[Deb]

You ARE making progress, Steve!

[Steve]

Actually, I posted this earlier this morning but it was awaiting moderation. It’s still tough Deb. Like I said, I only got 3 and a half hours sleep last night and when I went in to work this morning, I was dizzy and dead tired. Over the weekend I felt pretty good because I got more sleep and it was straight sleep. The only thing I can surmise is that last night’s sleep wasn’t a very deep one and so I didn’t sleep all that well. We’ll see what happens in the future.

I hope you are doing well. Did you get your fragmented sleep in order?

[Deb]

My sleep isn’t fragmented for the most part. Just sometimes it takes me awhile to fall asleep and I have to get up once or twice.

Isn’t your sleep better than the first week? How long have you been doing this now?

[Steve]

I am sleeping less than I was before SR but the sleep seems to be a little more consolidated. Tonight will be my 12th night. From what I have read, the majority of people sleep less than what they did before SR for the first couple weeks so I’m not worried. Before SR, I was getting about 4 to 5.5 hours most nights. But that was spread over an 8 to 9 hour period so it was very fragmented. For the first week of SR, I was getting about 2 to 2.5 hours a night. A little better this week but not much.

[Steve]

Well I consider it to be another relatively good night. I got about 4 hours and 20 minutes of straight through sleep with no wakeups that I remember. This is my fourth night in a row of at least 3 and a 1/4 hours of sleep and two of them were above 4 hours. Hopefully, I’ve seen the last of my sleep in the 2 hour range. I am still a little dizzy but that doesn’t surprise me as 4 and a 1/4 hours sleep is still way less than what I need but it’s definitely a start in the right direction. Still waiting for that 4.7 hours of sleep which will put me in the 85% SE level but I am close to it.

[Mac0908]

Very glad to hear Steve. Not much else to say of course but to stick with it and do NOT slip up. I personally kind of did that but didn’t have much of a choice as I was very sick last week. To answer your question no I didn’t take an antibiotic. Usually I do but this time I let it run its course. In any event, last night I reverted back to my 11:30p bedtime and to no surprise, I wasn’t that exhausted and my sleep pressure didn’t really come full force. I still thought I’d nod off after a half hour or so but even that didn’t happen. I ended up crashing around 12:20aI’d say. While I slept through to my 6am alarm, it didn’t change the fact that around 5.5 hours of sleep is simply not enough for me. Not a horrific night, but I’m still dead tired today. Hoping and pretty much assuming that my sleep pressure will come back either tonight or tomorrow. Gotta readjust after messing around for 4-5 days. With me I know I can at least fall off SRT for a little bit like this since my overall sleep fear/anxiety is nothing like it used to be and I guess that’s a nice feeling. But for you Steve, stay the course 100%

[Steve]

Thanks Mac. The biggest thing for me is now knowing that I can sleep naturally without meds. I hope you can pick up where you left off and start getting more than 5.5 hours of sleep again. Good luck to you.

[Deb]

You’re definitely on the right track, Steve, getting better and better! You’re doing a great job! Like you, Mac, my anxiety is way down too. That feels really good because it was horrible when the anxiety was so high. But we’ve got the tools and we know how to do this. There may be frustration at times (especially with ourselves), but it’s so much better than the anxiety.

Hope you get some better rest tonight, Mac. I was finally able to go to bed at 11:30 last night and slept through the night. 7 glorious hours of sleep! Now to just keep up the good habits.

[Padron1926]

New to this thread….

I’m finishing up Week 6 and was progressing along with Martin’s help but last week had a slight breakdown (bc severe lack of sleep a few nights) coupled with a death in the family that completely derailed my sleep for the past week and a half.  I started at 5.5 window (I mostly sleep between 4.5 to 5 hrs a night) and moved to 5.75 hours after week 4.

Because lack week and a half was such a wreck sleeping (going back to old sleep schedule and doing whatever) I figured I would just start over again at 5.5 hrs (11:15 to 4:45) and join this thread.

Worst part of the course so far has been the extreme tiredness during the day, falling asleep briefly at my desk during the day from morning to afternoon which wasn’t happening before I started doing SR and SC.  My old sleep window I had set to midnight and was barely able to stay awake till then basically standing up and doing squats but would still feel like I was asleep on my feet and having to move from my recliner to an uncomfortable chair bc I would doze off.  Other issue was that even though I fall asleep as soon as head hits the pillow from being extremely sleepy, I would still wake after 4.5 hrs (one chunk usually), try for 30 mins to sleep then get up for 30 mins, lay back down and minutes later alarm is going off ending my sleep window.  SC has been really difficult bc when I get up to read or watch tv, I’m so exhausted that my eyes can’t see straight and my brain cant comprehend what I’m reading or watching and I just end up sitting in my chair in the dark trying not to nod off and is not something that I look forward to when in bed in the middle of the night.  Also have a hard time estimating the 30 mins cause all I want to do is get back to bed (even though I probably wont fall back asleep) which probably doesn’t help things either.

