[Pumanu]

Hello Everyone,
I’ve read lots of books on CBT-I and I’m fairly sophisticated about it. I do everything as instructed but still wake up once in the night, followed by an early morning awakening (5-6am). Sometimes I can go back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the nigh, but other times I am up for like 2 hours. I’m soooo tired and irritable in the daytime. I only go to bed when sleepy and set my alarm for
7am every day. I do all the sleep hygiene stuff, do a wind down hour, etc and I’m just not having luck! I don’t have restless leg or sleep apnea.

Anyone have any creative suggestions? I’m really desperate and I refuse to go on meds! Thanks in advance.

[Chee2308]

There’s nothing to be creative about when it comes to sleeping. Your body already knows how to do it but your relentless dissatisfaction with it is what’s keeping you from sleeping! Forget everything you learn about sleep, the cbti, the rules etc. Set a get into and out of bed time and completely ignore everything else. Just give up the constant figuring out how many hours you slept and how many times you woke. Abandon the chase and ultimately the struggle! Return to basics and try going back to sleeping like when you were a baby. Has anyone heard of babies getting chronic insomnia at all? NO, because they have no concepts of such things and are not bothered with chasing sleep or results. Good luck.

• This reply was modified 1 years, 4 months ago by Chee2308.

[Martin Reed]

It sounds as though you might be a little bit tangled up in trying to make sleep happen and trying to get rid of wakefulness — sometimes, when that’s our focus, things can remain a bit difficult since we cannot directly control sleep.

CBT-I techniques are intended to help tackle the behaviors that can perpetuate sleep disruption — they cannot make sleep happen. Quite often, the more we try to control sleep the more we can end up struggling with it.

It might be helpful to recognize that waking during the night is a normal part of sleep. How do you currently respond to those awakenings when they happen?

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