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These are all very helpful points. Thank you hiker. I will continue to work on it (observing thoughts instead of living them). 🙏
Thank you hiker. This is very helpful. I like your analogy of sunny and rainy weather. It makes a lot of sense. I am now working on letting it go. I feel that that’s the key for me (especially since sleep restriction and CBTi didn’t work for me). I am also listening to a lot of YouTube channel about working on anxiety and worries and fears (I get all three with this sleep issue). Hopefully I will be better at it day by day, and same to you.
Hi Martin,
I only got out of bed sometimes and not always. I did that because I thought we were supposed to, If you could give me the exact amount and type of sleep I wanted, my life would have been much better because I no longer need to struggle at night and wake up feeling refreshed and energized. Without the exhausted feeling and with more energy, I would be able to do a lot more things and accomplish more tasks. I understand that I am supposed to continue with my planned things but at times I just couldn’t follow through.Having insomnia on and off for over 10 years, I know so well the fear and anxiety when set back happens. But this time it’s definitely worse than before. I was taking the course and learning, felt like I improved with the way I dealt with insomnia… Etc. After sleeping well for about a month, all of a sudden I experienced set back and I am still struggling with insomnia all over again. It is SO discouraging. I don’t think about it during the day but I can’t help but to remind myself that I have sleep problems when it’s closed to bed time. I go to bed yawing and sleepy, yet just cannot fall asleep. After nearly an hour of lying in bed and half asleep, I never actually fell asleep. I ended up getting up and read. If I do managed to fall asleep after, I wake up a few times at night, sometimes unable to fall back asleep. I learned some good tips from the course but I am starting to lose faith and think that I need extra help (but I don’t know how or where) to be able to sleep again.
Omg I am the same way! Most of the time I do feel sleepy and tired when I go bed (meaning, I am ready to sleep). But I’d lie down, and sleep will go away after a few minutes since I didn’t fall asleep. Sometimes I do a very shallow sleep and then wake right up in a few minutes or in and out for about an hour. Then, woke completely. I almost always listen to something on YouTube, sometimes Marin’s podcast, to fall asleep. Because I found it helped me focus on listening instead of thinking about some random thoughts. I let myself drift to sleep that way. However, these days, with or without listening to things, I struggled to fall asleep AND stay asleep.
Sonja I have very similar experience. I got much better half way through the course and was very happy that I slept better. However it only lasted a month and half, and then no major stressor, insomnia came right back for whatever reason. I am also sleeping alright one night and terribly the next two… Something like that. An on going pattern for the past few weeks. I also did go on with my days even though I felt so tired.
I also have a lot of fear and it keeps coming back. What I’ve improved so far is that I don’t think about it as much as during the day. However as the night falls and when it gets close to bed time, the thought of “am I going to sleep tonight”, or the feeling of fear and worry about not having a good night of sleep creeps right back. Even if it’s a few seconds, it’s there. I tried to think that they are just headlines in the newspaper, and that are they are just thoughts and not facts. However, my sleep is all over the place. Had one ok/good night, and then followed by a really bad night or two. Still frustrating and struggling.
I found myself having similar experiences with Packer Fan. It was a constant struggle for me. I actually slept fairly well for about a month and half, averaging 7-8 hours even though I never slept through and always wake up a couple nights per night. I almost felt that I’ve cured most of my chronic insomnia. Recently I am feeling anxious about sleep again because I had a couple of “not so good” nights – mostly, taking longer to fall asleep, and waking up a few times throughout the night. This makes me more anxious at bedtime, and finally tonight I turned to taking Xanax because I felt that I need help to calm down. My fear of going back to 1.5 months ago really got me. 🙁
I wasn’t trying to chase sleep though. I’ve moved away from lying in bed for hours to try to sleep. I simply go to bed when I feel some sleepiness. But most of the time I ended up not falling asleep after more than 20 min so I got up again… But if that happens more than a few times I started to get more anxious. For now, I ditched my sleep window altogether and I am working on the week 2 AWAKE exercise, which I like very much.
I am on my first day of week 2. I failed the sleep window miserably. I tried it for four days and it made my insomnia worse by staying up til the start of my sleep window. Also, isn’t that the same as CBTi’s sleep restriction? Which I tried months ago with similar suffering.
Hi GenieB, thank you for replying to my post. I was so ready to quit… Feeling that the sleep restriction isn’t right for me. Today the whole day I was very tired but didn’t feel sleepy at all. It is as if my fight to stay awake yesterday took over and now I’ve lost the sense of sleepiness. Perhaps I will tweak my sleep window to 11pm-6am and see how it goes.
Hi Rosanne. Welcome. This is also my first week of signing up. I’ve been struggling on and off for 12 years with insomnia. I kept experiencing relapses with these two years being the worst ever. Hope this program helps both of us.
Hi hiker. Yes you are so right! I have exactly those same thoughts (can’t deal, wish I was dead…). I am much more relax about it these days but I guess there are still more I need to do or train myself before things get better. Thanks again for the tips and suggestions. Have you overcome your insomnia and are you doing much better now?
Hi hiker. I know that these thoughts of “insomnia can cause high blood pressure”, for example, aren’t helping and instead makes me more fearful, they just keep popping out here and there when I am experiencing bad nights. I will continue to working on improving though. Thanks so much for replying to my post. It’s definitely soothing and encouraging.
It sounds very difficult and at times I had very similar experience as yours. My insomnia has been on and off for over 10 years. Recently it has gotten really bad too. Me too, had a lot of doubts since I’ve also tried CBTi and it worked but just for a few weeks and then it relapses. I’ve decided to give this a try because I really want to be able to sleep, and it seems that it has helped a lot of people. Let’s keep a positive attitude and go through the course. At the same time, I am going to try to be more relax about my sleep. I think it’d help if we don’t dwell on it so much (I know it’s hard!!!)
