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I’ve been doing the breathing exercises for nearly a year, previous to starting your course. It often feels good (more impact at the start) however no, they haven’t removed anxiety permanently nor improved my sleep.
I agree focusing on my values might be a better approach rather doing activities for the sake of sleep. The obvious challenge is often having enough mental energy hence breathing exercises for energy rather than specifically sleep.
I think will experiment abandoning these efforts, rather engage more with AWAKE and NOW exercises.
I think you might be right. I just watched your clip on AWAKE, in particular the part about acknowledging difficult thoughts. I like it and will start to put that into practice.
Good question. It works occasionally however if I’m lying there too long the sleep monitoring part of the brain kicks in. In those instances I will try to get out of bed, change my context. I guess a small win is that I’m not immediately thinking about sleep when I get into bed. In the early days of insomnia it was my only thought.
If I hit the bed and start to feel more alert than previously, I try my best to think of other things other than sleep. Like occupy my mind with things from the day, things I’m looking forward to, even things I’m grateful for. Just let thoughts other than wanting to sleep pass on through. If I’m too wired I will try get up after an hour maybe. Watch tv for 30mins , maybe some breathing exercises and relax until I feel confident enough to try again. Getting up can be challenging.
Hey Jenna,
I can identify with your challenges. It’s difficult to not want reassurance that you’re making progress by checking the clock for how much sleep you might have had. I get the same thing. I have experienced physical sensations of anxiety this year which has no doubt contributed to insomnia forming. If I wake in the night, which I invariably do, I want to check the clock for reassurance. once I start thinking about it I’m not sure if monitoring of my physical anxiety, that always there at night, or monitoring time (more cognitive arousal) makes it challenging for me to get back to sleep. Either way, the monitoring is my battle. I’ve started leaving my phone(only clock I have) in the other room to avoid temptation. Added benefit of making me get out of bed at the end of my window, though very much a challenge sometimes . Fingers crossed it yields results over the ensuing weeks.
