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Hello!
Welcome to this forum. Nobody seems to want to respond to you so maybe I shall say a thing or two.Pills don’t work. Earlier in my insomnia journey, I used them but they quickly fizzled out by the 3rd night so I came off them and never used them since. I later found out the dependence is purely just psychological and not physical.
It’s a blessing actually to not have used them long term. Because it allowed me to find natural sleep again. Anything that dents your natural sleep confidence automatically reinforces your insomnia. And taking pills is just one of them.
Good luck and best wishes to you.
Hey buddy
I found srt helped a bit. But it only helped to anchor my circadian rhythm so it’s not all over place as a result of falling asleep at 12am, 2am, 4am or some ungodly hour during my insomnia days. Once i fell asleep by a consistent time, everything else pretty much fell into place by itself.
I didn’t find stimulus control helpful at all. It increased my stress. I never got out of bed when i couldn’t sleep pre-insomnia so doing it while i had it was unhelpful. It helped reinforce the idea that wakefulness is wrong and must be avoided at all costs. I personally wouldn’t do it but i have heard it worked wonders for other people so I’m not in a position to tell what works for you. But always do what you did pre-insomnia. Because that is the state you want to return to.
So why were you sleeping on the sofa? And why weird you slept 2 hours there? You want to be in a state where there’s no bewilderment. Sleep is supposed to be natural and a result of being in a comfortable state and place and in a relaxed state of mind, so that can be anywhere and anytime and there becomes nothing to celebrate when you had a great night and nothing to despair over when you had a bad one either. You just become neutral and okay with either outcome. Good luck.
Hello @Janie
Thank you for your kind words. I may come across as irritating sometimes when I tell people the honest truth that their problem is almost always just an illusion. It is your mind playing tricks on you. Don’t waste any time figuring this out. Because it is just not worth it, as your body knows what it’s doing and it just cannot do it wrong. If your sleep was broken, there will be ZERO sleep ALL the time, not 2, 3, 4, 5 or whatever hours it is almost always getting. So the fact you are always getting some sleep and that doing srt or stimulus control involves nothing external, whatever you need to do to sleep is already internal inside you, you are not getting good amounts it because you have essentially been caught up in this self-inducing and self-perpetuating hoax perpetrated by your own mind.
There is almost nothing physical you can do about sleep except generating sufficient wakefulness by staying awake that induces sufficient sleepiness. That’s all there is to it. Since the problem is psychological, adopting a mental or philosophical approach is more appropriate in my opinion. Stop running away or fearing it. The world of insomnia is full of paradoxes. Examples include:
1. Doing less is more.
2. Having more insomnia to beat insomnia. Because more insomnia automatically = less time sleeping = more time awake = more wakefulness = more sleep drive = more likely to sleep. And the converse is true as well. It is cycle that repeats itself all over again and insomnia + good sleep are both stuck on opposite sides of the same coin. To achieve great sleep again, you need to have a bit of insomnia and so forth.So when you ask me, how do I achieve the calm wise step, I would say, when you know what psychophysiological insomnia is all about, that would be the most natural step to take. Because you can’t do anything physical about it and neither does worrying about it makes it any better either. In fact, it can make it worse. So just sit back, relax and let your body do its job.
A clear mind is everyone’s common origin. When we were young, we never thought about sleep. It just happened and we never worried about it. Unfortunately, where we’ve stumbled is because we are constantly bombarded by all that noise telling us what to do and what to expect and we constantly aspire to reach those expectations. In sleep, doing less is more. Doing nothing is the best.
Go back to basics. Go back to being the child you once were. Because ignorance is truly bliss. There’s no problem if you never thought there was one.
Hi Lemon! The words “will recover” still suggests an element of elusiveness. It infers there is much to do, it suggests something to achieve. To recover, you must think not of “will” but actually you are already there, you have actually already “recovered” because there never was a problem to fix in the first place! You just think that there is. If you can forget you have a problem, your insomnia will disappear. If you can forget about it, it’s no longer there. That’s the weirdest thing about insomnia.
Actually, your body doesn’t need to fix its sleep. It’s already always there. It’s you who need to fix your thoughts about it. Mindset is key. And effortless is the strategy. Best wishes zzz..
Hello lemon!
I can feel happy or sad without insomnia either way 😂. So it may have nothing to do with sleep at all. Human beings are full of emotions, and emotions are like a roller coaster. Maybe you are just bored? Tired of doing the same thing repetitively?
Understand that changes are relentless. You may be happy or sad today, but all that is always subject to change. Same like insomnia. You may sleep bad on some nights but because change is possible, you will do better on other nights. There’s always ups and downs, as in life.
Having a bad night is not a setback, it is actually a test. Of how well you respond to bad sleep. Your response determines the trajectory of your recovery. And that’s all there is to it, really. It applies both to sleep and to life, in general. Best wishes.
It is okay to think about sleep during the day. It is when you think it’s wrong or not okay to think about sleep that you become conflicted. Yes, I was like that during my recovery. Give yourself permission to think about it. Just know where your limit is. Don’t let those obsessions translate into unproductive action. Actions like sleeping longer, going to bed earlier, taking newer medications in an effort to change it, or other similar things, we call them sleep efforts.
Yes, think about sleep anytime but just stay put at what you are already doing. Continue doing basic sleep hygiene like regular bedtimes, winding down before bed and ensuring a comfortable sleep environment. Stay away from those things like “what if I do this new thing or that… What happens to my sleep, will it be better?” Don’t. Don’t give your brain a chance to “try” things. It’s these kinds of mind games that keep you stuck. Avoid the guessing because that is mentally stimulating enough to keep you from sleeping!
