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Hello Paul!
You will continue to have problems as long as you keep doing all these unnecessary stuffs. If all your life, you require nothing to sleep until now, how on earth does your body suddenly need all these things within a month? Surely this isn’t making any sense.The reason you keep having problems is because you keep trying to solve an insolvable problem. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you at all, everyone will have sleep disruptions once in a while but for most people, they usually go away by itself without doing anything. Because they never thought there’s a problem! But somehow your mind has confused this as a big problem and keeps asking you to fix it asap.
Your sleep isnt the problem, but you thinking there’s a problem becomes the problem! And it is entirely psychological, the roots are in your mindset. In humans, it is always the mindset which shapes behaviours and attitude towards any problem. When you frequently take medications, herbs or other things to sleep, this keeps your mind in a conflicted and confused state, because when one thing didn’t work, it will automatically look for others and the frequent restlessness and overmonitoring of results make it hard to settle down and rest, which is an important condition for sleep.
Just keeping your bedtime regular is all you need. As well as befriending wakefulness, learn to be okay with wakefulness, because waking up during the night is quite normal! The faster you give up all efforts to improve your sleep, the faster your mind will settle down and then everything will start falling into place. Just trust your own body, it knows what it is doing, it has been doing this your whole life and it is basically screaming inside you, “I can sleep, pls stop giving me confusing signals!”. Also manage your relationship with poor sleep, try to make it workable by not fearing it, a bit at a time, by continuing to enjoy your day and doing your daily routines. Try not to cancel events or appointments. You will continue to think about sleep obessesively at this point, but it should slowly dissipate once your sleep improves. Be very patient and practise self compassion, don’t be so hard on yourself because you haven’t got a good night rest. Setbacks are also pretty common. Remember nobody is judging you or monitoring your progress except yourself! There’s no prize to be won for being the best or fastest sleeper anyway! Improve at your own pace and with the correct mindset and adhering to a regular bedtime, you should do very well. Best of luck!
Hello!
Even the worst anxiety attack can’t damage your sleep. That system is built-in and remains with you for life.Sleep works like this: the longer you go without it, the more likely you are to sleep, not less. Just like hunger. It also likes regularity, meaning if you go to bed and get up at regular times, you are more likely to get sleepy by a certain time in the evening. Normal human beings get sleepy after accumulating enough hours of wakefulness which is usually about 16-18 hours to generate 6-8 hours of sleep. That’s why cbt-i uses this to help you sleep better, by getting you to set a regular time for bed, builds up your sleep drive by limiting time in bed and getting out if you can’t sleep because sleep ultimately can’t be forced. It aids you to feel okay about wakefulness and not stress too much over it, so sleepiness returns and you can go to bed again. Sleep is always generated and regulated by your own body, therefore cbt-i is never a sleep generator and neither are sleeping pills either. The only thing you need to do is just stick to regular bedtime hours and let your body do the rest! Best wishes.
Hello!
You cope with this just in same way you cope with the stress of getting poor sleep. Your sleep drive will always win! It doesn’t matter where you sleep, right next to a noisy street, or near an airport with airplanes taking off or landing all the time, people will get used to these and then things will settle down, they become non-factors until people actually can’t sleep without the noise they got accustomed to! It might be difficult first few nights, don’t overreact and it will start breaking in. Stop underestimating your body, it can sleep anywhere and anytime as long as the drive is there. Ultimately this is a fear of poor sleep, not the actual sleep itself and people will only get over it once they manage the fear well. Best of luck, good night and happy sleeping next to your partner!Hi Deb
I’d say managing your relationship with poor sleep is key here. The issue isn’t about the actual sleep itself anymore because you’d shown yourself you can sleep.Pls try to stop fearing poor sleep, this is how a lot of people recover. Think of it another way, if you sleep a little poorly after a stretch of sleeping well, then the most likely explanation is your sleep drive is getting reduced after those good sleep. Isn’t this a sure sign your sleep system is working perfectly well? There is nothing else to troubleshoot and nothing to solve because nothing is broken. The faster you give up your efforts to improve, the faster your mind will settle down and then you find you fall back asleep faster, that was what happened to me and I believe many others too.
The only time you take a pill to sleep is when you think there’s something wrong with your sleep and you need a quick fix. And when you think there’s a problem, your mind automatically goes into troubleshooting or panic mode and this makes it harder to fall asleep. You also want to sleep more because you think more is better and therefore trying to override your body’s own mechanisms. In summary, you are trying to force sleep to happen because you have this fear that little sleep is equal to bad outcomes. And then guess what? Your struggle continues without end….
Hello!
When it comes to sleeping, there’s nothing to relearn. Your body naturally knows how to do this already.You might need to realign your circadian rhythm though if you fall asleep at irregular intervals. But if you just keep to a regular bedtime schedule, and let your body take care of everything else, you should have encouragable results within a few weeks. Expect some poor nights in between, which is 100% normal, and try not to react to them, you will do very well in the long run. Good night and happy sleeping!
@Gods_kid
Thank you for your kind comments. A fear of something is very natural for anyone, that’s why people get phobias all the time. For insomnia, it just happens to be poor sleep. Are people afraid of getting in a plane crash? Sure everyone is, but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen though, hence people keep flying all the time. Nowadays, my mind still reminds of the pain of insomnia and the thought of not sleeping will still drop by and say hello, but am I worried? Well, I’ll be lying if I say I’m completely not, just that it doesn’t bother me that much anymore hence I just let it pass. At night when it happens while I’m in bed, I’ll just shrug my shoulders and say to myself, “I’ll deal with it and its consequences when it actually happens” and then before I know it, I’ll start yawning, feeling sleepy and then fall right asleep. Insomnia hasn’t revisited me eversince, if it does, I’ll prob say hello and howdy like meeting an old friend and then make the best of it by watching or reading something interesting on my phone in bed. What’s the worse that could happen anyway? ??♂️ Probably nothing. Good night to you and happy sleeping.Hello!
