[Alnav]

Hello Everyone, I have been having problems sleeping for about 3 months now, before I NEVER had any problems sleeping. Disclaimer: I have a really unusual sleep time, I have a sleep window of 7am and wake up at 2pm on average. I have tried to change this sleep time but it is hard and I just have not been able to especially since I have slept at this time for almost 10 years now (I am 31) and my sleep is just not good enough to do so.

It started with waking up before my alarm due to noise at home. Then I kept getting more worried about it until I also had problems falling asleep at onset. I started CBT-I with a local therapist. I overall haven’t been happy with this treatment, half of it is information that I can find for free online, and you get one body scan audio file lol. I started the sleep restriction, with a 7 hour window and after the first week it was showing some improvements! I was getting between 4.5-5.5 hours of sleep a night, later on becoming consolidated and was sleeping at onset almost instantly. But while that improved I started waking up earlier and earlier (and not being able to get back to sleep) until my anxiety came back. I’ve been trying stimulus control, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. I get a bit more anxiety from SC because it’s light out when I am trying to sleep so I get a bit of anxiety thinking about leaving the room. I try to stay in bed if it is comfy but most of the time I am like an anxiety yoyo, lying down for a minute or 2 and getting back up because I feel on edge in the bed. At the same time it’s hard for me to do SC because i’d rather be lying in bed resting, but as I said the anxiety makes that difficult.

The best way to get over this is not worrying about insomnia, which I was doing better with when my sleep was a bit better. I was barely looking at sleep stuff on the internet. Now that my anxiety and poor sleep are worse they are all I want to talk about/look at, which sucks I would rather be doing things I enjoy. Now I feel like I will never get better stuck in this rut that I can’t get out of because it has consumed all my thoughts.

Last week I was told that my CBT-I treatment was technically over and around then my anxiety came back full force and I have been anxious all day for almost a week now. I am definitely regressing. Now it’s hard again falling asleep at onset again, taking way longer. I am now getting 4 hours or less on average, also broken up and am feeling horrible every day. Tired, anxious and I am starting to lose hope that I will ever get over this!

At this point I am looking for ways to deal with this anxiety because CBT-I is not helping me, therapist still around but what else can he teach me? I am using coach daniel on the bedtyme app, and while I love his message, I just keep hearing the same things over and over again.

Any recommendations on a next step? I like martin’s videos but I became a bit skeptical of CBT-I, I am thinking about trying ACTto see if that will adress the underlying anxiety, I guess that’s my last hope. I have been trying to do this without any meds but I am getting discouraged and considering taking them. I just don’t know how people live with this for years, I havent had these problems for that long compared to some people but its just hell to live through and am having really negative thoughts that I would never have otherwise. I am having problems doing things I enjoy from being too tired, feels like I have to force myself to enjoy myself.

At this point I just want to have hope again that I can get past this because I am feeling extremely hopeless and I don’t want to live like this the rest of my life…

[Chee2308]

Hi!
Since you sleep during the day, what do you do at nights when you are not sleeping? Are you taking naps?

You said you average 4 hours per night, over how long have you arrived at this average? Have you maybe missed out on some days where you slept for 6,7 or more hours that you failed to account for and perhaps only choose to fixate on those days where you slept much less and are stressing over this?

So if you choose to fixate on this 4 hours average, what is it about 4 hours of sleep that stresses you much? I will put the question to you in another way. How many calories per day do you eat? 2000, 2500, maybe 3000? So let’s say you only ate 1800 or 1500 per day for a week, would you stress too much about it? Or let’s say you somehow convinced yourself you have to breathe 300 times/minute, eat 10,000 calories per day and you became convinced something horrible is going to happen to your health if you don’t, that you can’t function at all, ask yourself do these concerns have any rational basis at all? Because here’s the thing about breathing, eating, peeing, pooing and sleeping, all these processes are controlled by your own body, it decides what’s enough and it’d be quite ridiculous and even dumb to worry about such things and trying to actively control them. Just let them be!

