[Deb]

Daf – I agree with Mac. if I were you I would get up and start practicing the SC as well as the SR. What you’re doing does not seem to be working. You’re still struggling with insomnia. Even though you go through periods where you do better, it keeps coming back. Martin says he’s worked with people who have had insomnia for 30 years and have been cured. My guess is that they have had the kind of insomnia like yours, where it comes and goes, rather than mine which was so intense that I would have committed suicide a long time ago and never made it through 30 years!

[Mac0908]

When you talk about someone who’s suffered for YEARS such as myself (2), it’s almost a guarantee that they haven’t STUCK with the rules or got cocky once they began going through a short good phase of sleeping. This is why I’m not more serious than ever about sticking to my form of SRT until I feel my sleep anxiety is completely gone, 100%

[Deb]

Good for you, Mac, for deciding that two years of this nonsense was enough and so now you’ve committed yourself to the process. Daf, you remind me of something Sasha Stephens said about herself when she talked about one of the main issues of some insomniacs. They think they are “different” and that their particular form of insomnia is “different” so therefore, the methods that other people use won’t work with them. Could this be you?

[Daf]

Mmm, Well I think everyone is different but everyone can also learn from other people too, especially experts in their field.

So try things, give them a real go, but also be true to yourself, understand yourself. Sure, listen to experts but also listen to your body, to your mind and to those who know you best and who are close to you.

Well, that’s my philosophy.

The fact is that different experts do have different views about treating insomnia. And that is a fact. But all agree about SRT – and as it happens, so do I.

 

 

[Mac0908]

With regards to feeling your insomnia problem is “different”, I can say I felt that many many times over the 2 years.

Now, even though I had a bad night last night , I can honestly say I have a better overall mindset than I ever have before knowing that I have a completely different plan now that I am STICKING to. Before, I would be at work right now miserable just wishing this would be gone forever. Feeling that I’m “broken” and just can’t wait to get into bed tonight to “Try again” so to speak. Those mindsets are gone now after just 9-10 days of SRT and knowing that I am doing SRT for the long haul and not just after 2-3 good nights like I used to

Here’s to hoping my severe insomnia days are over and it will at the worst just be a bumpy road until I fully recover, even if that means taking months. Thanks to everyone who has been chiming in here.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Mac0908.

[delv-x]

Hello,

Just wanted to add my two cents with regards to mindfulness, SRT and SC.

With mindfulness I can recommend the app “Mindfulness Coach”. It is completely free and IMO one of if not the best. I’ve gone through it and continue to use it (not as often as I should). One thing for me is to try to do it when you are least tired. For me it is usually around 7-9PM. If I do it closer to bed time Ill either start nodding off or thinking about mindfulness too much when going to bed. I’ve started to just keep my eyes open during meditation so my head and body doesn’t just jerk as I nod off. It kind of kills the mood. Another thing is to gauge the time. Don’t start with 15-30 minutes. Start with 3-5 minutes and breathe. If your mind wanders, gently return to your breathing. Less is more.

With SRT. It’s brutal as we all know. What is frustrating is that I didn’t need or care for this before. I would wake up to go to work, come home, do whatever and then between 10:30 and 11:30 I would go to bed. Now I just worry too much and nights that are bad I wonder if it’s because I slipped the day or days before slightly.

Finally SC. From my experience my recommendation is that if you are lying in bed for 20-30 minutes and don’t feel like sleep is approaching, get out of bed. Sometimes I just go into another room and just relax and stare at the wall. Ill color or put on some really light music. At times I don’t feel like it’s working but what I do feel after a few days where I am doing a lot of SC is that it feels like my brain and body is sick and tired of getting out, getting cold and miserable that when I do wake up in the middle of the night my mindset is “f$%k it” and I close my eyes and drift off to sleep again. Sometimes Ill get out, go to the bathroom and if I feel quite tired, Ill go back to sleep right away.

One thing no one touched on in this thread is PMR (progressive muscle relaxation). I have tried it a few times and although feels nice, not sure how effective it is.

[Deb]

Thanks for the mindfulness app!

[Daf]

Agreed.

But once out of bed – you need to calm yourself down with positive thinking and I think, mindfulness too – (if mindfulness works for you).

But for me, when insomnia strikes its no good at all getting out of bed and doing something else – as my thoughts will still be fearful (about insomnia), ….so some good self talk and a bit of mindfulness works then, for me….

