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Hi Chrissie, it sounds like you are getting hit out of nowhere with insomnia. And even if you determine there was a specific triggering event, the insomnia can take on a life of its own.
I also can relate to how you don’t entertain or go out at night, figuring you are too tired and instead have to gear up for the next day, when you figure you will be tired anyway. This is at least what I think I am hearing. It’s what I used to think. I also envisioned insomnia as this all-powerful force which I was helpless against. It was like a giant.
Over time, I realized the giant did not exist. Instead, it was an unpleasant fantasy conjured up from my thoughts running amuck. This is not meant to be dismissive. Not being able to sleep enough to feel fresh the next day is a bummer. But a lot depends on how we think about it.
I see that you are in Week 1 of the course. In subsequent weeks, Martin addresses how thoughts can drive insomnia, and also how surrendering our lives to insomnia (e.g. avoiding things which we used to enjoy) doesn’t work very well.
I also hope you will read another comments on the forum, both success stories and also how other people are struggling. I think you will find some common themes, one of which you already have figured out, that sleep anxiety perpetuates itself, if we don’t address it.
Take care, you are not alone in this.
Hi Meganb, sorry to hear you are having such a tough time. I haven’t raised a baby, so I can’t speak to that issue. I wonder if touching base with other moms could help.
But it sounds like you were struggling with insomnia even earlier, and that having a baby, plus the incident two months ago, are additional triggers which keep the insomnia going. It also sounds like you realize that insomnia can take on a life of its own, independent of triggering events.
I sympathize with your wanting to find a sleep med which will make the insomnia go away. I tried many. Unfortunately there is no cure-all med. If there were, people would be lined up for miles. The doctors will write this or that Rx which might work for a little while, but that’s about it. And M.D.s in particular are generally not very skilled or interested in exploring the emotional aspects of what is disrupting your sleep.
I hope you explore this website. If you read the forum posts, both success stories and accounts of people still struggling, you will see some common themes. One is that most of us get overwhelmed at times by our thoughts. They are so powerful, they must be true, right? (not necessarily at all). Another is that insomnia is something the problem-solving aspect of our brains can process and churn out a solution, much like building a piece of furniture. Wrong, but a lot of us have still spent a lot of time trying to do just that. You will see you are nowhere near alone in all this.
All the forums are free. There is also Martin’s course, which goes into more detail about e.g. how to slow down and observe, rather than race to solve.
Easier said than done when you’re hammered from insomnia. Try not to take on too much, just check out what other people are saying here. Wishing you the best: even if you might feel strongly sometimes that you are condemned to a lifetime of exhaustion, you’re not.
Hi Rania, sorry to hear you are struggling right now. I personally need to establish a fairly set routine. It would not include sleeping on the couch with the TV. But some people on the forum seem to do okay in all sorts of situations.
Maybe the only thing I’ve learned for sure is sleep just happens, as with babies and dogs. Not much consolation when you are feeling desperate—and I have been there—but it leaves me convinced that sleep anxiety can just get worse the more we obsess about it.
You note that some nights you do sleep considerably longer, and I am assuming at least somewhat better. Do you think perhaps you were not worrying as much about sleep at those times?
Hi Jtrang—-I can definitely relate to how insomnia can put your brain in a dark place, via powerful thoughts, even if they’re not necessarily true.
I would encourage you to stay with the course to learn about setbacks. I think you’ll find they are annoying, temporary blips, nothing more.
Hi Packer Fan, I hear you wanting to know why you’re having a setback, or a glitch. Call it what you will. When I don’t have any particular situation waking me up, I figure it just happens. In fact, I expect to wake up during the night, and usually do.
And I get that it can lead to worry about getting back to sleep. And then sleep anxiety moves in.
I tried to fight off sleep anxiety for the longest time. I finally learned it’s a lot better to just sort of stand back and watch it. It wants to tussle with you, but I never found that worked very well.
In short, even if you get to where you are sleeping well most of the time, a tough night or even a few can easily happen. The more you can just roll with it, the better. And yes, easier said than done sometimes.
Hi Charlie__7093:
“I think it’s the anxiety over having loss of sleep that sometimes creates the insomnia–a self fulfilling prophecy.” <<<< I think you nailed it right there, regardless of meds or anything else.
If we were perfectly logical all the time, I suppose your insight would mean no more insomnia. Instead, sleep anxiety can still hang around. Or as I think you’ve found, leave for a while and then pop back into your life.
it is indeed a vicious circle, maybe a menacing merry-go-round. I wonder if the next time you can’t get to sleep, or (like me) you wake up early and can’t get back to sleep, instead of seeing yourself as pinned on this go-round, you can visualize standing back and just watching it spin.
