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Thanks Martin! Sitting up in bed and reading takes me away from trying to chase sleep and to just enjoy the reading. It seems to have worked as I’ve enjoyed several nights of sleep now with no waking early in the night. More importantly and I can’t explain it but I have felt a massive shift in my daytime thoughts about sleep. Much less worry and thoughts about it which I think has led to more sleep and sleep confidence if there is such a thing. It’s just a feeling but after 8 months of ups and downs I truly feel it’s finally breaking down not so much because of the sleep but because my mind is just so much more relaxed about it.
Thanks for the advice Martin! It is amazing how as the night time anxiety feeling seems to have faded for me it sometimes is replaced by a frustrated feeling. I now understand that sometimes I will get frustrated and that’s OK. It too will pass. I’ll just keep working on relaxing/reading if I’m awake at at night and working on not struggling with it. I will try the in bed reading as quite often I feel comfortable in bed and have been unsure if I should get out of bed or not. I feel that getting out of bed is the right choice for me if anxious or frustrated feelings start to show up though.
I too have had a dip in progress after some success. My sleep before the course was just erratic and panic filled. Now I seem to have a couple of nights of good sleep followed by a couple of nights of bad sleep. I have learnt so much and follow the sleep window and now know my sleepy cues to go to bed and continue with my daily life. At the moment I seem to be going to sleep relatively quickly but waking a very short time after. The sleepiness usually leaves me when I wake so I will move to the couch to read a book or watch TV until I’m sleepy again only for the cycle to continue for much of the night. The more cycles I go through the more frustrated I become and the less sleepy I feel. I use AWAKE and be kind to myself to try and stop me going into full panic mode which works somewhat. Is this conditioned arousal? Is there anything else I should try or be doing or should I just keep doing what I’m doing?
Hi CMV1992,
Thanks for the advice. It has led me to a podcast from Martin where safety behaviours came up. I think I’m am still using them too much. As you mentioned I have leaned into just doing what I want in the evening in the evening the last couple of nights which has helped. Last night for instance I was lying in bed and of course my wife falls asleep very quickly and is quite a heavy breather. It usually frustrates me but last night I found myself counting her breathes. I could not control her breath rate which seemed to take the focus off myself. I woke on the alarm this morning after a few rousings during the night. Yah! Amazing how a small shift in mindset can make a difference. I’m under not illusion that this will work every night though so I’m just trying to think that every night is a fresh start.
Hi Edlung. I hope you can improve your situation soon. I’m no expert and not sure I can help but are you confident you know the difference between tiredness and sleepiness? Are you having trouble falling asleep or are you waking after falling asleep?
Hi Rozey. I feel your pain. I have had a similar experience to yours and the other morning I truly felt defeated and just wanted to cry. I still went about my day that day and felt pretty good by the afternoon. Last night I had seemly very little sleep but somehow I felt more comfortable with the wakefulness during the night and feel much better this morning. I am starting to see that what happens last night has no bearing on the next night so a fresh start every evening.
Thankyou for your reply Martin,
This makes sense to me looking back. Before going to bed I have been relaxed but trying to stay awake but with no real thought of sleep but when the sleep window starts I have thought to myself that I am going to go to the bed now to sleep. I guess this may not be helping me. I might just try to simply to move to my bed when sleepy in my sleep window with no expectation of sleep.
On the second point it does not guarantee I won’t get anxiety now I think about it. I have actually had success in that last couple of nights accepting the the wakefulness when moving to bed and allowing the thoughts once in bed which then helped me stay relaxed in bed and I actually went to sleep! Funny thing is that I can’t even remember what my mind was doing when I went to sleep. I also tried the acceptance when waking in the night and found I am happy and comfortable lying in bed and again drifted off to sleep after some amount of time.
Thank you, My sleep is still not great but I will keep working on it.
This information may help me, Thanks. I have been watching and enjoying TV for around 45 minutes to an hour before my sleep window and am finding sometimes I can barely keep my eyes open so maybe if this happens I should just go to bed.
Thanks for sharing your story. It helps a lot! I am no expert but this is what I have been doing. If I wake in the night but feel comfortable and drowsy I’ll stay in bed and see what happens with no expectations. If that goes on for what I think is half an hour or at any stage I start to become wide awake or my thoughts go to the why am I not sleeping thoughts then I will get up and do something else. Not sure if that works for everyone but I have noticed and improvement in falling back to sleep for me. Certainly not perfect though. I have also been trying really hard to go about me day as normal and to move on from sleep thoughts during the day so maybe that is having an effect as well.
Hi edlung
I completely know how you feel so please don’t feel you are alone. I felt like I was to only one up in whole world at the time even though I could hear traffic noises from my bed. A silly thought now I look back at it. That day I did push myself to go about my normal day as best as I could and and actually felt somewhat normal by the afternoon. In the following days I have also been working hard on trying not going down the rabbit hole of sleep thoughts during the day and evening. Not fighting the thoughts, just not engaging with them. The last few nights have been slightly better for me. While I still had trouble falling asleep and woke up several times, I felt comfortable with no anxiety in bed so didn’t get out of bed at all. I said to myself “Well if I can’t sleep I’m just going to lay here and rest”
An update to the first post. After writing the first post at 5am when I got up for a bit and then went back to bed to just to lie with my wife for some comfort. Fell asleep for at least 30 minutes very quickly. I know this was outside my window but that’s just what happened. This makes me think maybe I am still trying to force sleep upon returning to bed???
