[Borgesbi]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been on sleep restriction for the past 7 weeks and started seeing some improvement only 6 weeks into it – rough journey! I can’t say how much anger and frustration I have felt through the process (I know, not helpful at all), but having nights where I sleep 5 hours straight without waking up at all brings me a smile from ear to ear!

My question is: once we start seeing improvements, is it normal to still have bad nights of sleep sometimes even though we are doing everything right? Is there an explanation for why it happens when we are doing everything right? Will this eventually go away as well?

I was beyond excited that I got quite a few “good” nights of sleep (5 hours straight), and even though I did everything right as usual, last night I got only 2 hours of sleep in total and the rest of the night I was in a very light sleep state (between asleep and awake, a state very familiar to me but hadn’t happened in a while).

This brought a lot of frustration and anger when I had to get up in the morning. The thinking was : “I had been sleeping so much better the past few days, I did everything as usual,  had so much sleep pressure that I couldn’t keep my eyes open while standing up last night. And STILL I didn’t sleep much all night even though it had been working well the past week? Why, why, why?”

Has anyone gone through this and has any advice?

[Steve]

Hi Borgesbi. Yes, I have heard that relapses will occur even after having weeks or months of good sleep. That’s why part of Martin’s paid course is how to deal with them. I am just beginning my third week of SR and it is frustrating to have a good night of sleep only to be followed by a bad night. And yes, I have done everything right and was exhausted when my SW began and I still couldn’t sleep. So I know what you are going through. The only thing we can do is keep trying. I know that doesn’t help much but try not to let the frustration get to you.

[Steve]

Borgesbi – I see you are not a paying client of Martin’s. Where did you learn how to do SR? Martin’s free course? Are you also practicing Stimulus Control where you get out of bed after 30 minutes if you can’t fall asleep?

[Borgesbi]

Thank you for your response, Steve. It’s good to know that it is normal to have these relapses. I’m working on the frustration piece, usually it will last a little while and I eventually snap out of it.

I did CBTI with a therapist in person for the past 7 weeks and didn’t appreciate how she was handling things but learned the techniques with her. Now I’m doing Martin’s free course and applying what I learned before + what Martin suggests in the free course.

 

As for SC, I try my best to get out of bed when I’m not falling asleep, but a lot of times what happens is that I enter this weird state: I keep coming in and out of stage 1 or 2 of sleep which fools me and keeps me in bed, and sometimes this will go on all night – it’s horrible.  I stay in bed because I’m not awake/conscious enough to get out. If I am wide awake though, I do get out of bed as soon as possible  – I did it last night when I went to sleep and couldn’t fall asleep (even though sleep pressure was super strong). *Sigh…

[Steve]

Let me ask you something Borgesbi. Do you find that right now you are getting less sleep doing SR than before you started SR? I know I am but I have read where a lot of people get less sleep after they started SR than before. It takes awhile to start getting more sleep. Just curious if that’s happening to you.

[Borgesbi]

Yup, it was the case for the first six weeks of SR, only this past week I was able to get more sleep again (5 hours)

[Steve]

I notice another way I’m regressing as well. I did get 4 hours of sleep last night but it was fragmented. I am not getting my sleep in one chunk like I did a lot of times last week. I felt better when I got my sleep in large blocks. Another thing I noticed is that when I did awake a couple times during the night, I didn’t know where I was and was confused. I probably awoke from a deep sleep. I hate to wake up from them as I think I get so little. I think I need to adjust my wind down routine as I am doing it for too long. I might be nodding off in the chair and not realizing it which is destroying my sleep drive. Hopefully, I can start sleeping longer as well as get the sleep in one chunk.

One other thing I noticed last night is that Martin said we could read in bed rather than get out of it if we couldn’t sleep. Reading in bed is not as good as getting out of it but better than staying in it and tossing and turning. So I put my book by my nightstand and was prepared to get up and read in bed. However, I didn’t have to. I woke up a couple times during the night but managed to get back to sleep before I would have had to get up out of bed.