Sure, you’d rather it wasn’t there at all and you were still asleep, but at least knowing you don’t have to get on it. It could well be you don’t get a lot of sleep that night and are tired the next day, which I know is not fun. But you’ve been at this a while, and you have made it through 100% of the tired days so far.
Take care, you are not alone in this. And I do think your insight into sleep anxiety will help overall.
Hi Becc, if the course materials are still available, you might want to review a couple of points. If not, here is a sketch at least. Some of this stuff is pretty much burned into my memory for good.
After all your hard work to complete the course, it would seem fairer that you should not have to go through setbacks. So much for life being fair. Setbacks happen, no getting around it.
But knowing they just happen can lessen the feeling that it is a disaster. And if the feeling of doom is really strong, remembering the course chapters about stepping back and observing. Recall the difference between:
1. I am having the thought, and noticing the feeling, that I am plagued with insomnia for life; and
2. I am plagued with insomnia for life.Finally, you speak about using your will power and working harder to “prove your brain wrong.” But you might recall Martin’s lessons on how effort doesn’t work here as well as in other areas of life, and how we cannot undelete stuff in our brains. Nor can we cast thoughts away, never to return. For what it’s worth, I have fared better when I’ve not taken thoughts so seriously, especially when I’m tired.
Going on a bit here, but when (not if) you have a setback, I hope you can note that feeling something strongly does not make it true.
Take care, you are not alone in this.
Hi Moran, I am not a parent, so I don’t feel qualified to answer. I am writing this in the hope that parents will reply to you.
All I can offer is anecdotal stuff about what i have seen and heard parents do. You decide whether it is worth thinking about.
One practice is after doing what you can to comfort a small child, simply letting them deal with it, even crying themselves to sleep. While seeming to be heartless, I guess, the alternative seems to be arguably coddling them. How long will you let the kids sleep with you and your wife? (By the way, how is she dealing with all this?)
I see parents trying to prevent anything unfortunate from happening to their children, ever. Not letting them walk anywhere, no random play with kids in the neighborhood. Protecting them from the world, or trying to. All of which seems loving and well-intentioned, but how will the kids ever grow up?
As I say, better to let parents weigh in here. If you don’t get replies in this forum, how about checking in with other parents at your kids’ school, or any friends who are also parents? As kindly as you are treating your kids, the lack of good sleep must be taking a toll after a while.
Sorry I cannot come up with more, and I hope you can get better information.
Hi tamimendonca, even with your medical training as a nurse, I would consult the medical professional most qualified to advise you on half-lifes of medications, how/whether to taper off, side effects, etc. This would be a pharmacist.
I am not sure what led you away from CBT. You have found it the most beneficial of all the therapies you have tried. Maybe because it was not a perfect solution? What do you think about giving it another try, now that it sounds like you have realized there is no perfect solution, rather just go with the best one for you?
You acknowledge your need to practice more self-kindness. Maybe it developed after you moved away from CBT, but there is quite a bit of research on self-compassion, e.g. author Kristen (Kristin?) Neff. It seems that the people less apt to be self-compassionate are generally more compassionate to others (like nurses?)
Hi TraciD, well, as habits go, it’s certainly the worst out there. Still, I get that you would like to kick it and just go to sleep without the TV. I gather it is a problem because it’s not as though you wake up rested with the TV on. You describe having sleep problems for decades, so I’m assuming you wake up too early, perhaps prompted at least in part by the light or noise of the TV.
There could be a lot of perspectives on this. One might be to turn it off via remote a few seconds before you conk out. Or maybe not face the screen so the ambient light doesn’t jar you awake midway through the night. Or gradually lower the volume over several nights. Or maybe try listening to a podcast, which even if it continues would not include the light. Or just keep falling asleep to the TV–but not panicking when it wakes you up midway, just turning it off and going back to sleep. Or moving the TV to the bedroom so at least you are lying in bed (if you are currently falling asleep in living room armchair / sofa). Or just turning off the TV and experiencing the “cold turkey” anxiety—not to diminish the unpleasant aspects here, but at least it is not a risk to physical health, such as trying to detox off heroin without medical supervision.
I hope other people will reply so you can get additional ideas. In the meantime, I suggest you read other posts, even if they don’t address this specific subject. The common thread is sleep anxiety, as in omg, what am I going to do if I can’t sleep, I can’t handle this, etc. Whether it originates from a TV or anything else.
