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Steve what strength Melatonin did you try? I tried it awhile back, when I was probably too stressed with lack of sleep for it to be effective. Tried it again recently – 2 mg – and it worked a treat, I got many nights of 7 – 8 hours. BUT had to quit because it caused my heart rhythm to become a little irregular and that is not fun.
PS. Martin is also available for private clients, something I’ve considered, see the site. One area I feel let down by the sleep professionals I’ve seen over the past 3 years is that there is no ongoing support: you make an appointment to see them weeks in advance, you see them, then if you want to see them again you need to wait weeks to get to see them again. In the meantime, your sleep pattern deteriorates further or you develop bad habits which makes it all worse.
Hi Edgar,
I’m so sorry you are feeling like this, it sure does suck energy from you. I cannot imagine how you feel at school during the day. I am the same, I get tired and wired, not sleepy. How long have you been taking Valium? It is not for long term use, so please be careful. I was on it for 3 months, but weaned off it as I didn’t want to be on drugs for the rest of my life.
I am sure that Martin will reply to your post, have you read all the information on the site?
One thing that jumped out at me is that you have been here before AND WON! So you can beat it. I have to think the same, I have been able to sleep well before, it’s just that our minds are so powerful we can think that there’s something wrong when there isn’t. I was convinced that there was something wrong with my brain, that I had a tumour or something. I had a lot of headaches, now I think they were just due to lack of sleep. My Dr ordered an MRI and guess what – they found nothing wrong!
Take some time to read the testimonials on the site, there are some stories there that give you a lot of hope. And keep posting on here, we will all try to help each other!
Hi Matt, I thought I’d jump in here to say if you’re really very stressed then you may need to see your Dr about some short term anti anxiety meds to simply help you reach the point where you can BEGIN to be constructive about improving your sleep.
This was my experience last July. After a bad reaction to some insomnia meds (Belsomra) prescribed by my sleep specialist I landed up in hospital with heart arrhythmia. Turns out the extra beats were benign, there were just around 20,000 of them, and my heart was sound. But of course that experience was very frightening and I ended up developing acute anxiety. I was a crazy lady, I thought I was going to die, I wanted to just fall on the floor and turn to dust. My husband put in an emergency call to my sleep specialist and he wrote a prescription for Valium (Diazepam). Now this stuff is not great for long term use as it is addictive and I didn’t want to be on it but it was a life saver, it reduced my anxiety to the point where I could think about going to bed and getting some sleep. He also prescribed an anti depressant Mirtazepine which in low doses helps with sleep. Anyway, I did not want to be on any more drugs ( I hate prescription meds as a rule) BUT I saw this as a holding pattern. After 3 months of mostly reasonable sleep I weaned myself of the Valium, all good, tapered over a few weeks (was only on 5mg to begin with). Then after that I tapered off the Mirtazepine . This was not so easy, I got hit with rebound insomnia, it was pretty awful for a few weeks.
Anyway, fast forward a couple more months until April this year when I tried out Melatonin, which is another sleep aid (although not addictive like the others above). Unfortunately this affected my heart for some strange reason too (although it was great for sleep) so I had to quit it after a couple of weeks.
SO here I am today, trying not to get anxious at bedtime, trying to get to the point where I feel sleepy (this is hard) and trying out Martin’s plan for SR. The only hitch now is that my cardiologist wanted me to quit some other medication that hasn’t caused any problems in 6 – 7 years and now that I’ve stopped it I can really feel my heart pounding at times. All of this is not good for my anxiety levels I can tell you! I am seeing my women’s health Dr tomorrow so I will ask for her guidance.
I hope that sharing my story it will help you, I definitely think that you should see your Dr about your anxiety levels. They can be so high that they are counter-productive as I experienced last year.
Hi Chirppy,
I hear you on the worry you have about returning to how you were last year. I too had a health scare in 2018 which spun me into acute anxiety and of course wrecked my sleep. I even had to miss an overseas holiday with my family, I just could NOT get on that plane and be stuck in it for 12 hours.
But I have to say 5 – 8 hours a night is awesome! Of course 2 hrs is not ideal, and I’m struggling a little today b/c that’s all I got last night. However I just wanted to say that stay away from ideals of “I need x hours to function” and treat it as a progressive thing: you WILL steadily gain confidence in yourself and your sleep will improve as a result. I’ve let go of thinking I ‘need’ 8 hours, and it’s been quite liberating. Now I’m just concentrating on staying relaxed and trying to stay positive. And if I don’t get sleep one night, then I say ‘tonight is another night’.
Martin had this to say in a recent email on the myth of how much sleep we need:
“So many of us believe that we need eight hours of sleep. It has become the ‘holy grail’ — something we are told we should all strive for. This has led to many of us thinking that if we don’t get eight hours of sleep, something is wrong.
This leads to sleep-related worry, activates the arousal system, and makes sleep more difficult.
The most frustrating thing about this is the fact that very few of us actually need eight hours of sleep.
The truth of the matter is, we all require varying amounts of sleep. The amount of sleep you need to feel refreshed and at your best is likely very different to the amount of sleep I need.”
