Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Eric
I am glad you didn’t find my answer long-winded. Best wishes to you and I hope your sleep gets back on track soon.Hi Eric and greetings
I wonder why you call your “dilemma” a frustration? People who have sleep disruption tend to recover better and faster if they are willing to be more accepting and optimistic about their situation. Think of sleeping more like eating because essentially these two processes are the same to your body. Are you frustrated that you were hungry yesterday, last week, last month or months ago? Or do you get upset when you just ate a bit less on a certain day? Well it doesn’t matter because you will always make up for it the next meal and you don’t suddenly stop eating one day, so the opportunities for eating and sleeping in this case, are always abundant. Therefore how you eat or sleep for a certain day doesn’t matter over the long term, the body just know how to right itself over time. Sleep is something that you have absolutely no control over, it is an involuntary process just like breathing, sweating or regulating your body temp etc unlike other
actions which you can control and are voluntary such as flexing your arms, stretching your legs or moving your jaws to chew. So perhaps you should rethink your mindset about sleep and stop trying to control an involuntary process like sleep because you can’t and never will.Hello!
Greetings and welcome. What time do you go to bed and do you sleep at other times other than at bedtime?Hello Ryan and greetings to you!
My thoughts about sleep changed dramatically when I started realising that it is just a homeostatic process in the human body in the same way as eating, breathing, sweating, body temperature regulation, removal of waste products like urinating & defacating and of course sleeping (your body just takes care of all those processes by itself so there’s simply no point trying to control it because it would be like forcing yourself to breathe 300x per minute or eat 10,000 calories per day because you somehow became convinced that horrible things will happen to you or your health if you don’t). Instead the mistake that most insomniacs do is endlessly forcing themselves to control sleep as if it was a voluntary action like flexing your arms, walking, chewing etc). If you just allow sleep to happen, it just takes place naturally and only if you are sleepy enough which comes from being awake long enough. So the only explanation for not sleeping is you are either not sleepy from being too well rested or you are worrying unnecessarily and needlessly about it because you simply just can’t let go of control and are actively trying to override your own body. I hope this helps and best wishes to you.Hi Jacob
You sleep during daytime? And how do you feel during the day? Have you ever thought about sleeping in two distinct phases? It is something like this: begin first sleeping phase quite early in the evening (6-8pm), then sleep 4-5 hours, wake for couple of hours, then second phase for 2-3 hours. Remember you build sleep drive everytime you are awake so that couple of hours awake in between combined with your natural biological clock might help you fall asleep easier later on. You also seem to be an early sleeper and riser so when choosing the time, you need to keep this in mind as well as suitable to your current lifestyle. Best wishes!Hello Jacob!
That is old question which you keep asking over and over already. And unfortunately my answer is still the same and yes it’s me Chee answering you again ?. I would do absolutely nothing except just go back to bed and for me very often I am falling back asleep because I don’t give a crap if I can sleep or not. I have no issues waking up early I kinda expect it every morning now, I dont try to prevent it because it is futile and I cant control sleep or waking up. So I dont see it as a problem anymore and I dont care there’s light or what the birds will do outside. I set my alarm at 6 am and I stay in bed until the alarm rings and I have to snooze it 2-3 times before I finally get out of bed.Greetings!
Clock watching doesn’t really matter to me anymore. I look at the clock all the time when I’m awake and if it’s still early I just go back to sleep without a problem. I think the ultimate takeaway is being neutral in everything you do and not connecting what you think or do to sleep anymore, I hope that helps.Hi
Sleeping only 2-3 hours per night? I don’t think that’s sustainable in the long term. I bet you are slipping in some sleep during the daytime like napping or catching up on weekends by sleeping in. Either way, you are most likely sleeping more than you think. Sleep is just a part of the homeostatic process that your body controls like respiration, regulating body temperature, appetite, removal of wastes like urinating and defaecating, perspiration and so on. But sleep is a bit flexible because you can adopt a sleeping schedule that suits your current lifestyle and work. Just as long you allow sufficient time for sleep and not sleeping at other times and not wanting to take over control of sleep from your own body, like taking pills or doing a ton of other things to try to control it or getting frustrated/upset because you can’t sleep, you should do really well!The best natural remedy is self confidence. Normal sleepers don’t do anything special or take any pills to sleep because they really believe they can sleep. You need to regain this trust too in yourself by slowly tapering off your pills and be willing to experience some difficult nights in the beginning. Be brave, take that bold step and discover the new lushful bliss of natural restful sleep that lies beyond the horizons which you are so unwilling to venture into. Because you want to protect whatever sleep you have now and are unwilling to experience temporary unpleasantness, you are constantly missing the chance to improve your sleep forever. Short term pain for long term gain!
Hi Rmaas
I think you and most people over-catastrophize the senario that you will be facing. Because the truth is that people can function quite okay on little to no sleep for a few days as your body gets used to a new schedule. Based on your new work schedule, just select a time to get into and out of bed and do this consistently every day. Your body should respond within a few weeks if you are patient, disciplined and don’t cheat by sleeping in or taking naps. Adopting an optimistic, worry-free and can-do attitude helps too. But this may depend on the type of person you are and your personality. Good luck and best wishes to you.