You are not alone.
Hi kbgust, regardless whether you are employing sleep restriction, sleep anxiety can kick in at the start of sleep, or when you wake up in the middle of the night, as you are experiencing.
It’s indeed not unusual to wake up during the night. Martin focuses quite a bit in his course on the issue of nighttime wakefulness—that it is not unusual, and also doesn’t have to translate into oh no, now I won’t be able to get back to sleep. Okay, sometimes you get back to sleep, and sometimes you don’t, even though you would prefer to.
I think a sign of progress is when you are not panicked or even particularly surprised that you wake up in the middle of the night. Even more progress when you can accept that sometimes you don’t get back to sleep, so maybe just get up and do something relaxing in the quiet early morning. This can be hard to see when you are tired and not thinking straight. Been there.
Hi Nicki_23, I found that sleep meds could help on a temporary basis, sometimes. But if there were a surefire, slam dunk sleep med which guarantees great sleep, insomnia would be relegated to history, something no one experiences anymore because of this new drug. People would line up for miles to get it.
Unfortunately, you’re right: they don’t consistently work, even when you up the dosage. As for getting off them, I strongly suggest you consult a health care professional. Fortunately, the best people to answer medication questions are readily available–pharmacists. They spend years studying meds, dosages, side effects, whether you need to taper on or off. And they work at pharmacies which you can simply call up without an appointment. They are usually quite busy and you may have to wait a few minutes, but they are invaluable.
I’d recommend checking with a pharmacist even if you are just taking over-the counter meds.
I gather you are just starting Martin’s course, in Week 1? Please stick with it. I think you will discover that while there are insights to be gained, perspectives to be considered, still, you don’t focus on how to sleep. A little kid just conks out and goes to sleep, without studying and learning how to go about it. We adults have more trouble because our personal stuff, emotional baggage or whatever, can get in the way of the natural process of just falling asleep.
And yes, keep checking with the forum. People have good insights and if nothing else, you get reminded you are not alone. Take care.
Hi Chantal, I wish I knew a solution to the heat problem. I think most people have trouble sleeping in the heat. I suppose you have thought of whatever you can do to get temporarily cooled off, e.g. ice pack, cold shower, in the hope to getting to sleep before you get too warm again. I assume you don’t have access to a fan, much less an air conditioner, or a basement/garage which might be cooler.
As for thoughts, I can say with more confidence that not “everyone” is sleeping well while you are not. I am guessing your thoughts are leading into how am I supposed to deal with tomorrow when I can’t sleep tonight. For me, I just try to stay in the moment, even if it is not all that great. The alternative is to try to take on the future as well as the present, with all the future’s possibilities, all the what-ifs, when a lot of the possibilities won’t happen anyway.
I hope someone else can chime in with more specific suggestions about the heat.
This will be sort of stream of consciousness, but maybe it will help someone.
Last night, I woke up around 3 am, judging from the amount of natural light. I got up and stretched a little bit on the living room floor. I noticed I was having the thought that I might not get back to sleep, and also the thought that I wanted to, and then the usual accompanying thought that the day is going to be tougher if I don’t. And then I noticed the thought that what if I do go back to sleep, great, but what about tomorrow night and the day following after that?And then I noticed that all these thoughts were jumbling up into sort of a cloud and drifting off.
I got back into bed and had the thought that maybe I would go back to sleep, and if not I would just get up.
It turns out that I did go back to sleep. As for tonight, who knows? I’ll just have to see what happens then.
There have been plenty of nights when I had the thoughts described above, but when I did not just notice them from a distance, but instead I got drawn into them in a panic. And I know that I have not achieved Total Lifetime Serenity, and I will still get sucked into them now and then. And then I will re-commit myself to practicing mindfulness during the day and it will help, but with no guarantee.
I have been dealing with insomnia long enough to know it’s not like healing a broken arm. The arm takes several weeks, the progress is slow. But it is steady improvement, and the arm heals, for good. The broken arm is in the rearview mirror, for good. I think we all know insomnia doesn’t work that way.
Take care, you are not alone.
I can relate, Kleee. Trying to get insomnia under control, and trying to do everything in the mind to make sleep come is totally understandable. I find myself doing that when I have a setback also. I think you sum it up well when you note that letting it bother you makes it worse.
For sure, easier said than done, but I do find the insomnia doesn’t seem like such a monumental issue when I can just let the bummer thoughts about it just drift through–rather than reacting to them and generating a catastrophe.