Eventually, once you allow yourself to think about sleep, your mind will just give up on its own. It will go, “Hey there’s nothing going on here, I’m moving on”. On the contrary, the more you restrict your brain, the more it wants to go there! And because you are not allowing it, it becomes a daily mental struggle.
Good luck and I wish you the best.
Hello Amanda!
The final step is going cold turkey. Everything you learn about sleep goes out the window. Return to basics. Going to bed when sleepy. But that automatically means sleeping less which actually builds and strengthens sleep drive, and that makes sleeping much more likely to happen not less.
Think of it like this. Do you obsess over your own breathing? Or your heart pumping? Why won’t you start worrying if your body has somehow forgotten how to do the basics? This is exactly what you are doing about your sleep. You doubt your own body can’t do it automatically, or your organs have suddenly all forgotten how to do their jobs and now need all these pills to “refresh” its “memory”. How absurd is that.
Take the leap of faith. Stop doing anything for sleep. Stop being overprotective of it, what you are doing is actually reinforcing your insomnia. Going to bed at regular times is all you need, nothing else.
If your body wants to sleep, it will sleep. For example, if you starve for days, will your body suddenly refuse to eat when a table of scrumptious dishes is laid before it? Of course not. Similarly, your body won’t refuse to sleep on a comfortable bed if it is really starved of it! It is as simple as that. Stop making it complicated. Confront your fears head on and stop running away from it. Sleep is actually that simple and EFFORTLESS. Good luck.
Hello @neleh72!
Thank you for your question. I do recommend you to go to you-tube and look up this video “Talking Insomnia #39” about an interview between Daniel and Sasha Stephens, a 15 year and now recovered insomniac.
I do not wish to speak at length because I think I have spoken quite enough from my interactions with @etty. But I will repeat that most insomnia has an mental origin and therefore require mental response. My key advice would be:
1. Try to do NOTHING about it except keeping to a regular bedtime schedule. Because there is nothing to fix.
2. Be very patient and expect ups and downs. Give it all the time you need for everything to settle down.You are your own worst enemy when it comes to your insomnia. You are getting in the way of peaceful sleep, by doing all kinds things for sleep or at the very least, plainly becoming afraid. But that fear is conditioned and you can slowly learn to “unfear” it. I wish you the best.
Hey yeah, so I went through your post history.
Your story does ring a bell because it is so similar to mine and practically everyone else’s who have been through this journey.
Waking up earlier than you desire is an extremely common symptom of, well, sleeping well and recovery. Like I said, it happened to me also. So I started letting go, and my go to bed time got dragged out to later as well. Because I was sleeping so well, my body was needing less and less of it! So naturally, I went to bed later once I stopped doing the srt thing and I wasn’t feeling sleepy anytime before midnight. Because I was sleeping later, my wakeup time got dragged out to later as well. So now I have a super relaxed sleep schedule, I go to bed anytime between midnight and 1am, and get out anytime between 7-8am. Just lose the tracking and the whole thing will settle down by itself.
The final step of the way is truly and totally letting go. Maybe you don’t need to do anything at all. Your body just doesn’t need to sleep until 7-8 am or whatever time you have set it. For me, I always woke up at 4-5 am early in my recovery journey, now, I can barely get out at 8 or 9! That problem totally solved itself once I ignored it.
Hi @buddy370
Welcome to the club! If you would allow me to share my input, I would say recovery is really only a matter of perspective. Once you stop defining what is “good” or “bad” sleep based on whatever definitions you have come to set yourself, that sleep is just sleep, there’s just no good or bad, then technically you have recovered literally overnight.
Unfortunately, it is not that straightforward for many people. There will be emotional hurdles and setbacks. Your conditioned mind will keep plaguing you with all kinds of things. You will need to learn how respond to them, to make light of them, reframing unhelpful and unhealthy thoughts, and eventually totally ignore them altogether, which require a bit of time. Good luck.
I also might want to add that when I was doing srt with martin, it was at the height of the covid pandemic! So it was much worse for me and others in the same plight cos not only we had to contend with our own deeply seated fears, we also had to deal with a massive public health crisis where fear of contagion and deaths were happening everywhere. There was a public curfew in place and hospital visits to see healthcare professionals were severely curtailed. But that didn’t stop me from recovering, did it? Nope. It’s not fair that you are accusing me of pointless rambling. When I’m trying to tell you what you need to know to beat this thing! Cos I’ve been there, and done it all and I know what it’s all about.
No, there you made a mistake. I signed up for Martin’s course back in 2020. I did the full 8 week sleep restriction thing. I still kept my sleep journals but since thrown them away, cos they don’t really matter when I’ve moved on way beyond. Look under my handle chee2308, it says client. Yours doesn’t so I’m not sure what kind of sleep restriction are you doing or whether it’s supervised by any qualified therapist. But like I said, these are not important in the long run.
Following a plan like sleep restriction to the tee does not and will not guarantee results. I still had bad nights when I was doing it, still did even after I graduated and even now, I still have them very occasionally, although I can’t really remember when was my last. But as I said, I don’t care how I sleep anymore and that’s why I keep sleeping so well! I regularly do 7-9 hours night, I even nap occasionally. So I know what I’m talking about and if you read those testimonials of people who have succeeded in overcoming their insomnia, adoption of a nonchallant and indifferent trait is very often a crucial factor for success. It will be for you too if you want to overcome this. You will need to get out of your comfort zone, reexamine everything, experiment what seems uncomfortable or unnatural to you at first. Only then will you begin to chip away years and decades of die-hard, erroneous sleep beliefs that are not only unhelpful but are extremely destructive behaviors that actually reinforce your insomnia. I wish you the best.
