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Maybe too much troubleshooting? Trying to solve an impossible problem. Sleep is something nobody has any control over, ever. It just happens when that person has been awake long enough, like getting hungry after not eating for too long. Trying to solve the sleep puzzle is like trying to figure out how to never be hungry again without ever eating, which is ridiculous. Your body knows how to sleep! Just like it knows how to eat. Have a regular bedtime and sufficient wakefulness built up during the day. That’s all you need! Good luck.
Hi daisho!
If you want to wake at 8 am, and by allowing a 7 hour sleep window, that means you should go to bed around 1 am. Or you can go to bed earlier but accept that you might not fall sleep fast. The idea is not to be stressed over being awake, and to be okay with that wakefulness. Makes any sense? Nothing can make you sleep except your own body and that, as I’ve said, depends on how long you’ve been awake. Best wishes to you!Hi daisho!
This is a common problem which happens when people go to bed with a weak or no sleep drive, aka, not sleepy. Sleepiness depends on quite many things, but the most important is sufficient time being awake. This is the single most important factor which determines how sleepy you get. Normal people usually feel sufficiently sleepy after 16 hours of continuous wakefulness, but to get really sleepy, 17-18 hours are even better. You also may have disrupted your sleep cycle by sleeping at irregular hours. But this can be remedied quite easily, just pick a time you want to wake up by, every day, and by subtracting 7 hours from it, you arrive at your bedtime. Keep to this timetable as much as you can to really anchor your sleep-wake cycle! Your body should respond quite nicely within a few weeks. Try not to stress over poor sleep too, learn to trust your own body, this really helps in recovery. Be patient, compassionate and kind to yourself, stay away from medications and fast cure gimmicks, adopting these steps, you should very well. Good luck!Greetings!
I am reading a lot many sleep efforts and too much attention paid to forcing yourself to sleep when you’re just not sleepy.Nothing helps you sleep except sufficient wakefulness. This is the universal truth about sleep. All you need is just regular bedtime hours and sufficient wakefulness to generate enough sleepiness to fall and stay asleep. It’s really that simple. Try staying awake longer and limiting your bedtime hours. Best wishes.
Hello Lauren!
You will never recover as long as you continue to fear poor sleep. It’s fear that’s keeping you trapped in the cycle. Go to bed expecting poor sleep, every night if you have to, until you just get used to it that it no longer bothers you. Sleepless nights can’t continue indefinitely but the fear can. And sleep is still going to happen regardless of how you feel, having this fear is just a bothersome burden you choose to carry because you just can’t let it go!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.