[Borgesbi]

Steve,

You are still so in the beginning and you are actually having some pretty good nights of sleep compared to mine when I was in my third/fourth week – it was intense! I think it’s still too early to have any change well established – let’s remind each other to be patient with the process, we both need that: compassion with our insomnia 🙂

I think I’m getting the hang of this – the reality (at least for me) is that it will really take quite a few months of doing this to re-set the body’s sleeping system entirely. It has been so out of whack for the past 2 years, it makes sense that it takes a long time to really improve. I wish they didn’t say that people get better in 6-8 weeks of CBTI because that’s the window it took me just to see small improvements that are not even well established yet. To see significant and more permanent change, I’m assuming (for me) it will take around 6 months (with good improvements on the way there, hopefully). I was falling asleep very quickly for the past few weeks, and this week I’m taking at least 1 hour to fall asleep, so looks like the improvements come and go for a while until they’re more permanent.

I love the idea of reading a book in the middle of the night, instead of getting up – I find it relaxing and usually helps me fall asleep. If I’m up in the middle of the night I might try it!

[delv-x]

My question is: once we start seeing improvements, is it normal to still have bad nights of sleep sometimes even though we are doing everything right? Is there an explanation for why it happens when we are doing everything right? Will this eventually go away as well?

is it normal to still have bad nights of sleep sometimes even though we are doing everything right? Yes, no one is a perfect sleeper. It is expected everyone will have bad nights.

Is there an explanation for why it happens when we are doing everything right? That I can’t answer but wish I could. Perhaps it’s just your body/mind needs more time or there were external factors (room too hot, big presentation, stress, anxiety)

Will this eventually go away as well? No, BUT.. the frequency should be less and less. In other words, if you are having 75% poor nights, with consistency it may be down to 5-10% and that may mean one or two semi poor nights that recover quickly. Everyone is different and each night is different.

[Steve]

Hi delv – Yes, Martin says that eventually, the bad nights will become less and less until they go away as well. It just takes awhile to retrain your body. And I guess you are right that an unanticipated stress might make you regress. It’s how you handle it that tells if the insomnia comes back. After all, good sleepers have a bad night or two due to stress as well so it’s just not us poor sleepers.

I agree with you Borgesbi – I wish that a lot of people would stop saying they get better after 6 to 8 weeks because for most people, that’s not the correct time frame. I also am on Sleepio and their graduates are saying the same thing as you. They had insomnia for years and it is taking them a year or two in order to get good sleep and they STILL have a bad night or two every week. One woman I talk to is depressed because she has been in their program since this past January and while she has seen some improvement, she still has an SW of 5.5 hours, which is what she started at.

As for me? I just want to be able to get up and go to work and not have to fight to concentrate or fight to keep from falling asleep at my desk. I don’t know if that will ever happen but that is my goal.

[Borgesbi]

Oh, and I also get tons of micro sleep in the last hour of being awake, and sometimes it affects my falling asleep, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s a hard one to control – even if I’m sitting on the floor without my back resting on anything, I’ll still doze off.  I also don’t like to get myself wide awake to keep from micro sleeps happening because I want the body and mind to be in that state of relaxation/sleepiness for when I get in bed. It’s contradictory…not sure what to do about it.

[Steve]

Yeah, I get those microsleeps all the time and there is nothing I can do about it. A lot of times I will be sitting at my desk at work and the next thing I know, I pop awake. I’ve only been out for less than 10 seconds, if that, but they are just annoying. And yes they happen in the evening a lot also. I also sit on the floor although I have my back resting against the couch and the microsleeps will happen. I have often wondered how much of my sleep drive I have lost to them.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Steve.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Steve.

[frozensun]

Is there an online course for sleep restriction therapy,cuz I want to try my luck?

[Steve]

Go to the menu at the top of the page under “Resources” and click on it. You will see an item on the free sleep training course. I took it and I liked it.

[Martin Reed]

Hello Borgesbi

Congratulations on the progress you have been making! Your six-week commitment is starting to pay dividends! It is completely normal to continue to experience bad nights of sleep from time to time — because everyone has a bad night of sleep from time to time!

In my experience, when clients go through a course of CBT-I they will typically begin to enjoy more nights of good sleep but one or two “holdout” nights will remain for quite some time. It’s so important to focus your attention on all the good nights rather than the infrequent bad nights and to remain consistent with the techniques that you know are effective.

The more consistent you are with CBT-I techniques, the more consistent your sleep will become. I recorded a short video about these “holdout” nights here: What to do when you still have some bad nights of sleep during/after a course of CBT for insomnia.

I hope this helps.

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