[Steve]

You’re averaging 5 hours of sleep at night and you are on a 6.5 hour SW? Are you going to have to cut it back soon? I know that can be tough to do after you got it that high. In any event, good luck to you.

[Padron1926]

Checking in, rough couple days as well. Slept 4 hours one night (getting back into swing of things so expected), really struggled to stay awake next night for the start of my sleep window and fell asleep as soon as head hit the pillow but woke up like an hour later, took a little while to get back to sleep and maybe slept for another hour then awake for rest of night.  Was a mess the next day at work, hardly able to stay awake at my desk and passed out for like a half an hour at lunch.  Went home and tried to stay up for my sleep window but fell asleep watching TV early.  Went to my bed, forgot to set the alarm but I slept a lot more than I usually do. Probably around 7 hours over 8.5 hour sleep window (versus 4.75 over 5.5 hours.  Not tired today, no need for nap but brain is still foggy.

I don’t know how people do this consistently for weeks before they see meaningful results.  This is the hardest thing I have attempted in my life, seems borderline impossible to strictly follow the rules day after day, week after week for months.  At least if I spread my sleep window out, I was able to squeeze a little more sleep in, and I wasn’t tired during the day or early evening but I still felt like crap which wasn’t much of a difference than when on sleep restriction. Tried Sleep restriction for the first time a couple months back but the buildup of sleep deprivation was too much for me.  My mood became completely unhinged, unable to stay awake during the day and staying awake to SW was an immense struggle.  One weekend I just crashed in the afternoon and napped for like 2 hours of constant dreaming.  It felt great.   Still having this struggle on the second go round of SR.

 

 

[delv-x]

Here are two videos talking about clock watching.

Hi Deb. Yep looks like a bad week for most of us. Low anxiety is good thing though. How do you feel during the day? If your day function is almost normal then it is a good indicator that when you do sleep, it is deep and restorative.

It is frustrating because we all want predictable consistency. It’s nice to be able to fall asleep in 10-20 minutes and wake up when we need/want to wake up with little frustration. It sucks but I know as you know that better nights will occur. It’s just in the heat of the moment it feels awful and out of our control.

[Steve]

I know what you mean delv. I hate to waste my sleep window on SC as well. Last night when I got up, I just couldn’t bring myself to read so I turned the light off and sat in the dark. Three times.It was a bad night where even when I did sleep for two hours, it was a very fitful sleep. What is your SW and your SE? I started my third week of SE last night.

[Deb]

Hi Delv – I’m very functional during the day. Just not as refreshed as when I sleep 6.5 hours. If my sleep is under 4 hours, that’s when I become like a zombie. But thankfully have not had those kind of days since I got back into SR & SC.

[Steve]

Hi Padron. Yes, this is the toughest thing I ever did as well but I am pretty much used to it by now. The thing I have to watch for is that I can fall asleep watching evening TV too. The longest I’ve ever done it for is a half hour but that’s a half hour that was taken away from my Sleep Drive. I find that if I can get at least 4 hours of sleep, I am okay for work the next day. That doesn’t mean I feel normal as 4, 4 1/4 or 4 1/2 isn’t much sleep to refresh me. But when I get only 2 or 3 hours of sleep, the next day at work can be quite difficult, if not impossible. Hope you get better sleep soon.

[Padron1926]

Steve,

Same as you with SC.

Yea, I’m not sure how people get up and actually do things in the middle of the night.  When I awaken early in the morning, there is no way I can read cause my eyes and brain can’t focus when I’m that tired.  Tried to watch TV but all I wanted to do was close my eyes cause the lights and sounds “hurt” my brain that early so I just ended up sitting in the dark.  May have fallen asleep, may not have in the living room chair but I was too tired to care.  Would usually end up coloring and would just mindlessly do that but mostly just thought when can I get back into bed.  With my sleep window of 5.5 hours, and waking up after 4.5hr I just didn’t see the point of SC so I would just stay in bed and sometimes catch another 20mins of sleep, something that wouldn’t happen with SC.  In Gregg Jacobs book/program, you can stay in bed and read for up to an hour.

I have a hard time understanding if the getting out of bed portion of SC is even worth it for early morning awakening if you sleep in one chunk with no other long awakenings.  Early morning awakening seems like more like a broken circadian rhythm issue due to messed up sleep schedules (whether too variable or too long) that just needs to be re-booted over time.

“Once an individual has been comfortably sleeping, melatonin slowly is released to provide a second wave of drowsiness three to four hours. This helps sustain sleep through the second half of the night.