But different strokes, different folks. I don’t think leaping out of bed after 15 minutes or whatever and reading a book works for everyone though, unless reading a book say, is truly capable of switching your mind off worrying about sleep. That certainly would not work enough for me.

[Mac0908]

Another bad night. The worst yet of the 11 nights. My first back to back in my light SRT experience too. Really feeling a bit down this morning. As 11:45 bedtime approached, I’ll admit I felt some anxiety Bc of the bad night before, but honestly it wasn’t strong anxiety by any means. I went to bed and then had trouble dropping off. I should have got up. I wanted to get up.

Instead I laid there unable to sleep, thinking things would be ok, but instead I was just letting the anxiety build up by spending time in bed awake as Sasha Stephens put it. By the time I finally crashed my head was probably filled with enough anxiety to 100% guarantee me to a bad night.

I woke up what must have been a few hours later in a sweat. First time that’s happened in a while to me. I live in NY and it was 30 degrees out last night, but I was sweating. I didn’t look at the clock and dozed off eventually, thankfully. I woke again later on and this time saw it was 5:10am. I never went back. This is just misery to me. Yet if I slept on my couch where I’m completely anxiety free , guarantee you I would have had a better night. Sometimes i wonder if the day will ever come where I no longer have any fear at all of my bed again.

Oh well, back battling through another day at the office secretly shot to hell while everyone else is cheery and well rested. (Sorry for the negativity there, but sometimes it’s just too hard, and it’s quite scary to me that even when going to bed at 11:45pm with a 6:15am alarm I can’t manage to grab even 6 hours of sleep. Meanwhile before this nightmare started I’d crash at 10:45 and sleep straight through. Oh, the days before sleep anxiety…

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Mac0908.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Mac0908.

[delv-x]

Sorry to hear Mac. You are not alone. I had a bad night last night as well (and many others). Went to bed at midnight and was up around 2:30-3:00. I stayed in bed for a bit and when I determined sleep was not possible I got up and went to another room and just sat on the couch with music on for 15 minutes or so. I didn’t feel “sleepy” but was tired. Went back to bed and tossed and turned and got up again. Tried this once more and then got up at 7:00. I may have drifted off to very light sleep but hard to say. My issue is that my brain is always on and always checking to see if I am awake or not. It’s frustrating and wish there was an easy effective way to deal with it.

[Mac0908]

Sorry to hear for you as well. I personally cannot do this anymore. I’m at work right now and literally cannot keep my eyes open. I have suffered long enough. Is this really how hard it is to kill sleep anxiety? To not be able to go to bed around midnight and sleep through until 6am? Woken twice? It’s insane to me how I’m still experiencing nights THIS bad.

[delv-x]

They say that sleep restriction therapy increases sleep drive and thus should bust through sleep anxiety because your desire to sleep is stronger. Makes sense because sleeping is as natural as breathing, however, for some reason I am averaging 2-5 hours of sleep this past week and not sure how my body is still feeling wired. I am exhausted, fatigued, tired and unmotivated. I am not sleepy though.

[Mac0908]

How long have you been doing SRT and what is your history/daily log with it like?

[delv-x]

Been doing it since October. It started with 7:30hrs per night and after a month went down to 7:00hr. 12:00 to 7:00. I sometimes push it to 12:30 or 1:00. As for results, I will get 5-12 days or so with 80-95% efficiency and feel pretty good, then out of nowhere I get derailed and get 2-4 hours of sleep and efficiency drops to 20-60%. The good news although not encouraging is if you continue to sleep only a few hours a day, your efficiency will go up and you will tend to sleep deeper which is more restorative. I “think” why I get derailed to some extent is I may push my wake up from 7:00 to 8:00 or 8:30 when I actually sleep like a baby and think “oh man this is good!”. They say you should always stick to your rise time no matter what but I find it hard to believe 1-2 days of that would mess it up so much.  Was never an issue for me 6+ months ago.

[Mac0908]

Of course it didn’t affect you 6 months ago just like I used to be able to watch TV in bed and then fall right off to deep sleep. Bc we have developed sleep anxiety that needs to be dealt with and fought off. You must accept this. While we may never be able to break certain rules again now that the door to sleep anxiety has been open, I do believe we can absolutely recover. I can bet you pushing to 8am DOES in fact effect you as shocking as that may seem. I’m curious, to your knowledge do the bad nights begin after your later lie ins? Do your bad nights begin after developing some anxiety the night before for whatever the reason?

[Author]

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