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The more you try to “figure it out”, the more sleepless you will get. This is exactly what insomnia is all about. Overthinking and overdoing, and basically fear-mongering yourself awake. Losing sleep over sleep itself. Sleep only comes from a complete lack of effort and in a way, thinking. The only thing you need to do is just get in and out of bed at regular times. That’s it. The rest is up to your body and totally beyond your control. The more you try to “fix it”, the stickier your insomnia becomes because all that effort and brain exercise is very stimulating to your mind and keeps sleep at bay.
No supplement ever works for sleep. Your body already has what it needs. People generally take supplements simply because of the ” I feel safe taking these” factor, thinking they have delegated the effort of falling asleep to something else external, which can be a supplement, soothing tea, yoga, or whatever but none of these ever does anything to your sleep.
Hello and welcome to this forum!
Absolutely you can! Your ability to sleep is independent of everything you do or think, it will happen just as long as you have been sufficiently awake to be sleepy. Think of it like hunger, you may not feel hungry now but you will at some point when you haven’t eaten and it will happens regardless of whatever you think affects your appetite in any way
Perhaps you need to learn to stop being biased or at least actively take steps to recognize that this is exactly what’s going on (start being aware of it) and moving towards acceptance and therefore being less biased. If you have two children, one being normal and the other having some sort of disability such as down syndrome or autism, will you favor one child more than the other? Of course not, they are still both are your kids regardless, in any way, shape or form. Or perhaps you might even show a bit more love and attention toward the disadvantaged kid because that’s where it’s probably more needed. So what’s stopping you from doing exactly the same for yourself where sleep is concerned. If you love yourself for who you are and learn to not hate yourself where it fails to meet your expectations, then you will love and accept whatever sleep your body is giving you, at any time. Good luck.
If you get back into a sleepless pattern after a period of “doing really well”, that usually means you are routinely overdoing it by oversleeping! Which actually means you are sleeping really well, and sleeping too long for far too long! That’s why your body is making you regurgitate back out all those good nights by making you sleepless again. In cbti terms, it is a cue you need to re-limit your time in bed again or if you are like me and don’t freaking care, continue to oversleep but stop complaining! Even you yourself admitted you were sleeping really well before this happened (sleeping well after your dad died even) so why are you not giving yourself credit where this is due and only start complaining when everything starts deviating from your expectations?? Why the bias here?? Get on with your life, you won’t always get what you want, nobody will.
Your issues are EXACTLY THE SAME as a year and a half ago! Go back and reread what you wrote and how I responded. Have you learnt anything since then or old habits die hard? Insomnia never leaves you, you leave the struggle with it.
Everything you do to try to sleep IS A PLACEBO. If you haven’t realized this, then you are missing out on a very important lesson. Everyone CAN and WILL sleep, the only question is WHEN. Taking pills or doing other stuff becomes discretionary, it alters nothing and the results become a mixed bag and are entirely random, any connection you then make only exists inside your head and does not reflect the true reality, which is THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL SLEEP DIRECTLY. Effort is useless when it comes to sleeping, this ability is innate, you were born with it and remains with you until your last day.
Sleep doesn’t define who you are or what you are capable of. The moment you give in into a mental bully like insomnia is the moment you lose because you would have allowed it to completely take over your life
Parents are an extremely easy target for insomnia. If you have a fussy baby in your house, of course everyone in that household will have trouble sleeping! There’s no way around that so you need to be mentally prepared for it.
Other than that, Martin is gracious enough to share some very good suggestions on how to train your baby to sleep with minimum fuss. But ultimately, parenting is one in a lifetime joyful experience and I’m sure years from now when you reminisce on this, you would be far more grateful to have had that parenting experience than to catch just a couple more hours of ZZZ each night. Congratulations on being a new parent and good luck!
Or no activity at all and just staying in bed works too! The key is to the get the pressure to sleep off your chest for a bit
Everyone’s sleep gets lighter the more they sleep. What you described (light sleep, vivid dreams) is totally normal! What isn’t normal is expecting to get sleepier and sleepier the longer you sleep and as your accumulated sleep debt is getting undone. That is akin to getting hungrier and hungrier the more you eat. Does that make any sense?
You are already afraid of things that hasn’t happened yet and may never even happen at all. So you are basically fear-mongering based on what complete strangers are saying about their experiences. Well how familiar are you about these people? Do you know all of them personally or even interacted with them? If you have next to no idea who these people are, why do you pay so much attention to what they are saying? Do they know what they’re talking about? Have they done a polysomnography (sleep study) which shows they have been awake for days with ZERO sleep? Did you know that a lot of insomniacs actually underestimate how much they slept? Because they get confused between sleeping and being awake and many end up vastly overstating their symptoms. Once you begin to think something is wrong, you will go all out and find plain nothings to justify your fears! That’s just human nature.
Ultimately, if you feel forums are not the best idea or harm you, then what’s stopping you from disassociating? Please get off and stop going on forums to find answers. Whatever replies you get are unimportant because it still doesn’t generate sleepiness. Like I said, sleep is on a whole new league of its own, it happens independently of everything else, your body just knows how much it needs, there is practically NO WAY it can go wrong and therefore your intervention in any form is unnecessary. Sleep in some form will still happen regardless of any anxiety or worry, but you would have needlessly carried this burden over nothing and could actually make it worse because you have now given your mind something to worry about, when all it needs for a good night sleep is being at peace with yourself in conjunction with sufficient sleep drive built up over sufficient wakefulness. Good luck to you and I hope you find your relief soon.
The short answer to your question is no. What you describe is simply what people do when they lie in bed but aren’t sleepy and then they lie there for hours and hours, expecting to sleep which isn’t coming because they thought being calm means sleepy. No it does not, being calm doesn’t guarantee sleep either! The only thing that does is being awake long enough, there’s no way around this so if you want to sleep more you need to cut back first. Which means being awake more and sleeping less. It’s like draining and recharging your phone, don’t be surprised when your charge level isn’t going up when it’s already fully charged! You need to use the phone and discharge it first, of course. Simple observations like these will help you understand sleep more and how it works. Ultimately, why do you keep thinking being awake is a problem?? The problem with insomnia is that thinking there’s a problem when there’s none BECOMES THE PROBLEM.
Hello Pete!
Welcome and sorry to hear about your dilemma. Your story is much alike to another lady’s (her profile is tessishere) whose husband suffered horribly from insomnia like you now. They were practically at their wits’ ends, tried every remedy, saw every doctor they could and took whatever meds prescribed. However, nothing solved their trouble until they came to this forum and someone told them their relentless and frantic efforts to try to cure insomnia and escape from it was the cause why this went on and on with no respite. Suffering is not ended with effort, but with wisdom and empathy. I encourage you to check out her inspiring story and good luck to you.