It takes this combination of alerting and drowsy signals to facilitate consolidation of sleep into a block at night.

According to Rybarczyk, the circadian system is malleable – it will cooperate with whatever programming it is given in the form of cues from an individual’s patterns of activity and sleep during the day. Take for example someone who works an overnight shift in a hospital or warehouse or a traveler changing time zones. They are able to be awake and alert during night hours because they’ve reconditioned their sleep system to wake earlier than called for or to wake in the middle of the night.

However, when individuals have highly variable sleep/wake patterns – going to bed late or sleeping earlier – the circadian system is weakened. As variable sleeping patterns happen again, their circadian system gradually goes into quiet mode.

“That is the nature of the sleep system – it’s infinitely trainable, for better or worse sleep,”  Rybarczyk said.”

“Now it’s at five to six weeks since the start of treatment,” Rybarczyk said. “Along the way, they’ve really retrained the brain to have that automatic sleep response and have a consistent sleep pattern. That reactivates the circadian system which serves a vital role by creating an infusion of drowsiness in the second half of the sleep period.”

“With the circadian system restarted, they are able to sustain sleep throughout the night,” he said.

Also if I sleep 4.5 -5 hours in one chunk on a 5.5, 6 or even 6.5 window what is the point on restricting sleep down to the lowest level if I’m consistent with my window starting and waking at the same time everyday? I know that SE would be lower but why would sleep efficiency matter for early morning awakening?  I don’t think its a pairing bed with sleep/awakening issue since I can go to bed with no problem (no stress tied to this) and experience only one terminal awakening (which I’m not stressed about happening either, no anxiety or heart racing, I’m just awake for whatever reason).  I have no anxieties about sleep now I understand what is happening, I had more anxiety when I really didn’t know what was wrong with me.

[Steve]

Padron – Can I have the link to that article? I still have some stress about sleep but not about early morning awakening. If it happens it happens. My heart isn’t racing with anxiety either. But SR has consolidated my sleep. No question about that. But it hasn’t lengthened my sleep yet. And now that it is consolidated, when I wake up, I usually can’t get back to sleep. I am done for the night.

[Padron1926]

https://news.vcu.edu/article/The_science_of_sleep

https://news.vcu.edu/article/Sleep_boot_camp_A_wakeup_call_for_chronic_insomnia_sufferers

[delv-x]

Hi Steve,

Mine is from 12:00am to 7:00am. When I am out with friends I may go to bed later like 1:00am. When things are going well I may go to bed 11:45PM here and there. It has been working for me generally as I would get streaks of 6.5 hours of sleep which is 85%+ SE. When I have trouble sleeping I still try to maintain the same sleep window for awhile. I may push it to 1:00am here and there.

[KarenP]

My SW is 11:30 to 6:00 am.

[obribri]

Hi Padron,

I actually have worked with Dr. Rybarcyzk as a client before. The only reason why I stopped was because it was extremely expensive since he wasn’t in network. When I first started with him, I was seeing fantastic results and was actually “cured” after 6 weeks of treatment. I was insomnia free from August – February. However, I never really came to accept that our bodies naturally know how to sleep and I was still afraid of sleeping outside of my bedroom. I was relying on routine. When a trigger happened in February, my insomnia came back. I started seeing Dr. Rybarcyzk again, but I already knew all the techniques such as SR and SC. It was the cognitive stuff that I still wasn’t getting/remembering. So… since I couldn’t continue paying him, I hired Martin instead ($400 vs $1080). Also, I like that Martin provides transcripts of all his sessions so I can go back and look at them later on. I can’t remember a lot of stuff Dr. Rybarczyk and I talked about since it was in person.

If you want to follow Martin’s program, you follow his minimum of 5.5 hour rule and follow SC. Dr. Rybarcyzk is a little different. He never asked me to get out of bed unless I was feeling anxious. If I was calm and awake in bed, I was fine to stay in bed. His idea was that people would get anxious if the 20-30 minutes have passed which results in bed=anxiety. Additionally, if you’re only sleeping 4 hours, your sleep window is 4 hours even if that sounds dangerous. His policy was getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night temporarily isn’t going to affect you much because it’s only going to last a few weeks until your sleep drive takes over. Plus, you probably are getting this much right now anyway and the goal is to break you out of associating your bed with anxiety for those 2 hours you’re awake. I had a friend in college who only got 4 hours of sleep a night until he graduated and functioned perfectly. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow of course. My window started at 5 hours in this program which is what he usually recommends at first. If it wasn’t working then you move that time to 4.5 or 4 hrs.

