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Hello and greetings!
Solid sleep means what? 8 hours straight with no interruptions? This is the problem. People who don’t understand sleep say as if they can make sleep happen at their command. It’s like saying I DEMAND to go to bed at 10:30:00 pm and I want to sleep until 6:30:00 am with ABSOLUTELY no awakenings, and I must sleep 8:00:00 hours EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, and not A SECOND LESS. And oh yes, I must have the perfect bed and perfect bedding, perfect blackout curtains, absolute darkness, no lights can penetrate from outside and I must have perfect silence, absolute no noise from neighbor’s dogs barking, no cars must be passing by, and my partner absolutely can’t snore or turn in bed, and I need to drink my sleepy tea and take melatonin or ambien or whatever, and my room room must be at 18 deg C, AND OH YES I absolutely must have my weighted blanket and I must first take a warm bath with lavender oil etc etc etc. Stop setting impossible conditions to sleep for yourself! You will sleep great if you couldn’t care less about it.Hello and greetings!
Your condition isn’t even considered severe. I have encountered a story of a guy who went without sleep for 4 days straight due to severe sleep anxiety and despite this he was shooting rifles and sprinting during the day because he was drafted in the military. He then suffered from on off insomnia for 15 years before he finally “gets it” and sleeps great now! Realise that CBT-i doesn’t need you to take meds or seek any “external” help because what you need to sleep well is already inside you. This has always been the case and always will be. The ability to sleep is really innate to every person or animal. It is just your irrational thoughts and behaviors that are keeping you stuck indefinitely. Insomnia isn’t really an illness, it is just a term to name someone whose sleeping pattern are all over the place, ie, falling asleep at different times and sleeping different amounts each time. But overall, your average sleep duration should be the same over the long term. Between 6 to 7 hours. It is very similar to eating a similar amount of calories each day. And fear of not sleeping well is really like a fear of not eating well. How is that even possible?? Because everyone knows how to eat and they will eat when they eventually get hungry enough. It’s exactly the same because you will sleep when you get sleepy enough. CBT-i just helps make your nights become more regular. Good luck!Hello Jake
Thanks for sharing that insight! I had a similar discovery too, that people can still sleep despite being anxious. If everyone probed further, they would find that fear of not sleeping well has no rational basis at all. It would like having a fear of not eating well but then finding yourself feasting when the hunger drive becomes too strong to ignore. Eating and sleeping are regulated by your own body, it decides when and how much, so worrying is not only unnecessary but also unwarranted. If you didn’t sleep or eat well on one occasion, no reason to fret on it as there will be plenty of opportunities later on to catch up.Hello people!
Thanks for sharing your experiences. The issues about doing harmless stuffs affecting sleep are way overblown. It would be like getting bitten by a mosquito and saying “omg, i’m never going to sleep tonight or ever again”. In reality, it’s really nothing at all. It’s just your mind playing games with you and as long you buy into them, you will continue to have sleep issues over harmless nothings.Hello!
Nothing really significantly affects sleep drive and therefore how you sleep apart from being awake long enough. As long as you continue to tie the things you do to sleep, your sleep issues will continue to bother you. Good luck with the vaccination and best wishes.Hi Jaylogan!
I experienced similar too. If I consistently slept in and delay getting out of bed, my sleep would progressively get worse over time. Looking back, this was why I developed insomnia in the first place! The frequent oversleeping. My ideal spot is usually between 6-7 hours. So now I don’t follow any tight bed time schedule anymore. I go to bed when feeling very sleepy (head nodding off and difficulty focusing) and get out at my first awakening which is usually about 6.5 hours later. I don’t care what time it is when I go or get out of bed. Ironically, I feel more alert and energetic during the day sleeping less like this than sleeping in and doing 8-8.5 hours. I think it must be because I am getting more deep restorative sleep by restricting and consolidating my time in bed than spending 8-9 hours and getting only more light sleep out of that.Hi Jake
The converse seems true too. If you slept badly due to excessive worry, you’ll likely be sleeping well going forward until you oversleep again. Inadvertently. Then the whole cycle repeats. I found restricting my bedtime to no more than 7 hours helps keep my nights consistent. Sleep to live and not live to sleep, that’s my motto. When you are recovering, it can be tempting to overdo it and oversleep. Then you run into difficult nights and wonder why.Greetings and hello!
