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Normally I don’t have problems with sleep onset due to maintenance of a consistent sleep pressure of 17 hours ( 11 pm in bed, 6 am out of bed). My main problem ( very common ) is sleep maintenance a few hours after falling asleep.
Recently , however, I have been experiencing a strange phenomenon during sleep onset. As I begin to fall asleep I have begun to feel myself slowly fading into unconsciousness. For some reason my brain is alarmed at this and I wake back up. This may repeat itself which obviously results in some anxiety which counteracts getting to sleep. So now I seem to have acquired both sleep onset and sleep maintenance issues. This has resulted in even lower sleep quality and quantity than I had before.
Has anyone experienced this ‘fading out’ phenomenon. Any suggestions as to what can help with this?Hi Chee,
My sleeping problems began 6 months ago so that now most nights I get only 3-4 hours sleep. Thanks for the tip re : insomnia insight. I will persist. Thanks for the support.Hi Chee,
Yes, I have seen my GP recently. No problems with thyroid or heart. My GP advised me that my sweating is likely caused by anxiety about my insomnia issues.
I do keep my bedroom dark, cool and quiet at night in accordance to proper sleep hygiene.Hi Chee!
Thank you for your strong and consistent message about the importance of attitude towards sleep. First let me answer the questions you raised:
. Prior to SR I would wake up after a sleep onset of 10 – 15 minutes – go to the bathroom and return to bed. After this I rarely returned to sleep until getting up for the day. I would get flushed and sweaty, toss and turn. Most nights I would get 3-4 hours of sleep. Next day – tired, low energy and frustrated. As stated in my earlier email, now, even with a sleep pressure of 18 hours, I still repeat my old pattern of staying awake after an initial 3-4 hours.. sometimes I will get up if my arousal gets too much , but I find
that to be too disruptive and not that helpful.“Not caring” and giving up control is difficult for me as , what lead me to try and finally do something about my insomnia is the fact that I DID care about the my bad nights that would often lead to a persistent low quality of life during the day. This lead me to try Martin’s course on cbti with all its rules and protocols around sleeplogs and sleep efficiency calculations. But I now realize after your email that I should try to let go- maintain my 6 hour window and let what happens happen. I don,t think I could tolerate a smaller window at this point.
Wish me luck and thanks for your candid input.Martin,
Thanks for your suggestions and questions.I will, as you suggested, move my window so that I start and end a bit earlier.
To answer your two questions:
. I really don’t know why I can’t. fall back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night. Could my sleep pressure be too weak at this time? I just lie awake, bored , for several hours ( with periodic get-out-of-bed relief). I never seem to get more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep per night with obvious negative consequences the next day.
. finally, yes, I do check the clock periodically so that I can keep a record for my sleep log of TST. Thanks again for your help.Thanks for the prompt response Scott. To answer your questions:
1) I have tried any number of activities to keep awake until my designated sleep window but I am so tired ( mainly because of the previous night’s poor sleep) that I keep nodding off in the middle of the activity.
2) In the middle of the night I do get out of bed after 20 to 30 mins not because of anxiety but just because I can’t sleep. It would seem that my sleep pressure is just not enough at this point in the night to get me back to sleep.
