[Tramie]

My insomnia starts when I first had my first kid 6 years ago when he would wake up every 1-2 hours. Since then my insomnia has been on and off cycle these past years. Lately it’s gotten worse because I start to have sleep anxiety and can’t fall asleep for days. I started to do CBT-I and it helped but not consistent. I would either wake up at 2am and cannot go back to sleep. I feel so frustrated with myself for not having a full night of sleep.

[hiker]

Hi Tramie, it sounds like you are really going through it right now….

Your insomnia kicking in when your newborn was keeping you up is of course understandable. Maybe harder to deal with is, when the cause for situational insomnia starts to recede (kid starts sleeping through the night), why does the insomnia still hang around?

I think the neuroscientists talk about nerve pathways or whatever as an explanation for how our brains can get programmed this way or that. But also that it is possible to re-program out of this mess, with the likes of CBT. Which in turn does not come in and fix everything perfectly.

I am guessing that you know intellectually that CBT is something you just have to keep practicing—but it is hard to keep focused when you’re hammered day after day from inadequate sleep. And continuing in the vein of describing what you already know (sorry!), sleep anxiety keeps the messy cycle rolling.

You write “I am frustrated with myself….” I wonder if maybe you can acknowledge that it is frustrating to not sleep, without getting frustrated with yourself –i.e. not beating yourself up as if this means you are a failure. I totally get how we can feel like failures–sleep should just happen, other people sleep, why not me, am I a loser or what……maybe just acknowledging that you are having these thoughts without buying into them.

There is an enormous difference between:

1. “I’m having thoughts that I am a failure, I will never get over this;” and

2. “I am a failure, I will never get over this.”

So easy to gravitate to #2 when exhausted, but it’s not true.

I hope you stick with this website and check out Martin’s emails. Take care.

[Author]

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