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Chee2308 gratitude for your input. Yes, an endless fight, as you put it. When I do CBTi and continue taking medications, I am giving my brain two pieces of information. 1- I can do it and 2- I can’t do it/ And I’m stuck in the process, drying ice. Skating in the same place. I need to drop all efforts to help my sleep, otherwise CBTi won’t work. And knowing the bad nights can return but I don’t need to run off to meds again. Before long, everything falls into place. The sleep train gets back on track. At times when I feel alertness returning at night and adrenaline building, I go back to Martin’s course and reread all the notes and copies I made of the mentors’ posts here on the forum. It reduces the madness of fear, brings me closer to reality and reminds me of what I have to do. Usually when relapses happen, it’s because I’m already doing some things wrong and increasing my sleep effort. In other words: “Does wrong that goes wrong”. (sorry for english)
Hello Dbaldino!
I went through that too. I slept well after the course, I suddenly started waking up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. Despair was back! Getting anxious again to fulfill the commitments of the next day, she ended up taking a pill to get at least 2 hours of sleep. I realized with this that it gave gas to insomnia. In other words, she continued to direct my life, my days and nights. Every SOS pill I took she won the game and got stronger. And the cycle repeated itself. Whenever I take a medication, I give power to insomnia, and it starts stalking me again. This is all very subtle. It doesn’t make sense. It seems like a game that the more you lose, that is, you surrender and accept defeat and watch over it, the more at peace you are and sleep finally returns. With sleep everything works in reverse. I await news of how you got over it. (sorry for English)
Hello Godskid!
In my case, withdrawing the medicated drugs took a long time. Whenever I took it out, even slowly, in the end there was the insomnia with her eyes open waiting for me. I even got hospitalized for medication withdrawal. What I have to say is that to be successful, this withdrawal must be very slow. The body cannot perceive the withdrawal. There are withdrawal tables. As for Martin’s CBTi program, you could first try the free email course. It Works very well. Along with the videos and the Forum. I’m sure you can do it. In my case, I only started seeing results after 4 weeks. Good luck!
Hi Michael!
How nice to read this! I already said here in this forum, that I spent more or less the value of an apartment on treatments for insomnia. Expensive therapies, Cepaps, Hospitalizations, miracle drugs, etc… Anyway, an arsenal of things that only increased my wrong beliefs about sleep and increased my futile efforts to sleep better. 20 years of money, time and unhappiness and sleepless nights. Asked to die to at least sleep the eternal sleep of death. And CBTi in a few weeks saved my life. It was not easy. I suffered with RS and lack of faith, as I no longer believed that anything would work. But today I am free. I sleep soundly, between 6.5 and 7 hours a night. I never imagined this was possible without medications. I am so grateful to this forum and to Martin who has given me a quality of life that I never imagined possible. (sorry for english)
It is normal for periods of life change, and routine to increase our alertness. The body likes routine. What is predictable. Any change awakens us. So this should settle down. It’s just getting used to the brain. But it’s important to do the basics so this doesn’t perpetuate itself. That is: Sleeping with a fixed sleep window. Keep a fixed bedtime and wake up schedule. Just go to bed when you’re falling asleep. Do not take naps and especially forget about this subject. Do not value these passing difficulties. RS works but you have to give your body and brain some time to get used to it. In my case, I only had results after 3 weeks. The meds will only increase your lack of confidence that your body will recover. This is a very painful path. Give it up while there is still time. Have faith in CBTi, the only way to beat insomnia. Good luck!
Hello! I can imagine your degree of stress. It’s like sleeping with an alarm that you know is going to wake up. And wake up again and again. Sleeping with an alarm has always increased my anxiety a lot. The situation is quite complicated. First of all, don’t forget that taking naps during the day will make your night much worse. We tend to want to sleep when the baby sleeps, even during the day. If you do, you’re condemning yourself to sleepless nights. If you’ve been awake 18 hours straight during the day, you’ll go to sleep, wake up and fall back to sleep at night with ease. The secret is to accumulate hours of fatigue during the day. And when you wake up at night, don’t look at your watch. Read the posts on this precious forum, here you will have a lot of help. There are other mothers going through this problem.
Hello Lindsay!
I also used antidepressants, tranquilizers and everything you can think of to sleep. What I have to tell you, none of this works for insomnia. We need to address the cause, which is anxiety and fear. Medicines only work for a short while then we become addicted and stuck with something that just doesn’t work. But you need to be calm to get out of the 6-year addiction. The doctor will guide you with the slow withdrawal, while replacing the drug with CBTi. Having an insomnia coach will be very important. I did it, so you can do it too. Also read about ACT and Dr. Claire Weekes. This all took away all my anxiety and fear. Today I am totally free from all drug addictions. (Sorry for English)
Hello Friend! Welcome to this forum that helped me so much!
