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Hello!
So what horrible thing has happened in that 4 months? Except that you experienced of some kind of sleep disruption. What made you think if nothing significant happened in the last 4 months that something was suddenly going to happen now anyway?? Think carefully. How old are you? Maybe 20s or 30s? How on earth did you sleep quite okay for the past 2 or 3 decades but you suddenly start having “problems” now?? Again, think carefully. What is really the problem here? Or is there even any problem at all?? What is this all about except an irrational fear of wakefulness and basically being afraid of your own thoughts and nothing else?
Just one word to describe your incredible story. WOW! Thank you for sharing it. Wakefulness isn’t the enemy or dangerous, a powerful message right there. Don’t struggle, let the body take over naturally. I suppose insomnia itself needs a whole new definition too, it really isn’t about the inability to sleep, because at its core is the misguided struggle with wakefulness.
Hi @Fifi
Great question! Everyone who has or had insomnia must have asked themselves that. There’s no easy way to answer it unfortunately. My advice to you now is to go through this unwilling and unsolicited journey with open eyes and heart. Try to learn as much as you can from it instead of shutting it out and not wanting to learn anything. If you don’t want learn anything, you cannot and will not develop the courage to deal with it.
Try not to let how you sleep for one night determine your success or failure. There will be plenty of nights down the road so you can always keep trying and there is no reason to despair now because you “failed” to sleep on one single night. The key is consistency.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. The desire to be free of insomnia also starts with the desire. With the right knowledge and mindset, you too can overcome this. The key is not to struggle too much with it. Do not be petty and vengeful with sleep just because it doesn’t seem to serve you now. Which is why finding things to occupy your time that you enjoy and gives you meaning and purpose is helpful. It helps you get sleep off your mind even for a while. It may be a bit hard at first but most people find it gets easier as time moves on. When you no longer think about sleep or can’t be bothered anymore, when the obsession stops, when you no longer find any wakefulness annoying, the insomnia always and without fail, tends to resolve itself without any external intervention. Good luck to you.
Yes!… Feeling sleepy is a surefire sign that your sleep system is working perfectly. Try to reframe your thoughts about sleep and how you feel during the day. Sleep isn’t an on-off switch, it’s more like a dimmer whose input is dependent on so many things like your energy levels, your feelings, whether you are bored, when and what you eat and a myriad of other factors! It’s impossible to pinpoint why you feel exhausted. Ironically it always seems to happen around the same time for most people. Hence, the afternoon siesta!
Thank you for sharing your husband’s story. When you no longer fear sleeplessness, then it has no power over you. Congratulations!
Yes, it’s a condition called somniphobia. Which is an irrational fear of sleeping. So why do you fear going to bed? Have you evaluated the reasons behind this irrationality? Sleep is something you expect to do everyday for the rest of your life, so does it make any sense to keep fearing it going forward? What’s the fear really all about? Deeply self-reflect on these questions and find the solutions yourself, in your own way. It often helps when you stop placing so much pressure on yourself and just allow things to take its own natural course. After all, nobody taught how to eat or breathe at the moment of birth either! Sleep is like that too. It happens without pressure or effort and everybody can sleep regardless of how badly they think they are at it. Your own body is fail-safe and there’s just no way it can do it wrong regardless of how hard you try to break it.
As @allen said, your insomnia story is a very typical one. It often starts with something unpleasant which then develops into an unhealthy obsession with sleep with a good amount of accompanying fear-mongering going on. The fact is nothing about your sleep ability changed. It’s your thoughts toward sleep that have. No one sleeps fine for decades then all of a sudden finds themselves requiring sleeping pills over just a matter of days or weeks! From my experience, trying to seek comfort and safety in numbers is often counter-productive. That reinforces the idea that there is something very wrong (when there’s none) and that it must be stopped or overcome at all costs. Wrong approach, imo. A better response would be to deeply self-reflect within yourself and enquire why you must sleep soundly when you are experiencing a difficult situation. Because sleep disruptions are very common and normal! It happens to everyone every once in a while. The good news is that this is probably only temporary and transitory. A poor night sleep or a stretch of it will not mean it will continue forever unless you unknowingly allow it by doing and thinking the wrong things. Good luck to you.
