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Hello Brendan
I advise you not to play this dangerous game. Of trying to second-guess your body and attempting to override it. Firstly, it’s futile because there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. After you have fallen asleep, your body takes over completely. In the same way you don’t tell your body how to digest the food you eat. You can neither control nor tell your body what kind and how much of light, deep or rem sleep you get. Period.
Second reason, you may stumble upon some unsavory findings that cause you more misery because it’s not what you expected or had in mind. You then go into a downward spiral where you start to worry about sleep and taking unnecessary and ridiculous steps to try to control it. Then when you don’t the results you want, this leads to more conflicts between mind and body which makes sleep way harder or almost impossible. Not knowing is way better than seeking to know. This is a powerful way of letting go and accepting that some things are just beyond your control. And sleep is one of those things which sits right on top of that list. Let it go, buddy! Just enjoy your moment in bed and rest. Sleep, in whatever shape, form or duration will come when it comes. That’s how it supposed to be in nature.
Hello @mango!
Not sure what you want to hear from others. I suggest you read the success stories, there’s plenty of inspirations there. But ultimately, don’t seek to listen to other people’s stories just to justify your insecurity that you are not alone. This is “safety-reinforcing” behavior which just perpetuates your fear. Because people do this only if they are afraid and try to seek safety in numbers. And if you are afraid, you won’t overcome your insomnia. Insomnia feeds on the fear of not sleeping well. If you want to recover, you first need to stop fearing. Good luck!
Hi @danzer!
All suffering, including about sleep ones, are the result of wrong perceptions. Try to do some deep reflection within yourself. You said something about whether caring how you sleep helps. If you think you care, then what is the actual basis of it? Is it even worth caring about when it’s supposed to be natural? Or if you don’t care, is this really true? Could it be possible you somehow still care obessesively but you are just kidding yourself that you don’t because that’s what people here or everywhere else told you this helped them? Think very deeply about this. It can also be applied to other things in your life. Just deep reflection, examining any ideas or notions that you have then observing really carefully and without prejudice whether this actually reflect true reality.
That said, waking up throughout the night is normal. So could it be possible that you are overstressing yourself over issues that many people don’t perceive as problems at all? Could all this “suffering” actually be self-inflicted just because of a wrong perception or notion? Good luck!
Hello!
How does anyone define suffering? Well it depends on the person. If you don’t see something as a suffering, then it ceases to become as such.Sleep is very much the same concept. Any perceived sleep suffering is just your perceived notion of it. It comes into being because you have defined that inside your mind. But notions are not necessarily real or reflect the true reality. All notions are just figments of your imaginative mind.
The basic science is that sleepiness builds from adequate wakefulness. Therefore, a regular bedtime is more than enough that makes your sleep more consistent. That and an open mind is all you need to free yourself from your perceived “suffering”. Good luck!
The cure is nothingness. A complete abandonment of all efforts. There is no holy grail when it comes to sleep. Good luck!
Everyone will be able to see your posts. But of course, it’s their choice whether to respond. Maybe nobody is interested. There’s nothing complex about sleep either that can’t be explained in a few sentences so I am not sure what kind of insights you want to share here. Sleep is just sleep, it works like hunger, it gets stronger the longer you go without it. And it works like a timetable, ie, if people go to bed at consistent hours, they tend to get sleepy by a consistent time also. And that’s all there is to it! It’s not complicated at all, in fact the more anyone tries to make it so, the worse it gets
Hello!
Great to hear. So what did you do? I did nothing, and just went to bed and got out at the same time every day. With Martin’s guidance and advice, of course. But I now know, I really didn’t need anything else other than a regular bedtime schedule.Hello!
4-5 hours of deep sleep??? That’s way more than even the healthiest person gets! According to the sleep foundation, getting 55-97 mins is pretty typical, excerpt below. This means only one to one and half hours of deep sleep is normal so you are getting way more already. What then are you trying to fix? And then asking if doing sauna will fix an impossible or non-existent problem just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Excerpt from From Sleep Foundation:
How Much Deep Sleep Do You Need?
To calculate how much deep sleep you need, first determine how much sleep you need overall. Most adults should aim for seven to nine hours of sleep each night. Between 13% and 23% of that time should be spent in deep sleep. If you get seven hours of sleep each night, then you spend approximately 55 to 97 minutes each night in deep sleep.
To a certain extent, the body self-regulates amounts of deep sleep. For example, you might spend more time in deep sleep if you are recovering from sleep deprivation or if you regularly experience short sleep, such as over the course of a work week.
Source: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/stages-of-sleep/deep-sleep
Hi Sue!
