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Forget about sleep. Move on with your life and one of the things that you can actually do is TEACH. It makes you forget about your problems for a while. When you put your utmost attention and dedication into something, it becomes a form of mindfulness. You don’t just have to meditate, doing things and being mindful about them is actually quite the same thing.
If you could forget about your insomnia, then it actually ceases to exist, that is the weirdest thing. Insomnia exists because you defined what insomnia is inside your head, such as having all nighters. But to someone else who also have all nighters but doesn’t think it’s a problem, then insomnia can’t exist. Take for example someone who parties all night and then turns up at work, hardly ever slept. That person is not obsessed about sleep and sleeps well. The difference is your mindset and how you see things.
If you can’t forget, try to ignore it by being engaged in other things. If your mind keeps warning about insomnia, just acknowledge it and then refocus the attention back on what you are doing. Remember your purpose in life, is it just to sleep? Or to experience life to the fullest? On your death bed, what do you want to remember about your life: just how badly you slept all the time or how well you lived your life? The choice is yours.
The simple answer is why don’t you find out? Why won’t you continue to teach regardless of how you sleep? If you never step out of your comfort zone, you will just continue living in fear. Think back to those times when you slept very little but continued the next day seemingly oblivious. Something like christmas eve when you were much younger. Or high school prom. Wedding day eve. Going on your honey moon. Surely you must have had a blast and sleep was the last thing on your mind. Be that person! Go out and do things, don’t just stay in waiting for sleep to happen. You only get live once, make full use of it right here and right now. Otherwise it’s all wasted. Time waits for no man, fate is not going to extend your time or lifespan just because you have insomnia or whatever other problems in life. Everyone will get their eternal sleep one day, why miss it so badly now when you are guaranteed to get it in unlimited amounts later? It makes no sense.
Hello Yasmin
Welcome to this forum! Yes having insomnia can be quite unpleasant but it’s not the end of the world. Insomnia is usually a result of too much unnecessary worry, overthinking and trying to over-troubleshoot things. Although of course, it can have a underlying health issue but this is usually quite obvious such as pain or discomfort and it makes sense to seek medical attention to address these.
But otherwise if you don’t have any health issue, the reason is usually psychological stress and therefore, purely of a mental origin. You are basically losing sleep over sleep itself. You take this issue way too seriously than needs be. It becomes an unhealthy obsession which then develops into a phobia. A phobia of poor sleep and an incessant, relentless and unhealthy urge to get out this as much and as quickly possible. It drives you to seek unnecessary medical attention such as seeing mental experts and popping pills. These are not a permanent solution but actually erodes your confidence and damages your prospect to a more natural and long term solution.
The reason to want to avoid insomnia is entirely understandable. But unfortunately, it is not practical because sleep is a regular activity that people do everyday. And so every night, the nightmare is relived over and over again with no respite in sight. If you have another phobia such as travelling in a plane, then you can just skip that entirely and you can live your life normally. Unfortunately with sleep, this is entirely unavoidable.
You must find a way to take your insomnia much less seriously. This lessens the stress. The way out of this is actually having more insomnia! That is really weird but true and even paradoxical. Doing the opposite is what helps people overcome insomnia. Things like sleeping less which then strengthens your sleep drive, getting out of bed to remove negative association between bed and unpleasant wakefulness. And the most important of which is having a regular bed time, especially getting out of bed consistently at set times. This realigns your biological clock and helps regularize your nights. Your body has the ability to right itself if you just allow it!
Start trying to reframe your insomnia in a different light. Having poor nights actually develops your skills in how you handle them and over time, getting desensitized by them. A sleepless night or even a string of sleepless nights is pretty harmless, you are just over-reacting. Taking a step toward recovery does require a change in mindset. How you view poor sleep and ultimately how respond to them is your key to a complete recovery.
LOL…. what more do you want to hear about something that’s “normal”, according to you? Leave sleep alone dude. It will sort itself out
Yep I graduated from Martin’s course almost 2 years ago now. I sleep great now. I have a super relaxed bed schedule, bedtime is any time between 11-2 and I get out around 8-9. I am not obsessed with sleep anymore and it has stopped bothering me. The bottom line is I don’t care anymore
These are personal choices you need to make. It’s like asking what dress you should wear to an event, what jewellery you should wear, what you should eat, etc. Because none of all that really matters. Nothing of what you are asking should be done (like whether to use an alarm clock etc) has any connection to your ability to sleep. Do whatever you like. If sleep is not the main consideration, how will you choose? Then just go along with that. Always remove sleep from any decision you make and you remove anything your mind tries to associate with sleep. Be independent and brave. DO NOT FEAR POOR SLEEP ANYMORE AND STOP TRYING TO AVOID IT! FACE IT WITH COURAGE AND HUMILITY. THIS IS THE KEY TO A COMPLETE RECOVERY AND REGAINING YOUR IDENTITY AND PERSONALITY.
