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Every setback is a test not a failure. It tests how well you handle them. And each time you start fearing less, you are actually making a gain. Eventually because of all these “relapses”, you become stronger. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Another way of thinking about this is that having setbacks is a surefire sign that you are sleeping well. You begin sleeping less again because all that sleep debt is getting wiped out from better sleep. Just common sense, isn’t it? It is not reasonable to expect getting sleepier and sleepier the more the slept. In the same way, you don’t get hungrier the more you ate. Unless, of course, you have some kind of illness. So sleeping less is a sign of a healthy body. Nobody sleeps all the time unless they are really sick or perhaps even dying.
You may shed tears over this now but there will be a day when you actually laugh! You laugh because how seriously you took all this hoax. It happened to me. I laughed at how silly and gullible I was back then.
The goal of every insomniac is indifference. You don’t let it affect you. You get out of bed and boom, you get on with your day straightaway. No time to think about sleep or its minions. I wish you the best.
Hi all
I think you get the idea but the being convinced part is probably not there yet. Yes acceptance is key but how to be convinced?? That is usually the major hurdle and I admit it won’t be easy, it wasn’t for me and everyone else. We all want to be in control so giving up that control appears counter-intuitive. But that is exactly what needs to be done if you want to beat this thing called insomnia. You have to give up the struggle fully and voluntarily. And you must also be prepared to accept some bad sleep whenever and wherever it happens.
Insomnia is usually an unhealthy obsession with sleep. The human mind can be obsessed with anything under the sun as long as you provide a stimulus for it. For many people, having just one or two nights of poor sleep is enough to trigger a lifetime obsession with sleep which then completely takes over your life and becomes the main focus of everything you do, think or decide.
Insomnia is kinda like believing you need to breathe 1000x per minute or something bad will happen. Or believing you need to eat exactly 2,500.01 calories per day or something bad will happen to your health. Or whatever other things you give your brain to zoom in on. In this case, it’s believing you need X hours every night.
So how to get out of this loop? Well stop obsessing over it. But for sleep is not that easy because you do it every night and you are forced to confront this nightmare over and over again.
You need patience and discipline. Do it one step at a time. For example, if you take pills then try to wean off them. If you have a bunch of sleep rituals every night, then reduce them one by one. Eventually, your sleep confidence grows and the obsession wears off. Remember insomnia feeds off your obsession, when you cut off the obsession, the whole thing dies slowly. Good luck.
The final piece of the puzzle is becoming convinced you are already getting all the sleep your body needs.
That final step is truly letting go. Not chasing sleep anymore. Not becoming afraid anymore. This is the key to a long term resolution. When insomniacs recover for good, it doesn’t mean they get consistent 6-7 hour sleep all the time without fail. It just means they are no longer worried and have given up chasing perfect sleep.
When you drop all expectations and are no longer afraid, that’s truly when sleep comes. Because at this stage, you are essentially losing some sleep over sleep itself. So how to not let worrying about sleep get in the way of sleep happening? That’s the key to the problem. You have to really let it go. Not by pretending and fear. But with conviction and faith. Good luck.
Hello there.
I am honored that you still remember my advice. Remember that anytime you slept without aids is actually a good sign that your body keeps telling you. It can sleep. It always can. And will continue to sleep on its own. There is no need to worry about this ability.
Also, whenever you think you should extend your sleep window, please feel free to do it. Don’t always feel you must keep to a set of strict sleep rules just to sleep. Don’t try so hard to sleep or protect it. It should be effortless and stress-free. Like breathing and eating. You automatically know how to do it without needing to follow any set rules.
Be open to explore lying in bed if you can’t sleep either. If you used to do that before insomnia, there should be no problem doing it now. Very often, you will find you can fall asleep without much effort. Show yourself that there’s no problem. No stressful event. It’s just a bed. And sleep. Sleeping shouldn’t be frightful. While it is appreciated if it happens, it shouldn’t be hated if it doesn’t either.
Remember you expect to sleep for the rest of your life. So it is not logical to spend your whole life hating every moment of it. Learn to appreciate it and not be too judgmental of it. It may mean you need to stop being petty with your own body and be more kind and accommodating to it. Good luck to you and I hope you find your peaceful rest soon.
Yes, that’s a very common phenomenon. Intentionally doing things for sleep will always fail.
What works actually? It’s so simple you might not even believe it. Just do nothing. Stop trying so hard to sleep. Because that’s exhausting and is mentally stimulating enough to keep you awake.
