[Deb]

Mac – Had a few rough nights in my second week of ACT. I’m just experimenting with it.  What makes it hard is that there is no place to go to ask questions, to see if what I’m experiencing is normal. It’s hard to keep going if you’re not sure it’s normal or if you’re messing things up. If I don’t see any improvement over time I’ll give it up. I know I can always go back to CBT-I.

[Borgesbi]

Question for everyone:

Do you all have an idea of how long you stay awake in bed until you decide it’s time to get up and do SC?

I’ve noticed I can take sometimes 40 mins to up to an hour to get up, but I don’t realize it since notion of time can be pretty strange when we are in that state between asleep and awake.

I wonder if this can have a real impact in the overall effectiveness of CBT-I?  I’m wondering if I should start getting up quicker when I’m no falling asleep or falling back asleep and if that would help..

(Deb, I went through a nice longish period where I didn’t have to do much SC anymore but I’m back to it pretty intensely now (got up 3 times last night). I WISH 2 weeks of only SC would solve this problem – maybe if I’m a little quicker to to SC it could  make more of an impact?)

[Steve]

Hi Borgesbi – When I first wake up, I do look at the clock even though that’s frowned upon. So, I do have a starting point as to when the 30 minutes begin. Then I do one of two things. If I know I am not going to get back to sleep right away as I am too wide awake, I get up. In that case, it doesn’t matter if I get up early as I know I am not going back to sleep. Might as well get up and try to get sleepy again. If I think there is a chance I might fall back to sleep, I can pretty much tell when 30 minutes are about up. I do verify it by looking at the clock again and I can’t remember a time where I have been off by too much. Then I get up. So my times are either verifiable or it really doesn’t matter (like when I know I am not going back to sleep so I get up). I am a zombie today and I had to do SC last night. Just once but it was enough. I lately haven’t had to do it too much but I am having a string of bad nights lately. Way more bad nights than good.

[Borgesbi]

Same here, Steve. I’m averaging 2-3 hours of sleep for about 4 days now and yesterday I started taking CBD (from hemp oil) to help me cope with  the anxiety and depressive state of mind both resulting from such little sleep (energy level has been ok, don’t know how). Tough times…have to stay strong

[KarenP]

Dear All,

I’ve been an infrequent poster, and have tried to post encouragement before.  I completed Martin’s course 5 weeks ago.  His was the second course of CBTI I have done.  The first course did not provide the personal touch and encouragement that Martin provides.  I have been doing CBTI for 4 months now.

I was freaked out and panicked at the end of Martin’s course because I felt like my sleep was getting worse.  The wheels were falling off!  5 nights of insomnia with a nil night to boot!

I am still signed up for his “after course”.  I started out with sometimes 5 nights a week with insomnia.  Took sleeping pills for only 2 weeks before I started CBTI, and ended up in hospital with a reaction.  I was a mess!  No more sleeping pills since.  Up until 2 weeks ago, I was averaging 2 – 3 days a week of insomnia.  My insomnia started January 11.  I’m an anxious person and have had the year from hell.  It just caught up with me.  ?

The good part!  I am back in bed with my husband for the last 3 weeks, and have had an average of 6 – 7 hours sleep for the last 17 nights.

What made the difference for me was sticking to the program! I veered off course with ACT after I left Martin’s course and that was disastrous.  Took me awhile to get back on track.  I am fastidious about sticking to my sleep window, and SC if needed.  No cheating!  During the last 2 weeks, I have had to do SC 2 times.  Up out of bed only once in both cases.

I have to have a good buffer hour.  I read and get sleepy.  The biggest game changer for me was coming across an App called 10% Happier.  Martin ‘s breathing meditation always resonated with me, and this combines Mindfulness meditation with breathing.  My problem was racing thoughts, and if I meditate during the day, my mind is calmer during the night.  There are tons of sleep meditations as well.  You can do a free one week trial, then it is $99 a year.  To me that has been a small price to pay.  I go to bed, put my head on the pillow, start my breathing and the meditation practice I have learned.  I still don’t clock watch, follow all the rules; but I think I go to sleep within 15 – 20 minutes or so.  I meditate at least once during the day to keep anxiety at bay.

