[Sophia Widmer]

Hello! I’m 16 and been struggling with negative thought about bed and sleep for most of my whole life. I have been taking sleeping medicine for about 6 years every day. (Melatonin and over the counter sleeping aids). I mainly took something to help me feel like I’m able to get sleep and to not worry. But the night before my drivers test I got 0 hours of sleep. This then led to restless nights and having to do school completely online because I fear of not sleeping. It’s been 2 months of have really bad sleeping problems and I feel like a complete zombie and can’t concentrate or socialize on my day to day activities. It got so bad that I went to the doctor to try out prescription sleeping meds which were absolutely terrible! I got the worst ever hangover, and when I went back to tell them my issues they just prescribe me something else. I don’t want to be stuck on sleeping meds or anything that’s not myself doing the sleeping! I really hope this CBT for insomnia works! I’ve very excited and will try my best to suck to the program. 🙂

[Chee2308]

Hello Sophia!
Greetings and welcome to this forum. I think everyone here can completely relate to your story. Otherwise normal sleepers may experience just one sleepless night and this then starts them on a path of endless worry and anxiety, often unnecessarily, mainly because they begin to think something’s broken with their system and that ultimately erodes their confidence in being able to sleep unaided. Since you are only 16 now, and you said you’ve taken medications for 6 years, that means you started at 10?? That’s a very young age to be on sleeping aids. What’s your parents take on this?

As a former sufferer, I can tell you that everyone can sleep naturally and sleep is actually very easy to understand and simple to achieve. Sleep works a lot like hunger, both are natural biological drives that accumulate the longer you go on without it, ie, not sleeping or eating. So you can ask yourself, how do you get hungry? Well simple, you just go on without eating for a while and you then *WILL* get hungry eventually. You don’t actually need to do anything to get it, it is completely natural and effortless because the body takes care of that all by itself. Everything is a constant state of recharge and discharge, kinda like recharging your phone after using it for a while.

So how does this apply to sleep? Well, you just go to bed after a certain number of hours of *being awake*. For most people, the magic number is 16-18 hours of wakefulness that generates 6-8 hours of sleep. It is as simple as that. From now on, set a time you want to get out of bed and by initially allowing 6-6.5 hours of sleep, you arrive at the earliest time you should go to bed. Always get up at the same time every day no matter how much you slept. Do not compensate for lost sleep in any way (sleeping in, taking naps or going to bed earlier). Your sleep should improve after several weeks of doing this. Then as you slowly build up your confidence, you can increase your time in bed in 15 minute increments every 10 days or 2 weeks by going to bed earlier while keeping your out of bed time the same. Keep doing this until you reach your desired sleep duration.

Bear in mind, since you are currently taking medications you might want to discuss with your doctor about a tapering off plan. Also expect the journey to be ups and downs, the improvement will not be linear because:
1. You have been living with this fear of not being able to sleep for so long now and your brain will need a bit of “reformating” to unlearn the fear. Also, because you are likely falling asleep at irregular times, your body will need some time to readjust to the new sleep schedule.

2. You will naturally have some bad nights after a string of good nights. This is a very clear sign of improvement because when you start sleeping well, your natural sleep drive will get lesser as you are no longer as sleep deprived anymore. This will manifest itself as taking longer to fall asleep or waking up earlier than you would like and then finding it harder to fall back asleep. All of these are very common and normal during the recovery process. Not reacting to them strongly will give you the best chance of overcoming them. Try to practise acceptance as much as you can instead of avoidance.

Always be patient, practise self kindness and try to be non judgemental on how you sleep for a particular night. How you sleep in any night has no bearing on how you sleep in the future so always start every night on a fresh page and try not to be attached to the outcome. By practising these simple steps diligently you should be well on your way to sleeping well and naturally in the long term. Good luck!

[Sophia Widmer]

Thank you so much for this information! It’s much appreciated:)

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