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Deb – thanks for sharing your experiences with ACT, especially your starts and failures. I’m into this 5 nights now and having the same what seems like disappointing results like you. I will continue to persevere and accept this process and be patient because afterall the book is a 5 week course. It just helps to know what I am experiencing is probably very common. On a good note, being able to stay in bed just resting does give me a bit more energy during the daytime hours.
Deb, so glad you recommended the Sleep book. I believe practicing Weeks 2&3 about mindfulness and welcoming can be beneficial to life in general. Here’s what I tried this morning: I took a short drive to the beach with my dog as there was a negative low tide so there’s more beach to explore. Along our walk I welcomed and greeted Regret, Miss-Stake, and sometimes I ran into Loneliness and Anxiety. They didn’t stay long, but returned every now and then. There was so much light green seaweed covering the sand that from a distance it looked like a lawn instead of a beach. I took my phone out to take some pictures of that, my dog and some selfies to check the dark circles and undereye bags. I felt really mindful and in the moment then. On the way home I invited Regret and Anxiety to come along for the ride, but they vanished and for about 10 seconds I was sitting with and welcoming Joy and Peace. I don’t know if welcoming includes positive thoughts, but I acknowledged them anyway. I really hope this will be incorporated into bedtime.
Steve – Almost finished the book and wrote down some notes, mostly on Mindfulness ane Welcoming. I realize I will need some days to practice both and include them into my daily routine. I live in a beautiful area and everyday take my German Shepherd out for a good walk in nature and often have practiced mindfulness while out in the woods or on the beach with her. Now I need to work on the Welcoming. The book is good as it recommneds practicing this in the daytime, and for me I don’t feel the practicing is a strict routine, its easy to incorporate into your daily activities. Doing strict routines start to give me anxiety, that is why I wanted to change from doing SC to ACT.
I’ve only tried ACT for 3 nights, with one night a failure, an Ambien night. The the next few days will be practicing new things while still incorporating some pre-bedtime routines from SC to ease into it. I will just not get out of bed once I settle in for the night or only sit on the side of the bed if I need to get up. At the end of the book it also talks about a sleep window – so that you don’t spend too much time laying around in bed and you can build up sleep drive, but not a strict sleep window. So I will make sure my time in bed is between 7-8 hours and will probably avoid reading in bed until I see some success.
Glad you enjoyed your motorcycle ride! I had a small bike in my late teens my husband was an excellent rider and we enjoyed many road trips when younger.
Deb – Wow, you had a terrific night! Hope that is the first of many and getting back to normal. I just went back to reading some of your posts and it seems like your first week starting ACT was difficult as one might expect – little sleep, no sleep and light sleep. I’ve only tried this for two nights so far. First night, it took a while to get to sleep, but I must have got adequate sleep as I woke up feeling good, but last night I had no sleep – maybe I was trying to hard. But it still felt good just to go to bed and stay in bed without stressing about the time or getting out of bed to do SC. I’ve just started the Sleep book and hoping as I progress through that practice the exercises things will improve.
Please take it easy on yourself and speak with your doctor about a schedule to slowly ween off the medication. I hate taking medicine too and still do on “as-needed basis” not daily. But the longer I’m off it the better I feel, even when I only have a couple hours of sleep.
Hey Deb,
After reading your posts I’m going to order The Sleep Book by Dr Guy on my Kindle. I’ve read reading on a Kindle is not that bad if you do it for under an hour and dim the screen. At this point I have nothing to lose. Sleep Restriction brings on too much anxiety for me. Stimulus Control has had some benefits, but I’m getting tired and a bit anxious with the routines of it. I’ve never really been a depressed person but have issues with anxiety and it sounds like the ACT addressess this. Thanks again for your feedback to everyone!
Deb – thanks for sharing all that you’ve learned, its very helpful. Reading your posts I’ve realized I have not been good about practicing Mindfulness as much as I should, and realize it is not the same as meditation. As you wrote, I feel that intellectually I can am calm and there is no reason to be anxious, but the inner workings of my brain are not accepting this. Hopefully the brain will heal and relax over time. Your progress is encouraging for me.
I understand, I live in condos and behind a condominium pool and also remember spending time with my grandmother in NYC in an old apt. building, no insulation and all the street noise!
My sleep doc told me about an app called Insight Timer, but to me its just OK. To keep your mind from racing, I like the videos from the Mindful Movement on YouTube. Guided meditation to take you away from it all for 15-30 minutes. Really soothing.