Hi Martin, thanks for your reply, yes the 2 sleep psychologists I saw did address all my thoughts on sleep, how much I thought I “should” have, how I felt if I didn’t sleep etc, also stimulus control, sleep hygiene, relaxation etc. Probably the only area they didn’t cover was sleep restriction.
I had read about SR and now that I’ve also read what you’ve got to say on the subject I think it was an area that I could’ve benefitted from. I can see now that for a couple of years at least I’ve probably been going to bed too early. Although until April this year I could fall asleep pretty well straight away, then a big gap would open in the night, so going to bed at 10.30pm kind of made sense as I thought that was when I was ‘tired’ as I’d fall asleep straight away.
Hi Steve,
I second your preparations for when you get out of bed! I find that if I have it all arranged, then it eases the frustration quite a lot. You just get out of bed and move to the new phase for awhile. I also find it useful not to ‘disturb’ my body too much – I got this from my restorative yoga teacher. I basically move slowly, do not leap out of bed, I try to keep myself as quiet as possible. I even go to the bathroom in the dark, I know my house so well now I don’t really need the lights, and in the dark it’s easier to remain calm.
I also second Deb’s info about meds for temporarily reducing the anxiety. I’m going to talk to my Dr this week about this. I just need to remove some of the anxiety around bedtime. I know I can get better sleep, I’ve done it before, it’s a matter of gaining the confidence to be able to do it again.
agree with Roy, it’s probably very light sleep, I’ve had it too. You have the sense of being a little bit out of it, but you know that you know that, so you know that you cannot be asleep! If that makes sense. Because you have the awareness, you are not asleep, even though it can be quite comfortable being in that state, it’s not sleep. You should probably get up.
Hi there, I am in that situation too. I’ve been using Imovane, a sleeping pill, a couple of times a week since February. It’s been my ‘backstop’ for when I had too many bad nights in a row. But I have only in the past few days started to delay my bedtime, but I’m finding I am using Imovane too frequently and I don’t want to get a dependence. I have thought of going back on Valium (Diazepam) which I was prescribed last year, used for 3 months. It got me over the worst anxiety that I developed after a bad reaction to a new insomnia medication Belsomra that saw me hospitalised with heart arrhythmia. It totally freaked me out and of course the anxiety that resulted completely wrecked my sleep.
My sleep specialist at the time prescribed Valium at bedtime for anxiety about sleeping and Mirtazepine (an anti-depressant that at low doses can help with sleep). I was on both these for 3 – 4 months only. I didn’t want to stay on them as my sleep did not improve that greatly – I still had a big gap in the middle of the night – and I don’t really like the side effects of the stuff. So I tapered off both around the start of this year. Now trying other methods to train myself to get back to sleep, or create the ideal conditions so that sleep will flow!
Maybe this is a question for your Dr. though? I’m certainly going to ask my Dr on Tuesday if I can start back on low dose Valium, just to ease the anxiety around bedtime. I know I can taper off this fairly easily, and I’d like to think that I could gradually ease off it week by week once I gain confidence in my sleep and start to build it up. Slowly and steadily I will improve my sleep.
Thanks Steve,
I didn’t know that about eyesight but I try not to focus (haha) on the negatives as it just increases your anxiety levels.
We both had a rotten night, I too was sleepy when I went to bed but zing! that was it, complete change. I got up a couple of times and read, back to bed for same-same: listening to my relaxation clips (from YouTube, saved in Favourites, with phone brightness turned off). I think maybe I got one sleep cycle in from 5am, the rest of the time I just rested. It’s weird that I am SO SO tired but I feel I’ve forgotten how to fall asleep.
For your anxiety, I’d STRONGLY recommend at least 2 sessions of 20 mins a day. More if you can make it. I so wish that I’d been told that, learning to relax is absolutely vital with all this. There’s a ton of clips on the internet, pick one, and sit somewhere comfortable, close your eyes and just listen to the voice (pick a guided meditation one, not simply music). Be prepared to have all these thoughts come into your brain, it will be busy! A good analogy is that meditation (or mindfulness) is like sitting on a riverbank, with the river (your thoughts) rushing by. The key is to stay centred on the bank and not engage with the current, just let the thoughts drift on by.
I’m thinking of sleep restriction tonight, go to bed at midnight, instead of the 10.30pm. I get up at 6.30am so an 8 hour window is too much.
Hi Steve, thanks for your reply, how long have you been struggling with insomnia? I found Mirtazepine hell to get off, I’d been on it for around 4 months, low dose but even with that it was the hardest thing. How long were you on it for ?
I’ve done a tonne of sleep hygiene, relaxation, seen sleep psychologists over past 3 years, even had a sleep study done, and an MRI of my brain – I was convinced that the headaches I get (probably from not getting enough sleep) were indicators of something more sinister!
I’m happy with the course so far (day 2) but will see how I go. My biggest problem is that if I don’t sleep well then my heart arcs up and that just increases my anxiety so sleep restriction is a bit tricky. I swear some nights I could stay awake all night, or I’m just dozing.
best wishes with it all, I hope you’re sorted soon!