Hello and greetings. How many hours do you actually sleep on average over the long term? Just dont focus over those few days where you slept little but focus on the long term like a few weeks or a month out. You might find you actually slept more than you think. And this is the problem with many people, dramatizing those bad nights while forgetting to give yourself credit to those good nights. And here’s the thing with sleep: You sleep really well if you don’t constantly obesses over it, endlessly striving to achieve X hours per night like reciting a mantra (8 or whatever). When will the lesson ever be learnt that your body is the one that decides the amount of sleep it needs and not you or what your brain is telling you based on what you read or heard?? People can sleep and function really well on 5-6 hours of sleep (can you believe heart and brain surgeons can actually perform highly complex and life-saving operations on just 5.5 hours of sleep)? Treat sleep as if your appetite, you instinctively eat when you get really hungry and likewise, you just go to bed when really sleepy. And that’s how nature intended it. Do things based on how you feel and not on what time it is. So stop saying to yourself that you must be in bed sleeping at 10pm, and you need to sleep 8 uninterrupted hours every single night because that’s ridiculous in the same way you don’t eat the same amount, same food at the same exact time every day. Sleeping and eating isn’t going to make anyone feel good if they constantly overdo them by overeating or overspending time in bed when they should be out and doing exciting, enjoyable activities that give meaning and purpose to life. Great sleep isn’t about the numbers, it is about the quality of that sleep (conversely less time for sleep = more restful deep sleep whilst spending more time in bed = lots of light, broken and unrestful sleep) and the quality of daily life in your wakeful hours. Don’t stay in bed waiting for sleep to happen, just get out and enjoy life! Sleep is something your body takes care of all by itself, and that constantly worrying about it is a complete waste of your time and energy.
Hi Phoebe
It may sound ironic but the best sleep remedy is actually doing absolutely nothing, being completely easy and relaxed about your sleeping hours and spending less time in bed, not waiting for sleep.Hi Alex!
How long have you been doing cbt-i? From my experience, i dont think you should do that for more than 2 months. After all, cbt-i is only supposed to help make your nights become more regular, increase sleep confidence and dissipate sleep anxiety, and it seems to have done its job for you. After that, hopefully the subject should improve their sleep further as their confidence increases and their anxiety abates. Do you still have a huge amount of sleep anxiety with dented sleep confidence? Because here’s the thing about cbt-i. It is not meant to be used as a tool to generate sleep forever for anyone, which is what you are trying to do here. After cbt-i, everyone should have a really relaxed bedtime schedule and nobody wants to follow a set of sleep rules forever, really. Have you ever explored what happens if you just continue to use your extended sleep window despite the initial setback and you feel you just had to go back and restrict your window? Just try it with no expectation of any outcome. Allow 6 hours in bed, you may or may not have as good as a sleep efficiency with a more restricted window but the key is really trying to “see” what the other side looks like once you’ve allowed yourself to potentially sleep this much. Imagine how the New World, the American Colonies and now the most powerful country in the world, the USA, would have lay undiscovered if people back then didn’t want to explore beyond their horizons and still thought the world was flat. Or if you still unsure stick with the 15 min increments for few weeks and try to resist rolling back because you want to “protect” your current sleep. Be brave and take that step forward, it might make all the difference to you because you may start discovering that you actually *can* sleep, even for 5, 10 mins and then that develops into 30,45 mins, 1-2 hours, it happened like that to me and I am sure almost everyone else here has a similar experience. Stop using cbt-i as a “tool” to sleep because it really isn’t! The best sleep remedy is actually sleep confidence and a very relaxed approach towards sleep, not a rigid, inflexible one.Hi and thanks for sharing your story. I guess everyone’s a bit different in the path to recovery. But whatever helps them to overcome their fear of sleeping poorly is going to be helpful. I really encourage everyone to be funny and creative about their circumstances. Make jokes and be light hearted about it. Dress up your fear/anxiety in different mascots and watch how funny they’ve become. For example, dress them up as a santa reindeer and going ho-ho-ho all the way for entertainment sake. Or as Mr. Bean taking an exam in an exam hall, that was really funny. And for those who like to do gym and martial arts, paste a piece of paper with “insomnia” written on it onto a punch bag, then have your fill of punching, kicking, knee-ing and head-butting it. Or if you enjoy shooting guns/rifles on a target, paste “insomnia” on it then shoot at it. Then when you go bed and your brain asks you “What happened to your insomnia/sleep anxiety?”, you could say “Well I shot it” or “I beat the crap out of it today, it’s probably too injured to bother me now”. Laugh at your own insomnia and start making it less scary! Because if anyone’s ever watched the film IT, it’s all really inside your head, only you can make it as scary or harmless as you want it to be. In the end, that fear is just made of air, it’s really nothingness!
