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Hi Padron,
Martin gave me this advice: When implementing CBT-I, it is essential to see it as a long-term strategy and to “mentally automate” all the processes involved. Pretending you are a robot can actually make things easier since there is less mental conflict — you don’t go to bed before the start of your sleep window, you always get out of bed by the end of your sleep window, if you can’t sleep you get out of bed, etc.
So this is how I do it. I think of it as training, like training a kid to stay in his bed. The parent hauls the kid over and over back to his bed. I haul my butt out of bed over and over again to train my brain to associate the bed with sleep. That way there is no conflict or anxiety, it’s just training.
In the meantime, you may want to look into developing a mindfulness practice. I’m doing this and it helps me to calm myself by separating from any fearful and anxious thoughts instead of getting caught up in them. Hope this helps.
Just one other thing about the mindfulness practice. It’s important to practice during the daytime as well as night. When you’ve got the hang of it during the daytime when it’s easier to practice, then it will go smoother at night when it’s a lot harder.
Yeah I guess I understand the SR and SC parts, but having trouble with applying the CBT part of CBT-I. The changing the anxious behavior and negative thoughts. Guess need to practice mindfulness and meditation more.
Is your sleep getting any better yet, Dragon? That will go a long way towards reducing the anxious thoughts and feelings.
I had a string of around 3 good nights in a row last week. Then I have one I classify as not great and it throws me off again and I start to become anxious again even if I’m exhausted. Talked to my CBT-I person yesterday and they thought either I should push my start time later to 12:30 or I should better address my anxiety through CBT. I don’t think 12:30 would help. Already feel very tired by 12:00.
That’s great that you had 3 good nights in a row! Hopefully your therapy will help with the anxiety. I know for myself that having a smaller window would just make me more anxious.
Finally began SRT again, officially, Monday night. Have had two mediocre nights in a row, with last night being worse. This journey began with SRT on January 1st as Deb, Delv and others may know, and through some serious lows early on and eventually by March some nice highs. I learned a lot through this all, with the most obvious and important thing being that fixing chronic insomnia is anything but a quick/overnight fix. Fixing what is really a completely traumatized nervous system is not an easy task and takes discipline and it takes time. I began to decline about a month ago ironically immediately following what was my greatest phase yet of one full week of near perfect sleep of 7 hours or so a night. I’m still not sure what happened. Maybe my brain just got so comfortable that I felt like I was “due” for some bad sleep.
I just know it began with a bad night and absolutely spiraled until I hit rock bottom about a week or so ago. So here I am again, over 4 months later from that New Year’s Day, back at square one. Sad and sickening really. Knowing that this has all really consumed my life for the last 2.5 years and how at one point two months ago or so I thought it was really and truly behind me. It’s true what many have said on here, how SRT absolutely makes you think about Insomnia more, which yes could seem like a very bad thing at first, but the reality is if you stick to SRT like I plan to, it soon begins to fade, especially as you begin to do well and become less “restricted” with the sleep window.
The problem and my fear is that this may be a never ending cycle. That my nervous system or brain, whatever you want to call it, is just somehow permanently traumatized to the point where I may never be a 100% normal sleeper in my bedroom again. The bedroom that I associate sleep fear with the most. I’ve slept better in hotels. I’ve slept better at my parents. I’ve done other things that have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt this is all related to my own bed where these sleep issues began during that infamous week 2.5 years ago in late 2016. I hope I can come out the other side. I hope I can look back on this phase in my life as a distant memory one day. Maybe I will. I felt like I was almost there at one point. Gone from these forums. Gone from thinking a lot about sleep in general. I was almost there just 2 months ago. I appreciate all the help and support on this site and from Martin who’s been nice enough to chime in a few times. But we shall see. We shall just see.
Good luck Mac. I start with my sleep restriction again Saturday night. I want to update my sleep diary first.
I’m with you Mac. I started the same time as you the beginning of January and now I’m starting all over again too, although for different reasons. I took a long detour, trying out ACT only to totally fail at it, then fell into deep despair and finally came crawling back to Martin, begging for his help to get me out of this hell hole. Now I’m finally back on track again.
It’s been two weeks now and I’m seeing a similar pattern as I had before with 5 good nights a week and a couple bad. I’m very grateful for the good nights. But a part of me like you Mac, wonders if I’ll ever be normal again. I either fall asleep right away due to total exhaustion or can’t fall asleep and have to get up one, two or three times before finally getting a few hours of sleep. I’ll wonder if I’ll ever get back to normal where I don’t have to be so exhausted and can lie in bed for 20 minutes or so before falling asleep. So like you, Mac, there’s that strong association of my bed with wakefulness. I talked to Martin yesterday and he said that just as it took a long time for the insomnia to develop, it will take time for it to go away. I’ll have to keep reminding myself of this. I’m prepared to be very strict with the therapy for as long as it takes. Hopefully by a couple months, maybe I’ll have less of the bad nights and maybe even be able to lie in bed for awhile before falling asleep.
How’s everyone else doing? Delv, Dragon, Daf, Padron?
Hi Deb, I am going for round two of sleep restriction starting this Saturday night. I have to complete my sleep diary Friday night. Like you, ACT totally failed for me.
We should start a new thread as a support group for those of us retrying SR. This thread has a lot of pages and not all of them related to those of us doing sleep restriction.
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