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Hi Sleep
That’s amazing!! Great news! It’s all about acceptance and not analysing it. Now you’ve done it once I’m sure it can continue. It proves that we have to stop the struggle and worry and just accept whatever happens.
I hope to be joining you in your success soon 🤞 I think I’ve been thinking about it too much lately so I will follow your strategy and stop worrying about it.
Best wishes to you and thanks for the chats x
Great news Sleep!! Keep the positive attitude and the idea of acceptance. I believe that acceptance without fear is the holy grail and I find if I adopt this attitude with many aspects of my life then things gradually improve and begin to resolve. It’s as if you have to spend some time with acceptance before your brain begins to realise that you are no longer going to struggle with whatever it is. Then the brain and nervous system calm down and things improve.
Thank you Martin, for everything you do.
Good luck Sleep, I think you are 90% there now.
Thank you Martin, you always help me to question my thoughts.
I agree with Sleep that there’s something peaceful about sleeping in late in the mornings. I think it comes from working all your life and not being able to do it. It’s like a reward on your days off! However, for me the reason I find waking up so early annoying is because it puts me off staying up later in the evening. If I go to bed later, because I’ve been socialising, then I will still wake up early and then feel dreadful the next day. Does it matter? No, not really 🤔 but I have had so many years of always feeling so tired I just want to avoid it if I can. As you say, Martin, it’s all about that ‘control’ and accepting that we can’t precisely control when and for how long we sleep for. I am sooo grateful to be sleeping for 5-6 hours now that I do accept this. Life is not about perfection! I feel that I have finally stopped experiencing the fear and obsession around sleep and those are the big ones to conquer!
Thank you Sleep, I was so pleased to read that I had helped you with some previous comments. I think I am more of a night owl, like you, so I like to stay up later and I function less effectively early in the morning. Finding peace and gratitude in other things is great advice!
I’m sure there are plenty of people reading our messages who would just love to be sleeping at all and would feel irritated by our ‘problem’. I’ve been there too and understand now that it’s overcoming the fear that is the path to sleep. It’s hard work but you can get there.Hi Sleep
I have exactly the same problem. I always wake up between 5am and 6am. Occasionally it’s 4.15am and I can’t get back to sleep. I have had severe insomnia for more than 40 years (I am also retired now). I had a very stressful career and I longed to be able to lie in and not get up so early. It’s taken me about 18 months to come off medication to help me sleep. Martin’s techniques have helped me more than anything else I’ve done, including CBTi. Initially after stopping medication I was barely sleeping at all. Like you, I am grateful to be getting 5-6 hours.
Regardless of when I go to bed I always wake up too early and I then get very tired early in the evenings, which is annoying. Sorry I don’t have any answers, but maybe someone may have some ideas. I don’t analyse this situation and I just accept it but it is still pretty annoying if I think about it.
Good luck to you and hope things improve for you. You are not alone with this problem.
Hi
Yes, sleep like your old self will return but it takes time and a change in mindset.
The anxiety during the day about sleep is very common. You have proved that you can sleep well sometimes. If you prove that you can function on the days after a bad night then that helps to take the emphasis off ‘needing to sleep’. Once you can create a firm belief in your head about those two facts (you can sleep sometimes and that when you don’t sleep you can function) then you can reduce the worry about sleep. It’s all about convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter whether you sleep or not, you will get on with your life regardless. Gradually the anxiety and constant thoughts about sleep reduce and disappear.
Good luck!Hi Tony
As you may have learnt from this course and forum sleep is out of our control and will happen naturally. However, if you are currently waking up in the night and not going back to sleep it is a good idea to try and use what we can to enhance sleep. One of those things is to create good sleep drive. This means having a sleep window of about 6 hours, say from 12-6am and then not giving yourself any other opportunity to sleep during the day. This means that the drive to sleep when you go to bed is greater and increases the likelihood of it happening.
Once you are back in the habit of sleeping at night (this takes time) then naps in the day are probably ok. I do know how hard it is to stay awake during the day when you haven’t slept the night before so my advice is to keep the naps to a minimum as much as you can.
Hope that all makes sense and good luck.Thanks Edgar
I agree with your psychiatrist and think your insomnia is quite likely related to your MS and your epilepsy. I believe health fear is very powerful. What will happen in the future, will my symptoms get worse, these questions are always in your mind. I’ve had health scares and still have health issues and I empathise with you. You have a lot to deal with.
