[John1971]

I’ve just started getting insomnia, it’s been over the last few weeks, I had one night with no sleep, then it happened the next night, so I turned to alcohol to send me off…it went away and this week ive had 3 nights now with no sleep…I lie awake stressing, I’m watching the clocks, I’m getting panicked and I’m just totally tired, I can nap on my sofa in the early evening for 30 mins, then I go to bed and I’m then wide awake and as the hours tick by I get more stressed and upset..I know alcohol isnt the answer, but it takes the thoughts away and I drift off….I want to stop drinking….I’ve tried counting, going to a happy place, reading, audiobooks…I feel im going mad, its all I think about…will i sleep tonight …advice greatly received..thank you

[LCF]

Okay, first off, stop panicking. It won’t help, as you’ve already realized, and it will just make you worse.

There’s a lot of good advice on this forum, especially with tips on how to implement CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia, so you should browse some of the posts. Martin also has a free two-week course here on this website that I found very insightful and I recommend it.

In the meantime, here’s what this old insomniac knows:

You’re so focused on getting to sleep that you’ve made it impossible to sleep. If lying in bed awake makes you stressed, then don’t do it. Forget about sleeping altogether. Get up and go somewhere else, read a book, have a cup of tea, listen to some quiet music, eat something, watch TV if you must, in order to get your head away from the insomnia. Lying in bed stressing is boring as hell on top of exhausting, so get up and do something more fun.

Put your clock away. Seriously. If you have to set the alarm, put the clock under the bed where you can’t see it. Don’t look at it once you go to bed. That way lies madness.

Don’t allow yourself to stay in bed all morning, either. Get up with the sun. In fact, if you can go outside for some early morning rays or even a walk, you’ll feel better. Honest.

Alcohol will not help your sleep. It might knock you out for a while, but then you’ll get the blood sugar drop and you’ll wake up. And if you drink a lot, you’ll be exhausted AND hung over. Forget the alcohol. It’s a dead end when it comes to sleep.

I’ve lived with insomnia on and off for much of my life so I’m not the best example of a success story, but I do know that as soon as the panic reaction sets in, I have to get up and go somewhere else, because if I don’t I’ll drive myself gaga. I’ve been where you are many times over the years, and I finally learned that awful though insomnia can be, it’s always much worse if you freak out over it. And if you calm down, it will get better.

These days most of my bad nights now are spent either lying quietly in bed or on my couch with my cat and a book. Often just moving to the couch will send me to sleep for a couple of hours. I’m definitely the poster child for chronic insomnia, but at least I don’t drive myself completely nuts over it any more and my days are much better for it.

You might try planning to stay up for the whole night. Sometimes, when I really can’t drift off, I just forget about sleeping altogether and get up for the rest of the night without even bothering to go back to bed. That takes the pressure off and I can focus on something else instead of the insomnia. My time is more enjoyable and I almost always sleep a lot better the next night.

Since your insomnia is recent, you will be able to get over it. Honest. Most of all, stop catastrophizing the insomnia. It will pass.

Breathe.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 9 months ago by LCF.

[Deb]

It’s possible that it will pass, but it’s also possible that it won’t. Insomnia is caused by anxiety over not sleeping. The worrying about sleep, perpetuates it. My insomnia started just like yours – with just one bad night. Then I started worrying about it and it got worse.

There are two types of therapy for insomnia – cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and ACT. Martin, the founder of this website teaches and coaches people using CBT-I. You can find a lot of information about it on this website. Another less known therapy is based on something called ACT. It focuses on helping you learn to relax in bed, so that you naturally fall asleep. The best resource for this is the book, The Sleep Book by Dr. Guy Meadows, who developed this therapy. It’s an easy read and makes a lot of sense. I have been successful in using this therapy.

[Martin Reed]

How are you getting on since you posted, John?

At the end of the day, everyone experiences a bad patch of sleep from time to time. This is often caused by a stressful or unusual event such as a job loss (or a new job!), a health scare, marriage, divorce, a nightmare, etc.

When this initial trigger is no longer relevant, sleep almost always recovers all by itself. If it doesn’t, it’s because of the thoughts we have and the behaviors we implement in response to that initial sleep disruption.

When we do things like spend more time thinking and worrying about sleep, more time researching sleep, going to bed earlier, staying in bed later, canceling plans, calling in sick to work, modifying our days in response to a bad night, trying to conserve energy during the day, trying to nap during the day, etc, we actually make sleep more difficult and perpetuate the problem.

So, in the short-term, the best thing to do is to avoid all these compensatory thoughts and behaviors. With enough wakefulness, sleep will always happen in the end because sleep drive cannot be denied indefinitely!

Try to remain as active and engaged as possible during the day so your days aren’t filled with thinking and worrying about sleep. Participating in enriching activities can also help you recognize that the quality of your day is influenced far more by what you do during the day than by how you slept the previous night.

Finally, as I think you realize, alcohol is not a solution. It might help you fall asleep a bit faster, but it ruins sleep quality and leads to more wakefulness during the night.

If sleep problems continue for longer than a few weeks, you might want to implement cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques in order to tackle the thoughts and behaviors that are making it more difficult for your sleep to recover.

I hope this helps.

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