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Hello!
Feeling sleepy before your recommended bedtime? That’s so common for people doing sleep windows, so perhaps you could think about it in a different light and from another angle:
1. Feeling sleepy = shows your sleep is not broken and your body is perfectly capable of it because otherwise, how would you even begin to feel sleepy?
2. If there’s evidence your sleep is not broken, why do you even need to follow a sleep window? To prove what? Show your body that you can sleep? Well that’s like getting up and walking around to prove to your body you can walk perfectly fine, with no problems whatsoever. So why don’t you do that and walk around for every minute that you’re awake? Well, the reason is when you are already so completely convinced that there’s nothing wrong about something and you’re not obsessed over it, you just stop doing that anymore and in this example, people would rather sit down and relax and than try to show to themselves what they already know is true. This is exactly what you trying to do with a sleep window. You want nightly proof that you can sleep at specific times and you desperately try to achieve, build and keep the momentum by following a fixed set of rules. When you no longer need to convince yourself, you just give up and move on. This is what every insomniacs should aspire to return to. That perfectly innocent blissful ignorance of a baby who doesn’t care about these things, aren’t caught in it because of stuff they read or heard everywhere and where sleep just comes and goes as it pleases. Good luck!
Hi Sam!
I don’t use a sleep window anymore, my earliest bed time is now midnight which I happily oblige if I am sleepy by then and the latest 2am in which I climb into bed regardless of how wired I am. My out of bed time is anytime between 7-9am. I also do afternoon naps if I have the time and space for it. I stopped tracking my sleep and I have no idea how much I sleep. I seem to function fine like this, I might get sleepy at several times during the day but I take that as a sign my sleep system is in perfect working order and not because I was sleep deprived which I used to believe. My advice is only use a sleep window as a temporary crutch, because it is neither a sleep guarantee nor a sleep generator. Using a sleep window still won’t make you sleep more than what your own body needs! Thank you and good luck to you.
Hello @momup and welcome back! Haven’t heard from you in ages and it’s comforting to hear you are sleeping well.
Back to your queries, it’s quite likely your sleep will mess up a little bit. Hence it’s common to hear about people getting sunday night insomnia because they go to bed later and wake up later on the weekends compared to weekdays. But that’s life so the real question here is whether the weekend night life is worth losing some ZZZ over.
That said, it’s also impossible to tell how your body will respond to the new schedule until you actually do it. There is a chance you still sleep well on both weekdays and weekends despite the altered sleeping schedule anyway. Or even if you change nothing, you still get the occasional sleepless night. So why fret about it when you can’t control it? You should live your life as you want and not make sleep as the main consideration.
Hello Paul! You are already using the shortest sleep window and there’s really no need to change anything.
I think you have the wrong concept about sleep windows. It’s only there to help regularize your nights and keep your sleep consistent, but at no means, does it guarantee you will sleep. Obsessing over the details and asking too many questions is probably not going to help you very much. Your best sleep happens when you don’t obsess over the tiny details or wonder if you are doing it right. It is in letting go completely and letting your body take over.
In a way, your sleep window questions are like asking if you eat your lunch at 1pm, will you get hungry enough at 7 pm for dinner or do you need to eat lunch earlier so you get hungry by 7pm, or something along those lines. The answer is does it really matter? Does it matter if you eat lunch at 12pm, 1205pm, 1230pm, or 130pm or 2pm or whatever, are you so obsessive in getting hungry enough to having dinner at 7pm sharp?? When you start doing things like this for everything, you only create unnecessary hassle, inconvenience and disappointment to yourself. And when you don’t achieve your desired result, you begin to despair over it and think something has gone wrong somewhere and start doing different things in an attempt to “fix” it, when you really should just RELAX and let your body do its job. Your body just knows how and when to sleep in the same way as it knows when and how to eat, breathe, plus many other functions. Obsessing over details is pointless. You get sleep when you don’t think about it or even want it (think about those time how sleepy you got when you were stuck in a boring movie, a boring lecture, or just plain bored from doing nothing). People desperate for sleep and wait all day for it to happen just don’t get very much of it! Learn to appreciate the overall process and not the outcome, stop chasing sleep and take your time to appreciate the other things in your life. Hope you find this useful and good luck.