I’m glad to hear that you have reduced the fear associated with insomnia, although you still wake early, but maybe sometimes we have to learn to live with these nights, as I do too. As Martin says we don’t all need the recommended 8 hours! It’s great that you are able to live your life fully regardless of the insomnia and I’m sure you will gradually get some better nights with your positive mindset.
Actually CBT didn’t help me. I have gained a lot from Martin’s principles and also from the Mindbody arena. I prefer ACT and find that very useful with insomnia. I wish you luck and also hope that some of what we have all said can help Teresa a little.
Hi Edgar and Teresa333
I agree that you need to have true insomnia to understand it and appreciate how debilitating it is and how it cripples your life. Yes you can’t stop thinking about it and the utter desperation for sleep overrides everything else in your life. I do believe that Chee2308 has been there and fully understands how you and poor Teresa333 feel.
I feel desperately sorry for you Teresa333 as you clearly have a lot of problems. I too have TMS and neuroplastic chronic pain. I have had insomnia for 45 years. I did have a period of 10 days with no sleep at all. Fortunately I have responded to medication during my life to help me sleep and that is how I have survived it. It is only in recent months that I decided to come off all sleep aids. Hence I found Martin’s course and forum.
Teresa333 unfortunately I am not able to offer any advice based on your religious beliefs. However, I can comment about your struggle with TMS and pain. Interestingly the principles and treatments for these conditions and insomnia are the same. In fact insomnia is a TMS condition. They are all derived from a hyper alert nervous system, fear and ingrained neural pathways, usually stemming from childhood. I suspect you have experienced some kind of trauma when you were young. These neural pathways can be retrained and your nervous system can be calmed. I recommend looking into Curable.com (there is an app). After listening to this and exploring all the information you might feel up to reading some of the big authors who are Alan Gordon, Howard Schubiner, David Clarke, John Sarno to name a few. There are also podcasts.
With insomnia Chee2308 is absolutely right that you have to learn to change your mindset. You cannot just continue on the same track with the same attitude. You will not get better, sadly. You have to be receptive to changing the way you think about sleep. It is very hard work and it takes time to reduce the fear and improvement is gradual. You have to be very patient. I can testify that I have felt as desperate and exhausted as you but I have been able to find my way out, even after decades of problems.Please look into Martin’s principles and open your mind and listen! I have also made great progress with the Mindbody techniques and education that you can get from Curable. Once you are able to calm yourself you can use this forum to gain knowledge in how to resolve your insomnia. I am still in the process of recovering but I can have some good nights, with the bad nights, which I never thought possible. Open your mind to new ideas and accept that you do need to make changes to the way you think. The help and information is out there for you so reach out and embrace it if you want to recover. Good luck!
Hi ktMD
Like others, I like reading. I love a good psychological thriller and I then (almost) look forward to being awake so I can find out what happens next 😁
I find it also helps me go to sleep at the start of the night because I’m thinking about the storyline and that stifles out the negative thoughts.
I never get up and go to another room as, for me, that is game over and my brain thinks it’s time to get up and that’s it for the night. We are all different. I agree it needs to be an activity that you enjoy and anything that keeps you calm and stops you feeling that panic when you can’t sleep.
I have a mantra ‘it doesn’t matter if I don’t sleep, I am relaxing!’ 😁I’m not an endurance athlete but I can empathise with trying to come off sleep aid. I admire your training toward the 50K trail and have no idea how you do it on poor sleep, you deserve a medal already!
It sounds like you are doing fairly well with your sleep and I recognise the bad nights in anticipation of something important the next day. I think the stage you have to reach is not caring about sleep anytime. You have been functioning amazingly well without great sleep and that’s what you need to keep reminding yourself of. I don’t need sleep to live my life fully – I’m going to do it anyway. Those thoughts help to reduce the importance of sleep and reduce your attention to it.
I know how hard it is to give up sleep aid meds and yes it adds to the layers of negative thinking when you go to bed without taking them. I found it to be a gradual process. I told myself that these pills are just a placebo and I don’t need them. If I had any sleep without them that would give me confidence that I don’t need them. It’s such a great feeling to be without them. The other thing that can help is to take them every other night when you start and then you can tell yourself ‘it doesn’t matter if I sleep badly tonight because I can take a pill tomorrow night’. If you then sleep on the off night then that confirms you don’t need them!
It’s all about reducing the fear around sleep. Stop caring about it and focus on life, concentrate on your 50K trail and put sleep in its place. You are going to do it and you will do it well, regardless of your sleep. Good luck!!
