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Its amazing just how easy it is to “re-trigger” your Insomnia again after some bad habits. As I’ve said recently over the last week or so I’ve gone to bed at an extremely early time of around 9:45p (finally crashing around 10:30p) and ended up waking WAY WAY too early around 4:30am. This happened to me Tuesday night for example and last night, I went to bed at 10:30p instead trying to make sure I get back into my old better habits. I ended up crashing around 11pm and guess what? Around 4:30am I was up , in and out of half-a$$ sleep. I eventually drifted off for another hour or so and feel ok today, but it just goes to show… My body/brain actually got a tad used to the 4:30am-ish time for a bit, and now that will have to be broken again which may take a good few days. Point of the post and lesson learned? Don’t ever think of messing with your routine unless you are certain you are 110% healed. Have a good day everyone.
6 hours sleep. Wow.
Funny how everyone’s needs are different.
I’m 56 and average for people of my age is 5 to 6 hrs, as Martin points out in his fourth drip email update quoting much research. I guess I’m an outlier with 5 hrs average, but I feel fine with that.
Absolutely everyone is different. My “good” number is 7. Meanwhile I know people that have been fine to get by on 5. I do speak for the statistics though when I say that the majority adults NEED at least around 7 hours of sleep.
Could it be that you don’t feel good after 7 or 6 hrs or whatever being due to worry about a perceived performance target that is actually not attainable.
Maybe just forget about it and get on with living and living with the way you are.
Haha easier said than done
and while your point/question is very fair to ask, I can comfortably say after many years that I definitely need 7 hours to feel good. 6.5 I can get by. 6 is very iffy. Anything under 6 i’m pretty much shot. Just the way it is.
At this point I don’t know what to do. Maybe Martin can chime in just this once. It seems no matter what I do, no matter when I go to sleep, I simply cannot sleep more than 6-6.5 hours. Another 11p-5am last night. Sat in bed for an hour again before my 6am alarm went off. 10:30p-4:30a a few nights earlier. Sometimes I’ll get the 6.5, most times not. Tired today. I just don’t get it anymore. And I promise you all, my sleep anxiety has literally been reduced to what I’d say is 5% over the last few weeks. I follow great sleep hygiene. Have a nice wind down phase. Don’t enter my bedroom unless legitimately TIRED, etc. I don’t get nervous when I go to bed anymore. I don’t even have trouble falling asleep. I just can’t sleep past a certain number of hours. Please help!
Hi Mac,
It could be that your body doesn’t need the extra 30-90 minutes of sleep. As we age, we typically need less sleep and 6-6.5 hours may be optimal. As for wanting to sleep longer, I am not sure how to increase it other than being either more tired or sedation (booze, herbs, meds). Perhaps sticking with 6.5 hours for a few more weeks and then gradually increasing it may help add extra time.
What I am interested in Mac if you can chime in is you mentioned that your anxiety is down to 5%. What do you think helped the most? or was it the combination of sleep restriction, being very tired, wind down?
My issue is similar to yours but it’s less predictable. I may get a week of 6-6.5 hours and then get a streak of 4 or so. For example went to bed at 12:00 and then was up at 4:00am and I was just unable to fall back asleep.
Delv no offense but I don’t think you understood my situation. You are making it sound like I have control over how long I can sleep. I can’t “gradually increase” anything. No matter what time I go to sleep, even when I’m completely tired, I can never sleep past 6.5 hours. This also has nothing to do with my body’s age and not needing this extra sleep. I go through my days tired just like I’m tired today. It’s not normal or healthy to live like that. It’s normal to be refreshed and to achieve this feeling I need 7 hours, though I can get by on 6.5.
With regards to my anxiety, it took me finally having a serious structure in place. Before the new year when I began this all, I’d go to my bed around 10:15-10:30p every night pretty much no matter what, usually when I wasn’t totally tired. I’d also sleep in on weekends all the time. I had to discipline myself and retrain my brain (and body) in order to rid myself of a lot of anxiety. This meant only going into the bed once completely exhausted now, but more importantly, always waking at the same time, EVEN on the weekends, which was tough for me. My alarm during the week is 6am, and on weekends it was the same, though now I push to 6:30am on the weekends which is ok. Slowly but surely, my sleep anxiety decreased for all the obvious reasons we know of when it come to SRT/CBT-I. In the early stages if I ever woke during the night and legit couldn’t fall back asleep, I’d get up and out of the bed. The idea of course is to create a connection between the bed and the brain that is sleep ONLY of course, and it’s anything but a quick fix. I’m 2 months in now after 2+ years of being a chronic insomniac, and only now am I feeling more comfortable in saying that my anxiety is definitely very low.
Still doesn’t change the fact that I’m struggling in a pretty big way with regards to my being unable to ever sleep past 6/6.5 hours though. I suppose one solution some would suggest is to force push my bedtime to 12a which would get me to my alarmat 6a, and then slowly move my bedtime back once I’m comfortable in that spot, but I just don’t understand why I would need to do that if my sleep anxiety is so significantly reduced at this point. Plus, making it to 12am is probably an impossible task for me. By 10:30pm the latest my eyes are drooping every night. I believe your problem all along is lack of discipline on yourself. You need to understand that you have a traumatized nervous system and it will take some serious work to help reverse that.
