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Hi John,
How long did you have insomnia for? Was it primary or secondary? Any tips or tricks that you could share that worked for you?
Christine
My advice is to try to commit to social functions and activities. I know it may seem counter intuitive but if you are tired and not able to sleep anyway, going out for a bit can actually help. Going out will make you feel less tired and going out will make you think and worry less about sleep. Short social functions like going out for tea with some friends for a few hours can be helpful. Also it gives you an opportunity to talk about it if you feel comfortable to.
Oh and one more thing. (I can probably go on and on). In ACT, they say that you cannot control sleep and this is true. The more you “try” to sleep, the more difficult it becomes. For those who are controlling which is a lot of us, you can control sleep to an extent. You can control when you go to bed and when you wake up. Everything in between unfortunately is out of your control.
So if you feel the need to control some aspect of sleep, you can decide when you go to bed and when you wake up. If you sleep in by over an hour, you’ve lost control.
Once you consistently can sleep with 85% sleep efficiency or higher for a few weeks, you should be more confident and be able to add more slack. Maybe on weekends, sleep another 30 minutes or a bit more. Take that 30 minute power nap etc.
If you start to slip, start sleep restriction asap. Sleep restriction shouldn’t be a big reduction but rather consolidating sleep and getting consistency back.
Thanks Deb. I am always willing to help others and provide suggestions to anyone on here. I honestly think everyone is different and there isn’t a cookie cutter solution. A lot is trial and error but the answer is more of doing what you did before all this. Some may find 2 hours of winding down helpful. Some may find tea helpful. Some may find a cooler room helpful. From my experience, almost everything I’ve tried worked initially and then stopped and led to disappointment.
What is working/helping for me in general:
– Treat every day and night as unique. If you slept well or poorly the night before it has little bearing on how you will sleep tonight.
– If you got up at your prescribed time or earlier and can’t fall back asleep, go through your day. It is usually not as bad as you envisioned when you first woke up. The more fun you have during the day/evening, the less you will worry about sleep, the easier it will be to fall asleep and stay asleep.
– Avoid naps. If you need to make sure it’s early morning, early afternoon and keep it short. What I do is set 30 minutes. If I sleep, I sleep, if I don’t I relax but after 30 minutes I am up. If I really needed to sleep that WAS my opportunity. Tough love.
– Tough love. Try to wake up at the same time everyday including weekends. Once you are up, avoid napping. Your next opportunity to sleep is at bed time. It sucks but after awhile I find that I am less tired.
– In the evenings, find things to do. Go out, socialize, play board games, bowling etc. Staying in on the couch watching Netflix in a dark room is cue for sleepyness. This will make it more difficult to stay awake and also wind you up to think about how you will sleep tonight. You will end up in the paradox of easily falling asleep on the couch but wide awake in bed.
– Wind down. I think everyone is different and you will need to experiment. Wind down for me is it is nice to relax but too much makes it worse. If I spend an hour doing yoga, meditate, tai chi, hot bath, read, have tea I not only waste time but I am more likely to have worse sleep. Do what you did before your insomnia. If it were to read for 20 minutes, read for 20 minutes. If you like to walk the dog before bed, go for it.
– If you get 3-4 hours of sleep or whatever that night, see above “tough love”. Staying in bed for another few hours is almost futile especially if you are no longer sleepy. Getting up and about your day is the best option. Your next opportunity to sleep is at bed time.
– Avoid looking at the clock. Better yet remove clocks from the room. If it’s not 7am I don’t want to know. It’s bedtime.
– Consistency. I would rather have 5 hours of sleep every night than 3 here, 7 there, maybe an 8 and then a 2. The inconsistency makes daytime functioning hard. 3 hours of sleep I feel awful. 8 hours of sleep I feel awful even if I did get 8 hours!. Getting the same amount everyday is better. Best way to stay consistent is sleep restriction. If all is well after a few weeks you may be able to sleep 7-8 hours solid. If you are older then maybe 6-7. Nothing wrong with that.
– Finally, sleep difficulty is common. So common that it is a billion dollar+ industry of pillows, gimmicks and potions promising better sleep. I know it is very hard to do but when you do get a good night sleep, make the best of your day. Exercise, socialize, have fun. The odds are that will help for that night and spiral you upwards and not downwards. It is 99.9% guaranteed you will have poor nights again and possibly several nights in a row. Not letting it get to you and not giving it attention it wants is one of the best and quickest ticket out.
Hello, my two cents.
– Melatonin has little to no effect unless you want to reset your circadian rhythm or have sleep phase disorder. Melatonin can make you groggy and leave a hang over effect in the morning. Studies show that it may help you fall asleep a few minutes faster but doesn’t really help with the amount of sleep overall
– Valerian root probably helps for those with the occasional sleep issue. Quality and dosage varies. It is safe but the effectiveness is questionable.
– Diphenhydramine is probably the best over the counter option. It makes you groggy and may help you sleep although not refreshingly. There is usually a hang over effect and I wouldn’t suggest dosing in the middle of the night because of that.