If there is no concept of time, you don’t know what time it is, only going by sunrise and sunset, and everyone just go to sleep when really sleepy and wake up when they have enough, will insomnia then exist at all? Will anyone know how much they slept? Answer is no in both cases, because they let their body decide how much is enough, just as naturally as breathing and eating. It is when we try to force ourselves to sleep X hours, saying to ourselves that we must sleep between 10pm and 6am or whatever timetable we set ourselves, that we need to do things to sleep like CBT-i, ACT, taking pills or whatever, that puts us in a sticky situtation, because we are trying to take control away from our own bodies which decide such things, that is not only impossible but also silly and futile. I hope you get the message. Go back to basics if you have to, sleep when really sleepy, eat when only hungry, because that’s how it’s supposed to be! Accept that if you can’t sleep or eat at a particular time, then it must mean you just aren’t sleepy or hungry at that moment in time. But they’ll eventually come back. Best wishes!

[Alnav]

Hello Chee,

To answer your question I dont sleep at all outside of my sleep window. I stay up all night until it is my sleep window. It started out at 7:15am and I managed to fall asleep quite a few times at 7, maybe i’ll try staying up a bit longer.

This average has been for a week now. My biggest issue is the anxiety that this is causing me. In the past week I have become an anxious mess that just wants to think about sleep all the time. It’s been over a week since I had 6 hours and 2 weeks since I had 7. When I was having a bit more sleep I wasn’t thinking about it as much. I guess I am frustrated because I am waiting for that one good restorative night that still hasn’t come yet.

In terms of the concept of time I try not to look at the clock, but I can tell that i’m up for 3-4 hours of the night and I’m sorry but 4 hours is just not enough to feel okay throughout the day. I can survive but with that little sleep anxiety takes over and has me obsess about sleep all day. I just want to stop obsessing and stop thinking about it but that is by far the hardest part. I am just always looking for a solution because I hate living like this. And yes I know looking for a solution is bad too, I just can’t get this out of my mind. And yes I agree trying to find a solution is the bad route, I just don’t know what else to do… I am waiting for just one day of decent sleep to make me feel even a bit more positive but it just hasn’t come… And I see where you are coming from, I agree, I wish I could just get myself to agree…

[Chee2308]

Hello Alnav!
I can completely relate with your experience because I went through it all myself. I probably can’t talk you out of your anxiety now, I doubt anyone here can. But I guess this is a phase that most “insomniacs” will have to go through in order to get over it. For me, I just started becoming less afraid of sleeping less the more often they happen as I kinda settled into that narrative “god it’s the same old shit all over again, alright cmon now, show me what you’ve got this time” And it’s always the same. I guess you could say I got bored by it. I don’t know when the mental shift started, but it happened and I just became desensitized over time. Then I started discovering the way to sleeping great is actually sleeping less. My sweet spot is between 6-7 hours, actually people sleeping this amount is very healthy and live longer than those doing 7.5-8 hours according to a NYTimes article. I had hit both ends of my sleep journey, so to speak. When I slept 5 hours, I woke up very sleepy, dazed and would be sleepy all day. Conversely if I did 7-8.5 hours, I would also wake up tired, fatigued and lacking energy all day plus I couldn’t sleep at night. So now I only sleep 6-7, I found I slept more deeply and woke up feeling refreshed and energetic. I guess for many “insomniacs”, the real lesson here is that you sleep your best when you actually sleep less. Has it ever occurred to you that you might need less sleep than you actually think? That it is your lying in and occasional oversleeping that keeps those sleepless nights coming back. The average sleeping duration for the normal person is actually only about 6-6.5 hours. So if you had 7-9 hours days wedged in between, you are probably more likely to experience sleepless days down the road. All this is just a way that your body is regulating itself, so that over the longer timeframe your average sleep duration stays pretty much the same. Nothing is actually wrong with getting 4 hours if you were routinely sleeping more than you actually need to start with.

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