The problem is seeing waking up and staying awake as a problem. When waking up is really very common. The trick is not to try all kinds of tricks and quick fixes. The real trick is to be completely okay with waking up and staying up longer than you would like, because the end of the struggle with insomnia is not necessarily in trying very hard to avoid it completely, it is in leaving behind the struggle with it. Good luck to you.
And I want to get to the point that I don’t worry if sleep isn’t forthcoming – accepting the situation for what it is
– That is exactly what everyone does anyway, whether they are aware of it or not
Hi matt
Another way of looking at this is: Will your body refuse the delicious food laid before it after being starved for several days? Do you really believe your body will reject sleep in a comfortable bed after a string of bad nights? Be open minded and maybe try an experiment on how long you can go without sleep. I did and mine couldn’t last past 30 hours. I crashed after 24 hours of no sleep and at the 30 hour mark, I was so sleepy I had no time nor space to be anxious, worried, agitated whatever. I just wanted to sleep and I didn’t care where. I could fall asleep while just peeing! Learn to trust your own body and there’s no way it can do it wrong. It will get what it needs in the end.
The trick with arousal system is not to avoid it. Allow yourself to sit with the discomfort and then let it pass. This is perhaps the most difficult part of the recovery. Stop trying to escape anymore (because it is impossible to escape sleep related worries as you go to bed to sleep every night!) and to start being brave and courageous. Maybe you can start by assuming you will sleep so-so every night, not very good but not very bad either so it’s okay either way. Whatever lost sleep in one night will be regained in another so it makes no big difference because tonight is not the only night you can sleep. There are plenty of nights down the line to try again so go easy on yourself and practice self-kindness 🙂
In regards to your sleeping pill, Martin has already answered you. Consult with your doctor first but the most important thing to realize is nothing can help you sleep if you are still afraid of poor sleep. Recovery from insomnia doesn’t really mean free from insomnia, it means leaving behind the struggle with it. Good luck to you.
Hi Matt
I am a graduate of martin’s program so maybe I could answer some of your questions?
1. What is your wakeup time and how long is your sleep window when you start doing cbti? Trying to stretch a go to bed time of 12:30 to 9 (3.5 hours) is a bit far-fletched to me. Most people start with a 6-6.5 hour sleep window so when they reach the desired 7.5-8 hour duration, the expansion would only be about 1-2 hours.
2. It depends on your progress and how you view sleep at its core. Doing a sleep window is not a sleep generator! It doesn’t generate more sleep than you need and it won’t guarantee you will get your desired result. It’s just a mechanism to regularize your nights. If you are up for X hours, then you are most likely to feel sleepy by Y hours. This is the key lesson of doing the sleep window. Technically, you could go from doing a 6 hour window to 8 in one night, if the sleep drive is there. No one sleeps great all the time and you will learn this as you progress along in the course. Ultimately, when you are sleeping regularly as a result of following a sleep window, the small details don’t matter so much anymore.
3. What is a normal sleep pattern to you? You may notice even when you are sleeping normally, you still get the occasional bad night or two. Everyone does. The key idea is to not fret over them when they happen and just keep doing what you are doing and sticking to your regular bedtime. The real recovery isn’t getting more sleep, it is the willingness to accept some wakefulness, that you won’t sleep great all the time and that it’s okay. Good luck to you.
Oh no please don’t do that in bed! During my insomnia, I did that a few times and actually made it worse. I was getting in and out of bed doing stimulus control all night. Because this activity is too mentally stimulating. Just go to bed, close your eyes and let your mind drift. Sometimes your mind may suddenly become conscious and jolt you awake just when you are about to drift off and it may repeat a few times until you finally doze off at some point unknowable to you, this is all completely normal. But no more counting and no monitoring. Nobody can tell the exact moment they fall asleep, it will happen effortlessly. You won’t even be aware you fell asleep until you wake up. Good luck to you.
Nobody forgets how to sleep. Think of it like eating and breathing. Can you ever forget how to do these or do you even need any lessons how to eat or breathe? Well, no. Those abilities are innate to you the moment you came into this world. Likewise for sleep. You were never taught how to sleep, therefore it’s not a skill to acquire or lose in the first place! Change your mindset, practice letting go of your sleep obsession or any effort to subvert your own body and you will regain your natural sleeping ability.
