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Timh, I’m with you. I’ve kind of concluded that good sleep simply brews a bad night up now and then (don’t be surprised when it happens!), and it’s pretty inevitable we will revert to some bad habits. The nice thing is that, as easy as it is to go back to bad ways, it’s also easy to go back to the good ways. The snap-back to decent sleep gets easier with time and experience. Resilience comes with time.
Keep at it and keep checking in, and let us know how you are doing! The course has some really nice moments ahead for you, I was so pleasantly surprised at how it ends with finding and living your best life, which isn’t exactly about sleep – except that it kind of is all about that.
Kevin
Dear Masharey,
Martin tells us there will be setbacks, and there will be. If you’ve been practicing insomnia for decades like I have, 1 puny course and a few months are not going to unwind that much expertise at staying awake!
The setbacks happen, the nice thing is I bounce back from them and I am aware of them as they are happening. The mind is tricky and deep, and it continues to find ways to be very unhelpful.
I’m currently wondering if one simply has to have an occasional bad night to remind yourself they aren’t so bad after all.
Best wishes,
Kevin
Sdzagrean, I’m afraid I can keep The Startles (you’re falling asleep, alarm! alarm!) going for much of the night for some reason. For some reason my Problem Solving Mind fears letting go and letting me sleep fully, at least for now.
Martin – the tightrope walker has a goal (crossing to the other side), and keeps that in mind, and presumably never thinks “oh gosh I hope I don’t fall.” I want the intent of the tightrope walker because of course I want to cross into sleep and reach my destination. But I have to learn to do that without the fear of falling. I guess the tightrope walker accepts the possibility of falling without denial or focus (because they don’t focus on falling). I really need to watch a documentary on tightrope walkers instead of speculating …
So much good stuff here – thanks for your fellowship, Rubylight, in the “insulted brains” society, it’s comforting to know I’m not alone!
Martin, I appreciate your statement about zero expectations. Having stealth expecations is partly why the relapse is so hard. There weren’t any exterior stressors that would have logically brought about the wakefulness, it was just my mind being decidedly illogical. (Captain Spock, where are you when I need you?)
I think it’s the shock of the rebound that got me back into a struggle. To not have trouble with sleeping for several weeks means that, when trouble does arise, it seems more menacing. I start to catastrophize something that, in the light of day, is far from a catastrophe. When I’m in the midst of poor sleep it is No Fun At All but not the monster it is at night. Sleeping well is so lovely that I hate to give it up, but the reality is no one really gets this all the time, even my wife of the “I can fall asleep 5 seconds don’t hate me” camp.
Best to all –
Kevin
Tim, I love your approach – acknowledge that this stinks, stay the course, and sometimes the adversity means taking a sleeping pill while acknowledging it’s not a long term fix. It sounds so healthy.
I too have had relapse issues – watching those week 6 videos seemed amusing at the time since I had “conquered” insomnia. Now those videos are prophetic, and I’m going back and revisiting things I wasn’t paying attention to in my mild arrogance.
What’s hard is that sleeping well for several weeks means that, for me, when it comes back it comes back full force and kind of shocking. I forget how miserable it is to not sleep, but in the night and the next day. So I fall back into struggle because it’s a forgotten trauma that reactivates and blows up. Uggh. I wish instead it would just be mild, like a small paper cut!
Best to all –
Thanks for your kind words, Martin.
It’s tricky – I want to gently persuade my brain to not do this, without struggling with it. I can imagine speaking gently, or thanking it, or acknowledging what is happening, or simply letting it do this rather irritating micromanaging of the sleep process!
It’s akin to a tightrope walker who doesn’t want to think about falling. We don’t really want to think about going to sleep as examining the process is a surefire way to fall or wake back up. So I guess I could watch YouTube videos about tightrope walkers and their mental process?? LOLZ but maybe not …
I too have had a relapse. We just have to keep doing what we have already done – AWAKE and kindness and acceptance. Not as much fun as sleeping though!
I find diseases to be mostly mysterious in their origin. Was it a doorknob I touched, or the grocery store, or a conversation in a parking lot with someone, that gave me that virus? Did the restaurant give me food poisoning?
In reality there is no way to really know. Most people who think they were served bad food at a restaurant actually were developing a stomach bug/virus already, and it coincided with that particular restaurant meal. The restaurant had nothing to do with it. (I’m not saying that food poisoning doesn’t ever happen, it’s just much rarer than most people believe.)
