[emschli]

Hey everyone!
So far I have made great progress with Martins Free Course and also some CBT-I App I have been using.
So what’s the progress?
I get sleepy in the evening and have seldom any problems falling asleep. I worry less about not sleeping. I live my life and have let go of safety behaviors, allowing myself the experience that good things can happen and I can be happy even after a bad night. I get around 5 hours of sleep pretty consistently.

But as I am trying to extend my sleeping window I am hitting a wall. Any minutes I add, I just wake up earlier (most of the time). When I do, I get out of bed and do something to get sleepy again but usually there is not enough time before the alarm goes off…
So now I feel trapped because in order to make further progress, I would need to actually sleep the time I add but in order to do that, I feel like I would need even more time.
Does this make any sense?

Now I am thinking about just dropping the sleep window completely, stick with a consistent wake up time and just trying to get comfortable with these early awakenings…But I am also worried, that will lead to more unpleasant wakefulness and an overall worsening of sleep releated thoughts 🙁

Overall I am already much happier and less stressed but still I was hoping to get more than 5 hours a night eventually…It’s not that I would do anything differently with my life then…It is just unpleasant to feel tired everyday and I know there are some areas in which I would just perform better with more sleep.

Any advice anyone?

[hiker]

Hi, emschli, for starters it sounds like you’re making good progress. Even though you would like to sleep more hours to feel leas tired. Seems reasonable for sure, as long as it doesn’t turn into a “must have”

I hope you are also reading other posts to hammer home that you’re not alone, and also to read the follow up comments. For example the thread entitled:
“My nervous system will eventually let go, right?” which started June 16.
To the comments there I would add only that it’s hard to think straight and easy to catastrophize? when you’re tired.
Keep up the good work—-without working at it too much!

[Author]

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