[Dreyo86]

I am going to start 1am-6am sleep window, but getting out of bed and wandering round the house waking everyone else up is not ideal. If I go to my desk in my room is this suffice? WHen I read a book my thoughts race incredibly fast and the anxiety only gets worse, I sometimes sketch, but the same problem. The only thing that reduces thoughts slightly is literally going on youtube. I have my screen on warm (orange) light and lowest light intensity possible, its so dim i can barely see it. Is this a problem? I need help really bad as I’m sleeping around 2 hours max every night and my mental health is crushed which cripples me through the day, stopping me from having any life at all.
Thanks
Andrew

[Chee2308]

Hello
Firstly, a SW of only 5 hours is too short. It increases the pressure to sleep in such a short window and could worsen your sleep anxiety. An ideal starting point is at least 5.5 hours. But 6 hours is preferable and is more suitable for most people.

In regards to your question about stimulus control, revert back to those times before your insomnia started when you couldn’t sleep and what did you do then? Then use this as a guide. If you didn’t get up from bed, then you don’t need to now. Your ability to sleep never changed. It’s your thoughts towards sleep that has. You are therefore reacting to a set of thoughts inside your head, or over-reacting in this instance. You are taking your mere thoughts way more seriously than you need to.

Most people recover when they start to take their insomnia less seriously and stopped chasing sleep. Getting more sleep just isn’t the cure. The real cure is being okay with any amount of sleep you get. It is no longer living with the phobia of poor sleep or letting this control every aspect of your life. Best wishes and good luck to you.

[Dreyo86]

Being OK with 2 hours or non refreshing sleep is something hard to stomach. No one should have to accept this especially when it makes me feel ill all day everyday and has destroyed my life.

[Chee2308]

I’m not sure if you mean 2 hours every complete 24 hours. Maybe you mean you only get 2 hours during the night in a specific time interval (eg 1-6am) but you are also sleeping on other times during the day as well or sleeping in and over your sleep window, taking naps or whatever. Of course if you engage in any of these, it will kill your sleep drive when your sleep window arrives.

I also went over your past posts on this forum and note that you have had insomnia for over what, 15 years??? Maybe your thoughts about sleep and insomnia are so entrenched that it’s almost impossible to overcome or you are just not convinced you can recover at all. The human mind is a powerful machine. It can make you believe anything, even blatant falsehoods, outright lies and hoaxes. Especially if you have had this for so long. For me, I am no longer afraid of poor sleep, and sleep takes up less and less of my mind that it’s almost gone completely and along with it, my sleepless nights. I don’t lose sleep over sleep anymore and from where I am now, it’s just not worth it. There are many other things more deserving of my attention. Sleep has become a chore and a waste of time in a sense. It exists only out of convenience and not necessity and I just do the least that I can get away with. Nonetheless, I wish the best. You are probably never going to get far if you continue to fear poor sleep and the role it allegedly plays in your life.

[Martin Reed]

Hello Andrew and welcome to the forum!

I think it’s probably going to be hard to be OK with getting two hours of sleep, right? What can be a more useful approach might be to practice accepting that you simply cannot make yourself get a certain amount of sleep — and that the more you try to do that, the more you might end up tangled up in a struggle that can end up making things even more difficult.

What’s your goal/intent when it comes to getting out of bed during the night? What are you trying to achieve by doing that?

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