Some of these viruses incubate for days or weeks. So you blame the grocery store cart for getting a bad cold that night, but you were actually already contaminated 4 days beforehand. You just got symptomatic soon after that visit to the Kroger where you forgot to bring hand sanitizer.
Our problem solving minds like to be Perry Mason and ascribe blame to something, but correlation is not causation. You just got sick.
It’s great to be smart about illness by washing your hands, avoiding folks who are sick with something, and so on. But unless you live as a hermit in a cave you are going to get sick. If you have friends and family, or you go out to eat and touch surfaces, you are going to get sick. It doesn’t have anything to do with sleep. Sleep does not give you a shield against viruses and infections. Being well rested might mean a quicker recovery, but reducing your anxiety over sleep will also mean a quicker recovery.
Blood pressure is complicated – genes, diet, exercise, your concern about your blood pressure itself will cause the blood pressure to go up, and so on. It’s multifactorial and not just a result of 1 thing such as sleep. Best to consult a medical doctor about your blood pressure, and take readings at home at different times of day for a period of time.
Best wishes,
Kevin
As you’ll learn by going through the course, this material doesn’t prescribe getting out of bed if you are awake for a significant amount of time. You don’t need to get out of bed, unless you find it personally useful.
If you’re falling asleep with the TV while waiting for the sleep window you might benefit from being more active. I find doing light chores around the house to be a good way to stay awake. I have teenagers so there’s always some dishes to clean in my house.
Yes I have experienced those too. I have also experienced that feeling when trying to go to sleep, when anxiety and stress have me freaked out about how late it is and how crushing tomorrow will be. You are not alone.
Feelings and minds are strange. Your mind may be reacting to some perceived threat (being awake, or being in a light sleep, or a floating worry about something).
You cannot struggle or fight these feelings, or else now you have an endless loop where you must fight the sense of panic, which itself will make you panic.
The course will give you some ways to deal with these moments, such as acknowledging that feeling. So keep going.
That panicked feeling is like a smoke alarm going off. Unfortunately there is no simple off button. The best way to deal with it is acknowledge it. Saying to yourself “I am feeling panicked right now,” and letting that acknowledgement resonate, is the best way to deal with this. You cannot struggle or fight, you can only accept, which weirdly tends to deflate these moments. Most feelings, when truly felt, only last about 2 minutes (if you struggle or obsess over them they last longer).
Other strategies: get out of bed and drink some water, or splash your face with water. Go to the window and look at the sky. Stay in bed and clasp your fingers, or rub your own shoulders, whatever would calm you from that moment.
This experience will probably stick around for awhile, and then reoccur at other points in your life. It’s no fun. It’s like a mad Viking coming at you with swords on a horse. But accepting it as simply part of your reality will mean it is unhorsed and flailing around in the mud, and much less of a threat.
With every good wish,
Kevin
Yes it does, and many thanks. I think “resonance” is a great word and metaphor for this process. It also makes me think of Marie Kondo and what sparks joy.
I hear you. I have used Ambien for 10 years and it has been moderately successful long term in helping me sleep, and when you compare the medicated sleep life with the unmedicated sleep life there are some pluses and minuses on both sides.
I also hear you that all of these things are, on some level, efforts. We all want to sleep and all chase that lovely equilibrium of rested and awake. Some of us find this more difficult than others. My spouse can, like Homer Simpson, fall asleep in mid-sentence, and it is very galling.
The trick, as I understand it, is desiring sleep but knowing that it cannot be controlled. So all of these techniques are not ways to get yourself to fall asleep, but rather to help you address the anxieties of being awake in the night.
I first approached the AWAKE exercise as I had others: if I say it properly I will get sleepy and go to sleep. NOPE. One can only prepare the soil but you cannot control the seed that grows into a plant (Mark chapter 4, if it helps you to parallel this with something from Christianity).
Sleep is allergic to control, especially for those who are mired in insomnia. Any attempt or effort or trick to control sleep will inevitably fail. That’s why we’re here.
With every good wish,
KevinI can totally identify with your “it comes down to the first hour” comment – I feel much the same way. The trigger or narrative of not being able to sleep is so powerful that it just steamrolls the whole night. Have you seen any changes?
I have several friends who are, as they call it, “sleep divorced,” meaning they sleep in separate bedrooms. There is nothing inherently wrong with this if it is a happier arrangement. (I would probably go for that arrangement myself if we had a spare bedroom in our home!) So, as Martin says, it comes down to why you would love to sleep in your partner’s bed, what that means to you, and how your partner feels about that as well.
