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Hi @Sha22
It’s perfectly normal to have anxious feelings throughout the day when you’re the path to recovery. I was once there and know what it’s like.
I think once you accept it’s normal to get anxious anywhere along the journey, then it just get less intense over time. You just had had a traumatic experience so of course that is going to stick around for a while.
Everyone gets bad nights once in a while. I really don’t know what else to say that doesn’t upset them except that to advise them to keep trying on other nights and not get overly stressed over it because that doesn’t help! I try to make people understand that they don’t only get to sleep for one time and it’s make it or break it. There are abundant opportunities to sleep and insomnia is really only transient and transitory, like everything else happening in your life. Good luck and merry xmas to you.
Hello Sue
I really appreciate your kind words. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas too. May you find joy and happiness in this festive and giving season. I might add too that optimistic and cheerful people are usually the ones that do pretty well in life generally, not just in overcoming insomnia. Thank you again.Hi Sarah and welcome!
I am sorry to hear about your struggle. Can I ask how long have you been suffering from insomnia? What are your nights like? And how do you cope during the day?
Unfortunately, when I said you should just get on with your day, you do exactly that. Another word for this is acceptance. You accept whatever uncomfortable situation you find yourself in. It’s kinda like jumping into a cold pool or taking a cold shower, it’s quite uncomfortable at first but you’ll get used to it.
And therefore, I mentioned to find things to do to distract yourself, preferably something you really enjoy to take your mind off such things for a while. The more you just sit there and thinking how horrible everything is, the worse it gets. The more dissatisfied you are with yourself about sleep, the more despair you get yourself into. No doubt, you will feel tired and sleepy at times, and this is normal. It is surefire sign that your sleep system is still working perfectly!
The less you sleep during the day, the more likely you will sleep at night. This is the fundamental truth about human sleep biology. It works exactly like hunger. The longer you go without food, the hungrier you get. Just don’t stress excessively over it, trust your own body, it will readjust itself if you allow it. The act of just going to bed is analogous to putting food in your mouth when hungry. Your body automatically knows what to do next and it will get what it needs for that moment. There is just no way your body can get it wrong! Good luck.
Hi Dewina and welcome!
I am sorry to hear about your recent struggle. My first advice is to set a regular bed time and always stick to it. This is important, especially getting out of bed the same time every day and helps keep your body’s biological clock in good sync.
The second is try to ignore all that doom and gloom noise especially the one generated inside your head, I know this is very hard especially when you’re hurting so much now but equally very important if you want to cure your insomnia. Pay less and less attention on your insomnia and get on with your day regardless of how you slept. Distract yourself by keeping yourself busy, engage in joyful and satisfactory work while in your waking hours. People who recover from insomnia don’t necessarily sleep a lot better, but they are able to handle the stress of not sleeping well a lot better and because of that, they generally sleep much better. Fear of poor sleep is exactly what keeps it going! Good luck and merry christmas to you. I earnestly hope 2023 will be a year when you really recover from your insomnia.
Hi!
Welcome to the forum. I don’t think being so hard on yourself is really helping especially when you’re still pretty new to it. How many hours do you allow for sleep btw? 6 hours should be the minimum.Waking up groggy is normal even with normal sleepers! Then it kinda just goes away by the time you eat breakfast and get revved up to start the day. It is pretty common to mistake this grogginess with lack of sleep because sleep doesn’t work like a switch that turns on or off instantaneously; it’s more like a dimmer and the things you do after waking up will give your body the necessary cues to what’s going on.
You don’t have to follow cbt-i exactly to the tee to expect the results you desire. That means you can “mess up” a bit here and there, like dozing or taking micro naps and it still wouldn’t affect your sleep drive by very much. Just try it. Be willing to explore and take things further from your comfort zone. Don’t just attribute “failure” to anything you did “wrong”, there may be no connection at all.
Feeling sleepy is a surefire way to tell your sleep system is working. It means nothing is wrong. I encourage you to change your mindset in positive ways that will aid your recovery. In the end, you will just stop following sleep rules, you become very relaxed with your sleep schedule, are very open to the idea of staying up later or finding yourself awakening any time of the night. And you don’t lose sleep over sleep anymore because it’s just not worth it. Recovery from insomnia doesn’t mean free from insomnia, it just means those who recovered are a lot more indifferent to future episodes of poor sleep than they used to be. Actually they are much more common than you think and coming to terms with it is what makes all the difference. Good luck to you.
Hi!
Live wires? Does an ex-live wire’s account carry any weight? LOL. But basically why ask the people who still haven’t seemed to have it figured out, versus those who’s been there, done it and gotten over it?
Waking up is really normal is what I wanna say. Try not to take any issue with it, if you find yourself in this situation, the first thing you should try is getting back to sleep, or if that’s generating too much stress due to unpleasant wakefulness, you have the option to get out to get away from the source of stress and try again later. But you still need to get comfortable with episodes of wakefulness everytime they find you.
