Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi Jamie, I read Deb’s response to you and I just wanted to say my experiences with insomnia parallel Deb’s and her advice and solutions were very helpful for me. I tried SR for a few days, and as Deb wrote, in general for me my anxiety can be so great that it overrides the sleep drive. This could be from patterns of childhood, from adverse childhood experiences. Acceptance of my insomnia, talking about it and not feeling embarrassed about it, like I was a failure or something for not sleeping was the turning point for me feeling better. Using ACT was most helpful to accomplish this. SR was extremely stressful and while SC was helpful in the beginning it didn’t address underlying anxiety. As Deb mentioned, practicing welcoming and mindfulness during the day worked out better for me. My anxiety was not really about sleep itself or the bed, but how the effects of insomnia were affecting my life. Not being able to work and therefore income and savings issues, relationship issues, and planning my activities of daily living like meals and housekeeping due to fatigue and brain fog. For me practicing ACT and learning to welcome and lean into really uncomfortable feelings of shame, anxiety, regrets, etc that came up, instead of pushing them away was kind of intense that is why it is better to deal with them during the day, and if they don’t go away, journal at night once in a while. Now that I am working again and busier, I still try to practice the breathing exercises mentioned in the Sleep Book a few minutes when I first wake up, quietly in bed and/or during a break from work sitting in my car quietly for a few moments.
It takes some time, I’ve been doing ACT for 3 months so far and still have sleep onset issues, but most nights I eventually get at least 5 hours of deep sleep and maybe an hour or two of light sleep in the beginning. After reading some of Martin’s success stories, sleeping a good six hours is an achievement and I expect it will take many more months to get back to my previous 7-8 hours of sleep. Wishing you better sleep soon and remember you’ll need a lot of patience in the healing process.
I have to agree with Steve that at least for me, sleep restriction would definitely be incompatible with ACT. The greatest benefit of ACT in my case has been reducing my anxiety and resting in bed so I have more energy during the day. I’ve been attempting ACT for almost 3 months now because my energy has increased I’ve been able to start work again, although part-time and I take some continuing education classes. Twice in the last two weeks, I’ve had zero sleep nights and still have gone to work for an 8 hours shift the next day. For the people trying SRT, are you hoping this will speed up the recovery process? From what I’ve read and my personal experience, there is seems to be no quick fix for insomnia, but a process to let the brain change and heal.
Changing the subject – Does anyone still experience long light sleep stages? For me it feels like I’m in the light sleep stage for the first 2 hours of getting to bed, not even sure I’m sleeping.
delv-x – sorry for your unexpected relapse. It seems that once you start sleeping well the relapse is doubly frustrating. Glad you have a positive attitude that you will sleep well again. Since July, twice I’ve had almost perfect sleep for a week then as you said, out of nowhere I go back to poor sleep patterns, but slowly over time things are slowly improving.
Hi Steve – October has been a very strange month so far for sleep and life in general. At the beginning of the month, I had a week of almost perfect sleep, then the following week started going back down to 2.5 – 6 hours of sleep per night. That week I really struggled at night and it was difficult to stay calm and relax. However, the long term benefit of ACT over the last two months has given me more energy during most days so I decided to apply for seasonal/Christmas help at a retail store 5 minutes from my house. They started hiring and training me right away! After training, my body decided to sleep 9 hours one night and then the next night I could not sleep at all which was the night before I would be working on my own, of course. But made it through an 8-hour shift on no sleep! This week I honestly can’t tell if I’m sleeping or not. I still struggle with sleep onset, maybe taking an hour or two to fall asleep, then I feel like I don’t sleep, but probably lite sleep for 2-3 hours, then the last 2-3 hours of the night I sleep pretty well and deep. I’ve been doing less mindfulness, I feel like if I do it too late at night it interferes with my sleep. So I’ll probably try and do 5 minutes in the morning. Journaling seems to be helpful and that is better to do before bed to clear my head a bit, but I still need to practice that more frequently.