I also read Sasha Stephens book which is essentially CBTI.  I wrote positive affirmations, and stopped talking to people or saying I had insomnia.  That helps a lot!

I also pray a lot!  I will pray for you all.  God bless.

Karen

 

[delv-x]

Karen, glad to hear things are generally positive for you! I hope the trend continues. I’ve been on a roller coaster and not sure how to prevent it from going off the rails. I’ve had stretches of 5-6 weeks of 6+ hours average of sleep and no stimulus control needed and then now up and down like a yo-yo. Last night I slept 2-3 hours or so and couldn’t get back to sleep. The lack of AC and a hot house didn’t help. Trying to stay positive. In bed I feel relaxed but as soon as I start to drop off I feel like I am aware and then wake up alert. I wish there were a technique I can focus on that will help address that. The only thing that works is being exhausted and hope for the best.

It is good to hear it’s working. CBT-I has helped with my beliefs about sleep and keep my sleep structured but I feel like I’ve been sleeping less although probably deeper and of better quality.

[Steve]

Thanks for the encouragement Karen. I am on Week 5 of Martin’s course. I definitely have had a rough patch as about 2 weeks ago, I was averaging almost 5 hours of sleep a night. Since that time, it has been about 3.5. I stick to my SW as well and I have done the SC both last night and the night before. For me, the trouble with SC is that if I get up to do it, when I get back to bed, I would only be able to sleep for an hour or less. I think that gives me more anxiety knowing that even if I did get back to sleep, it would only be for a short time. I would just like to get back around 5 hours of sleep a night again and then take it from there. I don’t do much meditation but I do the breathing exercises as they help relax me so I can get to sleep. Currently, my problem has been early awakenings. This is going to be a long road for me.

 

How is everybody else doing?

[Steve]

I see this thread slowed down again. How is everybody doing? This is the 8th (out of 10) days that I have been awakened at around 3:30 in the morning. Did SC but still couldn’t get back to sleep. It almost seems that I am being conditioned to get up at this time. If I can just get past being awoken at this time, I feel I will start sleeping more hours. Three and a half hours a night just isn’t cutting it.

[Mac0908]

I’m trying to distance myself from the thread for at least a week. Need breaks here and there, Steve. You say you’re waking in the middle of the night. Let me ask you something I’m sure I’ve asked before – are you DEAD tired when you go to sleep? Also what is your sleep window like right now? Are you sticking to it?

Update on me after my horrific week last week:

Fri and Sat night I was able to sleep better, though not perfectly. Was still kind of tired on Sat and Sun but it was nothing bad. Then Sunday and Monday nights were good. Yesterday I “Peaked” so to speak by sleeping 7 hours and boy was yesterday a great day. Last night things went to hell again. While I didn’t go to bed until I was dead tired at 11pm (crashed by 11:30p), the problem happened when I woke early at 5:15am and made the mistake of looking at my clock. Every once in a while i’ll still have an old slip up like that. Anyway, anxiety was raised by the site of the 5:15am time and I barely fell back asleep. This meant a night of around 5.5 hours of sleep, which for me as you may know by now Steve is simply not enough

I’m starting to accept a very harsh reality about my problem and it might be a good thing. That reality is that this all may simply just take more time. I may not be one of these types that gets on SRT and is recovered within a couple of months. With what I’ve been through in the 2+ years before I began SRT, my nervous system was SO traumatized to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes me the entire year of 2019 to fully get back to a great place of sleeping. I know I am better than where I was in January/February when I began this ‘semi SRT’ recovery process, and I know I am leaps and bounds better than where I was a year and especially 2 years ago. I need to sit back and start understanding how great of a thing that is, even if I am sitting here today at work very tired.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by Mac0908.

