[S.A.]

I have had insomnia for 6 years. I have tried SR a number of times with some minor success on my last attempt last year. I did it for 2 months before giving up but I now sometimes get 5 hours of sleep where as before it was always only 3 to 4 hours. I need to build on this because 5 hours is not enough for me and it’s not consistent anyway. I think if I got 6 hours I could be good with that. I started again a week ago with a window of 11pm to 5am like last year ( I cannot handle a later bedtime so prefer to get up earlier). My sleep issue is sleep maintenance and I am not anxious about sleep when I am in bed. I got over that years ago. Since I started a week ago I have not once gotten 5 hours of sleep. Today I am awake since 3.10 am. I am wondering if to reach my goal of 6 hours sleep should I get out of bed at 4 am? I am worried that doing that will make it “stick” and I will just always wake at 4 am. I feel that my body has already adjusted to the amount of sleep I already get even though I am never refreshed so I am worried it will readjust to even less sleep. Can I stay in bed until 5 am?. Or is 6 hours too much when I am not sleeping 6 hours?. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Martin Reed]

Welcome to the forum!

Unfortunately, striving or trying to get a certain amount of sleep can often be our biggest obstacle to reaching that goal because we have absolutely no control over sleep duration. When we try to control sleep, sleep usually becomes more difficult.

With this in mind, it might be worth exploring why you feel you need to get at least six hours of sleep. What if you got five hours and 15 minutes of sleep? What about five hours and 10 minutes of sleep? What about four hours and 50 minutes of sleep? Are those kinds of sleep durations 100% responsible for the quality of your life or is it possible that your reaction to how much sleep you get might have a role (perhaps more of a role, even that sleep duration alone)?

It’s good to hear you are implementing a consistent sleep window to help bring some consistency to your sleep! When you wake during the night (which is a normal part of sleep!) it can be helpful not to check the time since that often increases arousal and can make falling back to sleep more difficult.

I would usually suggest giving yourself until the end of your chosen sleep window to sleep. If you wake during the night and it feels good in bed, there’s no need to do anything since conditions are right for sleep! If it doesn’t feel good to be in bed, it might be helpful to get out of bed to do something a bit more appealing until conditions feel right for sleep.

Your alarm might go off when you are out of bed, but it might not!

I hope this helps!

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