[Oz]

New to this forum but with a long intermittent history of sleep onset insomnia and associated anxiety. Currently working my way through a long cycle,mostly on sleeping pills but struggling to wean myself off with some but intermittent success. The conditioned bedtime anticipation and anxiety is a killer to get under control. Anyway, the main reason for the post was to hear how others may have tackled the associated problem of rebound insomnia. Not rebound from pill use but from being so thrilled when you do get a good couple of nights and so want it to continue and be permanent that you start to psych yourself back into the anxiety rut, and the cycle starts anew. It seems that it’s not good to think too positively or anticipate good sleep too strongly, which seems a bad thing! Probably need to culture the feeling of not really caring what happens and that you’ll ‘eventually’ sleep – the problem being that ‘eventually’ might be days not hours. The mind is one convoluted stubborn beast but I still hope tameable.

[Conny]

Agree totally

[Martin Reed]

Hi Oz — we’ve talked a lot over email so I will get right down to business and simply answer the great question you posed in your post:

How do I tackle the problem of being so thrilled when I get a good couple of nights that my desire for this to continue leads to anxiety and rebound insomnia?

First, did I get the question right?

If so, my advice would be this — see every single night as a fresh start (because it is). If you had a bad night last night, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will have a bad night tonight. If you had a good night last night, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will have a good night tonight.

When you go to bed, don’t have any expectations. Just see what happens.

Also, bear in mind that improving sleep is a long-term process. So, it’s not always constructive to consider single nights as a measure of success, failure, or progress. Instead, look at your sleep over a longer time-frame. You want to improve the climate, not the weather. In other words, look at the long-term trend rather than what is happening in the short-term.

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