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This thread is for those who are in the process of doing SR and find that they need community support in order to continue. If you are doing SR and find yourself getting out of bed in the early morning hours doing Stimulus Control, feel free to stop in here and post your comments. Don’t wait until you are at the quitting point. Get that support here. Also, if anyone has questions of those on SR, feel free to ask them here.
Starting my SR on Saturday night. I will complete my sleep diary on Friday night and will determine what my sleep window is, although, I strongly suspect from these first four nights that it will be 5.5 hours. I failed miserably the first time for various reasons. Hoping to do better this time around. Good luck to all of you doing SR now (or soon).
Hi all. After thinking about it, I am going to check my sleep diary tonight and tomorrow night and if it’s pretty much the same, I will probably start my SR Friday night. That’s because if the next two nights are relatively the same, there is no way I will not have a 5.5 hour Sleep Window. If that’s the case, might as well get started.
I have my reading material which I will probably read in my chair next to the lamp. I have my TV across the living room from me. I will probably sit on the floor and watch it since if I sit in a a chair or on the couch, I might fall asleep watching it. Especially if I am up because I couldn’t sleep. I have some hot, decaffeinated “Sleepy Time” tea to drink if it gets cold at night, which it might still do where I live. I guess I could also do some housework. Any other tips and ideas from those of you doing SC, or did it in the past?
Yes here’s a tip, stop obsessing! Seems like you’re going a bit overboard imo with all your thinking and sleepy time tea. Take it from someone who’s been through it all with insomnia. You need to clear your mind as much as possible.
Mac – Just getting prepared for when I inevitably will have to leave the bed. Martin gave me a lot of those suggestions to get ready.
I don’t intend to post every day on this thread but just wanted to say I did start my SRT last night. While I still had two more days to go on my diary, I realized that no matter what I did the last two days, I was going to have a 5.5 hour window. Therefore, I started my Sleep Restriction Therapy last night and it did not go well. The good news was I was so tired when I went to bed at 11:45 that I fell asleep in 5 or 10 minutes. But I woke up after 45 minutes of sleep and couldn’t get back to sleep.
I normally average around 3 to 5.5 hours of sleep a night. And when I do wake up in the early part of the night, I can usually get back to sleep relatively quickly. My problem comes in the 3:30am or 4:00am to 5:15am time period when I can’t sleep at all. I don’t know, maybe all of this time I have been severely underestimating how long it takes me to fall back asleep. Anyway, after the first half hour after I woke up, I got out of bed and watched TV for a half hour. Then I went back to bed but still couldn’t sleep. It was then I learned why Martin always tells us not to go back to bed until you are sleepy because lying in bed unable to sleep for another half hour does not break the connection between the bed and no sleep. So, realizing this, I got back out of bed after only 15 minutes and read a book for an hour. I tried getting back to bed again and still couldn’t sleep so after another 15 minutes, I got up and went into the living room. Since I was tired of TV and reading, I just sat in a chair in the darkened room but made sure I didn’t doze off. I finally felt really sleepy so I went back to bed but when I got in it, you guessed it. I wasn’t sleep y anymore. I almost fell asleep twice but couldn’t get over the edge so I got up for good and sat again in the darkened living room until the alarm went off.
I really thought I would do better on my first night of SRT than I did last night. I have no choice but to continue but did anybody else have problems on their first night of sleep restriction? I understand that it is supposed to get better by the end of the second week or into the third week. I hope so because I can’t keep driving in to work on less than an hour’s sleep. Any encouragement would be appreciated.
Steve, first, just to verify… are you saying you only got 45 minutes of sleep last night? Woke up around 12:30am and could never fall back asleep? Allow me to ask you to summarize how this all began and what you think caused this for you.
-Mac
Yes, went to bed at 11:45. Fell asleep within 5 or 10 minutes. Then woke at 12:35 and couldn’t get back to sleep. I normally have little trouble getting back to sleep in the early part of the night. And I normally sleep anywhere from 3 to 5.5 hours. Six hours if I’m lucky. I don’t know why I couldn’t get back to sleep. New routine? Self conscious about having to get out of bed if I can’t sleep? I normally just lie there until I go to sleep again but that’s not helping cure my insomnia. Or do you mean how I got the insomnia? I believe it was severe anxiety. The triggers are now gone but my anxiety about the insomnia remains.
Seems like you may have quite a ways to go Steve as I sense your anxiety is sky high right now. It is what it is though and a lot of us, myself included, have been there. Just reading your struggles make me a bit anxious lol. That all being said, all I can say right now is to stay the course and stick to your window. If you can’t get back to sleep, listen to Martin and get OUT of that bed. You need to retrain your brain to understand that the bed is for sleep, good sleep, and nothing else. It will take time, maybe a lot of it, but you will get better.
Hi Steve – good luck with the SR & SC. Sorry your first night was rough. My first two nights were rough too. I had a lot of anxiety also when I started, and was even beginning to get panic attacks. But once I started sleeping better, my anxiety went way down pretty quickly. I also started an antidepressant about the same time which is probably helping. Are you taking anything to help with the anxiety, Steve? Maybe that would take the edge off your anxiety.
Just wondering Steve, how long have you had the insomnia and what was your sleep like before the insomnia?
Hi Deb. Thanks for the encouragement. You too Mac. In answer to your question Deb, I am not on any anti-depressants. They just don’t work for me. Besides, the triggers for my insomnia ended awhile back. Now I just remain stuck with the insomnia. I first started showing signs of insomnia at the end of October of last year. So about 7 months. I slept really well before the insomnia. Then came surgery, a major truck repair and the death of my cat. All within a couple months of each other. I am hoping CBT-I will work for me. Martin seems to think it will.
That is what happens Steve. To so many. The bad events become things of the past, but the insomnia stays bc you simply have learned how to sleep poorly. You’ve developed a habit and your brain has fed on the bad nights and the anxiety grew. I had a stressful event at work. It was soon a thing of the past. But the insomnia stayed, and boy did it stay. Have had phases of better sleep, but in general my nervous system was traumatized and I never bothered to REALLY do the work to repair it, didn’t know too much about insomnia, and it all just spiraled out of control until I began to truly work on it this year.
So both you and Deb are saying it’s normal to have some real bad nights at the beginning of SRT?
Thanks for the support. I appreciate it.
Mine started in October too. Also, after surgery. I took an antidepressant years ago during a difficult period, but then wasn’t on anything for years. I started taking the antidepressant only because my anxiety from the insomnia was overwhelming. Once I know I’m really stable, I’ll stop taking it. So I see myself taking this just for 2 or 3 months, hopefully. When I suggested that to you, I was referring to taking something temporarily just to reduce the anxiety and get through this rough period. If your anxiety went down due to the medication, then you might begin to sleep better. Since you have a history of sleeping really well before, I’m sure you’ll get back there.
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