[Karmamiakat]

I learned from Martin that waking up in the middle of the night several times is apart of the sleep cycle and learn to accept it and thus for two weeks been sleeping good with functioning fine. These past two days though I’ve woken up around 2AM and not gone back to sleep despite relaxing accepting things. The first of the two days I only managed to get 2 and half hours roughly. I got a little more last night by going to bed at 10 AM and waking up around 2 giving myself at least 4 hours. I tried to relax in bed and try to even get light sleep but my anxiety went through the charts today and felt weak and sick, though I think that’s more to do with my anxiety than just lack of sleep.

It doesn’t help that my parents dog started barking (she does these light “woofs” to let my parents know they need to let her out or in) and that drove me crazy and upset.

I also tried doing that sleep diary thing but thing is I’m not good at accumulating all the numbers and I have mild autism so it makes things like that a little bit hard to follow and understand.

[Karmamiakat]

Also female I’m 35
Fairly decent weight
I run around outside a lot and do a little bit of punching (like boxing but not like professional or anything. I do it when I’m frustrated and also to strengthen my arms) I did a little bit of that last night because I go frustrated not being able to sleep and because of the dog. She’s old and sleeps all day but gets restless sometimes.

I like to write stories and do roleplay and do digital art on a tablet. I don’t meditate or do any kind of breathing exercise though maybe I should look into that.

[Martin Reed]

I think you are close 😉

As you rightly pointed out, waking is a normal part of sleep.

If we find it hard to fall back to sleep when we wake, then there are a few possible explanations:

1. We don’t need more sleep,
2. We are putting pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep,
3. We are putting effort into making more sleep happen,
4. We are trying to fight or avoid any difficult thoughts and feelings that might be showing up.

You mentioned that you have, “not gone back to sleep despite relaxing accepting things”. This suggests that you might be practicing acceptance (not trying to fight or avoid wakefulness and the thoughts and feelings that can come with it) with the goal of making sleep happen.

If your experience tells you that sleep cannot be controlled through effort, then this might be what’s creating some struggle.

Acceptance is about building skill in experiencing difficult stuff that cannot be controlled with less struggle. Being more of a curious observer rather than an opponent.

The idea being that when we (understandably, by the way!) try to fight or avoid what cannot be controlled, we set ourselves up for a struggle, and all that difficult stuff we are battling becomes even more difficult.

Furthermore, when we are engaged in a war with all these invisible enemies, we are probably less likely to fall asleep!

So, a reminder of the goal of acceptance — choosing not to battle with what’s out of your control — and reframing your goal as ongoing practice to build skill in experiencing this stuff with less struggle might be useful.

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