Regarding your neurology appt, I know it is scary, but not knowing what is going on is even scarier. My daughter had a neurology appt yesterday, she an MRI and EEG earlier this month. If you need an EEG, the test is done while you are sleep deprived, they want you to only have 3 hours of sleep the night before, so that should not be a problem for you! My daughter has an abnormal brain from birth, but at least nothing abnormally new showed up, but she will need to start meds for seizures. But that is OK, she has much less anxiety after seeing the neurologist, knowing he will care for her.
Deb – Bravo Bravo!! Watching you sing is the highlight of my day, great song! Even if I didn’t have insomnia, singing in front a group like that would have kept me awake all night. As Steve said, taking an ambien once in a while is not discouraging, kind of normal for a lot of adults. This last week has not been so great for me, but at least I’m functioning on a basic level. Probably will need to do more journaling or some other sort of therapy to deal with personal issues, I’m still feeling sensitive because of long term sleep deprivation and my reaction to stress makes it difficult for the brain to relax.
Steve – so glad you are getting normal sleep and I hope the neurologist can help with your issues. You mentioned feeling sleepy during the day and taking a nap…the week I started getting normal sleep I felt the same way. Pleasantly sleepy and also like my body wanted to make up for the hours of sleep I’ve lost over the past 7 months.
Hi corbett21 – My current situation with insomnia is due to medication also. I took terbinafine for toenail fungus, I had no idea this would cause insomnia, plus it can stay in your system for about 3 months, it has been awful. The medication has been out of my system for about 3 months now, but still the damage from chronic insomnia persists.
What has helped so far has been a combination of things. At first practicing Stimulus Control and some CBT-i which is described under the “Resources” tab on the top of this website was helpful. After about 6 weeks of doing that I then incorporated ACT therapy for sleep. That reduced some anxiety and gave me a bit more energy to cope with things during the day. But still struggling and have to remind myself it will take some time for the brain to heal. Like you, I did need to use medication to help with sleep for a while. The nice thing about ACT is that I was able to slowly stop using medication, and there was not too much struggle slowly reducing the frequency. My last Ambien was just over a month ago and I don’t miss it.
Wishing you peace and rest, I know that it is hard to get sometimes being an active mom!
GertG – Welcome! Your lifestyle and family situation sounds very similar to my own. In my experience my doctors are not very interested in addressing things related to menopause. I know HRT has some risks, but it has been somewhat helpful for me. I recently asked my doc to slightly increase my dosage, the new dose is still low, but doc was very reluctant. I am somewhat cooler at night now. Have you ever tried HRT? My spouse gets cold too, he sleeps with electric blanket on, and I have the overhead fan on and still get so hot sometimes. I need to sleep with earplugs and sometimes medical devices for my spouse light up and alert. Like at your house, my spouse can nap at anytime, whereas I can never nap to recover lost sleep.
You may want to check out the ACT forum here and read the Sleep Book by Guy Meadows. It is a bit different as when you can’t sleep you just try to accept that and stay relaxed in bed. This gives you a bit more energy during the day and is helpful. Hope you start getting the rest you need to cope with your home situation.
JT – So glad you find this forum helpful. I truly don’t know where I’d be without it, especially the education and support I’ve found. I agree with you that having patience is difficult, but if you have a realistic expectation of recovery its easier to deal with. After reading several success stories, and my own personal timeline, my recovery will probably take 4 months. About another 6 weeks to go.
About your sleep meds, ACT is not strict about them and I feel you can learn the ACT process and at your own pace come off the meds. And if you’ve been taking them for a while, then ideally you should probably taper off slowly. When I first started ACT, I averaged one Ambien a week, slowly increased to 8, 9, 10 days without Ambien and tomorrow will be one month without one. Weening off just came naturally on ACT. Also Deb gave lots of support for this too. During the spring and early summer, I was using a lot of meds.
burn – I had your sleep pattern of sleeping well only every other night. About my 2nd week into ACT, I felt like I had a couple of weeks of really not sleeping at all one night, then the next night sleeping about 8 hours. Then a few weeks ago it seemed I would sleep at least 2 hours on the bad nights, instead of zero, then the next night sleep fairly well. Then starting about my 9th week of ACT, I had a full week of 6-8.5 hours of sleep per night, except for last night, only 2 hours. I skipped a couple of days of practicing mindfulness, so I will incorporate that again.
