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Hello!
Your sleep will take care of itself as long as you stick to a regular bedtime schedule consistently. Don’t give up now. It can take a few weeks for it to settle down so try to be as patient and consistent as you can. The important thing also is try not to stress over one or several days of poor sleep, this is normal! Have faith and you should do quite well. Best wishes!Hi Mona
I do agree in a kinda way that everyone’s different. But from my experience, the suffering, especially if associated with insomnia, only persists because people want so badly to escape it and are very unwilling to experience whatever unpleasantness that they think is causing them and in some cases, end up spending a lifetime fearing and hating it so much. Since you said you’ve had this for decades and seen a ton of therapists, so where has all that gotten you anyway? Why hasn’t anything worked? Has it ever crossed your mind that actually nothing’s wrong and you are trying to solve an impossible puzzle?I am also not sure why you think anyone in a forum like this, people who hardly know you let alone seen or evaluated you face-to-face can offer any form of beneficial advice above and beyond what these experts you are seeing or have seen haven’t already given you. I don’t think anyone here is qualified to give advice on mental illness, this is just a forum to improve sleep. But I would like to add that sleep still happens regardless what state of mind a person is in anyway. I am not sure why, after claiming to suffer from this for decades, that you think something is horribly wrong while you are still around after so many years, safe and sound, and that if something horrible were to happen from all this, it would certainly already have by now. You sound pretty normal to me! Maybe you are just being confused but having had this for so long, you may have conditioned your brain to fear something that’s completely normal and harmless (which is that some degree of sleeplessness is normal and happens to everyone) and your response becomes automatically triggered by harmless nothings over time. Anyhow, I wish you find some relief soon and best wishes.
Hello
Don’t shut out unpleasant thoughts out because it doesn’t work. Just accept them as well as your obessesion with sleep while trying to get on with your life as much as possible. Very slowly everything is going to settle down and you find letting go easier as you go along. Learn to get comfy with being awake and not fear it. By being very patient and sticking to a regular bedtime schedule, you will slowly but surely get better.Greetings!
No, you are not new to the world of sleeplessness. Everyone must have had some periods where they slept much less or not at all such as moving to a new house or neighbourhood, becoming first time parents, starting a new job, taking a long haul flight crossing multiple timezones, staying up all night studying for an exam and etc etc. Some periods of sleeplessness are very common for everyone, way more common than you think and this is completely normal! So what makes you think your sleep is broken or you are “damaged goods”? Also, question why you think having some degree of insomnia is so frightening that it keeps you up at night. You must address this source of stress to get ahead. Or slowly regaining confidence that nothing is wrong at all, if ever. Only by doing those or both will you be able to leave insomnialand behind forever. I also stress that being recovered doesn’t automatically mean sleeping much better or that you won’t get insomnia again, because as I’ve just said some sleeplessness is pretty common in everyone, it just means you are no longer afraid of it! That said, I hope you find relief soon and best wishes!Great insight! Recovered doesn’t automatically mean sleeping much better but it’s not being in a state of fear anymore. Good luck!
Greetings!
Your story is a very common one and it’s always the fear of poor or no sleep that keeps you up all night. You have to be able to manage this fear well to get ahead. Start accepting bad sleep, be okay with being awake, allow unpleasant emotions or thoughts to happen instead of shutting them out and generally stop making this such a big deal because it’s not! Other than that, the only thing you can do is just getting in and out of bed at generally regular times and let your body do the rest. I hope you find your relief soon and best wishes.Hi Larana
Lol okay! The human mind is very creative. That is also why you are having this problem now, your mind is presenting you with scary thoughts of not sleeping, poor sleep and etc. But I can tell as a recovered person that all this is entirely made up and a hoax!You need to find your own way to deal with it. Everyone does, there is no one size fits all, but the destination is always the same. It’s the freedom from fear and the resumption of the pursuit of other things that makes your life more fulfulling and satisfying. I hope you find it soon and best wishes!