Are you just afraid of poor sleep? Afraid that it will get worse and you lose whatever little sleep you now have?Then maybe this is what this is all about. Just a four letter word called FEAR. It is enough to keep people up for nights and they can go on suffering like this for decades because they try so hard to escape from it. But the fact is poor sleep is normal for everyone once in a while! Modify your response to stop avoiding it anymore and start kinda expecting it to happen every night like welcoming an old friend, the fact is that sleep is never controlled by anyone or anything, your body just makes it happen all by itself. Therefore worrying about it is completely futile and unnecessary.
Just keeping to a regular bedtime schedule is all you need and your body will take care of everything else. Just trust your own body for once! Stop trying so hard and doing so many things just to sleep! Let it happen all by itself. Your mindset and attitude, particularly towards bad nights will be key to your recovery. Good night and I wish you achieve your goals soon.
Hello Kay
You can try driving short distances first then slowly ramp up as you get more comfortable. That’s how I did it. For me, the fear of getting into a horrible accident and dying was enough to keep me awake during the whole drive. I guess it’s the same fear of not sleeping that kept me awake also! But like many things in life, you can’t move on unless you are willing to move out of your comfort zone, it’s the same principle when it comes to sleep, you won’t improve unless you are willing to experience the unpleasantness of poor sleep until you no longer fear it. Nobody is saying you can’t do this at your own pace. Good luck and be brave!Sleep is just sleep, there’s no way your body can do it wrong. If you reach a place like me, I don’t particularly celebratory if I get more than 8 hours, neither do I get upset if I got 4 or 5 either! But most of the times it’s in between. I stopped connecting actions/thoughts to sleep, because I became convinced there’s none even if you believe taking ambien helps but it’s always your own body that made you sleep and nothing else. I also stopped chasing sleep and fearing poor sleep, that’s how I recover and still doing great today. Good night and happy sleeping to you!
Hi Dalton!
Stimulus control of getting out of bed is supposed to make you be more welcoming to wakefulness and not struggle with it. Therefore, it doesn’t matter where you go, out of bed or not, as long as you stop seeing waking up as stressful, and try to be friends with wakefulness because waking up during the night is very normal and happens to everyone.Try not to do too many things to sleep, because this only reinforces there is something horribly wrong and you need to deal with it urgently, but unfortunately, nobody can do anything about sleep. Your body determines when and how much sleep you get so trying to force yourself to sleep is not going to work but leaves you more frustrated which makes your insomnia worse. Build your good working relationship with poor sleep, ask yourself why you fear it so much and if that fear is real. Most people still function very well on little sleep. Once you are okay with getting some poor sleep plus stop trying to avoid or fix it, and keeping to a regular bedtime, you will do very well. Be patient and stop trying to rush things, your body will recover at its own pace, the ultimate aim is to be at peace within yourself. Good luck!
Hello!
If you do a sleep diary, you only estimate how much you sleep without clock watching. But from my experience, your best sleep happens when you no longer track it or try to make improvements. Everyone’s sleep will right itself, as long as you stick to a regular bedtime schedule, where you just go to bed X and get out at Y, and you don’t care what happens in between. Your body should respond nicely within a few weeks. You might get some nights where your sleep gets worse but that’s okay because this is a sure sign everything is working well as your sleep drive will decrease naturally after good nights. Good luck!Sounds normal so far, what’s wrong? If you slept too well for a few nights, it’s natural your sleep drive is reduced so your sleep wouldn’t be as good, just common sense, isn’t it? It’s like your appetite for food becomes less or disappears after eating a full meal or overeating. If otherwise, you keep on feeling sleepy or hungry all the time even after eating and sleeping well, then something is really wrong with you. You could have some sort of underlying disease and you need to rush to see a doctor!
Hello!
How many weeks are you into cbti? What I can say is be as patient as you can and try sticking to the plan as much as possible. Since you are a client, you should direct your queries to Martin and I’m sure he will answer them satisfactorily.Another thing is please try not to be so hard on yourself. It’s okay if you can’t follow the cbti rules exactly every day, you are only human and doing the best you can. Be kind on yourself and practise self compassion. As a former client of Martin myself, and graduated exactly one year ago, I am happy to say I am completely relaxed about my sleep and don’t follow any rules anymore except having a reasonably regular bedtime. Other things like stimulus control of getting out of bed if unable to sleep, or not napping during the day, I’ve completely ditched all that because I sleep whenever I have the chance (with my body cooperating, of course) and the time for it. I stopped protecting my nocturnal sleep and I do sometimes have difficulty falling asleep at night due the afternoon naps I’m taking, and this is perfectly okay. Nobody is judging my sleep except myself. Even that, I have been very open-minded about my own sleep. I sleep great now because I let my body take care of it and I feel I don’t need to do anything at all. That really takes the pressure off and I can fall asleep quite easily. I am never bothered with the occasional bad night. Recovery doesn’t necessarily mean sleeping well, it just means you are no longer stressed or terrified with the idea of getting poor sleep, so shifting your mindset is key. Good luck to you and I hope you can have a great outcome as well.
Hello!
Be willing to experience wakefulness, even welcoming it
when it happens because this is normal. Try not to track or monitor your sleep especially trying to figure out when you are going to fall asleep, just rest in bed and let that happen naturally. The idea behind this is to be okay with wakefulness anytime and anywhere and to minimise the troubleshooting, pondering, wondering that’s going on inside your head, if you do these steps diligently, you will do very well. Best of luck!
