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I can fully understand what you are going through as I’ve been through it myself. Perhaps a mindset reset is what you need. Avoidance isn’t going to get you very far, tolerance will. Be willing to tolerate some poor sleep and setbacks. Be okay with wakefulness of any sort and at anytime. It may also mean tolerating the consequences of any perceived poor sleep. It is being okay with ANY KIND of sleep. Sleep truly doesn’t define who you are or what you are capable of.
Being on this forum for ages, I can kinda tell how people will fare from their literature. People who eventually recover are often the ones who disappear away quietly. They stop asking questions, complaining and talking about their issues. On the contrary, those who keep coming back are the ones with the most issues. They keep sweating the small stuff, keep getting caught up in technicalities, keep asking what to do or how to do the perfect cbti, and just seem to can’t let it go. The real recovery is really the correct mindset and also to some extent, your personality. Good luck!
Hi Whitney
If you are going on a vacation, then do exactly that! That means enjoying yourself first and leaving everything that is stressful to you behind. Isn’t that what vacations are supposed to be for? Try to approach the issue from as much of a normal human being as you can when you find yourself questioning what to do. Try to recall what you did under similar circumstances before you had insomnia. Then do exactly that! Because that is always your real personality before all this happened. You can always return to doing cbti after the trip. But right now, get your priorities in order and enjoy the vacation first. Don’t worry about setbacks, they will sort themselves out eventually.
As a recovered insomniac, I am telling obsessing with doing cbti to the T is not helpful. Cutting yourself some slacks here and there is okay, your progress will not be hampered by very much. Don’t treat cbti like a chore that must be diligently and religiously followed in order to sleep well. Because it’s not! Sleeping well comes from doing nothing and expecting nothing. Constant striving for perfection is what tires most people out and leaves them frustrated. Don’t fall into this trap! The real recovery is the realization that there’s nothing you can actually do for sleep, so you stop chasing the issue any further because it becomes pointless and meaningless. Sleep happens all on its own without any active intervention required from you. Good luck and I hope you have a great time!
Define positive results.
Describe what you did in the 3 weeks. Did you adhere to a fixed timetable for sleep? Are you working with a coach? Without specifics, nobody is able help you. I can tell you upfront the only way to recover is to stop making distinctions between good and perceived poor sleep. They really only exist inside your head. You have to slowly accept or somehow become convinced that ALL kinds of sleep, whatever the form, duration or type has to be the one that your body needs for that moment.In regards to sleep, trying to control your mind just so you can sleep is metaphorically like saying, “My life is miserable, or has no special meaning, because I’m not a billionaire.” The thing is it doesn’t have to be! You just need to change your mindset and outlook on life and you will find a lot of relief from those pressures of everyday life. If you suffer in life, it is usually due to one or both of these reasons:
1. You take everything in life seriously. In fact, too seriously that your life itself almost ceases to be a joy or inspiration to you.
2. You have become too biased and only preferred certain outcomes in your life. Usually from beliefs that certain things like having untold riches, obtaining plenty of worldly possessions, demanding a painless and sickness-free living forever, or in this case, wanting to be able to sleep 8 hours or whatever amount you desire will confer better a better and more meaningful existence or more pleasure or comfort or whatever. The fact of the matter is you can start to be content and still be able to find meaning in life with much less than you ever imagined.Hello!
It’s okay! Napping shows your sleep system is working perfectly fine and that your body can sleep. Don’t think of it as a big deal. I also nap occasionally. Also try not obsess with doing the perfect cbti and that it’s okay to slip up once in a while. Sleeping will be a lifetime thing and you will have plenty of time to redo cbti. Good luck!
Hello!
You should slowly increase your time in bed once you are able to consistently spend most of that time sleeping, ie >85% for most nights for at least 1-2 weeks.
You could go at it slowly at first, adding 15-30 minutes, you can choose to go to bed earlier or get out later or a combination of both. After 2 weeks or so, re-evaluate the above again to see if you need to keep adding more time or cut back a little. You keep doing this until you reach your desired bedtime length.
Do note that your sleep quality will likely suffer temporarily once you do this, because that sleep pressure backup is getting cleared by the increased sleeping. This is quite normal! I can’t emphasize this enough, so expect it to happen then it comes less of a surprise. It could take the form of requiring longer to fall asleep, waking up more often or earlier than usual or all of these. Just remain faithful to your set sleep schedule, try not to over-react and you will do fine. Good luck!
When you have insomnia, especially when it’s quite recently, it’s often useful to do your usual routine before your insomnia started. So what did you do last time? Try to stick to that. Because that is truly your real personality before everything started. Good luck!
Hello
That’s quite normal. As time goes on, your sleep should improve (please keep to a consistent bedtime routine) and everything should settle down. Just try to be a bit patient and it’s okay to have a bad night or two. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable and uneasy about poor sleep or waking up during the night. The important thing is not to struggle excessively and truly accepting things that happen with a cheerful and optimistic mind. Good luck.
