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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.
The best tip is just don’t do anything else except going to bed at regular times. Insomnia will resolve itself if you just leave it alone. Trust yourself and the process. Good luck.
Hello!
This is a very common pattern. First you had bad sleep, which is normal because it happens to everyone. Then you fear not sleeping (fear that your sleep is broken or may never recover). Then it starts branching out and you basically start fearing fear itself. It comes in all sorts of shapes and forms. It can be fear of discomfort during the day (feeling tired, sleepy, unable to focus, foggy brain), fear of being unable to do things like driving etc. Even when you are sleeping well, you fear having bad nights again etc. The remedy is to recognize this early. And telling yourself all this is unsubstantiated fears. The outcomes you fear haven’t even happened yet. You don’t know you can’t drive 4 hours until you tried it. So stop fear-mongering yourself. Recognize this all branches off the same thing. It is the fear of not sleeping well. You have to get over this fear in order to recover. And this usually means you must be okay with bad sleep. Once you stop fearing it, it has no control over you.
So you also said you feel tired during the day? Do you actually get sleepy? If you do, that’s actually a surefire sign your sleep system still works. So what are you really worried about? Your body has been trying to tell you that all along.. literally screaming on top of its lungs, “Hey I’m doing well. Everything still works. Stop getting unnecessarily worried because that’s getting in the way of me doing my job!”
Any sleep lost will always eventually be recovered. It’s only a matter of time. Be honest with yourself, “Is tonight my only shot at sleeping so it has to be perfect?” Or will there be the next night, the night after and so on. The answer is always the latter so plenty of future opportunities for sleep and catching up. Why worry now? Start practicing the habit of letting things be. Good luck!
Hello @greenleaf67
I read about your post in the other thread.
So you said you have a 5.5 hour window but only slept 4.5? I once had an experience with something of the sort. Sleeping well for 4-5 hours and then waking a wee bit short of my established wake up time and finding it harder to sleep again after exhausting the initial sleep drive.
So what did you do for that extra hour? For me, I just got out of bed early initially and but then for once, I went back to bed for a change and actually fell back asleep. As time went on, I started not getting out of bed anymore but I just went straight back (after getting up to use the toilet) and the times to fall back asleep started getting progressively shorter.
So for now, I spend between 7-9 hours in bed and I don’t track nor care how much of those were actually spent sleeping. Best wishes to you.