Someone here recommended audio books, which I’ve really enjoyed, there is a 30 day free trial on Amazon. After about 45minutes of listening, I am very relaxed and sleepy. Even if it’s hot, try taking a warm shower, the water evaporation on your skin is cooling and is supposed to stimulate melatonin production. Because my spouse has a Bi-Pap machine that can be noisy, I sampled a few ear plugs, and finally found some that don’t hurt my ears yet block the noise. They are the cheap foam kind. The other night I didn’t even hear people break into the pool at 1am and my husband calling the police on them! Coloring with colored pencils is also relaxing for me before bed. Hope you find something soon that works for you!
Eight hours of sleep in four days is truly awful and is close to my average sleep for the month of June. My insomnia started in March 2019 due to medication reaction and side effects. Like Chappyt described, the doctors don’t really look into the cause or continuation of the insomnia, just prescribe Ambien. Ambien has been extremely helpful for me in the past for short term use, like for traveling and changing time zones or just for a couple nights during stressful times. But the doctors really should intervene quickly when they know you are on it for two weeks or more.
To say you are really hurting is how many of us feel. For me I literally hurt with strong muscle aches, and then feel so bad you cannot drive safely, can’t learn new things and forget how to spell is so scary. I truly dinner time as my mind is shot and I can’t even plan a meal and is also the lowest energy time of day and can barely cook, its hard when you have someone depending on you. I am or was a very good cook and my family would boast about my meals, so to lose this ability was very sad for me.
Since March I spent about 2 months on Ambien, taking 5-7 days off of it every couple weeks. I’d average about 5 hours sleep on Ambien. When I was mostly off it, say taking it 2x week, that is when my sleep was really bad, averaging 2-3 hours per night and I stayed that way for about 6 weeks. I went to a sleep doctor and he started me on Stimulus Control which is under the “Resources” section here. The doctor added a few other modifications for my specific situation. About the 3rd week into it I started seeing improvement in sleep that was the beginning of July. Healing the brain from my trauma and trying to correct what the Ambien messed up will be a long process. But don’t get discouraged! It seems like so far in July about 1/3 of the days I’ve been able to sleep 6-7.5 hours per night, alternating a few good nights then a few nights with 2-4 hours sleep. I’m hoping in August I can increase my good nights to 50% of the time.
If either of you can afford this, you might try accupuncture. I did about 10 sessions, 2x a week. I wasn’t expecting an immediate result (I thought benefits would accumulate over time) but there were 3 times after a session where I slept 7 hours that night which was wonderful.
RonA – the breathing exercises, for a while I too was focusing on my breath too much. One reason was the exercises themselves, the other was that when wearing certain earplugs that in itself made my breathing more noticeable. In bed I might do 3-5 of the inhale 4seconds, hold 7 seconds, exhale 8 seconds and then tell myself I’m done, back to regular breath. Or don’t do them in bed, maybe on the sofa while waiting to go to bed. Another thing I recently tried was just noticing my breath at random moments, like just before I sit up from my desk, a moment before I put on my make-up. No special exercise, just notice, be in the moment for a few seconds and then continue with what I have to do. So this practice has helped me the last couple nights when going to bed my mind says that I am only going to notice my breath for a few moments, or I just acknowledge briefly that “I am hearing the sensations of my breath”.
Lately, I’ve been in the habit of waking up about 3:30am. Sometimes I can’t go back to sleep, but other times if I just get up briefly I may be able to go back to sleep. So I will get out of bed, go downstairs and drink some water, use the bathroom, sit in the dark for a few moments maybe massage my legs or feet. I also have issues with getting too hot, most likely hormones something you probably don’t deal with, but anyway I also sit until I cool down and hope my sheets cool down too while I’m out of bed. or may just change pjs. Sometimes I take an Advil, I might be just achy enough to prevent sleep. The Advil may be a placebo. I’m out of bed for about 5-10 minutes, then go back to bed. I’d say this helps about 50% of the time. If this doesn’t work I then just relax in bed and not stress about it.
Thanks Steve and Deb for your kind thoughts.
