[Deb]

Day 16 of ACT  No anxiety before or after going to bed. Fell asleep within 10-15 minutes. Slept all night but woke up tired again. I certainly hope that things settle down soon.

[Mac0908]

Deb what time did you actually fall asleep and rise? Whats your normal bedtime these days?

I’m actually going to try and implement my own person version of ACT in the coming weeks. As you know it seems I have a ceiling of 6.5 hours max which I have always been very frustrated about. Can’t naturally sleep 7 or more straight for the life of me. Beginning tonight I’m going to start “accepting” the fact that 6.5 hours is a good/regular night for me. Will see how that mentality works out.

Went 11:30-530 last night

tired today but not a zombie

[Deb]

For years my usual bedtime has been from 11:00 to 7:30 (give or take a half hour on both ends.) Last night I went to bed at 11:00 and woke up at 8:00. Like you, I’m tired today but not a zombie. It’s crazy that I’m still tired after 9 hours of sleep. Before the insomnia, I always felt very well-rested after 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep.

 

[Mac0908]

This is because you still have significant underlying anxiety that is preventing you from having truly restful sleep. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’m still there.

[Mac0908]

Over 2.5 months since I turned over a new leaf and began to try and seriously take care of my Insomnia, and I am still having these bad nights. Nothing at all like I was having before these 2.5 months and nothing at all like even back in January or Feb, bc yes, I’ve improved, but still, bad nights that I feel should be totally gone for the most part at this stage. Crashed at 11. Woke at 5:05am. Why? No clue. Went to bed pretty tired though not completely shot. I’ve simply been trying different formula’s. If something doesn’t work, obviously the answer is to try something different. That’s been the key to getting better for me after so long.

But still, today I’m pretty shot, and frustrated. The other night I tried going to bed later for the first time in a long time, crashing around 11:30pm. Certainly this would get me to my 6am alarm, right? Nope. Up I was at 5:35am. 6 hours of sleep and very tired during the day. So, whether or not this endless 6-6.5 hour routine will ever end I don’t know. Right now I’m trying to “accept” it. But the bags under my eyes tell me that might not be the best route. Sitting here today knowing I’ve improved over time, but still feel kind of lost for sure.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by Mac0908.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by Mac0908.

[delv-x]

Hi Mac,

If things have been generally better since Jan/Feb that’s a positive. There is a chance you will be able to sleep consistently over 7 hours. I would say if you go to bed and you wake up 6.5 hours later and dozing off for a bit longer is not going to happen because you are too alert, try not to fret and go about your day or lay in bed and relax for another 20 minutes. Some days where I get more sleep, I am more tired than other days where I get slightly less so it isn’t always a good predictor on how I will feel.

I would say if you can get 6-6.5 hours of sleep consistently for a few weeks that push up to your rise time, you might be able to gradually push another 15 minutes and then another 15  and another 15. If you are waking up an hour before your rise time then you may need to hold this pattern longer.

What helps a bit for me is to avoid checking the time no matter what. If I wake up and still dark and know it’s not close to my wake up time I relax and lay there, go to the bathroom if I need to, whatever and even toss and turn but I don’t know the time so my body stops learning that 5am is wake up time. If I don’t know the time then I don’t know how early I’ve woken up, the more likely I can doze off more and makes it easier to “let go” or whatever mantra you think works best in terms of acceptance. If you lose track of time, it may ease some anxiety and may help deprogram your internal clock to wake up early. After a few days/weeks, if your body is truly still sleepy and you wake up (we all wake up many times throughout the night) you will just turn around and fall back to sleep and not even care or notice. Good luck.

If you don’t check the clock at all then you can omit everything I’ve said above lol

[Mac0908]

Thanks Delv. Of course I check the clock bc obviously I know all my times lol. But I think you’re right. I have this idea in my head that looking at the clock isn’t a big deal and doesn’t really affect me, but the reality is it probably does. Even if it doesn’t in that exact moment, the thought is then ingrained in my head for the day that I woke up too early. I woke up at 5am, whatever it might be. So thanks for the advice. Going to revert back to my old way of simply never looking at the clock for the time being. We’ll see how that works out.

[dragon]

Yeah think not looking at the clock is necessary.

I guess my issue is when I have a regression it really affects me and I can’t then get out of it easily.  It tends to rock my confidence again.  Then I revert back to using props/pills to try to get back on track.

[Mac0908]

Same here. The power of the brain/fear can be seriously strong.

[Deb]

Just have to keep trying different things until something finally works. I was wondering, Mac, is your 6.5 hours consistent and is it approximately at the same time every night?

