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Hello there
Temporary sleep disruption is very common, it can happen for many reasons such as being on holiday, being sick, getting excited over a new event in life like becoming a parent for the first time and everyone gets them. What’s different is your response to them that can perpetuate insomnia. Why is sleeping poorly temporarily causing such distress? Think back to the times you first experienced sleep problems and you got through it fine, didn’t you? So why is it such an issue now? Keep in mind you will be spending a third of your lifetime sleeping so having a temporary patch of sleep disruption is nothing compared to a lifetime of sleeping. There will be plenty for opportunities for sleeping later so why does it bother how you sleep now? Think about those times you slept badly and did they bother you as much as they did when you started sleeping great again ? Answer is no, because who cares what happened in the past, in a few weeks or months from now, when you sleep well again which most likely you will, because you did it before and no reason why sleeping well can’t happen again, these episodes won’t matter that much anymore. Keep praticising good sleep hygiene like sleeping and waking at regular times and having a positive, accepting attitude will ensure you are well on the way to sleeping well again. Human beings are meant to enjoy things in life not constantly worry about sleep so keep doing things you love and enjoy while sleep will take care of itself, just like breathing, eating and other biological processes which normal human beings pay no attention to.Hi Ines,
What you are experiencing is very normal as I went through it myself during my recovery journey. If you have been sleeping well and then develop anxiety and worry over whether it will continue, it’s called performance anxiety and is completely normal. What is also normal is taking longer to fall asleep because that means you are sleeping well and not being sleep deprived. So celebrate these moments of victories instead of worrying about future sleep over which you have absolutely no control over and still hasn’t yet happened anyway. Tell yourself you will deal with it when it ACTUALLY happens not before. Every time your mind presents you with a thought of developing insomnia or poor sleep again, accept it as just a thought in the same way as having non-sleep related thoughts and thoughts really have no bearing over your ability to sleep and your sleep drive. Instead challenge it by daring it to make you sleepless again and/or proving you can still sleep despite being worried; this fear will slowly melt away. Continue practicing good sleep hygienes such as sleeping and waking at the same time each day, filling your day with enjoyable activities, not prioritizing sleep over personal enjoyment/development and paying no particular attention to how you slept for a particular night. You are going to spend at least a third of your lifetime sleeping so having couple of poor nights here and there is really insignificant. 2 bad nights over 365 nights is really nothing to worry about and everyone gets them. Remember you are here to enjoy what your life has to offer so do absolutely just that. Why fret over sleep if your purpose is to achieve joy and fulfillment in life? Accept that sleep is something your body will take care of all by itself, just like breathing while you set out to achieve what you want to achieve. Hope this helps you and good luck!
My advice is go to bed after spending at least 17-18 hours awake. This is what I do and it works every single time. If you have had inconsistent sleep times due to your struggles with sleep, it might take a while for your body to adjust but waking up at a certain time will fix this. Having total confidence in your ability to sleep naturally and only going to bed when sleepy, i.e. after being awake for 17-18 hours are all that are needed to sleeping well again.
I too graduated about 2 months ago and I’m back to sleeping normally. CBT-I help to realign my circadian rthym because people with sleep problems generally fall asleep at uncertain times due to taking meds and/or anxieties. But what I found most helpful is doing absolutely nothing for sleep except staying awake long enough and adopting an open and accepting attitude when going to bed. I now only go to bed after spending after at least 16 hours awake and I sleep every single time! I also don’t do stimulus control anymore. If it takes longer for me to fall sleep, I just lay in bed and not struggle. I let my body take over and find that sleep will eventually come. When I am no longer anxious about sleep, not falling asleep fast is a good sign because it means I must be sleeping really well and not sleep deprived.
Another thing is waking up during the night is normal. I still wake up several times during the night and usually fall back asleep again. Not being afraid of night time awakenings will ensure you fall back asleep.