There are plenty of prescription options and all have their pros/cons.
The best first line option is CBT-i. If you are sleeping 5-6 hours of broken sleep, CBT-i techniques will help consolidate that. After a few weeks you may only be sleeping 5-6 hours but less broken and more restorative. Then hopefully you will be able to push another hour or so or more.
Hi Mac,
Good observation. I’ve been limiting myself 7 hours each night and it works much better than giving me 8 or 9. Adding more to the beginning or end doesn’t make me sleep any longer and my day performance seems to be worse that way. Right now I have decent nights and some not so decent nights but give it a tough love approach. If I am not making the most out of 7 hours then why should I give it any more? My body will make it up the next night if it really needs it. If I feel tired and sleeping 90% of the time for a few weeks then sure Ill add more time but until then I am sticking with this because it’s consistent. I am sure Ill have rebound which I’ve had many times and expect to happen again soon but I believe what I am doing is the best and fastest way to slip back into a decent groove when it happens. My day time performance actually isn’t that bad lately most of the time. I do get waves of tiredness but it passes and in the evenings now I am not that tired and watching the clock every minute for bedtime.
Hi Deb,
Going back and implementing SR will help. I am convinced that quality is better than quantity. 6.5 hours of deeper sleep is better than 8 hours of lighter sleep. If you can keep an average of 85% SE then you should just hold that for a few weeks and see if you generally feel better during the day and my guess is you will. Then gradually add more time as you already know. I’ve been doing the 12:00 to 7:00 and this past week averaging 6 hours of actual sleep. Because relapse is a high probability and I am often waking up before my alarm I am holding this time and saying to my body that these are the times you have the opportunity to sleep so make the most of it. The result I believe is deeper sleep. *knock on wood* the first few hours of sleep feel deep. There could be a party on the street and I probably wouldn’t know. The second half of the night is more REM and lighter which is normal. Now if I eliminated SR then my theory is the first half would be more susceptible to waking up due to noise or whatnot.
Your first stop should be your primary physician to get a proper diagnosis and further testing (sleep study, blood work etc) . Sleep and depression go hand and hand. You can tackle either or and can help the other.
If things get unbearable you really should see your doctor.
Hi CK,
This product appears to be able to help with jet lag and not sleep onset, sleep maintenance or early awakenings. For jet lag, melatonin is what many use and costs pennies vs $200+ dollars for Lumos. If you have sleep maintenance or early awakenings as your primary concern then some basic CBT-I techniques should help and the material is free from various sources on the Internet! It takes some effort and commitment.
Hi Mac,
If things have been generally better since Jan/Feb that’s a positive. There is a chance you will be able to sleep consistently over 7 hours. I would say if you go to bed and you wake up 6.5 hours later and dozing off for a bit longer is not going to happen because you are too alert, try not to fret and go about your day or lay in bed and relax for another 20 minutes. Some days where I get more sleep, I am more tired than other days where I get slightly less so it isn’t always a good predictor on how I will feel.
I would say if you can get 6-6.5 hours of sleep consistently for a few weeks that push up to your rise time, you might be able to gradually push another 15 minutes and then another 15 and another 15. If you are waking up an hour before your rise time then you may need to hold this pattern longer.
What helps a bit for me is to avoid checking the time no matter what. If I wake up and still dark and know it’s not close to my wake up time I relax and lay there, go to the bathroom if I need to, whatever and even toss and turn but I don’t know the time so my body stops learning that 5am is wake up time. If I don’t know the time then I don’t know how early I’ve woken up, the more likely I can doze off more and makes it easier to “let go” or whatever mantra you think works best in terms of acceptance. If you lose track of time, it may ease some anxiety and may help deprogram your internal clock to wake up early. After a few days/weeks, if your body is truly still sleepy and you wake up (we all wake up many times throughout the night) you will just turn around and fall back to sleep and not even care or notice. Good luck.
If you don’t check the clock at all then you can omit everything I’ve said above lol
Almost everyone gets bouts of insomnia. Most of the time it is acute and goes away within a day or few days and is usually no big deal. When it is chronic, that’s when some people don’t understand because they don’t know how life is like dealing with it nor have they had it. If only I got a dollar every time I heard someone say to me “Have you tried melatonin?”. They are just trying to help much like we are trying to help each other here. I actually don’t mind too much when friends try to help. Often times I find out they struggle as well. Perhaps not to the same extent but similar enough with 4am awakenings or tossing and turning and not getting a restful sleep often enough. It makes me feel like yes some people do sleep well but others do have troubles just like me. It just seems like whatever they suggest (warm milk, yoga, tea, herbs, shot of vodka etc) works for them. For most of us here it’s been there and tried that and need more than a splash of lavender on the pillow to get a good night of sleep.
Sorry to hear it was light sleep. 8 hours is good though. The last few days have been decent for me. Friday night got 6 hours and was solid 6 with no interruptions. I was really exhausted on Saturday and napped for 1:30 hours which is way too long. It was early enough though. Last night I got 7 hours and woke up after 8am which is rare but nice. Hopefully it won’t derail me.
