[Carole]

Hi Noelle – From the time i wrote my post to now I have improved quite a bit and I no longer have sleep dominating my thoughts from the minute I wake up which is a huge step forward. The anxiety hasn’t completely gone though, I start to think about sleep about an hour before I go to bed and if i lie there for a long time, it can come back but I try to turn it on his head and think “so what if I don’t sleep, I’ve been here before and survived” (the worst episode I had was 4 days without sleeping) How did I improve? I educated myself as much as I could. I used the time I was anxious to learn and watched a lot of videos (sometime the same one a few times) from Martin Reed and also Daniel Erichsen on You Tube and I bought Daniel Erichsen’s book. A key moment for me was watching Martin Reed’s talk with Jade Wu – Busting sleep and insomnia myths because this one helped take the fear away given my anxiety was around what lack of sleep could be doing to my body longer term. It was such a powerful talk – I call it my breakthrough moment. It might sound like being so focused by watching all of these talks would make it worse but for me it helped. I’d been trying to problem solve my insomnia (sleep hygiene, pills) and in hindsight I know now that i was feeding it and making it worse Now I average about 5 hours, sometimes it’s broken but I stick to 3 rules; 1. A set wake up time 2. No day time napping and 3. No pills. I’ve also learned the difference between tired and sleepy which means my go to bed time can vary. I do still feel tired during the day but I can function and I’m back to doing all the things I’d given up because of the insomnia (which had taken over my life). I’m still hoping that overtime I can fully let go and sleep longer. I really hope you can overcome it too.

Take care
Carole

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