Steve – My insomnia started 3/12/19. The day I went to my podiatrist and received a steroid injection for a neoroma in my foot and also started taking on oral medication, Terbinafine for toe nail fungus. Both medications caused a severe reaction. Feeling high energy like I had superpowers for a couple days and then went into extreme mood swings, wanting to cry which is totally unlike me. After a week I contacted my primary doc, but she didn’t seem to really care or be concerned. She did give me Ambien, but the other drugs were so strong, the Ambien hardly worked. After almost 3 weeks with little sleep, I was freaking out. I went to the pool to swim to really tire myself out, came home, sat down for lunch and looked at the terbinafine I was about to take. I thought, I should research this medicine more thoroughly. The doctor said it could harm my liver and to watch out for that, but he did not mention any other side effects. Went online, and read many reports of this medication causing insomnia, I was that 1-2% of the patients it affected. This medication has a long half life and can stay in your system for 12 weeks.
I’ve had insomnia as a child, and as an adult very stressful situations can bring it on, traveling brings it on, and once before a medication gave me insomnia. But never before did it last this long.
Last night I slept 6.5 hours and if feels glorious compared to only 2-3 hours which was my average last month. July has been better, having a few days in a row of 6-7 hours sleep then I may regress to 3-4 hours for a couple days. I can no longer take Ambien, my body doesn’t like it anymore and actually makes my mind race, like it is not asleep. My sleep doctor suggested I try listening to audio books to relax me at night, which kind of makes sense as I remember how my kids loved it when I read to them at night. Amazon has a 30 day free trial, and I am really enjoying it. I have to listen outside of the bedroom and it takes about 30-45 minutes to feel sleepy enough for me to go to bed. It was also recommended that I take a warm shower 30 minutes before bed because the cooling of the body after a warm shower should stimulate melatonin production. If the audio books don’t work then I have a couple kind of boring books I read. Insomnia often makes my muscles ache, so once in a while I will also take some Advils before bed which helps me to relax a bit. Anyway, hope you can push past the 3:30am time. I woke up at 4am today, a little bit better. If you plan on taking supplements, don’t try the CBD gummies! My daughter gave me CBD gummies with THC, they are very relaxing to the point of you not caring about anything but they are very long lasting, like 20 hours and really affected me into the next day and although relaxing, did not induce sleep.
Hi Steve, the 3:30am hour is an awful time to wake up for me. My husband wakes up at 5am, so I often think by the time I get to sleep, he’ll probably wake up again, and sometimes if I’ve fallen asleep a but earlier at like 10:30, by body feels like 5 hours of sleep is great(compared to a month or two ago when I was only getting 2-3 hours sleep per night) so I’m wide awake .
Since you don’t have support at home, I’m glad you found this forum. Hearing what everyone is going through is so helpful, insomnia is a very lonesome condition especially at 3am. And here I don’t feel alone. Unkile you, I have someone at home who really doesn’t support me and frequently makes very insensitive comments that I am mental/crazy for having insomnia originally brought on by medications – and doesn’t want to understand it takes a long time for the brain to recover. My sleep doc knows my home situation and asked me to remove separate from the bedroom with my spouse. A sleep divorce. I did that for 3 weeks and now, I found a quiet, alone space before I go to bed and wait for my spouse to be asleep so I can go to bed in peace. So thanks, Martin for making this available!
I’m glad to hear you are making yourself do enjoyable activities even though you might feel lousy. I find when I do that, I might at least feel better for a couple hours afterward, especially if it was a vigorous, sweaty physical activity. I’ve increased my activity since insomnia and am in better physical shape, lets just hope the brain catches up with the body soon.
Thank you! We all need it. I recently had a sleep study done. I felt like I didn’t sleep at all, but I did get enough sleep in for a decent evaluation. They did recommend taking a sleep aid for this, and I did. Good news is I have no sleep apnea, but do have classic sleep patterns of insomnia. Hope you get your issues solved soon.
Deb, thanks for posting the information about the “light sleep” stage. I was wondering about the physiology of it all. I did a sleep study and it showed I stayed in light sleep/stage 1 longer than normal, but the doctor did not explain why, just said it was normal for people with insomnia.
Before March 2019 when the insomnia started, I cannot remember ever having so much light sleep or that it even existed. The last two to three weeks I am starting to slowly feel better, but this light sleep thing is puzzling. I usually try to get to be about 10pm, and I feel the hours between 10pm-12am I may not even be sleeping, but I know for some of that time I am. Can have decent sleep between 12am-3:30am, then after that I may wake up anytime between 3:30-6am. I know over time this will resolve, but if anyone has any estimates of how long it might take to reduce the light sleep stage to normal that would be nice to know. Anyway, thanks for all your information!