6-6.5 hours is the optimal amount of sleep to not run into difficult nights again, at least for me. I found how we sleep for one night is not important, what matters is the average amount of sleep we get over the longer term, ie, this always works out to around 6 to 6.5 hours. If I am not overly anxious, difficult nights are usually a result of consistently oversleeping by doing 7-8 hours nights. The body regulates itself and you can choose to worry about sleep but it would all have been over nothing. Studies show insomniacs and non insomniacs actually sleep roughly the same amount on average. The whole thing is a hoax all along.Hi Jake!
I discovered worrying about not sleeping well was a hoax all along. I found what really matters is the average sleep duration over the longer term, and this tends to balance out. Usually for me, this is somewhere between 6-7 hours and I found if I slept 7-8 hours by frequently sleeping in, this sets me up for progressively difficult nights down the road. So you can choose to worry about it, but it would all have been over nothing.Hello and greetings!
If you are suddenly relapsing after sleeping really well, it is almost certainly because you are overdoing it by oversleeping. Try restricting your time in bed. Try sleeping 7.5 hours instead of 8. Then cut that down to 7 if the difficult nights still persist. Your sleep history affects your future sleep, nothing unusual going on there. Think about it for a moment. Your body is an efficient survival machine, and it is during sleep that we are most vulnerable, less productive and your body undergoes the essential maintenance. So ideally it will only want to sleep just enough to keep everything functioning well whilst keeping you safe and productive. Best wishes to you.Greetings
Sleep can seem unrestful if you try to sleep with a weak sleep drive, aka not sleepy, or you have lots of sleep related anxiety or both. Try not to think too much about sleep. Your body will sleep when it wants to, and try not get caught up in trying to control it. If you have anxiety about not sleeping well, then this is almost impossible because it is like having a fear of hunger, but then you instinctly go and eat when your hunger drive gets so very strong it overrides everything else and you just had to eat. Same thing with sleep. Let your body tells you when it wants to eat, sleep or be active. Sleep only when sleepy. Eat only when hungry. Don’t worry, be happy, everything’s fine and there’s nothing broken with you.As I read your post, I wonder if you ever felt true and pure sleepiness? I have and when I get it, there’s no space inside my head for anxiety, worry, hyperarousal or whatever; the craving for sleep is so intense and I just want to sleep and that’s it. Maybe your frequent alcohol binges to knock yourself out has made you forgotten what it really feels like to be extremely sleepy. Yawning endlessly doesn’t cut it. I think you have conditioned yourself to be this way after years of trying to control sleep and not letting your body decide when it wants to. You know what, have zero rules, go to bed when extremely sleepy and get out whenever you feel like you’ve got enough. My cats do this and seem happy. Nobody is making this any difficult than it has to other than yourself trying to actively interfere in a core biological process.
Greetings!
Since you tried so many stuffs and nothing worked, what about not trying anymore?? Just give up completely. Go to bed when sleepy and get out 6 hours later. That’s it. Stop trying so hard! Sleep is easy and natural, no effort needed.Greetings!
Best wishes to you and I hope you do well. Try not to be obessesed about sleep and be patient and kind to yourself. Your situation is not unique; all parents suffer from some kind of sleep disruption and that’s okay! The human body is built to be super flexible about sleep to cater for different needs to ensure our survival such as parenting, foraging for food, hunting etc. Good luck.Greetings!
The short answer is yes. You can be flexible with your sleep window to suit your lifestyle. Before I had insomnia, I was a night owl and only went to bed at 3-4 am, sleeping until 10-11 am. Then I selected an initial sleep window of 1-6 am, giving myself only 5 hours. As I got better, I went to bed progressively earlier in 15 mins intervals while still getting up at 6am no matter how much I slept. My bedtime is now 10-1030 pm to 6-645am. As long as you get out of bed at the same time everyday, it doesn’t really matter as you will find yourself getting sleepier earlier in the evening if you consistently get out of bed earlier. Be patient with yourself and the first few weeks may be tough as you may experience more sleepiness throughout the day. But stick to the plan and try not to sleep at other times, you should do well. Best wishes!