Hello @eleung2!
Allow yourself to think whatever your mind wants. Essentially, allow your mind to come in and strip search whatever it wants, nothing is off limits. When you say, “ok mind, pls don’t go there, don’t probe this area, it is forbidden!” That’s when alarms bells go off and warning lights start flashing. Your body is just trying to alert you to a danger that it feels is imminent and fatal when in reality, that “danger” is just you can’t sleep. Please teach yourself and your mind that simply not sleeping is not dangerous, and that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable and uneasy about it. Over time, you just get desensitized. Then the danger just feels unreal and you aren’t bothered by it anymore. Understand that your mind and body process all thoughts identically, regardless of whether they are sleep related or not. The difference is how seriously you take them and how compelled you feel the need to take some action over it. Good luck!
Hello!
I think what Martin means is you often can’t control your original but unhelpful sleep thoughts, like “I slept only 2 hours last night, now my day’s completely ruined!”. And as you pointed out, we can often adjust or control our responses to these thoughts and quite often, that response can be a thought in itself. Ultimately, as insomnia starts becoming less of a problem, we don’t pay as much attention or attach much less meaning to these thoughts anymore. It’s like you have become as indifferent to your sleep thoughts such as (my sleep was bad last night so I should worry over it) as you are to an innocent every day thought like (the sky is blue and the clouds white). Your brain processes both sleep and non-sleep thoughts identically. So the issue then becomes how seriously you view your thoughts and how emotionally and mentally upset you get over them.
Try doing nothing! What did you do before insomnia when you woke up during the night? Probably got up to use the toilet and then straight to bed again. Try to rest even if you can’t sleep. Close your eyes and let your mind drift. Try not to care if you slept or not. Stop trying so hard to sleep! This is the common mistake I’m seeing people do. They do a ton of stuff which they never did before, hoping they can somehow make sleep happen. Try being okay with wakefulness of any kind. Your past history is your best clue. If you never had to do any stuff to get back to sleep, chances are you probably don’t need to now either. Good luck!
Hello everyone!
This is a productive discussion. But anyways, here’s my summary:
1. Your sleep is not broken. Never was or will. Your body will get what it needs as long as you allow the right conditions for it to happen.
2. Feeling fear is normal when you don’t understand something. Your brain is only trying to protect you.In both cases, nothing is broken. How to fix something that’s unbroken? Well, you can’t. That’s why it’s a futile exercise. You have to believe this 110%. Your personality might play a role as well. Pretending to ignore or ‘faking it’ just to sleep better or longer might be considered a sleep effort so I’d caution against it. That can only come when you fully realize sleep isn’t something you need to worry about. You then start reorganizing your other priorities in your life so sleep no longer becomes a huge part of it or becomes the main consideration. Good luck!
Hello @sleepybee
Great question! As a recovered insomniac, I’m going to give you a spoiler alert and my answer from experience: Not fixing your sleep. And being okay with waking up during the night because it’s an evolutionary mechanism to keep you safe. While you can’t control sleep, you can quite often shift it via something called a sleep window and sticking to it.
Of course, that’s just my answer. Your journey might be a bit different. Martin’s and Scott’s style, as you’d have taken notice, is prodding you along by asking a set of questions so you formulate your own answers. You come to your own conclusions. But ultimately, the destination is the same. I highly recommend you to sign up for the free 2 week course or even better, subscribe for the paid course for exclusive 1-to-1 coaching if you can afford it.
Good luck and I hope you get the most out of this journey.
Hello!
Please don’t focus too much on results and actual sleep duration this early in your cbti. Focus more on the thoughts and behaviors around sleep, as these have an influence on sleep. Because sleep can never be directly controlled by anyone or anything. It just happens when the conditions are right, ie, high sleep drive and you are not nervous or anxious. Focus on these two. So continue following your sleep window. This helps to keep your sleep drive regular. There are no mistakes, rights or wrongs here. Nobody is judging this except yourself. Try not to stress too much over it, because it won’t help. It may seem hard at first but definitely doable! Everything will start falling into place once you get on the correct page. At the end of your journey, the highest form of recovery is you are no longer afraid of waking up during the night or care about how you sleep anymore. Your body will take care of everything for you. Good luck!
Hello @grangers
Waking up is really normal and common! It has nothing to do with arousal but more to do with our thousand year old survival mechanism. It’s built-into our sleep system so that we wake up occasionally and scan for external dangers or threats and then if everything’s safe, we can go back to sleep peacefully.
If you continue to see this as abnormal or something to be avoided at any cost, or think you need to have high sleep drive to get back to sleep, you will keep having trouble falling back asleep. Your sleep drive will naturally reduce after sleeping, even for a while, so the reduced amount of sleep drive will not be enough to overcome any learned arousal associated with waking up during the night anymore. So the only way is to convince yourself that waking up is normal and nothing to be afraid of. This reduces the arousal. Only then you can go back to sleep quite easily. But waking up will still happen regardless of what you do or how safe you feel!
