[andreeadm]

Hello,

I’m 35 and am currently experiencing a second really bad bout of insomnia since March last year.

I’ve had a similar bout when I was 21 which lasted for about a year after which I was totally healed for about 12 years. My insomnia was so bad the first time that I didn’t sleep for 3 months straight (although doctors seem to doubt that this is even possible). It was triggered by stress with my graduation exams.

Then, one day, when I was excited that my favourite soccer team won an important match I lied in bed not thinking about falling asleep and I had the most amazing 8 hours of sleep. This showed me that I hadn’t lost my ability to sleep and, although, the following months were difficult, I slowly recovered my perfect sleep over the course of 1 year. This goes to show that it is possible to recover even from total insomnia and acceptance is the key.

Fast forward to 2017, I changed my job and was stressed because of that. This caused another bout of insomnia with a week of sleepless nights, then about 2 hours of sleep. This pattern repeated for about a year. At that point I was so low that I just wanted to die, because this time I collapsed physically and every time I did manage to fall asleep the hypnic jerks would wake me up.

As before I managed to overcome this by finally just accepting and not stressing over it.

Now I am stuck in another problem for 6 months. I fall asleep and continue to do so for 6 or 7 hours a night with 2 or 3 wake-ups, but I seem to have vivid dreams during the entire period and I am tired during the day.

I’ve been doing some research and it seems to point to either REM rebound or narcolepsy. The body seems to give priority to recovering REM sleep over the other phases, but could it last for so long? As for narcolepsy, I don’t suffer from cataplexy or sleep during the day.

Any input about these dreams is greatly appreciated. Has anybody gone through this phase while recovering from insomnia?

Intuition and history tells me that the solution is acceptance, but it’s easier said than done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Martin Reed]

Welcome to the forum! You are absolutely correct when you say that acceptance (or simply “letting go”) is easier said than done! Cognitive and behavioral techniques can help change the way many of us with insomnia think about sleep so we have more constructive thoughts and behaviors towards sleep.

First, unless you are finding that you sleep at random times during the day, it’s unlikely that you are living with narcolepsy.

The body actually prioritizes the deepest, most restorative levels of sleep over REM sleep and that’s why deep sleep occurs in the earlier part of the night.

What makes you concerned about your dreams? As you know, dreams are normal — so are you concerned that your dreams are leading to less restorative sleep?

If so, what evidence do you have to support this, and what evidence do you have to refute this? Thinking it through like this can help you determine if the idea that your dreams are reducing your sleep quality is accurate, or if the idea is more likely to be an automatic thought that might not be entirely accurate.

Have you spoken to your doctor or a sleep specialist about your concerns in the past six months? If you are worried about your sleep architecture, an overnight sleep study may be helpful.

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[SergioRenato7]

Hi,

i actually have a similar issue. My insomnia started 2.5 yrs ago when I was abusing substances and doing regular all nighters, which triggered anxiety, and this anxiety never went away. I stopped the drugs and the all nighters but a few days laters I tried to go to sleep but I woke up from an insanely crazy scary vivid dreams. I was on a steep desert hill, being chased by huge 60ft aliens like those out of war of the worlds. The dream proceeded to get weirder and weirder. this freaked me out becoz I had only every had a dream once in my life. Since the insomnia begun my sleep has been fragemented nearly every day for the last 2.5 years, and I continue to hv vivid dreams almost every time I wake up. My sleep before was always dreamless and robust. I could sleep through anything.

So I guess the anxiety is causing the insomnia but why I hv dreams and some others don’t, I don’t know. I guess my body is on alert when I’m alseep so maybe it finds it harder to send me into the other stages of sleep. I can’t seem to shake of the anxiety. Time off work, supplements, medication. Nothing works.

[Mike Love]

Trying loving insomnia. It’s your friend. It’s telling you something. Serendipity.

[Mike Love]

If you say that you want to stay awake, and when you wake up in the middle of the night you say you are so glad then sometime I start laughing because it’s so ridiculous.

[Author]

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