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Hello and welcome to this forum!
My ultimate advice is try not to lose sleep over sleep. Easier said than done, I know, but perfectly doable because I and many others have done it. Get into a regular sleep schedule, this is really important to get your real sleep back on track. The other will be the mental or not so real aspect, it’s that fear over no/poor sleep and how they affect your real sleep. Ultimately, there’s really no connection between them although it will require a bit more work and time to overcome. Please go through the material here and you will start seeing the bigger picture of what insomnia is all about. Good luck and best wishes!
Hello Kyle!
Welcome to this forum and sorry to hear about your struggles. What you are going through is very common. As a recovered person, I am telling you up-front that sleep or lack of it has nothing to do with your health. It’s all entirely concocted by your brain to try to protect you but unfortunately, it’s wrong advice. And it’s misguided, erroneous info that you somehow bought into.
The biological process of sleep is very similar to eating and breathing. To your body, they are no different. The question really is can you accidentally starve yourself of sleep to death or into having the terrible health consequences that you described. In a similar way, you could ask yourself if you can accidentally starve yourself of oxygen or nourishment to death. The answer is unequivocally no because you will instinctively eat when hungry or breathe when you hold your breath long enough. Your body does all this for you. The act of going to bed is similar to putting food in your mouth or inhaling. These are all natural instinctive behaviors that requires no conscious intervention. The ability to sleep is an innate and inherent nature in all of us. Just like the ability to eat or breathe.
That said, so what can you do to get your sleep on track? Frankly, it’s really quite easy. Just set a time to get into and out of bed. That’s it. If your sleeping hours are out of whack due to horrendous sleep anxiety, by doing this, your body will get used to the schedule and it will respond accordingly.
Understand there are two distinct issues here. First is the actual insomnia, this is quite easy to fix, just by having a regular sleep schedule. The other is entirely psychological, or the mental aspect of insomnia and the scary thoughts and behaviors behind it. They both may seem interconnected but are really independent. Your ability to sleep is not affected by thoughts and likewise, anxiety doesn’t cause insomnia, in a strict sense. Tackling the mental aspect will be a huge part of the effort to get over insomnia. Your brain will repeatedly try to warn you about the dangers of not sleeping. Try to cultivate yourself into convincing yourself that this is all just noise. The general remedy is to not run away or escape from anxiety but to welcome and anticipate it and see what it is really all about. Over time, you will start getting desensitized because nothing remotely as bad or horrendous is really happening at all. Towards the end of your recovery, you start realizing it’s all just a set of thoughts and how you relate to them. You then get into a much better position to handle insomnia when it happens and it will no longer bother you that much.
Also try not to struggle when waking up during the night and being okay with night time wakefulness. If you have further questions, reach out to us here and we will try to help you. Good luck and best wishes!
So you slept well for six years while on medication? This proves your sleep is not broken, because medications can never generate sleep, it’s your own body that did it all along. You were just misled to believe you were dependent on it. The likely reason you slept is because you felt safer after you have ‘delegated’ the task of sleep to something else and can now heave a sigh of relief. You tried less and taking pills stopped your mind from the pondering and overthinking.
Two weeks is just a breeze, continue sticking to your sleep schedule and your sleep should improve. Sleep is a constant state of charge and discharge, to feel sleepy, you have to accumulate sleep debt first which means being awake long enough. Your emotions will settle down after some time or you get exposed to poor sleep and realise nothing really bad is happening anyways then you start becoming desensitized and immune. Good luck!
Getting up at the same time is a great start. So what time do you go to bed? If you feel sleepy by 10 or 11 and go to bed around this time,
this actually seems like a good starting sleep window.I think the problem you should ponder is why you think your sleep is broken. What happened that made you conclude this? Did you experience one night of no sleep or a couple of sleepless nights that changed everything?
Having bad nights is actually much more common than you think. You would have had it plenty of times in the past, like when you stayed up late to study for an exam, finish a project write-up, watch a movie or important match, take a long haul flight or whatever. Your sleep then recovers after that because you never thought anything was broken or tried to fix anything.
If you worry about sleep, then isn’t your body proving to you every night this is erroneous? Because you said you feel sleepy and fight to stay awake until your sleep window. This is a sure sign your body is telling you your sleep is never broken and can never be broken. You were just confused and misled by your own mind because you experienced some bad nights. You can think of bad nights as if you banged your toe or had a stomach upset. Bad nights means absolutely nothing except you had a bad night. It doesn’t mean your future sleep is compromised in any way. When you start taking your thoughts and fears way too seriously, you will only worry needlessly.
