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Preeced and mad Max, could you summarise in a few lines the key messages from both books.
I’m sure many of us would find that most useful.
Thanks
Daf
Hi Mad Max,
I just don’t buy this guff that you have to be in your own bed. …and not watch TV
Yes. its the ideal, but not essential.
When my insomnia episodes are raging, the night after a night of no sleep, I will just lie on couch and watch TV from 9pm and I will fall asleep. My wife then puts a duvet on me and it’s fine. I will sleep till my first awakening, usually 2 hrs later, then I will fall asleep again, on couch. I will stay there all night, until I’ve had 5 to 6 hrs sleep, then I will get up.
Often, during these episodes, if I had gone up to bed. Ping! I will be awake. And awake all night. It’s mad.
Eventually, the sleeping on couch gets my sleep confidence back and I can go up to bed and sleep like a normal person. It will then be all OK for a bit until the next episode of insomnia nights comes again.
Sleeping on couch and dropping off in front of TV can be a real aid at these times.
In my view if it works for someone then do it!
“I’ll also continue with stimulus control and sleep restriction, and positive thoughts like “my body knows how to sleep”. I’m quite optimistic about all this! It may be that we have to go through a process of learning all the CBT-i stuff until we develop the right habits, and then we have to move our focus away from it. If you were all day concerned about how to breath correctly, it could become difficult to switch to automatic breathing, right?”
Yes and Yes!
A very good paragraph there, that really sums things up correctly.!
I totally agree.
Occasionally I will get up in the night if I cannot sleep and I have got stressed about it.
But surely it is far better, as the poster says, to adopt an accepting approach to it – “here is it, its OK, I feel the wakefulness and the anxiety that come with it, but I will welcome them all in”
I know Guy Meadows and the acceptance commitment therapy approach think that getting up in the night and then going back to bed half an hour later has its limits.
If we can accept this strange condition, stop googling solutions (FFS, we know there aren’t any!) and start living despite insomnia, we make the problem shrink on its own a bit. It can lose its power.
