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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.
Good to hear about that. Hope everything goes well and I look forward to hearing that you are sleeping peacefully and naturally again without meds. Best wishes.
I’m sorry to hear you are depressed. Are you currently undergoing counselling?
Do you enjoy being in bed? Then by all means, please go to bed and enjoy some quiet and peaceful time there. Don’t worry too much about sleep because it usually has a life of its own. It can still happen with or without depression or whether you are in bed or not.
Good luck to you and I hope you find quick relief soon.
My experience with insomnia is, don’t try to fix anything if it’s not broken. A lot of times, it leads you down rabbit holes. It can make it worse too because all that sudden attention and monitoring can be mentally stimulating that makes sleep a bit harder to come by. Best wishes to you.
Hello!
A very rough estimate is more than good enough. In the end, you shouldn’t even track your sleep at all. Because optimal sleep happens when you track nothing.
In fact, you don’t even need to guess. Your body already does it all for you. It knows how much it needs and how much it gets, that’s why you wake up or feel sleepy! There’s already an internal clock going on inside that does all the tracking and regulating the sleep/wake cycle.
Just trust your own body okay? That’s how you recover. You slowly build trust and demolish doubt about your body. Ultimately, don’t turn your own body into an imaginary enemy that you need to fight every night. Because let’s face it, you expect to sleep every night so don’t turn that routine into a nightmare or some kind of competition that you need to win on every night. Sleep is not competition or race or a boxing match. Sleep is when you can completely relax and let go. The body takes over naturally and sleep becomes a by-product of that relaxation.
Easy does it. The more you let go, the better you sleep. Best wishes.
Yes. Even normal sleepers get transient insomnia. There is no big deal. Move on with your life. Sleep works itself out. You don’t need to do anything.
I would get off any meds too if I were you. Anything that causes you to doubt your own sleep ability automatically reinforces insomnia. The mindset that insomnia must be avoided at all costs actually causes it.
When people recover, they don’t necessarily sleep well all the time. It just means they are no longer fearful of insomnia. And that is the ultimate cure. Not fearing anymore. Not endlessly trying to control it. Stop this fight from within. Ultimately, who is the enemy? Who gave you insomnia? Nobody except yourself. The problem comes from within and it should end from within. Nothing external including any meds is really required. You just need to change your mindset. Best wishes to you.
Hi @sudu
You are absolutely right to question whether doing something is necessary for sleep. Because it will be discovered in the end, it is really not. Sleep is natural and effortless just like eating and breathing.
If you think your sleep is fine, then there’s no need to self-impose a set of sleep rules that you must follow. Because whatever you do or don’t, you will still sleep when your body wants it and won’t when it doesn’t.
Congratulations on being a parent and best wishes to you and your new born.
I enjoy taking occasional afternoon naps to stave off early evening sleepiness.
But I know that’s probably taboo because you’ve been told no naps, etc etc. All this rhetoric just to protect your nocturnal sleep.
But I am super relaxed about my sleep and I don’t mind feeling sleepy later or sleeping a bit less at night. Because I don’t fear poor sleep and am super relaxed about my sleep rules, I continue to sleep well.
You have several options really, you could
1. do the naps,
2. go to bed at 8-9 pm when you feel sleepy but expect to wake up earlier too, OR
3. do nothing and continue to fight the sleepiness. Actually feeling sleepiness is a surefire sign that your sleep system still works.Hello @edgar
Thank you for your response and I appreciate it. Tough love is the greatest love.
I am sorry to hear about your health problems. But any case, I still encourage everyone to live a full and balanced life whatever their conditions. Because ultimately, we can’t control what afflicts us. But we can control how we live our lives. Living well in spite of daunting circumstances is graceful and elegant, in my opinion.
It is always possible to find perfection in a sea of imperfections. Indeed, it is because life is imperfect that it is actually perfect. Because it allows us to truly grow, mature and appreciate. Best wishes to you and Teresa.
Hi Paul!
So why do you get out of bed after only minutes? Is it not possible to just enjoy the bed, feel the soft sheets against your skin or close your eyes, think good thoughts and allow your mind to drift off until you have unknowingly fallen asleep? I do this every night and I fall asleep without fail.
Hello Daniel,
Thank you for sharing. I like your suggestions but what about the pills, do you intend to take them for life or will you begin a tapering program with consultation with your medical professionals to start reducing the dosage until you are off completely?
Breaking your fingers eh… And then when you start zooming out to look at the bigger picture, you begin realizing it’s actually your other hand that’s doing the breaking. Interesting analogy though.
Any insomnia struggle is almost always self-induced and self-inflicted. Leave it alone and it leaves you alone. If sleep ability is completely lost, you would have ZERO sleep all the time and you won’t last very long either, the average being 18 months. These sufferers would often suffer many symptoms such as unable to speak coherently let alone get into a forum like this and type a ton of stuff complete with excellent grammar and punctuation! They would also have trouble walking even let alone show up at work, take a paycheck to take care of your family. The fact you are still around despite decades of “suffering” strongly suggests your sleep ability is fine, there was nothing wrong to begin with and therefore nothing to fix. Trying to fix an inexistent problem becomes the problem.
