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Greetings!
Insomnia really has two components to it: the first is the actual sleeplessness and the second is the psychological part, which is a set of learnt, unhealthy and obsessive thoughts/behaviors about sleep.Cbti would usually resolve the sleeplessness part within a few weeks. For the psychological part, it has no deadline because it is self-perpetuating and can go on indefinitely. To get over that, you have to be extremely patient, and fully accepting of poor sleep until you just become desensitized by it naturally. People either continue to struggle for a long time because they are still afraid or they learnt to trust their own bodies completely and ultimately stop caring which leads to a place of peace. Good luck!
Hi Angeli!
So true. Insomnia really has two components to it: firstly, it’s the sleeplessness and the other part is the fear. Cbti cures the sleeplessness but not the fear. That’s why many people still have insomnia even after cbti, because the fear is still there! To cure the fear, you have to be willing to experience more fear, until you just get desensitized. Sounds ironic and paradoxical, but so true!Greetings!
You wrote a lengthy post but
in it, never mentioned a word why waking up during the night is so bad that you have to intervene. So what is so bad about waking up? Are your days much worse if you woke up then if you didn’t? If let’s say, you woke up 3x during the night, are your days going to be 3x worse or you would feel 3x as tired? Try to think rationally about this. The whole thing about insomnia is really about thinking why poor sleep has such a bad outcome that it must be avoided like the plague. Can you identify the reasons? Then find out if they’re true. Majority of the time they’re outright false and misguided! Other than that, no, you can’t control waking up as much as you can’t control sleeping. Your body is in total control. But not treating waking up as problem has a better chance of making you sleep better than otherwise! That’s just how insomnia works: the more you think there’s a problem, the worse it gets because thinking there’s a problem becomes the problem! Good luck in your journey to sleeping better.Hi Angeli!
Congratulations on your improvement. So great to hear you are doing so well after leaving the fight. And this is key to sleeping well, being relaxed and accepting of bad outcomes no matter how bad they seem. Forget about medications, meditatations and what nots. If you are pretty advanced like me, I’ve ditched cbti also and still sleeping well. Just trust your own body firmly, it knows what it is doing. Set a regular bedtime schedule, that’s it! I now just go to bed, when I can’t sleep immediately, I just think about random stuffs, then without noticing it, I’ve closed my eyes and fallen asleep. When I next open my eyes, it’s already morning and close to wakeup time. That’s how easy and effortless for me.Hello! If there’s anything you can learn here, it’s probably this. Frustration makes it worse. Impatience makes it worse. The only way out is complete acceptance, self-compassion and patience, lots of it! Other than that, continue going and getting out of bed at regular times, stop researching sleep or seeking fast tips/cures, you will do very well!
You wont sleep well if you keep trying to monitor it. Because that attention feeds your insomnia. Your best sleep happens when it’s effortless, unmonitored and completely relaxed.
Hi there!
This is the mistake, wanting to stop negative thoughts. The thing is it is very hard to do this, the more you try to stop them the worse they become! So the way is just allow negative thoughts to happen, observe them and understand that thoughts are just thoughts, they aren’t always real or as menacing as your brain portrays them to be.Hi Danielbme
A 5 hour sleep window is too short! The minimum is 6 hours so if you wake at 630, subtract that by 6 hours, that makes your bed time 1230am. And if you feel sleepy within 30-60 mins of the start of your sleep window, as Martin suggests, going to bed between 1130-1230 is absolutely fine!Stop obessesing over the tiny details and the exact specifications, this is how you can kinda get lost. Be easy on yourself, let your body do all this work. Just go to bed between 1130 and 1230 and by keeping your out of bed time consistent, resisting efforts to constantly research sleep like going on this forum or goggling it, believing in yourself that nothing is wrong and letting everything settle down naturally, you will do very well indeed. Of course, if you need the extra help, you can always sign up for the course and benefit from Martin’s personal coaching. But ultimately, even after graduating, you will need to be able to do this all by yourself. Hopefully by then, you will have gained the necessary knowledge and mindwork to realise sleep is supposed to be natural, effortless and simple which leads to less struggle even when experiencing difficult nights. Just recognise that whatever sleep lost now will be regained over subsequent nights so why worry so much about tonite? There will be plenty of opportunities to sleep in the future. Good luck and best wishes!
Hi Angeli!
Thanks for sharing. If you want to sleep well, then you must really be prepared to accept the worst case senario and poor sleep. Over time, you just become desensitized. Then it doesn’t bother you anymore, that’s how people recover! Accepting and not avoiding!Hello elmtree!
Getting frustrated is a good sign! It shows the futility of the situation and hence is becoming apparently clear that it is pointless to engage in any more sleep effort like taking endless sleeping pills and/or seeing countless doctors if the origin of your troubles is totally psychological.Instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t be on this at 327am”, you can go “well, why can’t I be on the computer at 327 am?”, “What’s the worse that could happen?”. The answer is probably nothing. Take it a step further and you can go “Hell, f*ck this! I’m doing whatever I want from now, I don’t care if I sleep or not!”. That’s when you begin letting go and stop getting scared. And then you know what? That’s when the magic might happen! Best wishes to you.
Hello guys!
I just wanna add here that you people are not giving your own bodies the credit they deserve in making you sleep, it was your own bodies that did all the work always has and always will, everything else like doing x, y, z and a ton of other stuffs are completely useless and unnecessary. You guys are way underestimating your own body’s ability to sleep and that’s the problem! That’s why you feel you had to override your body and do all these stuffs. So when will the lesson ever be learnt?? You can’t force sleep, it’s your own body that’s calling all the shotsNot medical advice here but in general, you will never recover if you keep taking pills to sleep because then you keep believing you need to take something external to sleep, not confident of your own ability and ultimately, still fearing something that cannot be controlled. It’s always that fear which generates stress that keeps you up all night!
Hi DK.
The best person to answer this question is actually yourself! If you dont have insomnia what would u have done? Remember back when u didnt have sleeping problems, and try to imagine yourself back there. What did u do?? Also, if u go to youtube, Martin has answered this question already if u just searched his channel. The answer is the same: it’s up to u!Hi Dk!
If you can afford the full course then go for it! But otherwise, if you can follow a simple set of rules, anyone should be able to improve their sleep by themselves. This is because even if you do sign up, it doesn’t involve taking anything external, meaning everything you need is already inside your body. Then after graduation, you can follow those set of rules for life, or completely abandon them like I did, because I completely believe in myself and I never question my own ability to sleep anymore; I just don’t need anyone or anything to tell me what to do about sleep anymore. Best wishes and good luck.Greetings!
Have you ever reasoned that you or your mind has warped this fear of not sleeping now into this fear of actually falling asleep? Since you go to bed to sleep, and you feel you are already sleepy, so how come now you are afraid of falling asleep because isn’t that what you want? Try to find the rationale in this, if any! Because there’s none and your mind has completely turned something into something else that doesn’t make sense. Going forward, try not fight the fear of bad sleep, accept that it’s going to take a while to settle down and that’s okay! You will eventually doze off at some point, it may be a bit longer than normal people for now, that’s understandable because you’ve lived with this fear for so long. Give yourself lots of time and patience. It will settle down eventually and then as you begin letting go, these episodes will happen less and you’ll fall asleep faster. Just try not to struggle, let whatever happen to happen or kinda expect it will be like this every night, in a way. Give yourself permission to rest in bed while giving time for your anxious mind to settle down and that everything’s fine and will work out eventually. Ultimately to get over insomnia, you have to stop fearing poor or little sleep. That’s how it works! Hope you find this useful and best wishes.
