[Sabikun2007]

How it started:
It started in this February when i shifted to a new place. I suddenly decided to refix my sleeping schedule and that actually where i made a big mistake..
I was always a poor sleeper but never worried or gor anxious while trying to sleep and never complained.
Bt recently i found myself thinking about it all day long and it is taking almost every fun of life.
What brought me here:
Afte searching so many cures in google i became more frustrated and it seems like a never ending problem for me. I thought of giving it a try. Who knows it might just help.
My sleep related worries:
After passing a bed night i start craving for a good night sleep to compensate that and thats where i ruin my day time mood and everything. My anxiety about sleep loss and how sleep loss will cause any other physical and mental desease is the major problem i think. Its always my mind that is out of control as well as sleep. I am living in a country where we lack mental health care support a lot. There is none who can help to deal this isue

[Chee2308]

Hello and welcome to this forum!

Your sleep problem is a very common and classic one. Almost every insomniac’s nightmare started like this.

The root of every insomnia is almost always the overthinking, overdoing and over-catastrophizing over lack of sleep. I and many others are here to tell you there’s nothing wrong with the occasional sleepless night or with your sleep system. Believing there’s a problem when there’s actually none is the main problem.

Keep your sleeping hours regular, get out and into bed at the same time every night. This is the core of cbti and the most practical step to get out of insomnia. Be very patient, disciplined and super compassionate on yourself. Because this will take some time to get back to normal. How long will depend on your personality and patience. Remember nobody is judging your sleep except yourself. Never measure success or failure based on just one night. One poor night never means your future nights are doomed, on the contrary, after poor sleep, it means good sleep is always just around the corner. Because these polar opposites are connected together and form opposite sides of the same coin.

The other aspect is the mental part, which is the fear and over-catastrophizing. Try to remind yourself these are only thoughts and don’t shut them out. Allow them to form in the mind and experiment with yourself to see if they’re really true. As you get better, most people will start growing out of them. Then they just don’t bother you anymore because there’s no shred of truth in them at all. All this fear has been a hoax all along.

Toward the end of your recovery, try to see that true recovery is never about getting good sleep every night. It is your response and mindset to poor nights. If bad nights happen, which they almost always do occasionally, but you’re no longer bothered at all, not compelled to ask many questions and try to seek quick fixes, or actively try to avoid them, then congratulations, you’re cured! True recovery is not living in fear of poor sleep. Good luck.

[Sabikun2007]

Yes i acknowledge the fact that true recovery is not getting better sleep EVERYNIGHT.
I want to ask a question, whenever i come across any comment coming from someone with insomnia like “they have not slept for days after days, seven days, they never fall asleep without med” i got panicked and start to think all day like “it might happen to me too” and “i might have also loosing my sleeping ability like them” then my insomnia goes worse..
Is this kind of claim is accurate? Or they just exaggerate their situation.
Please tell me they are exaggerating

[Chee2308]

Why is it relevant what other people say? Do you even know them personally? Are you absolutely sure that your circumstances are identical? If a child told you there’re monsters in the closet that are keeping him awake, would you take that seriously? Yet, that’s exactly what you are doing with these “stories”.

What matters is what you truly believe in. Ultimately, do you trust your own body? Sleeping is really like eating or breathing. To your body, they are no different. All these are core biological processes which your body needs to do to stay alive. Try to go on days without eating or breathing, is it possible to forget how to eat or breathe? How does that even work? Eating is as easy as putting food in your mouth while to breathe, all you need to do is just inhale. For sleep, the act of going to bed is akin to putting food into your mouth. It’s your overprotective mind that’s feeding you with unnecessary and unhelpful information. But even your mind can be wrong!

Please stay off the forums if you haven’t developed the ability to independently evaluate the info. Or, if you insist, take everything with a grain of salt. Otherwise, you will only suffer needlessly. As it doesn’t matter what you read or do in regards to sleep, your body’s sleep system will kick in when you have been awake long enough, every single time! Going to bed regularly helps keep that system healthy. Ignore everything else because they’re truly irrelevant. If you are trying to sleep, making your mind go into overthinking mode by reading irrelevant stuff is probably the last thing you want to do. Stay off them, at least for a while. Then when you’ve recovered, you’ll probably laugh at them and yourself for being so ludicrous. A lot of the stuff are rubbish. All this while, all you ever did was hoodwinking and scaring yourself with a set of your own thoughts by imagining all these worse-case senarios which haven’t even happened yet, if at all!

[Sabikun2007]

I have been taking mirtazepin for 3 months. Now i somehow built a belief that this medicine put me to sleep. I want to break the belief and last night did not take it and i got no sleep at all.
I keep my wake up time consistent and my bed time vary from time to time.
So watched on a yt video where martin said with med cbti doesn’t work cz i already gave power to medication and have almost zero confidence on my ability sleep.
So what should i do now??
I want to stay committed yet the fear is intense about giving up on pill.

[Chee2308]

It’s always the fear of poor sleep that’s driving everything. Essentially the stress over not getting sufficient quality sleep is enough to keep you awake. This has nothing to do with cbti, taking meds or whatever. As long as you continue to have fear, you will continue to have sleeping problems on and off, here and there. But with or without fear, some form of sleep will still happen. No matter how afraid you are, your sleep system will continue to work to give you the minimum sleep you need to survive, regardless of what you do, or what you take. This means you WILL sleep but you would just carry this fear with you all the time over nothing. Think about why you need to fear poor sleep so much. Is it because you are scared of having health problems, dying, feeling tired or whatever? Then find out if it’s really true. It’s almost always false, having little sleep is harmless. You may feel a bit more tired, or feel sleepy all the time (which shows your sleep system is perfectly functional!) but you won’t die or have any kind of health problems.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Chee2308.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Chee2308.

[Sabikun2007]

Since last three months i have been taking pill with NO SKIP.
So being able to sleep (no matter how many hours) with no pill will be a bigger breakthrough for me i think.
Thanks for encouraging by saying “with or without fear some form of sleep will occur”
I am truly looking forward to that some form sleep without pill.
Day 1 passed by.
Lets face day 2 with ‘no trying to take nap’

[Author]

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