in bed or get out of bed.

I hope this helps!

—

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.

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