I know it seems hard now when things look pretty bad. But I am telling you as a recovered insomniac, insomnia is mainly a problem of overthinking and too much unhealthy obsession on sleep. Your sleep will regulate itself as long as you keep to a regular sleep schedule. But sleep won’t be your cure until you address your thoughts and fears about poor sleep because sleep is something everyone does every night and as long as you are scared of poor sleep, those fears will keep reliving themselves every day. Ultimately, once you get over this, you realize insomnia is really just a set of thoughts inside your mind and how you relate to them. The key is being disciplined to stick to a sleep schedule, keeping your fears under control and being okay with wakefulness when you wake up during the night. Best wishes to you!
When I did the course, yes I kept a diary. That was 2 years ago back in 2020. I don’t now. I typically go to bed at 11-12 pm and get out at 7-8 am. My sleep is pretty consistent and I use no aids whatsoever. A sleep diary is pretty useful in recording data and tracking your progress. But for someone who already sleeps normally whom I consider myself as, it’s quite pointless. Nobody wants to keep to a set of sleep rules forever, really. Use cbti as a crutch if you will, but ultimately, you’ll have to grow out of it once its useful purpose has been utilized.
It’s quite impossible for someone who has no sleep problems before to suddenly “lose” it, so to speak, over just a couple of sleepless nights. It doesn’t work like that. Mainly people are overreacting to a harmless condition that happens to everyone. I still get choppy sleep sometimes but I don’t get panicked like before. If I have a bad night then it means just that. It doesn’t mean I’m broken. It’s like I banged my toe or have an upset tummy, it will go away if I don’t start obsessing over it. You must have had many instances of poor sleep before but you weren’t bothered and they eventually went away without much fanfare. You’ll understand what I mean in due course. Good luck.
Hi and thank you too. Your insomnia is pretty recent which is good because you can nip it in the bud before it develops into years or decades long obsession like in some people.
I wouldn’t recommend taking pills. It’s easy to quit now before the idea that you need external aids like pills to sleep becomes more deeply entrenched. Early in my insomnia, I took ambien but it worked only for two nights. So I knew very early on that pills weren’t the solution for me.
A much better way to “reboot” your sleep system is just to keep to a regular bed time. No sleeping or naps at other times if you can. Keep doing this and your body will respond within a few weeks. The human sleep system works on a clock and on something called sleep drive or sleep debt. You get sleepier the longer you stay awake. You are building sleep debt every minute you are awake. It’s exactly like hunger. Most people will have a healthy sleep drive after at least 16 hours being awake. 18 hours is better so you could start with a 6 hour sleep window and slowly extend this as you improve.
In addition, another common question is waking up during the night or too early. Understand that this is completely normal. Traditional cbti recommends you get out of bed if you can’t sleep within 20 mins. But over time, I found another effective method. Act like you don’t care. Be okay with wakefulness, over time you should fall back asleep pretty quickly.
Try to be cheerful and optimistic about your condition. Fully engage in your daily activities as much as you can, much like before you have insomnia. Behave like a normal person without insomnia. Any truly recovered person is one who sees that sleep just cannot be controlled, and doesn’t live in fear of poor sleep anymore. Best wishes to you.
Hello and welcome. I am sorry you are having sleeping problems lately. Please feel free to look through the material here. Some of the success stories have a lot of insights. Insomnia is almost always a problem of too much thinking and too much obsession. If you can start letting go of these, your recovery can truly begin. Other than that, observing a regular sleep schedule (sleep window) is critical. And that’s all you need. Discipline and a willingness to learn and letting go of unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. Good luck!
Hi @amandalea
Your question is an interesting one because I also faced a similar senario years ago. Basically I told myself I have 2 possible choices (going out or not) and 4 possible outcomes:
1. I don’t go out and sleep well.
2. I don’t go out but still sleep poorly regardless.
3. I go out and have a great time. But it may mean I mess up my sleep so I sleep poorly.
4. I go out and have a blast. Then come home with a huge smile and then sleep really well!I realized if I choose 1 or 2, I’d always lose out no matter how I slept that night. I’d deprived myself the chance of enjoying myself and still not able to guarantee a good night sleep. Whereas if I chose 3 or 4, I always win no matter the outcome, plus the chance of sleeping great would be an added bonus. So guess what?? I chose to go out and slept really well that night because I forgot all about my insomnia and told no one about it.
Years from now, how would you choose to reminisce this moment? Would it be how well you slept that night or how much fun you had with your friends? You decide ?.
