[Mac0908]

As recovering insomniacs (I know I’m not supposed to use that word, but sorry!) we especially are prone to bad nights. I never doubted that. I knew that to be part of this process. It’s just that when I’m three weeks into this and I’m still having bad nights on BOTH weekend nights (Fri and Sat), the two nights a week where I should definitely be improving due to no ‘work in the morning’ anxiety), it’s very difficult to be optimistic.

I’m off today for the MLK Holiday and had an OK night last night. Went in bed around 11 when sleepy, crashed probably a half hour later at 11:30. Woke around what I’d say was 5:30 and laid in bed anxiety free until my set wake time of 6:15am. If there’s one small positive about this its that I’m seeing certain aspects of my anxiety go away, such as the waking in the night or waking too early anxiety, though that still doesn’t change the fact that I’m a zombie once I wake up and am miserable for the entire day like I was the last two.

[Daf]

Golly, uninterrupted sleep for 6 hours.

I think I’d steal candy from a kid to have that every night. Think I’d steal it from my own kid!!

It must be better than it was before, though Mac? Did you not have to have nil-sleep nights before (or sorry if I’m mixing you up with someone else)

Glad it’s working for you.

D

 

[Deb]

Just wondering, Mac, what wakes you up in the morning? I’ve gone through brief periods where I start getting anxious about waking up and not being able to fall back asleep. I could be woken up by something like needing to go to the bathroom or something smaller like a cat meow or even turning over in bed. Because of the anxiousness I wake up all the way and then can’t fall back asleep. Is that what happens to you? For me, I find that eventually the anxiousness goes away and I can fall asleep again naturally.

[Mac0908]

@daf you need to understand of course that 6 hours for someone may be the equivalent hell of 3 hours for another. Just like some people I’ve known can get by nicely(somehow) on 5 hours of sleep while others need 7-8. Everyone is different. As far as you saying this is working for me, I’m not going that far at all obviously if you read my post.

@deb, what wakes me up is the underlying anxiety that’s still in my brain. It’s not a noise or call of nature or any of that. It’s simple anxiety stemming from the bad habit of rarely ever getting more than 6-6.5 hours of sleep that I have formed for over two years. Not an easy thing to break after that long. I have to unlearn the habit, which is what I’ve been trying to do more seriously for the 3 weeks now.

 

[Daf]

Thanks Mac, yes I understand. Yes, we are all very different in this – i.e. our sleep need. My son, who is 16 seems to need 9 hours!

They used to say Margaret Thatcher managed on 3 hours. But then her chauffer said, “Aye, but she had loads of little naps between engagements”

[delv-x]

I seem to be getting 5-6.5 hours a night when I am stable. When things go off then I may have a few nights where it feels like I got like 2-4 hours. Those days are awful and hard not to think about it. I think part of it is anxiety but also that my sleep needs have changed. It kind of sucks because those extra 2 hours or so were nice and I usually would sleep through until the alarm clock. I am just taking each day and night as is. Trying to keep my work/life routine balanced and go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time.

I am not fully satisfied with how things are but overall it’s better than a few months ago. The big frustration is that bad nights or a streak of them just seem to happen without and rhyme or reason. I wake up in the middle of the night most nights but on good nights, I just turn around and go back to sleep, bad nights I am wide awake.

[Deb]

I’m re-reading some parts of Sasha Stephens’ book and was surprised to find that she is really against SR. She says that’s because it can be an artificial crutch like pills. Got me to thinking. Anyway, she talks about how we have to learn to trust ourselves again more than anything else, which makes sense. After all, we had complete trust in our ability to sleep before the insomnia started, so now we just have to develop that trust again. I guess for me, hiring Martin and doing what he says has been like a crutch. I put my trust in him and his methods which helped me to relax which then reduced the anxiety and therefore, the insomnia. But maybe it’s ok to take an intermediate step of trusting someone or something, and then eventually learning to trust ourselves completely. Just some thoughts.

Had 6.25 hours of sleep last night. Am tired today, but not too bad. On my 2nd cup of coffee. True confession here – the last few nights I’ve had a nightcap before going to bed. I know it’s probably reducing the quality of my sleep. This darn anxiety makes you do stupid stuff you know isn’t good for you, but the worry about having a bad night is still so strong. But after reading Sasha’s stuff about crutches and the importance of regaining confidence in our natural ability to fall asleep, I’m going to give that up. We’ll see how tonight goes.