Hello!
Whenever the event causes a temporary sleep disruption is over, then try to move on with your life. Don’t change your sleeping habits like going to bed earlier, sleeping in, trying to sleep more, taking pills, researching sleep, asking endless questions about sleep and so on. Just continue to get up at the same time and get on with your day. It’s helpful to accept that sleep can be affected for a while and it takes time to settle down. This is normal and happens to everyone.Whenever you have bad nights, try not to think too much about it. It’s just a bad night and means absolutely nothing to anyone including yourself. You can tell yourself to try again on other nights and that you can do better next time. Don’t stress over it because it’s pointless and the night is already gone. Focus more on your present moment and the future will take care of itself. Ultimately, re-evaluate your relationship with bad sleep, why must you take sleeping badly so seriously? What’s so important you must sleep well every night? Is there a prize to be won for being the best sleeper? Be okay with poor sleep by slowly desensitizing yourself to it. Good luck!
Cultivate yourself as such:
Let the seen remains seen, the heard remains heard and the thought remains thought.Meaning: Whatever you see, hear or feel does not translate into further action or hopefully further feelings. There is no sense of wanting to change or improve anything. You are happy with things the way they are.
As @Jeff_Nero pointed out, you can sort of be that independent person looking at your yourself from outside in. You just observe everything from a distance yet remain unattached and unbiased at the same time. Not being judgmental about anything because this “drama” goes on without requiring any input from you. You just follow the script whichever way it takes you.
I’m not sure if you mean 2 hours every complete 24 hours. Maybe you mean you only get 2 hours during the night in a specific time interval (eg 1-6am) but you are also sleeping on other times during the day as well or sleeping in and over your sleep window, taking naps or whatever. Of course if you engage in any of these, it will kill your sleep drive when your sleep window arrives.
I also went over your past posts on this forum and note that you have had insomnia for over what, 15 years??? Maybe your thoughts about sleep and insomnia are so entrenched that it’s almost impossible to overcome or you are just not convinced you can recover at all. The human mind is a powerful machine. It can make you believe anything, even blatant falsehoods, outright lies and hoaxes. Especially if you have had this for so long. For me, I am no longer afraid of poor sleep, and sleep takes up less and less of my mind that it’s almost gone completely and along with it, my sleepless nights. I don’t lose sleep over sleep anymore and from where I am now, it’s just not worth it. There are many other things more deserving of my attention. Sleep has become a chore and a waste of time in a sense. It exists only out of convenience and not necessity and I just do the least that I can get away with. Nonetheless, I wish the best. You are probably never going to get far if you continue to fear poor sleep and the role it allegedly plays in your life.
Hello
Firstly, a SW of only 5 hours is too short. It increases the pressure to sleep in such a short window and could worsen your sleep anxiety. An ideal starting point is at least 5.5 hours. But 6 hours is preferable and is more suitable for most people.In regards to your question about stimulus control, revert back to those times before your insomnia started when you couldn’t sleep and what did you do then? Then use this as a guide. If you didn’t get up from bed, then you don’t need to now. Your ability to sleep never changed. It’s your thoughts towards sleep that has. You are therefore reacting to a set of thoughts inside your head, or over-reacting in this instance. You are taking your mere thoughts way more seriously than you need to.
Most people recover when they start to take their insomnia less seriously and stopped chasing sleep. Getting more sleep just isn’t the cure. The real cure is being okay with any amount of sleep you get. It is no longer living with the phobia of poor sleep or letting this control every aspect of your life. Best wishes and good luck to you.
Can your body let go of the ability to breathe or eat? What makes sleep special that this ability needs to be protected??
Well why do you meditate? Is it only to sleep better or because you truly enjoy it? If it’s solely to sleep better, how does meditation help in that sense? If you meditate but don’t really enjoy it, that’s just torture. Might as well do anything else that you truly enjoy which really helps to get sleep off your mind for a bit. Then you have a better chance of practicing real mindfulness, where you are wholly engaged at the task at hand and can’t think of anything else including sleep. Of course sleep thoughts will always creep back and that’s okay (always allow this to happen), then gently refocus your attention back on the task. Ultimately, you want to be at a place where you enjoy what you are doing and truly live the life you want. Sleep doesn’t need any kind of assistance or intervention from you at all. It just happens when you’ve been up long enough, regardless of what you have been thinking or doing. Good luck.