The thing that I like but also dislike about Martin’s program is the SC. I dislike it now because it’s making me anxious and I don’t want to get up (I haven’t actually started this phase yet as I’m only on week 2 but have tried it). But I think in the long run, it’s a lot more helpful than staying in bed awake even if you’re calm because when this happens months to years from now (which is a guarantee), you know that it’s okay to be awake and get up to do something. In Dr. Rybarcyzk’s program, it was fine while I was fixing my insomnia but when I couldn’t sleep after that February trigger, I started freaking out and didn’t want to get up.

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

[Padron1926]

obribri,

Thanks for the info.  You get any other tips out of Dr. Rybarcyzk’s program that many people might not know about or is different from a lot of other programs?  Which kind of insomnia did you have (onset, maintenance, early morning awakening, or a mix)?

I’m mostly just venting.  I know I have to follow Martin’s recommendations since they are proven to work but it’s tremendously difficult.  I can follow for a couple days in a row but then just crash from tiredness after a bad night of little or no sleep.  Hard to function the next day, stay awake during the day, as well as making it to the start of the sleep window. I have a window of 5.5 hrs, wake up mostly after 4.75hrs, see if I can go back to sleep for 30mins, if not then I just get up for the day.

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

[obribri]

No I don’t. His treatment is very similar to Martin’s. Those were the only 2 big differences I noticed. I’m not too far into Martin’s program to know what to do in case of a relapse so I can’t speak about the differences there. Dr. Rybarcyzk told me to temporarily do sleep restriction for a few days which should set me back on track. Unfortunately even when I did this, I was still “sleep watching” because I was already anxious. The most important thing to know is you know how to sleep. If you continue to monitor whether or not you’re asleep, you won’t be sleeping which is my issue. Also, I’ve gotten into the habit of napping during the day that I need to break. I can almost always fall asleep when wanting to nap because there’s no pressure. I wonder if even though we know how to sleep, our brain is in the habit of sleeping badly. Thus, we need to train our brain to sleep well through SR and SC in order to get back on track. After that, it’s a matter of using the techniques you know to not sleep watch/reduce anxiety.

I have all three. The one that bothers me the most is the onset. If I can’t fall asleep within 30 minutes, I can get anxious enough that I won’t sleep at all and this has made me go 3 nights without sleep before. I don’t mind the early awakening as much. I’ve always woken up before my alarm went off even when I was a good sleeper. For years I’d set my alarm for 7:15am but would always wake up around 6:50am. So, if I wake up 30-40 minutes before my alarm goes off, I’m perfectly happy just resting in bed. The maintenance is kind of annoying. I’ve been waking up 3-4 times a night if I’m able to fall asleep right away. As long as I don’t think, I can fall back asleep. I’d take this over not being able to fall asleep at all though….

I completely understand what you mean. I’ve been trying to not nap per Martin’s recommendation, but I usually fail after 1-2 days. That or I accidentally fall asleep on the couch while trying to wind down for the night. I used to have people help me stay awake until 30 minutes -1 hr before my sleep window begins. After that, I would try to sit up and read or do something relaxing. Most of the time this actually caused me to have anxiety because even when I’m reading, my mind is going back to the fact that I want to sleep. Either way, I did it because it was keeping me awake enough. Eventually, the treatment started working. If you want to try a 5 hr sleep window, go for it. If you think about it, Martin recommends a 5.5 hr sleep window. But if you’re not sleepy, don’t go to sleep so essentially, you may be having a 5 hr sleep window anyway.

You’d be happy to know that once you go a couple months post-insomnia, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world. I started doing things in my bed again (not a good idea) but was able to sleep every night. The most important thing from courses like these are that you know how to stop freaking out after 1 bad night which like everyone said, is bound to happen. I think my relapse was my trigger made me think of “how to fall asleep” which like you know, you can’t do anything to fall asleep… I didn’t get that.

[Steve]

Thanks for the info obribri. I read about Dr. Rybarcyzk and his methods. I was wondering why in the articles, some of his patients were on a 5.5 hour window and other patients seemed to be on a four hour window. From the articles I read about him, there is one other key difference between him and Martin. In the article, he states he reduces the SW by a half hour every week or so. Or at least that’s what it seems. In Martin’s program, we have to have a 7 night SE average of at least 85% before we can reduce it 15 minutes.(In the Sleepio program, you have to have a 90% SE over 5 nights.) Still, he seems to get results. I just signed up for Martin’s program as I know I need some “hand holding” here as SR and SC are tough.

[Author]

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