You’re right Paul. In general, that’s what you do in life too, don’t get overly attached to anything and you will live a happier and more content life. Good luck.
You eventually just get used to it. Because you go through so many good and/or bad nights it really doesn’t matter anymore. You get desensitized over time.
Sleep anxiety is actually pretty common as is transient insomnia. Everyone experiences it at some point. The key is your reaction. You only struggle because sleep wasn’t anything you thought about before, therefore you have little understanding of it, and now you begin to think something has gone wrong. I am here to tell you that is usually false and misguided. Your sleep is never broken, it probably never will be but it’s your thoughts towards sleep that has changed. And it’s your reaction to these thoughts that keeps you stuck in the struggle. Don’t struggle! Let it be. Continue your bedtime schedules (keep it pretty consistent), and your daytime routines. Act as if nothing happened. If you can’t act, then at pretend or make an effort at it. The key is to not react explosively to insomnia and the problem usually fixes itself. Ever wonder why babies don’t have insomnia? That’s because they don’t have such a concept. Ignorance is bliss. If you are taking medications for sleep, which is what medical professionals will give you when you see them, it’s usually a very good idea to get off them slowly but eventually. Anything that chips at your sleep confidence and makes you think a drug is actually what made you sleep is usually not a great idea. Only your body can make itself sleep and only sufficient wakefulness can make your body get sleepy enough. Anxious thoughts including about sleep itself can put off sleep temporarily but it can never suspend it indefinitely. Good luck to you and congratulations on being a parent.
WOW, Tess, WOW! Your story will reverberate in this forum for as long as it is up. I have no doubt in the future, someone in a similar situation as your husband (which is a lot, I can assure you) will get so much inspiration from reading your story, and it eventually helps them move past their struggle. You have no idea how many potential insomniacs you’d have helped to heal. THANK YOU!
Thank you for your candid response and I appreciate it. My mantra is always “Don’t react”, “Be indifferent”. I believe that’s how many people recover from this. If you go to Martin’s YT success stories videos or read about them here, this is the common factor for practically ALL recoveries. People just stopped responding to the their insomnia and it stopped bothering them. It’s not an easy task, I’ll admit, it could mean you might need to drop certain aspects of your personality, do or think about things that are unnatural to you at this point, or go beyond your comfort zone, but once you take the first step, the next one is a teeny bit easier and so on until you find the issue has just ceased mattering for you. In hindsight, I never thought I would be at this stage of recovery during the deepest bouts of my insomnia and I can confidently say many others here feel the same way too. Maybe Martin has a different answer for you, but it’s usually along philosophical lines such as “If insomnia isn’t such a problem, how will your life be different?” and so on. In this aspect, I can positively say thinking metaphorically helps too. Like if you think of sleeping as eating or breathing, why have you convinced yourself that only your sleep is broken and not others, when the biological processes for these are physiologically similar in your body. In a nutshell, I can’t talk you out of your situation but please appreciate the process more than the outcome, think more deeply about it and then come to your own conclusions that make good sense to you. Good luck!
Hello Franky and welcome!
Common mistake most newly minted “insomniacs” make – overdoing and overthinking! When you should just sit back, relax and do not change anything about your daily routines and your bedtime schedule. The bout of poor sleep will eventually pass. Good luck!
You are correct in certain aspects. Most people don’t acknowledge they have insomnia because they don’t see it as a problem. It is more of a mindset issue than a physical one. You have insomnia because your mind defined one into existence. What is insomnia? Basically, not sleeping X nights, or sleeping only Y hours per night or whatever definition you have given it. You might have the exact sleeping pattern as another person, you might see yours as problematic while the other doesn’t, so he/she doesn’t worry unnecessarily over it and their insomnia fails to take hold or continue to persist. Their condition usually resolves itself while yours continues mainly because you get upset and depressed over it and you make multiple attempts to try to “fix” it which automatically puts your brain into an hyperactive, alert and self-monitoring mode which makes sleep more difficult to come by.
