[skrzypovita]

Hello, it’s my first post here.
My biggest obstacle to better sleep is intense worry about the consequences of my insomnia. I can’t seem to be reassured by the positive thoughts like “you don’t need 8 hours of sleep, you need your core 5.5 hours”. The problem is that since my insomnia started in February, I never get over 5h of sleep. I believe I average around 4.5h, and it’s obviously not terribly deep sleep. Because of that, my imagination shows me catastrophic scenarios like physical and cognitive deterioration. I can make some days bearable with the amount of sleep that I’m getting, but the anxiety makes my suffering triple or even more! I should add that since I started employing other CBT-I techniques, my sleep seems to be getting a bit more solid, I experience stronger sleepiness late in the evening, bed is also slowly becoming less scary and more pleasant. However, my health worry (mostly about cognitive consequences) is relentless and started limiting my hobbies and social activities due to feelings of inferiority and incapability to perform on optimal level. Am I too irrational with my worries? Are there any more rational perspectives on this? I feel that if I won’t get more deeply convinced that I have errors in my thinking, my recovery will take much longer than needed. Also, I believe that my anxiety is actually making me too sleepy too early in the day because of all those exhausting mental calculations that I’m constantly doing about the possibility of future disasters.
Thank you very much for reading my post.

[Chee2308]

Hello!
Yes, your worries are way overblown and unnecessary. Ask yourself: Do you worry about never eating again? Or worry that you somehow have forgotten how to breathe? Answers are most definitely NO. In fact, it is ridiculous and even stupid to worry about these things. WHY? Because your body takes care of them naturally. Sleep is exactly like that. Your body takes cares of eating, breathing, going to toilet to pee/sh*t and sleeping all by itself. So why must you worry? If you are not sleeping enough, your body will eventually force you to sleep by making you extremely sleepy, in the same way your body will force you to eat or breathe if you try to hold them in. It is when you try to control sleep that you run into problems. Expecting ridiculous things about sleep like saying “I DEMAND TO GO TO BED AT 10:00:00 PM AND I WANT TO SLEEP FOR 8:00:00 HOURS AND WAKE UP AT 6:00:00 AM WITH NO AWAKENINGS IN BETWEEN! I DEMAND TO GET MY SOLID SLEEP EACH AND EVERY NIGHT AND I MUST SLEEP 8.00 HOURS, NOT ONE SECOND LESS!”. Why be so hard on yourself by setting impossible sleeping goals or getting obesessed over it? Be natural. Just trust your own body, it knows exactly what it is doing. If you can’t sleep, accept that you can’t sleep and that your body just doesn’t need it at that moment in time. But it will return, eventually. Don’t chase sleep, let it chase you! Sleep only to live and not live your life only to sleep. I hope you get the message and best wishes.

[Scottsdale Sue]

I have similar fears. It’s been a year and a half of severe insomnia. I now have weird head pain and burning sensations abs pressure. My body feels awful. Feels like it will never recover and be normal again. Just want my life back to how it was before. Praying for you and me and anyone else struggling. No one really knows how awful insomnia is until they’ve experienced it long term. Sending blood thoughts to you….

[Author]

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