[Steve]

I am tired when I go to bed. Not sure about dead tired.  I read right before I go to bed and I find I am re-reading the pages to comprehend what I am reading. In addition, when I do go to bed, mostly I fall asleep within 15 minutes. My SW is 5.5 hours and Martin suggested I re-do it so that it runs from 11:30 – 5:00 rather than the 11:45 – 5:15 as it used to. I followed his suggestion. Do you think it is possible to re-condition yourself so that you get up at a certain time?

Glad you are back on track even if last night was a little rough. I know you took some time off from here but the thread was very busy last Saturday and Sunday.

[delv-x]

Steve,

Well last night I didn’t clock watch but I was up in the middle of the night and I believe I slept a bit more until about 5-6am where I got up and laid on the couch for a bit longer near a fan. My AC is out and I slept in a warm room with a fan blowing on me and still felt hot so that is a factor. Hopefully the AC will be reconnected today *crosses fingers*. Besides that I am not sure if I would have had a much better night. Right now my issue is sleep maintenance. Some days/weeks I wake up, pee and go to bed and sleep until morning, other days/weeks I wake up and can’t fall back asleep. The nights I fall back asleep I feel sleepy, other nights I am fatigued and relaxed but not sleepy.

From what I’ve read the protocol is sleep hygiene of course, no napping or limit it to 10-20 mins max, go to bed when sleepy, a reasonably short sleep window and SC if you find you can’t get back to bed in about 20 minutes.

I just don’t know. When I am on a roll I can wake up, pee and think “I wonder if Ill be able to fall back asleep” and just pass right out anyway.

[Deb]

Here’s my update. I’m still sticking with ACT for now. I’m in my third week. The second week was difficult, which wasn’t a surprise. I think I did well the first week because of my hopeful attitude when I start something new. Last week was the second week when reality set in, and 4 nights out of 7 it took me forever to fall asleep, finally falling asleep in the wee hours of morning and only getting 1 or 2 hours of sleep. It was very discouraging. But now I’m on the 4th day of the 3rd week and the last 3 nights have been better, but also with their challenges. The good thing is that I haven’t had any difficulties falling asleep the last 3 nights. But the bad thing has been that the quality of the sleep has been poor, so I’ve been waking up tired.

The poor sleep quality is what I experienced the first time I did ACT and then I became confused, discouraged, depressed and got completely derailed and lost. This time I’m hanging in there and accepting that this is par for the course. I’m still feeling hopeful because I’m having more nights of being able to fall asleep without having to stay up late until I’m droopy-eyed exhausted. What happens during my sleep is beyond my control, such as the poor quality. I can’t control what happens unconsciously, beneath the surface. Consciously, my anxiety is low and I’m not experiencing fearful thoughts or feelings. But it’s going to take some time for the unconscious part of myself to catch up with conscious part and begin to relax as well and drift off into a deeper sleep.

Borgesbi – just curious what happened when you tried ACT.

[Borgesbi]

Deb, I meant to mention something to you but felt a little hesitant because  generalizing or projecting my experience on you might not be the best idea. I’m going to share it now because what you just reported in your experience with ACT  is exactly what I experienced back in the day.

I never did ACT formally as I just found out last week through you what it actually is. There was another person here who said they tried ACT but I forget who it was.

In my case, because I’ve been practicing mindfulness and meditation since 2013, non-resistance of the present moment and of internal states are a daily practice of mine. When my insomnia first developed, I used to have terrible sleep anxiety until I decided to accept it and ride the wave (also quitting a demanding job helped). I learned to cope with my insomnia by accepting it. So many nights I would just lie in bed for hours in a meditative state, relaxed, without fighting it with any negativity. I also wouldn’t think about sleep during the day at all. So basically, I did what you are doing now, is that right?

