[Steve]

Yeah Mac, I know what you mean about the titles. Some of them can really make you remember the anxiety which is why I am avoiding them for now. Well, there is no alarm for me during vacation but I still have to get up at the end of my SW. As for work, I set the alarm to make sure I am up but I haven’t slept to the alarm since I developed the insomnia so it hardly ever goes off. Usually, I am out of bed doing SC or did SC and there is so little time left it isn’t worth going back to bed. These last 4 nights though, I have been in bed at the end of my SW either just waking up or waking up not too long before it. In fact, one of those mornings I slept for 15 minutes beyond my SW. That is a good sign I think and I should probably set the alarm so I make sure I am up at the end of my SW. The only problem I had is that since I didn’t have to get ready for work, I would go sit in a chair. And these last two mornings I noticed I fell asleep in the chair. I have to stop that. I think the same thing is happening on the weekends and that is why I feel relatively good after I get up on the weekends and so tired at work, because on work days, I can’t take those early, short naps after I get up.

[Steve]

Mac, I think I misunderstood what you are asking. Yes, I have the alarm for work and I think it has affected me some. My workplace is a bit rough right now with the insomnia and is probably leading to some of the stress I feel. So knowing I have to go in and there is an alarm set for it, it does affect me some in a negative way. I have to try to keep a more positive attitude knowing if I sleep better, the workplace won’t be so tough.

[Mac0908]

Yeah, like me, I think work and the thought of waking up for it absolutely contributes. I mean how could it not for a person suffering with this? Its just an extra level of worry for us, thinking about having to be up for work. Add on a stressful job and it makes things even worse, sure.

Last night I had a bad night. No real reason behind it at all either. Went to bed at 11, crashed around 1130, and woke up at 530am. I remember a time where if I fell asleep at 11:30pm it wouldn’t even be a single doubt in my mind that I’d be sleeping straight through to my 6am alarm. Now bc of the underlying sleep anxiety its just difficult. I’ll admit I still have thoughts of worry as I lay in my bed waiting to sleep. I’m not at a point where I need to go back to the SRT window yet, but if that’s necessary to do, I guess I’ll have to do it.

[Daf]

But 6 hours is OK surely?

[Mac0908]

Not for me no. I need at least 6.5 to feel ok. Learned that a long time ago about myself

6 is and always has been an iffy number for me. Today i’m tired.

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

[Steve]

Mac – I didn’t realize you weren’t doing a SW. Do you still go to bed at relatively the same time though and get up at the same time? I am not sure what I need to feel good. The best I have been able to do is around 5.25 hours and while I didn’t feel refreshed, I wasn’t falling asleep at my desk. I am curious to see what 6.0 would do for me. Before insomnia, I needed 7.5 to 8 to feel refreshed.  Not sure if it’s less now since my sleep is probably more consolidated. I just finished pedaling my 10 speed 5.4 miles  and I am really tired because I just started riding the bike a very short time ago. I figured I needed the exercise so I started it up again. As for work, yes, it can be added stress. I just hope I can start next week with a more positive attitude towards it. That would certainly help the stress. Hope your sleep picks up soon.

[Mac0908]

My window was 11:30p-6a… slowly but surely I started feeling better again and broke away from the strictness of it all, but the only difference this time unlike back earlier this year is that instead of hopping into the bed at the second I feel a little tired, now I really do not go to bed any earlier than 11pm. The problem with this, like last night I’ll admit, is that sometimes I’m not feeling that complete exhaustion/head nodding when 11pmcomes but I’ll still go to bed. I know that’s not good for someone who’s not fully recovered, but at the same time like we’ve spoke about on here before, it just gets to a point where when does it all end? Am I going to have to worry about SC/SRT related routines forever in order to get good sleep? Once upon a time I’d go to bed around 10:30pm every night, sometimes exhausted sometimes not, and I’d always sleep ok.

Now days bc of the underlying anxiety that still remains, I cannot do this. My hope and my goal is to think that the more and more I continue on with at least this “light” form of SRT the more I’ll get better. For example I also never sleep in, even on the weekends. Up by 7am the latest, though even that, which is an hour later than I wake during the week, probably isn’t great for me either…  But like I said, when does it end?

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

[Steve]

So how is everyone doing? It’s been over a week since anybody posted here. As for me, I graduated from Martin’s course and while I am not “cured”, I’m glad I took it. I will probably be signing up for the maintenance course of four weeks for the support he gives me. At least for one more month, maybe two. But after that, I will be on my own as I have no support elsewhere. My SW is now at 6 hours and my SE is at 85% of that. Some nights I sleep a little more than that 85% and other nights a little less than the 85%. It’s strange. When I first started the course, 3 hour sleeps were bad nights for me and I was glad when I got 4 as I felt better the next day. Then as I started sleeping more, I recognized that 4 hour sleeps were poor for me and I was glad when I got 5 hour sleeps as I felt better the next day. Now I recognize that sleeps in the range of 4.5 to 5.0 are poor nights for me and I’m glad when I get in the 5.25 to 5.5 hour range as I feel good the next day. Once I started sleeping better, the formerly “good” nights became poor nights. As I continue to progress, I hope that these 5.5 sleep nights will be considered poor for me and the 6.0 nights will seem good for me.

I strongly urge all of you considering SR to enroll in Martin’s course. While I still suffer from insomnia, I have made a lot of improvements and don’t think I would have without Martin’s knowledge and support.

