[SleepWorry]

I am falling asleep every night (even though its taking around an hour when it used to take 20 mins tops), but I am waking up almost every 2 to 3 hours on the dot. I am able to eventually fall back asleep, rinse and repeat until I have to get up. For example last night I slept around a combined 8 hours but it was something like 4 hours of sleep, then wake, 2 hours of sleep, wake, 2 hours, wake up. I do not feel rested at all, but its better than nothing I guess. My other question is i’ve been taking OTC melatonin 3mg every single night before bed for about 3 months now, and i’m starting to wonder at this point if that is actually doing me more harm than good as I’ve read it makes people wake up a lot. I don’t know what is going on, i’m a healthy 30 year old male, don’t drink or smoke, never had sleep issues growing up, i work out daily, practice good sleep hygiene, I get off the phone, take magnesium supplements, and am spiraling out of control with insomnia starting about a week and a half ago. I am currently a bit stressed at work (working a lot more hours than usual + short handed + working in health care during pandemic) and I do have a history of anxiety problems so that could be it. Everything was going fine until I had one bad night 2 saturdays ago, it took me about 3 hours to go to sleep, this triggered me to the next day where I was dwelling on sleep all day, and getting physical symptoms of anxiety like not being able to eat, shaky, negative thoughts, confusion, making small mistakes I usually never make. I’m worried I’m going to be stuck like this forever, its making my life extremely difficult in a time when i need to be at 100%.

[Jaran]

Hello @sleepworry. Have you considered quitting or tapering off the melatonin to see if that helps?

If you want to learn more about sleep, I’d recommend starting at the *Resources* menu at the top of this page. First, there are Podcasts. Each is roughly 45 minutes, and you can tell from the titles which might interest you most. I gained a lot of insight and confidence from watching those.

Also under the Resources menu, there are excellent descriptions of CBTI and its main components.

Finally, the last bullet under the Resources menu is a free two week insomnia training. It’s an email training, totally free, and can be a great place to start for some people.

And, you can also sign up to work with Martin individually online or by phone.

Best wishes!

[Author]

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