Mac
Hello Mac. As requested, I’ll chime in.
First, let me address your opening post. It sounds as though you experienced sleep disruption because you went to bed before you were sleepy and/or before your earliest bedtime (are you observing a sleep window?).
First of all, it’s great to hear that your anxiety has fallen since implementing CBT-I techniques.
You do seem to be very concerned about being unable to sleep for longer than six to six-and-a-half hours. Am I right?
If so, why are you so concerned about this and so determined to get more than six to six-and-a-half hours of sleep? Have you considered that perhaps this is your individual sleep need?
You mentioned that if you get less than six hours of sleep, your day is shot. Let me ask you this — have you ever had a great night of sleep, but had a bad day? Or, does a great night of sleep guarantee you a fantastic day, 100% of the time?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hi, Mac,
Reading your post, I just had to chime in, since my situation for the past two and a little something years is identical to yours. I’ve had insomnia all my life, but mostly in a way of not being able to fall asleep initially. Once I would finally fall asleep , I would sleep as much as I need (7.5-8.5 hrs).
Now, I generally fall asleep fine, around 22:30 or 23 but my wakeup time is somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30. Pushing the time of going to sleep earlier or later does nothing. In favt, I’ve had days when I would go to sleep later and still wake up at 4:30. Boy those days are beauties….
I also try to comfort myself by saying “6, 6.5 hrs is fine, it’s in the lower range of normal”, but the fact of the matter is it isn’t enough. I’m tired all day, often so much that it’s hard to hold a normal conversation. And it physically shows, too, bags under eyes, people asking if I’m sick and all that.
Don’t let people tell you that “maybe it’s normal for you” or that maybe it’s “as much as your body needs”. If you feel crappy, then you didn’t sleep as much as you need. Simple as that.
Sleeping for 6 hours a day is fine for a few days, but if it becomes the norm, then you live your life like a deflated baloon.
Eddy
Eddy thank you for understanding. It is very frustrating. I know all about the bags under the eyes as well as many other awful things associated with what I like to refer to as zombie days.
Martin, thank you so much for responding. You ask why I’m so determined to sleep more than 6/6.5. The answer is simple. It’s simply not enough sleep for me. How could it be my individual sleep need if I feel like crap the next day? 6.5 hours I can usually get by just fine, I’ll admit. But 6 is where it’s just not enough, though I can push through.
On occasion I will wake after 6 hours on a weekend night and then fall back asleep for an extra hour (due to no work alarm to worry about going off in the next hour) thus bringing my total to 7, and guess what, I feel good that day. I know it’s not great at all to worry about “totals” and how much we slept, when we slept etc, but it just is what it is. My sleep anxiety is very low and I’m ok with the counting. What I’m not ok with anymore is constantly coming up just short of nights that will make me feel rested.
To answer your question, throughout my life yes, there have been a few of those instances when I’d sleep for 7-8 but feel poor the next day. Didn’t get deep good sleep or whatever it may have been. Rare, but it’s happened.
Also to answer your first question Martin, I do not have a legitimate strict sleep window. I follow what i’d like to call a “light” SRT method over the last 2 months where I only go to bed when completely exhausted, however I DO wake up at the same time everyday which is 6am. (6:30 on weekends now though)
Initially before I began this on 1/1/19 I would rarely be very tired before bed so I started doing 11:30pm to 6am and would be tired and would usually sleep through the night. This eventually increased my sleep pressure and sleep drive to the point where I would now begin getting tired around 10:30pm on average. This was my normal bedtime for years and before this chronic insomnia began 2.5 years ago. Problem NOW however unlike then, is that after I eventually drift off around 11pm, as you know will wake around 5am, sometimes 5:30 the latest. I can never make it to my 6am alarm. Maybe a few very rare occasions I’ve woke at 5:45a.
Hello again, Mac! The fact you have noticed that you can have a bad day after a good night of sleep is evidence that the quality of your day isn’t always reliant on the quality of your sleep.
I completely appreciate that you would like to get more than six or six-and-a-half hours of sleep, but if your body is not currently capable of getting that much sleep on a consistent basis, there is nothing you can do to force a longer sleep duration.
What you can do is set the stage for sleep and give yourself the best chance of sleep and create optimal conditions for sleep. Not going to bed before you are sleepy is very important — and for the best results, this needs to be combined with always getting out of bed by the same time every single morning (which it sounds as though you are doing).
It is also very important to note that you should also be following an ‘earliest possible bedtime’. Otherwise, if you go to bed at varying times each night, it is going to be very difficult for you to get the consistent sleep duration you want.
Think of it this way, we can’t really expect consistent sleep if we don’t have consistent wakefulness.
If you regularly wake naturally before the end of your sleep window and regularly find yourself very sleepy before the start of your sleep window, you may want to shift your window forward so it starts slightly earlier in the evening.
I hope this helps.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
I’m probably a bit older than you and also in menopause but your insomnia sounds like a dream. I would love to have solid quality sleep from 11-5. Maybe your sleep needs are changing and that’s all you need? I know I could function beautifully with that, but we are all different.
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