You don’t need to do his longer course. Save your money. You can learn all the principles and work towards resolving the insomnia without it.
Sorry to hear about your worries. Hope you can work things out 🤞
Ah you are welcome! Yes I did do the 6 week course and the free 2 week course. I found the 2 week course the best. I didn’t really get on with the 6 week one (I was a bit angry at that time 😖😁).
Martin is amazing and he’s the best for insomnia and has helped me so much with his principles. I did find the podcasts excellent where clients talk about their recovery. I learnt a lot from that. You can access those too.I have done previous longer courses (not with Martin) but they were rubbish. I’ve also had CBTi counselling (not useful) and read a few books about insomnia that were helpful. I’m also into the Mindbody stuff as I also suffer from chronic pain and gut issues and have researched that a lot. Insomnia comes under the umbrella of Mindbody too so those principles help with all of it.
How are you getting on with your sleep problems?
Hi
The negative thoughts at night are very common and I’ve certainly had them for a long, long time. I try to just say hallo to them and then reframe them into a more positive language. The other thing I do sometimes is to keep a notepad and pen beside the bed and I write down all my negative thoughts, whatever is on my mind, before I go to sleep. Make sure you journal very honestly by venting any anger or other emotions, as this can help to separate you from these feelings. I always shred what I’ve written the next morning. I have been known to journal in the middle of the night too when I can’t sleep. I find it helps to reduce the amount of stuff in my head at night. I think you have to learn to live with negative thoughts. They are generally not accurate and it’s all about how you react to them and reduce their impact.I retired from nursing over 4 years ago now. I took early retirement as I was very burnt out and Covid had turned up. I was very ill with it twice and decided to get out (I have asthma which made it worse).
I would encourage you to retire if you can. Although it’s a shock at the beginning, once you fill your life with other things it’s great!! I was also concerned about finances but you get through it. Healthcare is a very stressful job and I don’t think I would have had any hope of improving my sleep until after I left.
I wish you luck!It is very hard to accept at the beginning. I remember someone saying this on one of Martin’s podcasts and I thought ‘I cannot accept not sleeping for hours every night!’ I was so furious about it and thought it was a silly idea.
Well guess what? You ain’t going to improve insomnia unless you start to teach your brain to accept the times you can’t sleep and stop the struggle.
The key to insomnia is understanding that it is all about fear. Fear of being awake at night – like a phobia. So to reduce the fear you teach yourself that life goes on regardless of whether you sleep or not and you reduce how much you care about it. Once you realise that you can function and go to work and all the normal things without much sleep then the insomnia loses its grip and starts to go away. I know you were hoping for a quick fix but that’s unlikely. It’s hard work for a while but you will get there.
Hi KtMD
Not sure there is a clear answer to that question. I suspect it varies greatly from person to person.
I’ve had insomnia for 40 + years, on and off. I have mainly medicated to enable me to sleep as every time I tried to stop medication I didn’t sleep at all and I had a career in nursing to navigate. I mainly took antihistamines in more recent years, never sleeping tablets as they made me feel so awful.I started trying to stop medication about 11 months ago. I found Martin and his courses/podcasts about 5 months ago. I had done some other sleep programmes before that, that had not helped at all. When I first started trying without medication I had terrible nights with next to no sleep for weeks on end. I was really despairing and so I often relapsed and took a tablet.
However, once I found Martin and I realised exactly what I was doing wrong and how to resolve it, I would say it’s taken about 5 months. There have been lots of ups and downs with a few good nights and then a relapse because I became anxious about it returning.
Then I realised I had to accept the bad nights and not be bothered by them. I had to learn to fully not give a crap about whether I slept or not. I did this by telling myself that it didn’t matter as I could function whatever night I had. I got on with my life and gave my sleep less and less attention and now I really don’t care what happens each night because I will get on with my life regardless. I have stopped having relapses but it did take a few months to reach this point and it wasn’t easy. I now get reasonable sleep most nights. I’ve no idea how many hours but I don’t feel half asleep all day and I can think more clearly, so I must be getting enough.It’s a very long winded reply, sorry about that, but it seems from Martin’s podcasts that most people need a good few months to work on their mindset and get to the point where you don’t care about it and it sorts itself naturally.
So my advice is to keep learning to ignore what your sleep does. Don’t analyse or measure it. Put it in its place and give it no attention. Don’t try to control it, don’t worry about how long it’s taking to improve and be patient.
Hope this helps a bit? Good luck!