Day 17 of ACT Speaking of trying something different, yesterday I had an inspiration of something to try that might solve my shallow sleep problem. I remembered reading somewhere that it’s possible that if your sleep is too long it could be shallow and not refreshing. In that case it’s better to sleep less to get deeper sleep. The number of hours I’ve been sleeping is not too long in comparison to how I slept before the insomnia. But since everything has been out of kilter for so long, my body might not be ready for this right now and it might be best to compress my sleep for awhile, i.e., go back to SR. I also re-examined my theory that there could still be underlying anxiety that I’m not even conscious of that is making the sleep shallow. But then I was reminded of how when I first started SR three months ago my anxiety was so much higher than it is now, yet I slept very deep. SR worked like a charm for me and I slept well on the good nights.

So I’m going back to 6.5 hours for awhile and will see how this goes. I’m also going back to my schedule of 12 to 6:30. If this works well and deepens my sleep, then after 2 weeks I’ll add on a half hour and gradually work my way up to the right number of hours for me.

Last night I had no anxiety before or after going to bed. Woke up this morning feeling tired but not too bad. I’ve had so many nights of shallow sleep that I think it might take a couple days to catch up and start feeling more rested in the morning. The good news is that I have’t had a bad night for over a week and a half. I had a couple nights where I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep, but they weren’t “bad nights” in the same way as before with me struggling, getting out of bed over and over, and not sleeping until 3:00 or 4:00, or maybe not at all. I feel like I’m doing so much better with dealing with anxiety so that any potential bad night is nipped in the bud.

[Mac0908]

Deb, first, I think your plan is great and you know just as well as I do that less can very well mean more when it comes to sleep. I did try an 11:30pmbedtime the other night as I said and still woke at 530a, but that was after all just one night. I’m a big believer that staying consistent is key and if I did this every night, things would gradually get better.

To your question, no, to be honest, its not at the same time every night. Most nights I’ll head to bed around 10:30p but there are plenty when I am legit tired and go to bed at 10p. I usually end up crashing a half hour later. This past weekend for example I didn’t go into bed until around 11 or later. This is a problem, I know, bc clearly I’m not fully healed at all. But its just awful to think that after over 2.5 months what do I have to do? Go back to square one and create the semi strict sleep window? (i.e. 11:30-6a) ??

Maybe I do. After all, its obvious that I still need some kind of help. I don’t care anymore than I’m “Better than I was”. I’m over that. I sit here again today at work a zombie. Earlier I thought it was just a “tired day”, but no, its bad.

[delv-x]

Hi Deb,

Going back and implementing SR will help. I am convinced that quality is better than quantity. 6.5 hours of deeper sleep is better than 8 hours of lighter sleep. If you can keep an average of 85% SE then you should just hold that for a few weeks and see if you generally feel better during the day and my guess is you will. Then gradually add more time as you already know. I’ve been doing the 12:00 to 7:00 and this past week averaging 6 hours of actual sleep. Because relapse is a high probability and I am often waking up before my alarm I am holding this time and saying to my body that these are the times you have the opportunity to sleep so make the most of it. The result I believe is deeper sleep. *knock on wood* the first few hours of sleep feel deep. There could be a party on the street and I probably wouldn’t know. The second half of the night is more REM and lighter which is normal. Now if I eliminated SR then my theory is the first half would be more susceptible to waking up due to noise or whatnot.

[Deb]

Yeah, it might be best to go back to being stricter, Mac. Like I said, SR worked like a charm for me. I went to bed the same time and got up the same time every morning. After awhile I could give myself a little leeway, like going to bed 5-10 minutes early or lying in bed in the morning an extra 15 minutes or so before starting my day. This small amount of leeway didn’t seem to affect my sleep the following night.

I think like little kids, we need consistency. Maybe your body is giving you the message that it needs consistency. If I were you, I would give it a try. Maybe for 2 weeks go to bed and get up at the same time with no more leeway than 15 minutes. I know it’s hard to stay up when you’re really tired. I had many evenings of nodding off while reading a book before bedtime. Try the 6.5 hours and see if it becomes consistent. If it doesn’t, I would even consider reducing it to 6 hours. Although I know this sounds like hell to you, but if your sleep finally stabilizes with this amount of sleep, it will be well worth it. Because then you can gradually increase it over time and finally reach your goal of 7 hours a night, or even more.

[Deb]

Delv – I can’t calculate my sleep efficiency because I’m never fully awake. I’m in and out of sleep all night, in and out of dreams, just barely waking up and then immediately falling back asleep. I’ve had 9 nights like this within the last couple weeks. By the way, I’m not aware of any of that happening last night so hopefully I’m on the right track.

[dragon]

I feel like my own SRT got derailed.  I have young kids, so it was making it harder to follow everything to the letter.  Guess I have to try to return to that for a two week period and see the effect.  I quite like the idea of ACT, but my anxiety is so high I’m having difficulty letting the thoughts go.  But, yeah as with Carlos, I understand that it’s not immediate.  So I guess I’m wondering if SRT is a good starting point to get things more stabilized before trying ACT.

[Author]

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