If you have no commitments and love getting up at 3am, then sure why not. 5.5 hours is probably a bit short though if that’s how long you intend to sleep over 24 hours. But what you could also do is wake up at 3am, stay awake and keep yourself occupied/entertained with light duties like reading or watching tv for 2 hours, then try sleeping again at 5 am for a further 2 hours for a final out of bed time of 7 am. Remember that you are automatically accumulating sleep drive for every minute you are awake so that 2 hours in between two distinct sleeping phases could help you achieve more overall snooze time. It would be interesting to note that many pre-industrial revolution humans slept like this. They went to bed at dusk and had a “1st” and “2nd sleep phases” separated by a period of wakefulness in between where they ate, prayed, made food, hung out, had sex etc. The idea is to be flexible and go easy on yourself when it comes to sleep. Just don’t stress over it and you should do quite well. Best of luck!
Hello Sue!
How long is your sleep window? It should be a minimum of 6 hours. Feeling sleepy way before your bedtime can be a result of an excessively shortened sleep window, so you could be slightly sleep deprived. Good luck!Hi @eviancenita!
You should be able to get over the anxiety in the same way most of us did. By slowly desensitizing yourself to your fears over time. And then realizing these fears are way overblown and irrational. By being willing to entertain the idea of poor sleep. Ultimately if you believe in yourself, your confidence should return.
In the end, it boils down to your relationship with poor sleep and how you think about it. Another person could have exactly the same sleep patterns as yours but still thinks he sleeps okay, is okay with it, goes on his life as usual, and not making a big fuss out of it. Because he thinks nothing is wrong and therefore nothing needs fixing! It is really all about perception and a change of mindset. If you don’t make a big deal out of it or endlessly trying to seek answers, it will blow over and your issues will resolve on its own with almost no effort.
Nobody came into this world “learning how to sleep”. There’s no kindergarten for it! As babies, we just slept whenever we wanted and that’s how nature really intended it. If everybody just goes to sleep whenever they are truly sleepy, and not because so-called science or whatever literature says “you should sleep at 11pm and wake at 7am”, then technically insomnia won’t even exist at all. Go back to basics if you have to. Ditch all the rules and the efforts. Be brave to face whatever the outcome and understand that true sleep requires neither effort nor preparation. It is supposed to be natural and effortless. But it should be pretty consistent if you are consistent with your sleeping schedules. Good luck.
Conversely, if you can’t sleep, either because you are prob quite well-rested or suffering from extreme stress (even under great stress, you will still sleep if you are sleep deprived), then you won’t sleep even if you take a ton of pills, or check yourself into a $50,000 hotel suite. You can never force it! Sleep works like this: it gets stronger the longer you go without it, nothing can stop it and nothing can produce it either except being awake long enough. It works exactly like hunger, you just get hungrier the longer you go without eating. There’s nothing fancy going on here or anything that’s hard to understand. Sleep is pretty simple. But that said, the normal amount of wakefulness to generate sufficient sleepiness is around 16-18 hours for most people so ask yourself, have you actually been awake long enough to be sleepy? Stop going to bed because of what time it is, go by the amount of time spent awake. If it’s a consistent amount every night, your sleep should be pretty consistent too. This is what cbt-i is all about. Setting a regular bedtime schedule and that’s it! The rest is up to your body. Excessive worry over it or taking unnecessary measures to force sleep to happen is not only counter-productive but also reinforces the fear around it which only prolongs the insomnia episodes. Stop all the sleep efforts, only this way will your mind settle down enough for your body to get its rest. Good luck!
Hi @eviancenita
Advice to combat this? What about no advice? Because nothing is wrong. Never was and very likely never will be. Your ability to sleep can never be broken. It is built in since birth. Just like eating, breathing, peeing or defecating. Your body takes care of it! If you can’t sleep, then it prob means your body doesn’t need it at that point in time. If you are very sleepy due to going on for prolonged period with it, you can and you will sleep, practically anywhere, standing or hung upside down, it doesn’t matter
Hi @anamarija
You can slowly bring forward your bedtime in 15-20 mins intervals until you achieve the desired amount of sleep. But if you go to bed earlier, you are also very likely to wake up earlier. The 2nd part of sleep after the first awakening can be a bit challenging for most people. Expect this to happen so there are no surprises. As long as you take it gently and don’t stress too much over it, you should be able to fall back asleep or the time to fall back asleep should get shorter. Being okay with waking up after sleeping several hours sleep is key. Stop the pondering, the questioning, or the endless seeking for answers is key to quieten down your mind so you can go back to sleep. Accept everything as it happens and that you have very little control aside from keeping to a regular bedtime schedule and enjoying your wakeful hours the best you can. Good luck!
