[AKG]

Hi Everyone and thank you Martin!

I wanted to write a post here as these success stories were so helpful to me while I was going through my own recent struggle with insomnia, some of the stories I re-read about 10 times to help keep me motivated while doing CBT-I.

I’ve always been a pretty good sleeper until February this year when I started working from home. I started staying up a bit later and sleeping in longer (getting more sleep than I needed) and then one night wham out of nowhere I had zero sleep, then the following night I went to bed and the same thing happened again (zero sleep) and so I started googling at around 4am and found some other forums with people saying they hadn’t slept for 2 weeks straight and found a disease called sporadic fatal insomnia (which I thought I had at one point!) which all sent my anxiety and insomnia spiraling out of control.

I was averaging around 2-3 hours’ sleep per night (sometimes none) and was an anxious mess, especially every night when bedtime was approaching. For a few nights I suffered badly from hypnic jerks every time I would nearly drift off to sleep which made it impossible to fall asleep! After a month I went to a Dr in tears who prescribed me Temazepam which worked for a couple of nights and then on the third night did nothing at all. I also tried taking Valium, Phenergan and Melatonin – I felt absolutely horrible after the Temazepam and Valium and at an all-time mental low and stopped taking anything at all when I received one of Martin’s emails titled “Antihistamines and Melatonin” about why they don’t work.

I stumbled upon Martin’s website when googling one day and it has been life-changing for me, I signed up for the free 2 week course and would have signed up for the paid 8 week course but I had been referred to a sleep psychologist and wanted to see her before signing up. By the time I made it to the sleep psychologists office I was already 4 weeks into SR/SC and so had already done some of her work for her. It turns out that she had no useful advise for me and actually told me one day to go home and go to bed early and take a Phenergan and give myself a break – I stopped going back after that! It took me around 10 weeks of sleep restriction and sleep control to get back on track with my sleeping and at around week’s 5 and 7 I had really bad weeks where I thought that CBT-I wasn’t working for me and that I was different to everyone else, broken in some way but I kept persevering (as what other options are there?) and now I’m finally back to 7-8 hours per night.

I also implemented other changes which I think helped along with CBT-I – I stopped looking at my phone or watching streaming services in bed (my phone is now off limits in bed), I stopped checking the time when I wake up during the night and I have given myself a cut off time in the evening (8pm) when I look at anything on my phone/devices that could possibly give me any kind of anxiety. I used to get into bed and quickly check my work emails which I can’t believe now! I also started using a meditating app (My Life) occasionally, doing more exercise and going for long walks.

Martin, I can’t thank you enough!

[Recovery]

Hey AKG,
thank you for being posting.
I have a very similar situation. I have been on SRT for about 7-8 weeks now and have mix results. Im hoping you can answers some of my questions. I don’t want to think that it is not working for me. Basically few issues i am dealing with, Do you feel sleepy before the start of your window and then you don’t feel tire going to bed? What was you starting window for going to bed? I have issues sleeping till the wake up time. I always now seem to wake up before my alarm for about an hr to 45 mins. I toss and turn wanting to fall back asleep but it adds to frustration and surge of adrenaline which is super uncomfortable. I get out of bed and there is no point to go back to sleep because is so close to my wake up time. Do you sleep till your wake up time? If not, what do you do? How do you handle nights that are not good? I need a lot of motivation right now. Any support and advice will be much appreciated. I just want to be able to feel normal again. Thanks

[AKG]

Hi Recovery,
I know exactly how you feel, I was at the same stage at around week 7/8, I would have a few really good nights and think that I was finally getting back to normal and then I’d have a night with no sleep or only a couple of hours sleep and feel like I was back to square one. For me, things didn’t really start to get into a more normal sleeping pattern until around week 11/12 and even then I was having one challenging night per week so please hang in there, you will get there. I also felt like SR/SC maybe wasn’t working for me and that I’d have to try a different approach such as mindfulness but I think that it just takes longer for some people to get there.