Having preconceived notions between sleep and health is perhaps not helpful. Maybe it’s time you re-examine them. Can you give any source which says 12-13 hours of sleep gives higher cd4 count? If you are on anti-virals, is a high cd4 count really that important anymore? Because your viral load would be extremely low, sometimes undetectable even to the most sensitive tests. What about other hiv patients? Do they need 12-13 hours?
Or believing you need more than 8 hours to prevent headaches. Is there any basis for this? During your recent insomnia bouts, are you having headaches as alleged? Be honest, true and completely transparent with yourself. The mind can just be too full of ideas, they are mostly ineffective, unhelpful or downright false. Unleash the ability to expose the work of an overprotective mind, it is sometimes feeding you false and unsubstantiated information.
What about dropping the relaxation exercises completely? I mean really. What’s the point of continuing them if you feel they are not getting you anywhere?
Replace them with your hobbies. Doing things you truly enjoy for a change. Gardening, cooking, baking, knitting or anything you always wanted to do but haven’t got the time. When I had insomnia, I was like you. I then realized it was these relaxation techniques that were causing me to focus on my sleep, paying more attention to it. It was actually a sleep effort.
Maybe you shouldn’t relax away your fears and anxiety. Because this shows you still think there’s a problem or fear you need to manage and relaxation is the only means of escape. You can’t get over the fear if you continue fearing it. This is the loop you are caught up in. Try to see what your anxiety is all about. Is it grounded in reality or just a figment of imagination? You may start realizing it’s all just a set of thoughts after all, most of them are completely overblown and false. It’s all just over-dramatized fear. Best wishes to you.
I’m sorry you are going through a rough time now. Though I’m not sure what negative side effects you are experiencing and how bad they actually are. But isn’t insomnia itself able to cause all those effects you are talking about or even worse? A regular course of cbti is about 8 weeks. Whilst having insomnia, theoretically, you could suffer for a lot longer. So which one do you prefer: a short or a lifelong struggle? Theoretically, you could be “cured” by the end of 8 weeks and you could be sleeping well for the rest of your life! Short term pain for long term gain. It’s well-worth it. But all that said, I’m going tell you up-front that a “cure” isn’t necessary sleeping well every single night from then on and never experiencing bad nights again. It just means your nights are more regular, you have an altered relationship with poor sleep, you don’t see it as a danger anymore, you are no longer afraid, and you are in much better position to face it. This is the key to a complete recovery, it’s not living with the fear of poor sleep anymore. Good luck and best wishes!
For most recovered people, they start getting used to it. Be willing to sit with the fear and see what it’s all about. Stop hiding and running away because nothing of this nature can actually hurt you physically. Then slowly you realize there’s really nothing there at all. It’s all just a set of thoughts and how you relate to them. Thoughts can do nothing unless you start taking them seriously. Your sleep works on an entirely different level and has nothing to do with what’s going on inside your head. All you need is just stick to your sleep window! This is really important. Ignore everything else, stop researching sleep, stop listening to ideas or trying quick fixes, stop talking about it, stop fretting when you start waking up more and earlier because this is normal as your sleep improves, just quit trying to figure this out and things will start settling into place.
Talk to your doctor first if you have any concerns. But if ask me, it doesn’t really matter. Sleep is separate from what you do or feel or think. Any connection you make is entirely fictitious and exist only inside your mind, as long as keep making these decisions based on how you think it affects your sleep, you will always have difficulty sleeping because ultimately you are still very scared. You won’t sleep well as long as you have fear.
Hi @alax
Ups and downs are extremely common! Nobody’s recovery goes from getting 4-5 hours/night to 8 straight hours within few weeks. As your sleep improves, your sleep drive reduces and what you WILL experience from now on will be more awakenings and possibly lots of early morning awakenings too. The question now is how do you respond to them which then determines how fast you fall back asleep and continue making progress. If you accept all these as normal which they are, ignore them, do nothing and stop struggling, your improvement will continue in the form of falling asleep faster after these awakenings. You may also start experimenting with adding a bit more time to your sleep window to see if you can get more sleep out of it.
Remember your sleep debt accumulated from your insomnia nights is getting cleared as you start sleeping more. How fast and how long you fall asleep on any night is really just a question of how much sleep debt you have built-up over the days and weeks, so this means more insomnia nights = more sleep going forward, OR more sleep in the past week(s) = more awakenings/less sleep in future.This is the fundamental truth about sleep and there’s no way anybody can go round this. Ultimately, your body knows.