Deb – hoping your fears about relapsing fade away soon. I think to want to push away our fears instead of accepting them is a life long habit for most people and learning to accept, embrace and make friends with our negative thoughts is a new skill, and just like if you were to learn something new like playing the piano, it just takes time and practice. Your dedication to overcoming this is inspiring! I think most of us here would have to say that having insomnia is one of the worst experiences of our lives. I’ve had very difficult times before but not the intensity and duration of this sleep deprivation, so of course you would get fearful thinking about it again.
I had almost a full week of decent sleep and minimal time for sleep onset! This has come about 9 weeks after starting ACT. Last night was not the best, I couldn’t fall asleep until about 12:15am, but earlier in the evening I had to deal with a mouse in the house, a new outbreak of ants, and I found evidence of termites eating my daughter’s headboard! All late in the day, so dinner did not get started until 8pm and didn’t take time to unwind and meditate. But I did sleep for about 6-6.5 hours so still feeling good.
One of the things that gave me anxiety last night was something I experienced the night before and a few weeks ago. I tried to look it up online and I think its classified as “confusional arousals” For me its the space between sleep and feeling like I might wake up in the middle of the night. One time I felt like I was in a black hole and kind of had amnesia, it was very scary, and the other night I felt like I lost my personality and bearings around the house. I remembered this happened once before and then I tried not to get scared and also remembered my sleep doctor told me I have more light sleep time, and when he said to tell yourself just to go back to sleep, you are having light sleep. So I did. I read this can happen to people after a lot of sleep deprivation and a few other things. Has anyone else had the feeling of waking up very confused once your recovery started, or at anytime during insomnia?
Borgesbi – your writing about your insomnia is very informative, you express everything so well and make ACT easier to visualize. I’m trying to have your attitude and mostly forgetting about insomnia during the day and lately trying to drop a couple of props at night.
Deb – I saw about 3/4 of the interview Martin did with Nick., it was very nice. I do agree that ACT is like the master’s level of sleep education. I wish SC and CBT-I would have been effective for me, it was a good foundation and maybe if my insomnia was not so ingrained and I sought help earlier that would have been enough, but as many have posted, the routines and structures of CBT-I end up contributing to the anxiety you are trying to relieve. And studies show it does not work everyone, we must be the 20-30% that need additional help.
TiredTwinDad – Great you are able to continue to do things you enjoy like playing in the band, even if you aren’t feeling well. Glad you’ve had some good nights in a row! I have twin girls, 30 years old now. I remember those days, well kind of, I was so sleep deprived it all seems like a daze or blur. After reading some posts here, I didn’t realize how the stress of newborns and the unpredictable sleep schedules can cause chronic insomnia vs just sleep deprivation.
I am happy to write that I’ve had 4 nights of normal sleep and normal sleep onset, even after one night where my husband had a little temper tantrum. Once I had insomnia, the tantrum would get my mind going so much I couldn’t sleep until 3am. About 2 weeks ago I had a strange pattern of feeling sleepy during the day. Not fatigued or wired tired, but almost like that sweet sleepiness I used to feel when just normally tired. I wonder if anyone else felt that recently, and wondering if that comes before you start to recover? I have not felt it the last couple days, maybe because my sleep has started to improve a bit.
Featherly – sorry to read about your 4 bad nights in a row. Once ACT starts working and you get a few good nights of sleep, the bad nights seem doubly disappointing! A couple nights ago I felt the welcomings were constant too. I had to take a polygraph test as part of a job interview process – I had a bad childhood, a neglectful mother and my behavior was not angelic. The questions asked brought up a lot of unpleasant stuff. However, even though I had to do so many welcomings, using ACT I changed my perspective and gave my childhood shadow self a lot of compassion worked on becoming friends with the memories instead of burying them, so from now on I don’t think they will bother me that much. So I’m hoping for you, the work you put in now will have a positive effect in the near future, even though we are all hoping for immediate relief!
