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Hello everyone!
@gemma2906 when you feel you have to make a choice between X and Y and you do this because
it’s driven by the sleep factor, always ask yourself the intention, are you doing it in the hopes of sleeping more & better, or is it because it’s genuinely want it and it’s not because of sleep?? Always choose the latter, if you get up, it’s because you have more interesting things to do, perhaps you want to watch a movie, catch up on a series, sew, have ice-cream, pat your cat, do your laundry whatever! Or if you have nothing that you want to get out of bed for, then just STAY In, even if it means you get anxious over not sleeping, get used to the anxiety in bed and it becomes something you eventually grow out of because it happens so many times and nothing bad has ever happened, your body just starts recognizing it’s a false alarm and that’s indeed what it is!Don’t chase the end-result, ie, sleep. Forget about what you think normal sleep should be like! Focus more on the process and the things you can control like:
1. Consistency. Get into and out of bed at consistent times helps form the bedrock for your circadian rhythm, so when you are up X number of hours, you will get sleepy roughly by Y o’clock. Not an exact science but mostly it works like this. Stop thinking sleep as some mysterious, indecipherable black box that you have to keep figuring out. It’s not and it’s really simple: you will get sleepy when you are up long enough.
2. Focus on your comfort and keep your bedroom cool, comfortable and relaxing. Start associating your bed as a place where you leave everything behind, your worries, anxieties and yes, even sleep itself if that makes you worry excessively. Focus just on resting even if you can’t sleep, tell yourself you are only human and you cannot control everything so there’s no point to be obsessive about anything if it does not turn out the way you want it. Life isn’t always a bed of roses and that’s okay!
3. Get over the fear, this is the ultimate objective of every insomniac and the hardest part of letting go. To sleep well, you must, at some point, stop fearing poor sleep, start accepting wakefulness at any time of the night and you must stop obsessing over it. You can still think about sleep but that doesn’t translate into actions or excessive emotions anymore. It just becomes a neutral item, like the sky is blue and the forest is green, you appreciate it as it is and you make no attempt to change it to your bidding.Good luck. The correct mindset leads to the correct actions which leads to a place where you are happy and content with things just as they are. People who recovered from insomnia don’t necessarily sleep a lot better, it just means they have abandoned the struggle with it.
Well what makes you think sleep has anything to do with your tiredness? Could there be an underlying medical condition? See your doctor and seek medical advice. There are many types of people: some who sleep 10-12 hours a day but still feel tired regardless and some who only do 4-5 and feel great and energetic all day! There is also such thing as sleep inertia, everyone wakes up feeling sleepy but the feeling generally goes away as you get on with your day. Whatever your case, sleep probably isn’t the real cause, the cause might be something else or it could even be you are depressed over your sleep because you aren’t getting what you want but that isn’t your fault either! It’s your own body that decides how much sleep it needs and gets and not you.
There are some very innovative ways to reframe your thoughts about insomnia. One of these is being able to make fun or being satirical about it. Laugh at yourself, this was one of the ways I looked back and discovered how silly everything and my reaction was. I thought I’d share some jokes here:
1. My wife has insomnia: Great! At least she won’t be sleeping with other men. LOL.
2. Waking up between 2am and 4am means a higher power wanted to talk to you: YOUR CAT DEMANDING TO BE FED! LOL.
Develop your sense of humor along the way. Once you are able to do that, it probably means your insomnia is loosening its grip over you. And that is the point of the whole thing! Lose the fear.
Hello @rubylight
Don’t TRY. Because it suggests it is such a huge monumental effort and that insomnia is such a monster you need to defeat every night. It is really not. Just DON’T REACT. Try to return to your pristine, original state, like when you were a baby. Who has ever heard of such a thing as babies suffering from insomnia?? You won’t. That’s because insomnia isn’t defined in their mindsets, they achieve sleep hardly ever thinking about it or setting any goal! And that’s it! Your insomnia exists because your mind defined it into existence. When you are able to forget all about your insomnia or your mindset changes to not see any sleeplessness as a problem, then your insomnia simply ceases to exist. Drop all your targets. Believe in your own body, there’s no way it can do it wrong. If you can sleep, you can and if you can’t, you can’t. That’s it. There are no ands, ifs or buts about it and it’s futile trying to assign blames or find root causes. Just accept it as it is and move on. I also think your sleep window of 5.5 hours is a bit too short. An ideal starting point would be around 6-6.5. Accept that you may not be able to sleep through all of that allocated time and your sleep efficiency might be crap. Who cares? You are not in a race vying for being the best sleeper to win a prize. And nobody will punish you for being the worst either. The only person who can pass judgments is yourself so why couldn’t you be kind, patient and compassionate to yourself? Best wishes!
