[NWSleepy]

Thank you again, Martin, for all of your wonderful online resources. I was laid off due to COVID and cannot sign up to work with you but am so grateful for your website and podcast. I have also found the free app from the Veterans Administration — CBT-i Coach — to be invaluable. I also appreciate the chance to contribute to this forum on a weekly basis.

I have been restricting my sleep for one month and I am seeing great improvements in my ability to fall asleep more quickly and when I do wake up at night, I am able to fall back to sleep fairly quickly — give or take a few nights.
I come to this program as someone who took 30min-90min naps every day of my life and stayed in bed 10 -12 hours as a light sleeper or non-sleeper. It took me nearly 2 hours to fall asleep every night. I have never experienced excessive insomnia (only sleeping 2 – 3 hours a night, never being able to fall asleep) but I have felt that I was spending half my life in bed for all my life without feeling rested and I really wanted to turn that around.

Since I am self-directing with CBT-i, I’m finding it hard to decide when and how much time to add to my sleep window. Right now my sleep window is, according to the VA app, 11:17 pm – 7:00 am.

Despite what may seem a lot of time in bed, I am still very sleepy during the day. I may be someone who needs more than 8 hours of sleep a night — not sure. I want to increase my sleep window but I don’t want to blow all of the sleep drive building I’ve done over the last month.

After listening to several of Martin’s podcasts, I think I will try lights out 15min sooner for a week and see what happens. I may just be at the experimental stage. But I am so proud of myself for what I’ve accomplished. I never thought I could get through a day without a nap and now I’ve gone a whole month.
Thank you everyone for your success stories!

[Martin Reed]

This is so great to hear! I think your plan of adding 15 minutes to your sleep window and giving yourself a week or so to assess whether the change was helpful is a great plan!

Thank you for sharing your story — it sounds as though you’re doing great!

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