I did that for the whole 2.5 years of insomnia, and here’s my report: practicing acceptance certainly helps with sleep anxiety – it eliminated it back then. There was no more thinking about sleep, no more fear, no anxiety – before bed or during the night. That was the way I found to cope. But by no means did it fix my insomnia. I would sleep here and there but would have the same problem you mentioned having now- I never felt that the sleep was quality sleep. I would constantly wake up with mental fatigue and feeling tired and wired (states I don’t really experience anymore).

My opinion is the following: I think practicing acceptance is an indispensable tool in helping heal insomnia. It’s definitely ONE piece of the puzzle. However, I do think there are biological matters going on in our brain that aren’t going to be solved by acceptance and only CBT-I techniques can tap into them without the use of drugs. For example, some form of SW helps accumulate in our brain the hormone responsible for sleep pressure, a pivotal factor to falling asleep easily and staying asleep longer. Acceptance alone won’t help accumulate that specific hormone if your brain.

This is just my opinion and feedback from my own experience, of course! You might want to try ACT for at least a month or two and see what happens! Could have a different effect for you.

My sleep anxiety returned 2 weeks ago and was very persistent. Because I’ve been feeling some serious side effects from not sleeping well, I decided to start taking CDB oil from hemp – did I mention this already? It’s supposed to help with anxiety and sleep. I started taking it Sunday and already feel anxiety has gone WAY DOWN and so did my over eating, and I have slept well the past 3 nights. Maybe there is something to this CBD oil? I plan on continuing with it for a good while since it’s natural and it seems to be helping 🙂

[Deb]

Thanks, Borgesbi. Yes, like you, I’ve been accepting everything. But on the nights that sleep quality is poor, I’m not laying in bed all night awake meditating or relaxing or anything. I’m actually sleeping but am in and out of sleep all night. I wake up slightly and then fall back asleep, wake up slightly and fall back asleep again a few times throughout the night. So maybe my experience is different than yours and I hope it works. I’m taking an attitude of “one day at a time,” actually one night at a time, and looking for any small signs of improvement. If I get to a point of no improvements over a period of time I’ll give up on this.

[Steve]

Hi Borgesbi. I was probably the person you remember saying they tried ACT. I tried it because it seemed more natural to stay in bed when you couldn’t sleep so that you could rest and not expend energy like you do with SR and SC. Unfortunately, it didn’t do anything for me. I was very accepting that I had insomnia and didn’t have too much anxiety over having it. At least I don’t think I did. But accepting it didn’t help me fall asleep any better or stay asleep any longer than when I wasn’t using ACT and my sleep hours were all over the board. I was very tired the next day at work and could barely function. To me, ACT seemed more of a wishful thinking kind of thing. Just lie there awake at night accepting your situation and the insomnia will disappear. I must have tried it for three or four weeks when I realized it wasn’t doing anything for me and that’s when I switched to CBT-i. I was doing good with CBT-i until about a week and a half ago. I was almost at the point where I thought I could expand my SW by 15 minutes, although Martin advised me not to. The last week and a half has been a killer and I am back down to sleeping around 3 and a half hours a night. Not sure what the problem is. I am going to try to stay up later tonight to make me more tired and see if that keeps me asleep longer.

I also took CBD oil. At first I thought it helped but after awhile, I thought I noticed a withdrawal problem when the oil ran its course for the day. There is no doubt my anxiety was less after I took it, but when that withdrawal came, I was shaking like a leaf. It only lasted a half hour or so but it happened the same time every day and since I took it the same time every day, I can only assume that’s what made me shake like that. I could be wrong and maybe it was something  unrelated to the CBD oil but at any rate, I’d rather try SR and SC without taking supplements. I hope to get back to 4 3/4 to 5 1/4 hours of sleep most nights soon. It wasn’t enough, but I felt way better than I have this last week and a half getting only 3 and a half hours. It’s been a tough struggle at work.

[Author]

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