You are never going to get past insomnia as long as you are very unwilling to tolerate it occasionally. “Shrug it off as normal” – this is exactly everyone needs to do! The faster you accept this fact, the faster you will get over each episode when it happens.
Hi!
First of all, let me express my sympathies for the suffering you are going through. But what is really the problem here? IMO, trying to use cbti as some kind of magic sleeping pill or an academic formula to escape that which makes you feel extremely uncomfortable, which is insomnia or simply a phobia of having poor sleep. Well it just doesn’t work like that.
Assess how this statement makes you feel: “There is really nothing you can do to make sleep happen.” If you,
1. Chuckle and just shrug it off. Congratulations! You very likely don’t or won’t have insomnia.
2. Feel nervous, despair, defeated, anxious or any of those unpleasant feelings. Well, you still have something to work on. Actually coming to terms with it.Note that people in category 1 don’t necessarily sleep a lot better than 2. It just means they are indifferent to the same set of symptoms. They don’t spend hours thinking about it. Recovery from insomnia doesn’t mean free from insomnia. It just means they have abandoned the struggle with it.
I go by an earliest bed time or the latest. If I am really sleepy by 10pm, or still not sleepy by midnight, I climb into bed regardless. Then I either fall asleep straightaway or wait until I do. I want to be ready in bed to ride the sleepiness wave when it arrives and not be up and about doing things. I did try, for how long I can go without sleep, mine is around 36 hours regardless how much I wanted to soldier on or how anxious I was. I just can’t make it past 1.5 days without sleep no matter how hard I tried! So worrying about going for days without sleep is pointless, it is impossible to me and my body just won’t allow it
You can’t stop what is part of your nature. Thinking is a normal part of a healthy brain. Normal sleepers take anywhere between 15-30 mins to fall asleep anyway, so in that time, there’ll be plenty to think about. Of course, if you are really sleepy, you’ll be out in much less time. Let your own body guide you, when sleepy, there’ll be nothing unmistakable about it, heavy eyelids, head nodding off, difficulty concentrating etc. If you have none of these, it just means you are not sleepy yet. Or the body doesn’t need to sleep at that point. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong either. Sleep will come at some point after being awake long enough. No ifs ands or buts. In the meantime if you find yourself in this situation, you can either get up and do something enjoyable or stay in bed and well, think. There’s no wrong choice here and it’s up to you which you prefer.
You should also make choices about sleep as if sleep isn’t the main factor but because that’s what you really want. In regards to physical symptoms, my feeling is that they should go away over time. Mine did. Unless of course you have an underlying medical issue that causes them. Recovered insomniacs aren’t necessarily sleeping a lot better or that insomnia has left them. It just means we have abandoned the struggle and are much more open to having wakefulness and not struggle as much than those who do. Good luck!
Hi Tess!
What used to work before should work now. Because nothing really changed except your thoughts! Don’t approach cbti as if it’s a magic pill that guarantees sleep. It isn’t. It’s more like a crutch you use to help you get back on your feet but should be abandoned when it’s done its job.
Hello Tess!
Welcome to this forum. So what was his sleep window before he ‘developed’ insomnia? I use ‘ ‘ because nobody ever lost the ability to sleep. It’s usually the thoughts towards sleep that has. And therefore the brain thinks that something is wrong when nothing is. I always recommend going back to your habits and patterns during pre-insomnia days. Try to regain your personality and identity as much as you can. To get as nonchalant and indifferent about sleep as you can because this is the state where you want to return to. When you no longer obsess over sleep, spend hours of your waking hours thinking about it, or make decisions about your everyday life around it, you will do a lot better.
If it’s only the first week, and this is the sleep window you want to keep to, I recommend sticking to it. Try to not make the focus too much on the end result, ie sleep, focus on other things like enriching your daily life with memorable experiences, doing the things you love and spending time with your loved ones. The sleep will take care of itself in the end. Your body will regulate itself if you just allow it.
The mental work that goes into ‘fixing’ insomnia is a significant part because insomnia is mainly a mental issue. It is usually a result of overthinking, overdoing and over monitoring. Reframing your mindset around insomnia is key. Be simply okay with wakefulness. When you find yourself having to make a choice, do as if you don’t have insomnia and sleep isn’t the main consideration. When you no longer fear insomnia, it has no control over you. There is no one way to do this so you need to find a narrative that fits you best. Some people do meditation, others write positive sleep affirmations or yet others use metaphors. Say for example, if you are unhappy just because you only have $6 in your bank account, it still doesn’t change this fact. But if you look at it in another way, say, you have a roof over your head, enough food to eat and your basic needs are taken care of, that $6 becomes insignificant. The thought then fades away and your bank balance just is a number. Do like this for sleep, if you are optimistic about life, are happy where you are and what you do, then how many hours you sleep really doesn’t matter. It becomes just a number. Good luck and best wishes to you all.
