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Hello. Bad insomnia lately (past 3 nights), to the point of me getting really sick (cold/flu) on my mom’s birthday (Jan 18*, so I was not able to see her.
I need at least 8 hours or I am a mess. Have tried Gabapentin, diphenhydramine, Ambien, etc, etc. I take 1 mg. Klonopin every night for anxiety but I’ve been on it for 20 years, and it doesn’t really affect me anymore. No drugs help–I took Kavanice Ultra PM, a natural supplement with 5-HTP (Tryptophan) and melatonin, but it’s stopped working as well.
Guided meditations on youtube have helped some, but I wake up after an hour. Deep breathing, yoga, vigorous exercise during the day etc. I am at wits’ end. Have had sleep problems my entire life but it is worse now. I feel like I’m going crazy. I googled some CBT-I courses on line, but most seem to be for practitioners. Has anyone found a decent CBT-I course on line? Thanks in advance. I worry about getting really sick in the head as well as the body.
Don’t know if there are any courses online, but from my experience so far as a client of Martin Reed’s all you need is a sleep log, sleep restriction (SR), stimulus control (SC) and techniques to help yourself relax. In the sleep log you basically record when you went to bed, when you got up, how many hours of sleep did you get, how many times did you get up, the total sum of the time up, how much caffeine and alcohol you consumed, and at what times. SR and SC are explained on this website. You start with SR and then add SC. In determining your sleep window for SR, make sure you average over a week the number of hours you are actually sleeping. So for example, if you’re sleeping one night 8 hours, but another night only 4 the average is 6. Don’t make your sleep window your “ideal” length of sleep, say, 8 hours, or it won’t be effective. You may be tired a lot, but you will overcome your insomnia sooner.
This is not easy work to do alone however. So if you can find a coach like Martin or a CBT-I therapist to help you, that is best. Otherwise you can always come here to the forum for support (and a place to vent when it gets rough – it will!)
There also is a book that explains in detail how to do this – End the Insomnia Struggle by Colleen Ehrnstrom. She says you can do either SC or SR. I wouldn’t recommend that. Do SR with SC together and you’ll get better results. Good luck!
Well, my sleep coaching course uses CBT-I techniques and is conducted entirely online!
You mentioned that you need eight hours of sleep otherwise you are a mess. Does this mean that if you manage seven hours and 45 minutes you can’t get through the day? Has there never been a time when you got less than eight hours of sleep but still noticed a few positive moments in your day?
It’s actually quite unusual to get eight hours of sleep — if you are regularly getting eight hours of sleep, you are well above the typical nightly sleep duration of most adults.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
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