You really don’t have to get out of bed if you don’t want to. The choice is entirely yours. What’s the norm for you when you couldn’t sleep in the past before your insomnia, did you get up or not and then just continue doing that. What worked before will work now, nothing about your sleep changed, it’s your thoughts towards sleep that has. And nobody wants to do boring stuff any time of the day either! Let alone get out of a comfy bed and then go pretending to enjoy doing it just to go back to sleep is a pretty ludicrous idea.
Periods of not so good sleep after good ones are actually really common! Don’t try so hard to conquer insomnia, you actually do much better from doing nothing and letting it be. Just speaking from experience. Good luck!
Hello @gemma2906
Thank you and welcome to this forum. It’s not easy, of course, otherwise insomnia wouldn’t be such a big problem. But what I can say is the situation is manageable, just don’t keep trying to avoid it or make it go away fast. Be patient, and the good thing is it tends to get easier as you go along, as long you adopt the correct mindset. Expect a bumpy road, there will be ups and downs. Try not to be upset about any setbacks or get too celebratory when you slept well as well! The key is to get as nonchalant and indifferent about it as you can, this is when you truly move ahead and leave all this struggle with insomnia behind because you are starting to show that none of these are affecting you as much as before. This is the natural state every insomniac should aspire to return to, to not react to any good or bad outcome. Good luck, and this is entirely doable.
Nobody is in a position to question their own bodies when it comes to sleep. The more you do this, the worse it gets. Pretend you are born blind and deaf and have no concept what time or sleep is, what will you do about your sleep? Probably absolutely nothing, because you won’t be corrupted with media lies about sleep such as “you need your golden 8 hours”, “you must sleep uninterrupted” or whatever. Pretend you don’t know all this or have no interest because in order to sleep well, you must return to your pristine, virgin state like when you were a baby, when you have absolutely no such idea and no such concept and slept whenever you wanted. Ignorance is truly bliss, forget everything else and forget whatever you think your sleep should be. Drop all your expectations and stop circumventing your own body. Only your body knows best, not you. Good luck.
Well how do you feel during the day? If you feel fine and are able to get on with your life, so then where’s the big problem?
When does the sleep pressure kick in? It’s difficult to tell, when it does, it does and when it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There’s no point arguing with yourself or everyone else over it. But from my experience, when you’ve truly accepted, the relentless asking naturally ceases and the accepting truly begins. What is there to ask about anymore, it’s like asking when will the blue sky turn dark and the raining begins, well why do you obsess over that when you have other stuffs going on that require your attention? Everyone just knows it’s only a matter of time and checking every passing second actively anticipating for something to happen just isn’t productive use of that time.
Go to bed at X and wake up at Y. Forget about what happens in between. Then rinse and repeat every single day. Ignore everything else and get on with your day. Don’t dwell on the past because it’s gone! Begin every new day on a fresh page and quit setting expectations or a time limit for your recovery. Be thankful for any sleep you get whilst being okay with any wakefulness you experience. Good luck!
Hi!
What you described is very normal indeed. I don’t think you need to change anything. Yes, people tend to fall asleep faster and sleep deeper during the initial phase of the night but as the sleep drive wanes because it is getting depleted the more sleep you are getting, then any further sleep eventually gets lighter, and is usually characterized by more frequent awakenings and more vivid dreams. This is entirely very normal! What isn’t normal or even healthy is the stuff you are expecting, ie, the more you sleep, the sleepier you become which is akin to getting hungrier the more you eat, does that make any sense to you?? So expect these episodes to happen every night, if I were you, I would just get up and use the toilet for a bit and then climb back to bed to rest, drop all expectations and the pressure to sleep, and eventually I would just doze off at some point. Good luck to you, don’t blame yourself and your body for not sleeping, because that’s usually a result of your body being already quite well-rested in the first place!
Insomnia is not an enemy you can defeat by showing weakness and fear at every turn of the way. You will keep getting it as long as the fear is still there. On the contrary, when you show resilience even in the face of weakness and accept whatever happens with an open and optimistic mind, you will do extremely well. Good luck.
You can’t stop what to think @dogacan. I think by being okay with thinking anything, you slowly start moving away from those thoughts.
