[Cyi101]

Hi there! So I’m all onboard with this CBT-I approach and am getting into the habit of having a consistent wake-up time at 6:30am. However, I REALLY dislike being jolted awake by a loud and stressful alarm clock. I notice that when I’m jarred awake in the middle of a deep sleep cycle like that, I tend to feel really crappy and feel like that for the rest of the day.

However, when I’m able to wake up more gently (like from the sun or from a softer alarm), I feel like my body is able to slowly wind down into a lighter sleep cycle and I wake up more naturally (rather than the instant jolt of being slapped in the face by an alarm!)

So I’ve been experimenting with this: setting a very soft gentle alarm at 6:30am. And then a loud, blaring alarm at 6:45. or 7am. It seems that if my body’s sleep cycles are ready to naturally wake-up at 6:30am, then I’ll hear the soft alarm and get up. But if it needs a little more time to wind-down, then I’ll sleep through the soft alarm – giving my body more time to gradually get out of it’s current sleep cycle – and then I’ll for sure get up at 6:45 or 7am when the loud alarm sounds.

Do you think this would be okay to implement? Or with CBT-I, is it better to just stick to a hard and consistent 6:30am wake-up time?

Any thoughts appreciated, thank you so much!

– Chris

[Martin Reed]

Welcome to the forum, Chris! I don’t think a 15-minute swing in your out of bed time in the morning is going to make much difference to your chances for success with CBT-I, so if that natural alarm is going to help you get out of bed at a relatively consistent time, I think you should go for it!

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