Hello there,
I am a graduate of Martin’s course and I sleep great now! What you are experiencing is very normal and I went through them as well. The idea of CBT-I is to get your sleep schedule back on track because most people with sleep problems got into very erratic sleep patterns by falling asleep at different times as a result of taking meds and/or their anxieties. Over time as you progress, you will start adopting a much more relaxed approach towards sleep where you go to bed only if sleepy. Getting up at a fixed time is key. I discovered nothing generates sleepiness more than staying awake long enough. By sleeping and waking at certain times ensures you only go to bed after being awake for at least 17-18 hours. Basically what is sleep? It is just a core biological process that happens after a person has stayed awake enough, for normal people that’s usually 17-18 hours, then that person naturally feels sleepy and goes to sleep for about 6-7 hours. Think of it like breathing, which is another core biological process. The body takes care of it all by itself and there’s no intervention required at all. Sleep, just like breathing, is effortless. Do nothing except sleeping and waking at fixed times as well as adopting an open and accepting attitude is all that is required to sleeping great again. If you can’t get to sleep at a certain time due to various reasons, such as staying up for work or other reasons such as having guests over, which is normal for all human beings anyway, then try to wake at a fixed time if you want to keep your sleep intact. Try not to compensate for lost sleep by sleeping in too often. I now go to bed after being awake for at least 16-18 hours, I fall asleep EVERY single time this way. I have absolute confidence in my ability to sleep and I even take short afternoon naps occasionally and I still sleep great at night!
Hello there, I experienced the same thing you did. Your sleep window may be too short. Are you currently sleeping through all of your sleep window? Spending much of the time in bed asleep? If so, it may be time to increase the time you allow for sleep either by going to bed earlier or waking up later.
Hi Martin and Scott,
Thank you for your feedbacks. I have now completed the 13th night of my 8 week course. Last night was my first “bad” night after 12 nights of sleeping reasonably well as it was the first time I had to implement stimulus control because I woke up after about 1.5 hours of falling asleep and couldn’t get back asleep as easily as before and I had to get out of bed as it was getting uncomfortable. But even with this, I still managed to get a total 5+ hours of fragmented sleep, which I considered to be a “good” night compared to before. I could sense my sleep getting a little disturbed again, maybe because I had a string of better nights, and I was finding myself unintentionally napping more during the day. So now, I have resorted to chewing gum to keep myself awake, especially since my family like to take long drive trips and I am travelling along as a passenger. I am getting a bit worried about my bad night but try to calm myself down that a bad night is not going to ruin everything and that this is a long term improvement strategy and what happens in one night is non-consequential. So I will submit my sleep diary for the 2nd week after tonight and see how it goes.
Hi Edgar, thought I would chip in and share my thoughts. Try going to bed later but wake up at the same time every day, this is even after u had zero sleep the night before. Building your sleep drive is key to overcoming your anxiety over sleep. I would construe all of your efforts like going to bed early to try to force your body to sleep when it is hyper-aroused, taking V, all of these are sleep efforts which are counterproductive because sleep simply cant be controlled. The more sleep efforts u take, the less likely u fall sleep because that then makes u think more about your sleep and when u cant sleep, the more aroused u get and this feeds into the vicious cycle that keeps u awake. Personally for me and many insomniacs, the mistake we made was going to bed too early when we just weren’t sleepy or think we were sleepy when we were just fatigued and then try to fall asleep with our minds just not in the mood for sleep. From my experience, if u are truly sleepy, u wont have any space inside your head to be anxious about anything, instead u would be quite calm and most likely fixated on going to sleep and u could just fall asleep watching tv or playing your phone. This is the real feeling of sleepiness. Try going to bed later, that helped me break out of the vicious cycle and with bedtime restriction, made my sleep get back on track. Good luck.
Hi Jess,
Do u remember if u were dreaming when u said u were in stage 1? Or having vivid images? How can u be sure what stage of sleep u are in? Are u wearing some kind of device to sleep that tells u that? But if u are dreaming, it is definitely NOT stage 1.