Hi everyone! Just thought I’d post since it has been 2 months now starting ACT, and having insomnia about 6 1/2 months now. I am still struggling with sleep onset, sometimes not falling asleep until 3am. Last week I had 3 normal nights in a row, but this week has been 2 nights of 3 hours of sleep and 2 nights of 4.5hrs.
Trying to find a balance of not over-thinking and focusing too much on welcoming vs just letting my mind drift off like I did before insomnia. burn and Padron, do you have similar issues? I normally don’t have the sleep maintenance issues. At the beginning of the night I sometimes I still have the light sleep. Psychologically, I’ve been going through challenging and stressful issues unrelated to sleep/insomnia. Deb mentioned she used to journal, so I’m doing that, but probably need to do more at this time. It is amazing how some of the issues I wrote about are really put to rest and don’t surface anymore.
The good news is I’m more relaxed about sleep, just wish my mind would cycle less at night. I also do not think about Ambien anymore. I have not taken one since 3 weeks ago and it has been the longest stretch of being medication free since last March.
Steve – it is especially joyful to read about your progress and this gives me continued hope for recovery.
Wow, your brother is so fortunate to have you as a sister, advocating for his health and wellness. If you are close to him and have access to his medications, I would go through each one and see if there is a possibility of it causing insomnia. I’ve taken 2 different medications that gave me terrible insomnia. One was Celexa many years ago and the other which put on this forum now is terbinafine. I am probably the 2% of population that is affected, so I’d try and rule this out.
You said he is napping, normally that is not good if trying to get over insomnia unless it is only for 20-30minutes early afternoon. If he’s taking cannabis then I would think most anti-anxiety meds or sleeping pills would not be advised. The anti-anxiety pills can be addictive and you can build up a tolerance. They are extremely difficult to get off of once you become dependent. You can ask his doctor about gabapentin, its a seizure med, but used off label for sleep. But eventually he would build up a tolerance to that too.
I’d continue with the mindfulness meditation apps. Many of us here are trying ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) for sleep as recommended in the Sleep Book by Guy Meadows. Martin, who operates this website can offer support too and he has suggestions under “Resources” at the header of this website. Lastly, what about a dog/service dog to help with PTSD and anxiety?
My ACT experience update. Started Aug 1st. Weeks 6-7 have been about the same, last night had terrible sleep onset, not falling asleep until 4am, then slept 3.5 hours. Other nights not so bad and I say a typical night I’ll get 3-6 hrs sleep. It seems that I am not progressing, but then I realized that since the beginning of August I have been feeling better during the day because I am conserving more energy at night. So I started to add more activities and challenging events to my daytime routine. So I am having more stress which may be interfering with sleep onset, but at least I feel like I am moving forward with my life a bit more. So hoping my body and brain will adjust to the new stressors soon. Anyway, just wanted to check in and I also get happy reading about everyone else who is experiencing better sleep, no matter how little progress one is making.
Phil – thanks for sharing your experience. Recovering does seem to be a long process and like you mentioned, no quick fix. However by letting us know your experience, I can have realistic expectations to sleeping better and won’t get anxious when it is not happening as fast as I like.
For most normal sleepers getting 4-6 hours of sleep would seem awful, but I know going form 2-4 hours to 4-6 hrs nightly must seem so refreshing and I hope you continue to improve. I’m about where you are now. Maybe once every two weeks I might get an 8 hour sleep night in, but still looking at 3.5-6.5 hrs per night. I’m also glad you were able to get off pills. That has been difficult for me, but find I can go longer and longer stretches without them, and that feels very good. I had terrible insomnia starting mid-March 2019 due to a long acting medication. I think it finally left my system beginning of July. From the 2nd week of July to now I’ve am very slowly improving, and realize it may not be until November until I am almost normal.
And although I have not used Martin personally, the information he shares, his videos and this forum are so helpful and supportive, I’d also like to thank him too.