[Mac0908]

Drinking before bed is up there on the list of one of the worst things you can do IMO.

With regards to Sasha, yes, I know how she is against STRICT SRT bc I agree with her in that it came become a crutch. She is a big reason and maybe the reason why I instead have been going with the “light” version of SRT that she teaches in her book. That being said, 3 weeks later and Deb I think you’re doing a lot better than me, so go figure. I don’t know. We’ll see. All I know is that the main culprit is the anxiety of course. Whatever works to kill that, by all means.

[Deb]

She talks about people using SR who increased their sleep window and then couldn’t sleep. That sounds like dependence on it. But if its actually over time helping to reduce the association between going to bed and anxiety, then that’s a good thing. I’m hoping that is my case.

[delv-x]

When it comes to SR, the way it is suppose to work is you take 1-2 weeks of logs to see how much you actually sleep and then restrict it to that + half an hour or so. In other words if you started with being in bed for 9 hours and only sleeping for 7 then your SR would be 7.5 or even 7. What should happen is you spending 90% of that time sleeping thus re-enforcing bed with sleep. This alone can help a lot. Ideally there should be some improvement within a few weeks.

The problem that can arise is if one goes to bed early to try to catch up on sleep. This may lead to more tossing and turning and make the problem worse.

 

[Deb]

That’s how Martin calculated my sleep window. Even though I had a couple of 7 hour nights and one 9 hour night, when you averaged in a zero sleep night plus the nights of just a few hours of sleep, it came to 5.5 hours. Then he added on a half hour.

I actually was surprised how quickly it worked for me. In the first week alone, I only had 2 bad nights and 5 good nights. This was a huge difference from before when most nights were bad with an occasional reprieve of a couple nights.

I wonder if this has worked well for me because I’ve had the insomnia less time than others. I know that my spiritual beliefs also help me. I trust in a benevolent universe that wants the best for us. This doesn’t mean that I don’t get bent out of shape at times just like others, but in general, I’m trusting. But not in a naive way. It comes from years of experience. So when I found Martin online, it felt right to me and I trusted my intuition. It usually guides me well.

[Deb]

Went asleep around 3:00 so only slept about 3 & 1/2 hours last night. I’m so tired of this. Starting to have doubts about this SR method. Sure, it’s great when I fall asleep immediately because I’m so exhausted. But I used to regularly take between 20-30 minutes to fall asleep with no problem or worries about not falling asleep. Now I doubt myself when I don’t crash out right away and as a result end up staying up for hours. This is crazy. Somehow have to regain confidence in my own ability to fall asleep naturally like Sasha says. I don’t know if the SR is helping or hindering that.

[Mac0908]

Really sorry to hear this deb. Seems like the two of us have the constant two steps forward one step backwards routine. I just don’t understand though how you can get into bed and not fall asleep until 3am. I guarantee you that you went to bed without feeling exhausted. With SRT, even if your set time is 12am, imo in the event you’re not super sleepy you still shouldn’t be going into your bed. If that means holding off until 1am so be it.

 

[Deb]

I was totally exhausted. But once I lay in bed the fear started creeping in.  You see my insomnia is opposite of yours in that my trouble is in falling asleep. But once I do I’m out for the night. I don’t have early awakenings. But I can be completely exhausted and still not fall asleep for hours.

[Mac0908]

Surprise, surprise.. another bad night. Coming off of two good nights and especially a great one on Sunday I had this weird feeling in me that I was maybe turning the corner. Nope. I don’t have a totally devastated mindset about it today though like I had with my bad nights over the weekend. But if these past 2+ years and especially 3 weeks have been any indication, who knows if that mindset will last. Out of the now 22 nights I’ve been doing this light SRT, I can estimate that I’ve had around 9 flat out bad nights. That’s 9 too many IMO, but the million dollar question is do I feel I am getting ‘better’ at all anxiety wise? Yes, I am, but, I’m still very concerned this never ending cycle will indeed remain never ending. Yesterday I swear I felt like a damn superhero. That wonderful “this is how life should be” feeling. Refreshed. Why can’t I get that for more than a few days in a row?  How’d you do Deb?

[Author]

Posts