[Mr.feynman]

Hello,

around three months ago,  at the same time as I was changing my country of residence (UK) and job, I started to develop a bad form of insomnia.

I’ve been living abroad for the last 10 years, and until recently my professional situation has been extremely stressful (I was an academic researcher). Recently, I decided to quit and started a much less stressful job, although it is still very demanding intellectually. Contrary to expectations, my quality has sleep has deteriorating considerably, rather than improving.

I had never been a great sleeper, but in this last period I have been getting 4 hours of sleep on average. I usually don’t have too much trouble falling asleep, taking from 30 min to 1 hour. However, after 3 hours I usually wake up (often around 3 am), and have trouble falling back asleep. At that point I can get at most very light sleep, but in practice I feel awake until the morning.

When I wake up at 3 am, I feel very tense, sweaty and with a fast heartbeat. I’ve been to the doctor, and I’ve tried during aerobic activity, taking melatonin and valerian, but those don’t help much.

I do not know if I have a physiological or psychological condition (related to my recent change of country and job), but I’m very surprised I’m getting this now since I feel much less stressed during the day that I’ve been in the last 5-8 years.

Furthermore, I found out that in the UK my private health insurance does not cover treatment for insomnia, since it’s not considered a “medical condition”. This is impairing my professional and social life and I would really appreciate any input.

Thank you

 

[gsdmom]

Since you’be been to the doctor, I assume you’ve ruled out medical conditions like diabetes for the night sweats and sleep apnea? What would happen if you went to bed earlier, say like 9pm so you would get 6 hours sleep instead of 3hours?

[Martin Reed]

Welcome to the forum, Mr.feynman. Has there been any improvement since you posted?

It sounds as though you may be a bit more predisposed to sleep disruption since you mention that you have never been a great sleeper. Then, when you changed jobs and country of residence this triggered an episode of sleep disruption — and this is something to be expected since any major life change can affect sleep.

What can happen at this point is, instead of sleep recovering once we become accustomed to the change or new circumstances, we start to think (and even worry) more about sleep than we did in the past.

We might also do things in a bid to get our sleep back on track that actually make it harder for our sleep to recover. For example, we might start to spend more time in bed, we might spend a lot of time researching insomnia and sleep, we might start putting pressure on ourselves to sleep, or self-monitor for sleep.

Have you tried implementing CBT-I techniques to improve your sleep? CBT-I can be very effective for chronic insomnia since it addresses the perpetuating factors behind insomnia — and, since the techniques are skills-based, once you have learned them and are confident and comfortable with implementing them, they stay with you for the rest of your life. So, if sleep issues return, you know exactly what to do to get your sleep back on track.

I hope this helps.

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