[ButterflyHMW]

I’ve had insomnia for about 3 months now following an illness. The stomach issues I had caused me to wake up not feeling well in the night, which started a pattern that unfortunately stuck.

I recently started sleep restriction with a CBT-I specialist. I hate to say that I’m doubting her, but I’m doubting her. My TIB is about 10 hours (10pm-8am) with about 7 hours sleep. I have no trouble falling asleep about 10:30pm, awake around 3am for an hour or more, then again about 5:30am and from there have broken sleep until about 8am. From her calculations my sleep efficiency is at about 73%.

So my restriction is set at 12am-8am. I’m only on night 3. My question is, doesn’t this seem like a long time? I haven’t read any about anyone being set on an 8 hour restriction. My guess is that she is trying to start by limiting my TIB down from 10 hours? I have high anxiety around all this so maybe she’s trying to go easy on me. The first night was Hell filled with anxiety. The second night I didn’t wake up until almost 5, bypassing the whole 3am wake up. So something changed a little or it was a fluke – there have been a few times in these last few months that I’ve bypassed 3am.

I just really feel like this isn’t going to work. But I’m trying to believe. Most of the time I felt better with the broken sleep than I do this exhaustion from the restriction.

[Scott]

Hi – welcome to our forum!

Did you and your specialist determine your new sleep window through discussion or did she set it based on the information you provided to her? I wouldn’t want to circumvent your specialists advice so I’d encourage you to continue having those discussions with her if you feel your sleep window and time in bed needs to be altered. Typically, TIB (time in bed) is calculated from reviewing the person’s sleep journal and taking the average number of hours of sleep and adding 30 minutes to the average, but the total time in bed should not be less than 5.5 hours. Your sleep restricted window is determined by that calculation and, generally, when you want/need to start your morning. For example – if my TIB is 7 hours and I need to be out of bed at 6am to start my day, then my sleep window should start at 11pm.

It sounds like your sleep dramatically improved the second night of your new sleep window so how has it been since then? You mentioned having anxiety the first night – was that due to being nervous about your new sleep window or something else – can you expand on why the increased arousal that night?

Hope that helps,
Scott J

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[Chee2308]

It actually sounds like you are sleeping quite well, I estimate you slept like 4.5 hours in the first stretch, then 1.5 hours in the 2nd. With these amounts I would reckon you would have reached your core sleep duration, i.e., the minimum amount of sleep you really need. Any sleep after that is considered bonus eventhough it’s broken because if your body doesn’t really need that sleep, you kinda get it in small bouts, similar to what normal people get when they take afternoon naps. That is also why you said you felt much better with broken sleep because most people feel so much better after taking these naps too. You are doing absolutely fine and you need to start believing you are sleeping well. You will still wake up even when sleeping well but that is completely normal. But if you are no longer anxious about sleep and no longer see waking up as a threat, you will fall asleep pretty quickly again in the 2nd stretch. With that said, I think alloting 10 hours for sleep is too much and 7-8 hours will be more than enough to get that core + any bonus sleep in my opinion. Use that extra 2-3 hours to do things you really enjoy, think of it as God’s gift to enjoy life so why do you want to spend it sleeping? You only live once so go out and enjoy! Hope this helps and remember, life is meant to be enjoyed not spent sleeping half the time!

[Author]

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