Hello there, I certainly can relate with your experience. I too had good nights where I slept 7 hours then would crash right back into sleepless nights where I got 2 or none. I would encourage u to stay committed to the course and give your body a chance to adapt. Some people started seeing results rightaway and some took months, everyone is different. I had insomnia for just under a month, so when I started bedtime restriction and cognitive therapy where I changed my mindset about my sleep, I started seeing results almost immediately. I am now into my second week of therapy and am able to consistently sleep at the start of my sleep window. It could be your insomnia is chronic so that’s why your body needs time to adjust. Be patient and u should see improvements down the road.
Hi Kimmy, yes I used to have that too due to an unpleasant dizziness condition which was triggered when I lay down in bed to sleep and turned my body to the right. Dreading going to sleep is quite common, people with PTSD have it all the time due to recurrent nightmares, especially soldiers who have gone through a lot of mental trauma. The good thing is it can be treated 100%! Once the trigger causing the fear of sleep is removed, most people are able sleep normally again. However for me, the sleep disturbance continued even after I cured my health condition because I hadallowed it to persist for too long until my brain had started associating sleep with the unpleasantness. Luckily for me, after implementing CBT-I techniques, I am now no longer fearing sleep, the anxiety over going to sleep at night still visits me but it is getting much less now as my confidence over falling asleep improves. The main thing about insomnia and/or sleep-related anxieties and phobia is that it can overcome successfully with the right techniques and guidance. Martin’s sleep aid course is one the best out there and this is coming from a guy who has had insomnia and beaten it. I highly recommend that you try it! Good luck!
Hello Sally! Well you’ve come to the right forum and we all here can relate with the problem that you are having. I would highly recommend that you try Martin’s sleep aid course which is evidenced-based and proven to be highly effective for treatment of acute and chronic insomnia, based on principles of CBT-I. I have read stories and seen podcasts of people who suffered insomnia for decades and were finally able to overcome their sleep problems after following Martin’s guidance. Try it, you won’t regret it. I wish I could tell you more but don’t want to overload you with too much information but the basic concepts are that: Sleep is a completely natural and innate ability. You will never lose it and it is failsafe. You just need the right guidance to help you find it again. Harnessing this knowledge, you will be implementing strategies such as restricting sleep time to drive up your sleep pressure which in turn, overcomes all other concerns or anxieties to help you gain confidence in consistently falling asleep again. If you have seen Martin’s videos in Youtube, you will find he ends each video with “You CAN sleep”, but to me it’s more “You WILL sleep”. I personally have tried them and they work 100%! I started seeing results on my first week itself and am now well on my way to putting my insomnia episodes behind. I am lucky I didn’t have insomnia for too long, just 2 months suffering from it, so I am very relieved to finally see light at the end of the tunnel. You can too! Good luck!
Hey Edgar and Angel! Yes Insomnia is beatable! I am glad both of you are in the process of putting this ugly episode behind your lives and sleeping better. I too developed insomnia 2 months ago after a brief illness and now on the mend. I too have been sleeping almost like I used to for past 6 nights while implementing sleep restriction, but I did experience more frequent awakenings than usual. However, I do find myself falling asleep pretty quickly after these awakenings so I guess I am doing fine. The anxieties about sleep do come back once in a while, however, not as bad as before. I also find myself experiencing moodiness and slight depression due to the lack of sleep. But I fully expect my mood and depression to go away once I start sleep better.
Hi Edgar, I totally agree with your answer. In general, people should be doing all that (eat healthy, no smoking, no alcohol, regular exercise) even if they sleep fine. But I’d imagine it’s a lot worse if an insomniac were to do all those things. However, insomniacs are probably much too obsessed about their sleep to be enjoying things like eating rich foods excessively, or drink excessively etc.