The key to resolving insomnia is usually by becoming indifferent to what’s going on, this isn’t easy because it also depends on your personality and how controlling your character is. It also comes from receiving the correct education, adopting the right mindset which leads to taking the correct steps to get out of it. Sleep is quite easy and simple once you understand it. It is not some mysterious indecipherable black box that you have to keep figuring out. Sleep happens once you are up long enough. Therefore, use a consistent bed time and stick to it. Detach yourself from everything else. Don’t try to overachieve. Nothing except sufficient wakefulness can make your body sleepy and therefore is beyond your control or reproach. Your body is in total control and not you. Attempting to circumvent this is not only futile but also leads to more struggle and disappointment down the road. Good luck to you.
Hello everyone!
@gemma2906 when you feel you have to make a choice between X and Y and you do this because
it’s driven by the sleep factor, always ask yourself the intention, are you doing it in the hopes of sleeping more & better, or is it because it’s genuinely want it and it’s not because of sleep?? Always choose the latter, if you get up, it’s because you have more interesting things to do, perhaps you want to watch a movie, catch up on a series, sew, have ice-cream, pat your cat, do your laundry whatever! Or if you have nothing that you want to get out of bed for, then just STAY In, even if it means you get anxious over not sleeping, get used to the anxiety in bed and it becomes something you eventually grow out of because it happens so many times and nothing bad has ever happened, your body just starts recognizing it’s a false alarm and that’s indeed what it is!Don’t chase the end-result, ie, sleep. Forget about what you think normal sleep should be like! Focus more on the process and the things you can control like:
1. Consistency. Get into and out of bed at consistent times helps form the bedrock for your circadian rhythm, so when you are up X number of hours, you will get sleepy roughly by Y o’clock. Not an exact science but mostly it works like this. Stop thinking sleep as some mysterious, indecipherable black box that you have to keep figuring out. It’s not and it’s really simple: you will get sleepy when you are up long enough.
2. Focus on your comfort and keep your bedroom cool, comfortable and relaxing. Start associating your bed as a place where you leave everything behind, your worries, anxieties and yes, even sleep itself if that makes you worry excessively. Focus just on resting even if you can’t sleep, tell yourself you are only human and you cannot control everything so there’s no point to be obsessive about anything if it does not turn out the way you want it. Life isn’t always a bed of roses and that’s okay!
3. Get over the fear, this is the ultimate objective of every insomniac and the hardest part of letting go. To sleep well, you must, at some point, stop fearing poor sleep, start accepting wakefulness at any time of the night and you must stop obsessing over it. You can still think about sleep but that doesn’t translate into actions or excessive emotions anymore. It just becomes a neutral item, like the sky is blue and the forest is green, you appreciate it as it is and you make no attempt to change it to your bidding.Good luck. The correct mindset leads to the correct actions which leads to a place where you are happy and content with things just as they are. People who recovered from insomnia don’t necessarily sleep a lot better, it just means they have abandoned the struggle with it.
Well what makes you think sleep has anything to do with your tiredness? Could there be an underlying medical condition? See your doctor and seek medical advice. There are many types of people: some who sleep 10-12 hours a day but still feel tired regardless and some who only do 4-5 and feel great and energetic all day! There is also such thing as sleep inertia, everyone wakes up feeling sleepy but the feeling generally goes away as you get on with your day. Whatever your case, sleep probably isn’t the real cause, the cause might be something else or it could even be you are depressed over your sleep because you aren’t getting what you want but that isn’t your fault either! It’s your own body that decides how much sleep it needs and gets and not you.
There are some very innovative ways to reframe your thoughts about insomnia. One of these is being able to make fun or being satirical about it. Laugh at yourself, this was one of the ways I looked back and discovered how silly everything and my reaction was. I thought I’d share some jokes here:
1. My wife has insomnia: Great! At least she won’t be sleeping with other men. LOL.
2. Waking up between 2am and 4am means a higher power wanted to talk to you: YOUR CAT DEMANDING TO BE FED! LOL.
Develop your sense of humor along the way. Once you are able to do that, it probably means your insomnia is loosening its grip over you. And that is the point of the whole thing! Lose the fear.
