[Jwvln]

I have been struggling and suffering from insomnia all my life. I took my first sleeping pill before I was a teenager. I feel completely hopeless and powerless when it comes to sleep. I am very encouraged by your method and am committing myself to go through this process as hard as it might be at the beginning, in the hope that I will finally learn to sleep like a normal person.

[hiker]

Hi Jwvin, sorry to hear you are having such a tough time. All I can do is offer what has/hasn’t worked for me. Maybe it will help; I hope so.

I found that sleep meds either worked not at all, or for a short time before I built up a resistance. M.Ds tend to just write you another prescription without exploring any emotional aspects of insomnia. I did get some relief with a CPAP for apnea, but nothing else.

Re the emotional aspects, what worked the most–and still does, when I have setbacks is prayer and mindfulness. The first for getting the strength to get through the worst moments, the second for training my mind to stop buying into my thoughts.

I realize many people don’t believe in prayer, but there you go. As for mindfulness, there are documented studies which show actual physical changes to the brain. This matters because I found that like most people, my thoughts would get really scrambled when I was exhausted, to the point where I would start buying into my thoughts instead of just observing them drift or race through my head. It didn’t even matter if something concrete was happening in my life to disrupt sleep. Just worrying about whether I would sleep, aka sleep anxiety, took on a life of its own—a common story which afflicts millions of us.

A couple of mindfulness websites: palousemindfulness.com and mindfulness northwest.com
Also Headspace Guide to Meditation on Netflix.

As with prayer, a lot of people will blow off mindfulness as useless because they hear or read something from one or two people which doesn’t resonate.

I hope you stay with this website. Martin’s email and podcasts are really good, and reading other people’s posts help as well. For starters, you will see you are far from alone in all this.

I don’t believe there is a “cure” for insomnia, as in you will sleep great every night from here on out. It’s not like breaking a bone, which heals up and works fine after two or three months. So try not to freak out with setbacks.

All easier said than done: I still have to watch the tendency to panic, get irritable, despairing, etc. Insomnia can do a number on you.

Don’t give up, like I say you are not alone.

[Author]

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