[hutch]

So I’m about 5 weeks into sleep restriction. During week 2 there was a noticable improvement but over the past 2-3 weeks I’ve been regressing and I feel like my sleep has turned into a slippery snake rope that I’m desperately trying to hold on to. Is this normal? How long should I perceivere? Many thanks for any advice..

[California dreaming]

Hi Hutch, When this happened to me, I found that I needed to cut back on my hours in bed. I had been fooling myself about how much time I was allowing myself to be in bed. I was allowing too much time in bed. Cutting back by an hour and dragging myself out of bed every day for a week got me back on track. I had allowed myself 7 hours in bed over a period of about a month, when I really should have been allowing only 6 hours in bed. During this time, I was only sleeping 4-5 hours a night. When I cut back to 6 hours in bed, I slept a solid 5.5 hours, woke up feeling more rested, and was able to build up again very slowly from there. Hope this helps. Don’t give up!

[hutch]

Thanks for replying California Dreaming. It’s so easy to stretch the truth with SR in order to gain the much coveted extra 15mins of sleep at the end of the week – and harder still to reduce the sleep window and not see it as a setback. But I totally see the relationship between this and the regression I’ve been experiencing. I think it takes a while for it to sink in that this kind of training actually works and that your body can be that sensitive to it. Martin also suggested this which reaffirms your advice somewhat:

“Make sure you are still to allotting an appropriate amount of time for sleep and that you aren’t implementing any compensatory behaviors that might be sabotaging your efforts! These include things like going to bed before the start of your sleep window, staying in bed after your sleep window ends, modifying your day, napping, canceling plans, trying to conserve energy during the day, etc.

You might also find it helpful to incorporate additional techniques such as stimulus control so you aren’t spending a lot of time in bed during the night tossing and turning, fighting with sleep.”

I’m also trying not to fixate on the insomnia and focusing on trying to relax rather than trying to sleep (stimulus control?). I’m definitely seeing some gradual results and must remember to ‘take every win’ even when there’s a setback.

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by hutch.

[Martin Reed]

Ups and downs are completely normal — and that’s why you should use at least one week of sleep diary data (ideally two weeks) before evaluating your sleep window. How are you getting on since you posted, hutch?

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