I can tell you it works. Applying CBTi techniques you will see your life change. It seems like a joke that we spent so many years suffering, trying a thousand things, wasting money and time and the solution was so simple. In just a few weeks you will achieve what you haven’t achieved all these years.
But for the magic to happen, you don’t have to try anything else. Just follow what Martin suggests and drop everything he’s used so far to put him to sleep. The first few weeks of sleep restriction are not easy but keep in mind that this soon passes.Also read the posts on this forum. It will help you see how so many have recovered and also follow the mentors’ directions. (Forgive me for the English)
Yes, CBD works in some cases and for a while for insomnia, but it doesn’t cure the cause. In a short time your body will also get used to it and you will again have your eyes open. Nothing will help, you can take and do whatever. Giving up on this fight is all you have to do. Do nothing. That’s the only way out. I also used everything you used and the desperation only increased. Besides all the money I spent. CBTi , ACT and Full Acceptance work. Try it. (sorry for English)
Well, here I think common sense comes in. In my case, as I’ve suffered accidents due to being without sleep and using tranquilizers, I don’t drive anymore if I haven’t slept. But this is becoming more and more rare as my sleep issues were resolved from this course on. However, it is very important to maintain a normal life even after a whole night without sleep. From the moment we prioritize insomnia and make it important, it will grow and become more and more powerful. (forgive me for the english)
Hello Fuzz!
Caffeine addiction is very complicated. It works like a drug. But 18 months is enough time for cleaning.
Night awakenings with hot flashes can be adrenaline + cortizole. Stress hormones may be waking you up and giving you these symptoms. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is your reaction to it. The more stressed and panicked you become when this happens, the more stress hormones your body will produce. And it is very difficult to break this cycle. Read more about ACT and also read Dr Claire Weekes who treats the symptoms produced by Fear and teaches you to get out of this cycle. Good luck! (FORGIVENESS FOR ENGLISH)Hello!
I’m going to point out here some things you’re doing that if I did too, I’d be condemning myself to go back to the hell of insomnia.
1- Sleep early.
2- Take a nap 20 min before the sleep window starts and + 45 min after waking up. In other words: Steal 1 hour and 5 minutes of sleep from the next night.
3- Audio Book. My brain interprets it as something I’m doing to help me sleep faster and make me more awake.
4- Getting out of bed. It only worked for a while, then My anxiety increased. Paradoxical Intent worked best for me.I applied CBTi techniques and corrected severe insomnia for over 20 years. But at first I had to be very obedient to Insomnia Coach’s guidelines. I learned a lot here on this forum with the guidance of the most experienced. I suggest you read it.
You can name the sleep disorder whatever you like. The insomnia tree has many branches. Night panic, anxiety, depression, obsession, apnea, etc… but the root of this tree is one. Fear. Once fear has released its damn adrenaline into our body, sleep simply goes away. And it becomes a cycle that repeats itself night after night. I suggest you read all the posts here on this forum and see the suggestions for cases like yours, learn more about insomnia and see what people are doing to break this cycle. Here you will learn a lot. This forum is very rich. I wish you success.
Hello Friend!
In my struggles with insomnia, treatments, psychiatrists, sleep specialists, hospitalizations, medicines etc… I was referred to CEPAP (a torture machine) for my sleep apnea. I bought it and it was very expensive. The thing blew in my nose all night long with an infernal noise. I couldn’t sleep with that at all. My anxiety level was 10000. I was taking more and more medications to get few and poor hours of sleep. Those were nights of utter despair. Nowadays I sleep very well applying the simple CBTi practices. I sleep too much. If I have apnea I don’t even know anymore. Does not bother me. The more things I put into my life to help me sleep, the more insomnia I got. (forgiveness for english)
Hi SevenOfNine!
I was very moved by his account. Losses are difficult to overcome and take time to calm the heart. I’ll tell you how I’m overcoming my insomnia and learning to live despite the losses.
The first thing I did was accept the things I can’t change. When I am in a state of acceptance, I release tensions. The fight ends. And that goes for everything: Insomnia, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, panic, grief, pain etc… that is, accepting everything that comes. I would even say, accept the unacceptable.
The second thing was the CBTi technique part. Corrected my sleep, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, night panic, finally, my whole life destroyed by insomnia I recovered with CBTi. But for that I had to give myself totally and follow everything I was taught. To start with, I weaned all the medicines, supplements, melatonin etc… Because nothing worked anymore, they made me dependent and increased my anxiety.A month ago I also suffered the pain of the loss of a loved one. Despite being in a lot of pain, I didn’t lose sleep one night. I take it one day at a time and apply what I learn here. I don’t do anything else to help my sleep or take anything else. I hope you can too. (forgive me for the english mistakes)
