[alax]

Hi everyone,
I’ve been suffering from chronic insomnia for several months and the doc prescribed trazadone and recommended CBT-I. The meds worked ok for a few weeks and then I decided to wean off them and lean into CBT-I. All was good for a few days and then I had a bad night, which kicked off more bad nights. I decided to start sleep restriction (I was already doing stimulus control and relaxation methods for a week or so) and the first night was awful, only slept a couple hours and it created the worst anxiety of my life that lasted non-stop for a couple days, as well as near total appetite loss.
Was wondering if both methods are needed together or one or the other may work? Or maybe I should have waited a little longer before trying sleep restriction?
Thanks!

[Chee2308]

Hello @alax
It doesn’t actually matter when you start but since you have started, you might as well get on with it. A few tips I wanna point out:
1. Select your get out of bed time and a reasonable sw. 6h is a great starting point for most people and please keep sticking to it, don’t gauge your success on a bad night or string of bad nights because each success or failure are completely independent of each other. 6 hours is a reasonable sw to keep to, sticking to this will strengthen your sleep drive over time. It might take several weeks for your body to respond. As your sleep improves, you may slowly begin to extend your sw but keep in mind, your sleep quality will suffer a bit. You may get more awakenings and/or start waking up earlier than usual. This is normal and to be expected. You might also regress to an occasional sleepless night, this is also normal. But for most people, as long as they are not overstressed and stay disciplined, the improvement will continue and people are usually able to fall back asleep with no incident after those awakenings.

2. The other part is the mental aspect. In most people who recovered, as they begin sleeping better, they either start to forget about their problem or stop fearing it or both. This is crucial for total recovery. When you are able to look at insomnia hard in the face and not show any fear, you will sleep very well. Minimize the obessesion with sleep, by stopping going on forums like these, researching or goggling it, watching youtube videos or do anything related to sleep. Do nothing except sticking to your sw at least for a few weeks. Stop the obessesion which feeds the insomnia. Do nothing to try to sleep better, have total trust in the system and your own body, this will usually work wonders. Good luck and best wishes to your success.

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