[Deb]

Hi Steve and Everybody – I started to do ACT several weeks ago, but there were a bunch of starts and stops. It’s not easy, just like SR & SC aren’t. About 3 weeks ago I went ahead and scheduled some sessions with Dr. Kat Lederle to get some support. She works with Guy Meadows. My first week was difficult, being a combination of nights with light sleep, no sleep, and in and out of sleep all night. And there were nights when I gave up and took an Ambien, which of course doesn’t help in the long run. Everyday I’d wake up tired. Then I went on vacation for about a week. I didn’t want it completely ruined because of tiredness, so I took Ambien the whole time. Then I got home a week ago and got back on track.

It was hard to get back into it again, and the first night I was awake all night which I figured would probably happen. Since then it’s been a combination of the nights like the week before my vacation. But last night was very hopeful. I fell asleep right away for the first time in ages (my type of insomnia is sleep onset). For the rest of the night I was in and out of sleep with dreams that I remembered when I woke up. I’m tired again today, but hopeful.

I continue to have hope in this method because it addresses the anxiety directly. I’ve had some good talks with Dr. Kat and have learned some interesting things. I asked her if it was normal to have this light sleep all night. She said yes, and that research has been done that compared the brain activity during sleep of “normals” and those with insomnia. For those with insomnia, the amygdala, which controls the fight or flight response, is much more active. So unconsciously we are always on the alert, even if in our conscious mind we think we are relaxed. The goal of the therapy is to not only help us learn to relax consciously, but for the unconscious to eventually settle down as well. So far for me, the conscious part of myself is learning more and more to relax about sleep, but the unconscious part still has a ways to go.

[Steve]

Deb – I’m surprised you gave up on SR and SC. You seemed to be doing well on it. How much are the sessions with Dr. Kat costing you? Are they by e-mail or phone or what? ACT is an interesting method but it never really worked for me so I started SR with Martin.

[Deb]

Hi Steve – the sessions are about $200 (150 in English dollars) for an hour. Not cheap! I’m hoping my insurance will cover some of this since she is a doctor, but I don’t know if they’ll pay for someone outside of this country. We worked out that the sessions would be divided into 2 half hour sessions so I could see her a little more often. I don’t really need a whole hour anyway. So instead of a session every two weeks (where a lot could go wrong!) I see her every week. I’ve sent her an email a couple times with questions or struggles and she has been responsive.

I was doing well with SR but was frustrated because basically for 4 months I averaged 5 good days a week and 2 bad. I know that Martin has talked about “holdouts” and that it just takes time for those bad nights to fade away. But it felt as though it could take a long time to finally recover completely. But more importantly for me, I felt like my anxiety was always there lurking in the background and I wanted to deal with this directly, which is what ACT does. Also, through this forum I’ve seen how others here have tried so hard to do SR & SC, but even after many months of practicing it they’re still struggling . I believe that’s because the underlying anxiety is still there.

[gsdmom]

Deb, thanks for posting the information about the “light sleep” stage. I was wondering about the physiology of it all. I did a sleep study and it showed I stayed in light sleep/stage 1 longer than normal, but the doctor did not explain why, just said it was normal for people with insomnia.

Before March 2019 when the insomnia started, I cannot remember ever having so much light sleep or that it even existed. The last two to three weeks I am starting to slowly feel better, but this light sleep thing is puzzling. I usually try to get to be about 10pm, and I feel the hours between 10pm-12am I may not even be sleeping, but I know for some of that time I am. Can have decent sleep between 12am-3:30am, then after that I may wake up anytime between 3:30-6am. I know over time this will resolve, but if anyone has any estimates of how long it might take to reduce the light sleep stage to normal that would be nice to know. Anyway, thanks for all your information!

[Deb]

I’m hoping my light sleep will resolve too, through this therapy. I’ll keep everyone posted. It’s frustrating because if you don’t get the deeper sleep you need, you’re tired in the morning no matter how long you’ve slept. With the therapy, you strive to make peace with the tiredness during the day as well as with the light sleep at night, knowing that it is temporary. That’s because if you don’t make peace with it and accept it, it feeds the anxiety at night as you worry about how you’re going to feel the next day and then it reinforces the vicious cycle.

[Steve]

Hi gsdmom. I see we are having the same problem. I also sleep until 3:30 and then wake and can’t get back to sleep a lot of times. I do sleep sometimes through till 4:30 and the other day, I fell back to sleep and slept till the alarm went off. But  a lot of times, I wake at 3:30, wait for around 30 minutes and then have to get up to do SC. But I never feel sleepy so even if I do go back to bed after 30 minutes, I have to get up again. By that time, I might as well just stay up as it’s so close to the alarm. I have to start consistently doing SC again as I didn’t have to do it for awhile so when I start needing to do it, it’s hard to get up. My problem with the SC is usually I have to do it early in the morning and my eyes are just too tired to read and I am tired of watching TV or playing solitaire. So that doesn’t leave many options left except to sit quietly in a darkened room.

I am starting to be all over the board with my sleep again but for now, thank goodness, I am not going down into the 3 hour sleeps again. I feel I am improving, even if slowly. Hope you are doing better as well.

[Deb]

Hi Steve – I was wondering, are you getting close to your 5 hours of needed sleep these days?

I forgot to mention that I have the sessions with Dr. Kat using FaceTime. She probably uses other forms of video communication as well such as Skype or Zoom.

 

[Author]

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