My sleep window was always 6 hours (12.30pm-6.30am), I tried reducing it to 5.5 hours a few times but would find that by the time it got to 1.00am I was completely over-tired and wired so that 5.5 hours window didn’t work for me. Most of the time I would feel really sleepy leading up to my sleep window, struggling with micro sleeps and keeping myself awake but as soon as I would go and lie in bed and about to drift off, my brain would wake me up! My issue was sleep onset insomnia but when I started SR I also struggled with sleep maintenance. On the days that I would wake up too early, if I couldn’t lie in bed and relax I would either take a comfy blanket and pillow out to the couch and relax and watch TV or if I was motivated enough would go out for a walk, I just made sure that if I was ever feeling frustrated in bed that I didn’t stay in bed while I was feeling angry/frustrated.

On the days when I’d had little or no sleep I found that keeping busy and also doing some kind of exercise really helped me, even if it’s just going for a 30 minute walk. I also started to think after a while that even if I only had 1-3 hours sleep, that is still better than having no sleep! Which helped my mind set quite a bit.

From my experience, I think the CBT-I process is not a progressive one, it’s a process that has a lot of ups and downs and very slowly you make progress – you will get there!

[Recovery]

Thank you for the encouragement AKG. It is a little reassuring to hear that im not alone in this process. So when you get in bed and awake what kind of mindfulness strategies do you have. How long do you start to regain some confidence about not worrying about sleep. So what is your window now. Have you been able to increase your duration and sleep till the wake up time? Im hoping that i will be able to increase my time soon and be able to expand and sleep through my window. Thanks

[AKG]

You are definitely not alone in this process.

I picked up a few mindfulness tips along the way from reading a lot and found that the techniques that worked the best for me were every night when it would come time for me to relax, I would listen to a track from the app My Life, I did the progressive relaxation and body scan ones quite a bit as I found that they helped me unwind a lot and when I felt my anxiety starting to get the better of me I would take deep breaths and try and focus on my breathing as much as possible. I also saw a chiropractor a few times as they do a lot of cranial work which also helped me unwind. I also now set aside time every afternoon/evening at the end of my work day to think through my day and process everything that had taken place and write down anything outstanding/that I needed to address so that I wasn’t processing it all when I got in to bed at night time. Then when I woke up in the middle of the night and started thinking/stressing about those things I would think to myself that it’s not time to think about that now as I have an allotted time every day to think about those things – it takes a little while to get used to thinking like this but does work eventually.

I started to gain confidence little by little as my sleep started improving and then with that comes the thinking that it doesn’t matter if you have a bad night because you will eventually sleep and like Martin says, I realised that I could cope and get through a day even if I’d had a really bad nights sleep. Once you can get into this mindset (that it doesn’t matter and you can cope) I find that helps so much!

I have increased my sleep window now to 11pm-6.30am – I still wake up 1-2 times per night to go to the bathroom but I never look at the time and try not to start thinking about anything when I do get up and fall straight back to sleep. If I do wake up earlier I just get up and start my day then.

I was quite disciplined with the sleep control in the beginning, I would get up and down every 30 minutes (I would read when I got up) but at around 10 weeks I found that getting up and down stopped working for me as well so would just sit on the edge of my bed and stare into the darkness (for 10/15 mins) which I found at that point worked really well for me.

You will get there soon.

[Martin Reed]

Thank you so much for taking the time to come to the forum and share your success story, AKG — and for returning to offer support and reassurance to others!

I am so glad that after four weeks of implementing sleep restriction and stimulus control you didn’t give in to the temptation to start taking medication! Instead, you battled on and — after 10 weeks(!) — you were enjoying significant improvements in your sleep.

I am particularly grateful for the fact you shared that you experienced ups and downs along the way because progress is rarely linear. Goodness me, imagine if you had thrown in the towel during those setback at Week 5 or Week 7 — you wouldn’t be in the great position you are in today!

All the improvements you are enjoying are down to your own commitment, tenacity, and natural ability to sleep! I hope you give yourself credit for just how far you have come — because your progress is a direct result of your own efforts!

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If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.

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