Hi Larana!
Instead of writing affirmative statements which you don’t believe in, another way is to write down why you fear poor sleep so much. Is it as bad as your brain presents it? Then be brave and challenge yourself to discover if this is true.Rediscovering your own personality is also helpful. Do things like you always used to. What did you do whenever you were stressed before you had insomnia? Binge watching netflix, making a delicious meal, baking, gardening, going to your favorite restaurant, reconnecting with friends or whatever you find fun to do. Then do exactly that, this is your personalized way of destressing and it is often helpful because it won’t feel forced like writing down affirmations, which you don’t believe in or never did before.
Hello Mehar!
Insomnia can happen due to many causes but the underlying reason for it to persist is always the same. It’s the fear of getting poor sleep, its perceived repercussions which are often false and way overblown and the stress over why it keeps rehappening that keeps it going. To get over it, you have to stop fearing it and to stop fearing you have to face it bravely. Everyone succeeds in their own way but the destination is always the same, it’s not fearing anymore that leads to a place of inner peace and liberation. Good luck to you.Greetings!
What’s so scary and worrying about the inability to catch even a couple of hours of sleep on such nights? ?I encourage you to really identify why you find not sleeping so frightening that it keeps you up all night. Then challenge yourself, be brave to find out whether this is true. You must have the ability to manage this fear well to get ahead! Nobody has ever truly recovered as long as they continue to fear poor sleep.
And ask yourself why you think your sleep is damaged, given that you have already proven to yourself that you can sleep well for the past few weeks. Is having a couple of bad nights really so bad, after so many good nights?
Once you recouncile with your fears, you may just find your way out of all this. Good luck!
Greetings…
The only way for it to end is to not want it to end, sounds twisted? Because if you are desperate to get away from insomnia, it will tend to stick around longer! It is only when you stop seeing insomnia as a huge problem that you start to defuse the heightened alert situation and turn this around.Your mindset is the key here. Other than that, the only other thing you can do is just adopt a regular bedtime schedule just like a normal person. Best wishes.
Hello Jacob!
I am sure this is only temporary, kinda like hitting a speed bump on the road. Like last time, I am confident you will recover from this also. Then future bad nights will become less bumpy but this experience will better equip you with what it takes to handle future setbacks. Good luck and best wishes!Greetings Jacob!
Welcome back! And we all here have already heard about your stories so none of this is new. And it’s also me again replying to you! ?
Why is not sleeping so hard to accept? If you think bad nights give you bad days, challenge yourself and find out whether this is true. So when will you accept that sleep is entirely controlled by your own body and not you? You are trying to fight against your body, against an inexistent enemy. Read up on Angeli’s post, she has had insomnia for decades but recovered after just 2 months of doing nothing. She estimated the money she spent on sleep remedies over the decades is now enough to buy an apartment!
I don’t want to write a long post because my answer is still the same. Do nothing and try to achieve nothing! You know you are recovered when you get bad nights, but it never cross your mind again to seek any kind of help or come here to seek any advice anymore, you just go on your day as usual like nothing happened. This means only a total surrender of the situation and complete acceptance of bad nights that will happen regardless of anything you do or think, only this will truly liberate you from the struggle. Good luck and best wishes!
Greetings!
Your story is a very common one, typically starts as a night of little sleep then suddenly you get stressed over it because you don’t know what’s going on and what to do. That becomes the problem. The truth is nothing is wrong with your sleep or your body and you are just overreacting. Thinking there’s a problem when there’s none becomes the problem. If you didn’t need any help to sleep for 49 years of your life, you certainly don’t need now and sleep just doesn’t get broken like that, in a sudden way. Just keep to a regular bedtime schedule like you used to, then you will slowly recover and this episode will pass. There must be many times you had disrupted sleep in the past but recovered because you didn’t stress about it and did nothing. This is exactly what you need to do now.
