[Ms.Carrie]

Hello,

I have had a bad time with insomnia starting in April. I couldn’t sleep and became very worried and anxious about not sleeping. It has been very hard, at times I will only sleep a few hours a night and a few days of the week, I will sleep around 5 or 6. But after all these months, I am now starting to experience a feeling of sort of drugged or groggy all the time, like a brain fog even on the nights I sleep. This has made me even more worried about not sleeping well. I have never experienced this before. I hope I can overcome my anxiety around this insomnia and get back to normal.

[Chee2308]

Hello and greetings!
As a recovered person, I can tell you that worrying about bad sleep is a complete waste of time because nobody ever has any control of sleep. People naturally get sleepy after being up long enough just like being hungry. So absolutely no point worrying over it. Sleep happens independently whether you worry about it or not, or worry about other things, to your body it makes no difference as sleep and anxiety are independent of each other. It is possible to have some anxiety and still sleep well! To manage the anxiety part, you can start letting go of trying to control sleep, accept the thoughts about it but do nothing because there’s nothing you can do, really! Be accepting and inviting of scary sleep thoughts instead of avoidance and trying to escape them. Over time you begin to understand that sleep happens independently and that your thoughts has little bearing on your ability to sleep well after all.

[Ms.Carrie]

Hello!

Thank you for your response! I will work on letting go. I just feel so bad when I don’t sleep and I am starting to feel bad on nights I do sleep as well with feelings of foggy brain and out of it. I’m not sure why this is happening to me on the nights I do sleep, but it has also frightened me and has me feeling even more of the need to sleep well. I hear what you are saying though and I will keep trying to accept it all so I am not so afraid of insomnia.

Thank you!

[Ms.Carrie]

Hello again,

You mentioned you were a recovered person. What did you do to get over it?

[Chee2308]

Hi Ms Carrie!
The things I did or did not do:
1. Establish a bedtime routine. When I was doing cbt-i I was pretty strict about my bedtime. As time went on, I started getting more relaxed. Now I pretty much don’t care about this. I just go to bed when sleepy, eyes heavy and head nodding off.

2. I stopped being scared about not sleeping or waking up during the night. Ultimately this led me to not caring about sleep anymore and stopped chasing it. I realised you can still sleep really well even a bit anxious, this is the bit that most recoveries hinge on, then you slowly build on your successes bit by bit until all that anxiety about sleep disappears and you start letting go of control. Recovery won’t be overnight or linear, be patient and accepting of your situation, this means accepting any discomforts that come along with it. I stopped taking stuffs to sleep such as meds, melatonin, researching sleep, asking questions or anything related to sleep. I gave up and that’s it!

Anyone can do this. Be patient, disciplined and self-loving. Best wishes to you.

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