Sorry for the long post, just needed to vent.  But I’m here to restart everything and need some encouragement and following this thread has provided me the push to start over and not get derailed.

Thanks

 

 

[Deb]

Welcome to the thread, Padron. Some of us here are also restarting, so you’re not alone there. Other than your setback, has your sleep gotten better over the past 6 weeks?

That does sound really hard to get up in the early morning hours to do SC. I have sleep onset insomnia, so I do SC earlier in the night which is probably easier than what you’re doing. I hope that soon you’ll start sleeping through the whole sleep window.

[Padron1926]

Yea my sleep got a little better, much better SE but I still had the early morning awakenings.  I wasn’t the most disciplined starting out and was frustrated that this wasn’t a quick fix or seeing massive improvements right from the start.  The sleep window, which I picked, might have been starting too late (since I fell asleep as soon as head hit pillow) and against Martins recommendation I stayed at a later SW cause I didn’t want to wake before 6.  Now I’m moving my sleep time to one of his recommended windows starting tonight.

Would get really frustrated, with myself, on nights where I would have a few good nights in a row (about 4.75- 5hrs) then have a night where I went to bed extremely sleepy and would wake up after like an hour or 2 (looked at phone/clock mistakenly) and wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.  Then the next day I would be a total wreck at work, fall apart, having a breakdown and call my parents for support and would just go to my bed and “sleep” as soon as I got home.  Or I would fall asleep in my recliner before my SW and get mad at myself for screwing up.  I became very hard on myself if I did anything wrong because I thought I had ruined my progress for not only the night but the program so far and all my “progress” was out the window.  I’ve learned over the weeks to ease up on myself.

Just need to take it one day at a time and realize its not going to be a quick fix.

Toughest thing going forward is not letting the really bad night or 2 get to me and derail my progress and making sure I’m out of bed on the weekends (even though being up at 5 AM on a Sat/Sun sucks) and not napping on the weekends.

[Deb]

Yes, we really need to have the long term view in order to heal from this condition. Glad you learned to ease off yourself.

[Steve]

Hi Padron. Yes, we need to be easy on ourselves and forgive ourselves because there are times when we will screw up. I do know what you mean about being extremely tired and thinking you will have a good sleep and you don’t and you don’t have a clue as to why. I just need to remember to keep active in order to build up my sleep drive or I won’t be getting any sleep that night. I also have the same problem as you in waking up around 4:00 and then having to try to get to sleep or just give it up and get up for the day. Sometimes, I have a hard time falling asleep so I have to do SC both early night and the later hours of the morning. For now, I stopped being a yo-yo and don’t have to get up that much as I did when SR first started. I at first thought that this would be a quick fix as well but now realize it’s an ongoing process and I might not be getting 6 or more hours of sleep until a couple months from now. So be it.

I do actually look at the clock at night but only in certain instances. I am a very poor judge of time for the sleep diary so if I get up to go to the bathroom, I will look at the clock to see how long I slept for the diary. Or, if I wake up I will look at it for the same reason. As for timing the 30 minutes to get out of bed, I don’t do that. I know by now if I am going to maybe fall back asleep or if there is no chance I will. If it’s a maybe, I stay in bed a little while longer until I know for sure. If it’s a definite no, I get up. I don’t fret about the time and how much longer I will need to get up for two reasons. The first is for now, I hardly ever sleep to the alarm anyway so again, I either have to get up for SC or hopefully go back to sleep. So there is no reason to toss and turn anymore. Also, I don’t care if I get a poor night’s sleep and the effect it will have on my work performance the next day. I know I survived before and I will survive again so the time until I have to get up doesn’t bother me.

 

Okay, hope you continue to make progress. Hope to see you on this thread soon.

[Padron1926]

Steve

Yea no clock for me. I’d just freak out if I look and see I didn’t sleep as much as I thought I’d be too anxious to fall back asleep.

Like you some days I just get up if I awaken early because I know I’m not getting back to sleep even though I’m exhausted when I awaken.  Just hate the fact that I get up before 5 and don’t go to bed a little before midnight it’s going to make for a very long day.

We’ll get there Steve. We keep at this for like a couple months we will be sleeping much better than we are now

What sleep window are you using?

 

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Padron1926.

[Steve]

Padron,

My sleep window is from 11:45pm to 5:15am. Last night was one of those nights where I had to get out of bed at 3:00 in the morning and never got back to sleep at all. I just sat there in a darkened room until it was time to get up. Those are the most frustrating of nights, especially after a good sleep the previous evening. Hope things went better for you.

[Author]

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