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Hi DK!
Are you avoiding your bed until bedtime? In this instance, I would recommend you spend more enjoyable time in bed instead, doing things you like such as watching movies on your phone, play games or anything you like, try to reestablish that loving connection with your bed. Don’t try to use cbti as a tool to generate sleep, because nothing can generate sleep except sufficient wakefulness so it doesn’t really matter how and where you spend that wakefulness. Dont obesess over what time it is because cbti says so. Go by what your body is telling you. If you lose focus repeatedly then it’s time for bed. Your ability to sleep is independent of cbti or anything else you use to try to achieve this end. What did you like to do before bedtime prior to your insomnia? Then continue doing that! Restoring your personality will help regain your confidence and find that joy again. Best wishes to you.Hi DK!
I can only say some differences are to be expected from night to night. They are also much more likely to happen at the beginning of the recovery. But at the end of the day, sleep is just sleep, and there’s no way your body can do it wrong.I can understand where you are coming from, it is very human to want to do something to achieve some form of control, but therein is where your issues will stick. The more you do, the more attention you pay to it, the more struggle you will get. Try to be neutral and non judgmental about any kind of sleep you get. Be friendly to wakefulness as much as you can. Only then will your mind settle down to rest. Are you a bible person? It says God rested after 6 days of work. It didn’t say sleep. So as long as you allow yourself sufficient rest in bed, and not worry about sleep, you should be well rested. Sleep becomes a by-product of resting quietly in a comfortable place and you don’t actively strive or force it to happen.
You are only truly recovered when you stop seeking answers or asking questions after a perceived poor sleeping experience anymore. It comes from a realization that any sleep, good or poor, long or short, no longer has any hold over you.
Hello @daveka!
The solution to this is paradoxically not seeking to improve anymore. Sounds twisted but so true! Your body has already shown you it can sleep, is capable of improvement so what more do you ask of it? That it gives you 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every single night? You know that is impossible so when will the lesson ever be learnt that nobody controls sleep and nobody controls waking up either.Everybody will have bouts of poorer sleep after a stretch of good nights. Think of it as reduced sleep drive after getting so much good sleep so naturally your sleep will get poorer, there’s nothing wrong there and no troubleshooting is required. This is critical! The faster you realise that you can’t control sleep or waking up, and the less you do to try to control it, the faster you leave the struggle with insomnia. True recovery isn’t necessary about getting good sleep at all, it is really about your relationship with poor nights and how you feel or think about them.
Hello @jake5517!
The true recovery isn’t truly about the sleep anymore. It is really about your relationship with poor sleep, and how “immune” you are to it, if you
reach a stage when you think nothing about it, go on your day as usual and never crossed your mind to seek any kind of help or remedy, then that is the real recovery. Because you are no longer in that state of fear, when everything just seems to spiral out of control.Hello!
Here is the thing about sleep: Nobody has the ability to control it, ever. And nobody can control when they awake either! But getting overstressed over it can probably make it worse or make you waken more often. If you are willing to accept that you cant control sleep, that you will go to bed at X and get out at Y, disregard whatever happens in between and leave everything up to your body to decide and be willing to accept any outcome, including the awakenings, you will do quite well indeed. Sleep is just sleep, there’s nothing mysterious about it, and there’s no way your body can do it wrong either!Hello @Angeli
Thank you for your excellent answer. I too surrender completely to my body about sleep, I am also always sleepy almost all the time, especially during 2-4 pm, that’s why I like to take naps and sometimes they affect my nightly sleep but I’m not bothered at all. I find joy in both sleeping or not sleeping! That’s the meaning of being recovered because I am not trying to achieve anything anymore.
Hi @HENRY22
I am lucky because I discovered very early in my insomnia journey that ambien didnt work for me. Looking back the reason ambien didnt work was because I was going to bed way too early! Back then I was a late night owl, usually sleeping at 2am, so when insomnia hit after one whole sleepless night, of course I went to the doctor, horribly stressed over it and was prescribed ambien like everyone else. It kinda worked first night, I went to bed much earlier at 9pm versus the usual 2am, did manage to fall asleep after 1.5 hours but that was because I had backup sleep deprivation from the previous night. So second night, I took the pill again and went to bed at 9pm and guess what? Another sleepless night! Then I went back to the doctor who told me to stop taking the Ambien. Long story short, I only realised after finishing this course, that my circadian rhythm and the amount of time I spent awake continuously was the biggest determinant of how sleepy I’d get by a certain time in the evening. So now, I have been regularly going to bed at 11pm and out by 730am. So far so good, I am able to sleep a minimum of 6 hours on my worst nights, or the entire 8.5 on my best. I don’t stress about sleep anymore, I sometimes do wonder when an entire sleepless night would visit me again, and I do kinda anticipate it to happen because I have been taking afternoon naps, but so far, it hasn’t. I hope you find your relief soon. Best wishes.
Here’s the thing: Nobody ever conquered insomnia. Because sleeping is completely effortless and requires no action on your part, it is just happens naturally after being awake long enough. Insomnia really has two components to it: the first is the actual difficulty in sleeping and the other part is being frightened and stressed over it, which is completely psychological.
The first part is very easy to tackle. Just getting in and out of bed at regular times will fix it. The other part is more insidious and requires reverse psychology. You get over it by not wanting to get rid of insomnia, no longer seeing it as a problem and therefore, becoming desensitized by it over time. Sounds twisted but it works for many people!
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.