Giving up all sleep efforts and actually being convinced that’ll work, works wonders. Because then you can finally relax and that is very conducive to creating the right conditions for sleep to happen.
Hello!
Fear is a very normal process of recovery. Basically, the insomnia has graduated into a fear of many fears. Because that usually manifests itself in so many ways, it’s impossible to entertain all of them.
Move on with your life. Don’t be tempted to keep doing things endlessly trying to fix everything. Because this will usually settle down in due course so be patient. Good luck.
If you asked me, I have had issues with insomnia actually my whole life. I always had occasional “insomnia” every now and then. But they didn’t become a huge problem because I never paid much attention to them. But as I grew older, I started getting more protective of sleep. And that’s when it started becoming worse.
So I had to relearn everything all over again. Trying to fix insomnia actually causes insomnia. Because it causes you to fixate on it. And all this attention and obsession is mentally stimulating enough to cause insomnia. Plus all the anxiety and worry over it when you don’t do well can only make it worse.
So now, I just go back to my old way of sleeping. I don’t track or monitor or try to fix anything. No drugs, no medications, no remedies, no anything to improve sleep. Just in and out of bed at regular times. That’s it. And I get the maximum amount of sleep like this. Plus transient insomnia every now and then but that’s a lot better than having them all the time due to performance driven worry or anxiety.
You may just be a 6 hour person. When you have eliminated all the possibilities, which seems very likely from your years of efforts, then those ones that remain are closer to the answer.
Your body just doesn’t need more than 6 hours at one go. Or you may get more than 6 but you need to break them up into intervals. For example, 2230 – 430, then stay awake for an hour or two and then try again. You might be able to squeeze another hour or two out of it.
Any time spent awake automatically builds sleep drive. And whatever sleep you have demolishes any sleep drive accumulated from wakefulness. That’s just how sleep works. You can’t charge your phone over 100% when it’s already full. You can’t discharge it below zero either. There’s always this charging and discharging going on like this when it comes to sleeping.
Hello frozensun!
Not an expert here. Your internal body clock is definitely able to do that. Everyone has an internal clock inside that regulates sleep/wake cycle. Just like the regulation of body temperature or water level in blood plasma. So what time do you go to bed? Why is waking at 430am a bad thing?
Bothered by insomnia and sleep thoughts? You never rush to get rid of it. You just leave it alone until it leaves you alone. Hope that makes sense.
Yes, Martin. Ask why always. Are you born just to sleep? Or are you suppose to enjoy what life has to offer? Ask those deep philosophical questions. The quest for answer will undoubtedly lead to something insightful. It might lead to one of those “aha” moments when you finally see through the confusion and chaos.
Everyone’s lives has to end at some point. At that time, how do you want to remember yours? Do you want to remember how badly you slept all the time and how hard you struggled to fight your insomnia, or would you rather remember the wonderful things you did, the good times you had and the memorable memories you’ve accumulated? Ironically, at that point, aren’t you about to enter a deep rest where you’ll be having unlimited time for sleep already so why worry about not getting enough now!
The answer is very subjective. Because insomnia itself is very subjective and personal. Insomnia is essentially a problem of your own definition. You think sleeping anything less than X hours, you automatically think you have insomnia. On the other hand, another person sleeps 4-5 hours but doesn’t think there’s a problem, therefore he doesn’t have insomnia.
Yup. That’s normal. It still happens to me. But I’ve learnt to see these as my overprotective brain pinging me with useless crap. It’s trying to make me fear poor sleep again and fall back into the loop of insomnia all over again.
But I’m better equipped this time, I ain’t falling for that trick again. Simply because I don’t care even if I sleep poorly again. It doesn’t mean anything except I slept poorly for one or two nights. Are you going to worry for the rest of your life just because you bang your toes once? Or will you worry about eating again because you had a case of food poisoning? These feelings are very fluid and they change all the time so it’s pointless to entertain them.
Hello Martin!
Unfortunately, these are very personal decisions you have to make. It’s like asking if you’re on a diet, and there’s going to be a party a couple of weeks from now, should you attend or not?
Actually, you should question why you should even bother asking the question. What are you really afraid of? Because sleep that’s gone when attending the event shall never come back? It becomes then, why do you need to protect sleep so much? How has this been allowed to take up so much space and time in your life that it affects every thing you do or every decision you make?
I don’t know how you’ll end up choosing, but one thing is for certain. Sleep is still sleep. You will still get it in some form regardless of what you end up doing.
