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A year ago I had severe anxiety over my sleep to the point of not sleeping at night for like 4
days maybe I was getting like an hour of very broken sleep eventually I got back to sleeping normally but then a family got sick and I had to take care of them and it got worse now though a year later I’m sleeping at night it takes over an hour but the sleep is so shallow that when I wake up I am fatigued all day have no energy yet never ever seem to be sleepy just everyday is a repeat of the last.I have a 6 hour sleep window but its like all it does is provide the same results every night the
sleep drive never improves at all its so strange there has even been many times where I’ve literally done an all nighter only for the next day to arrive and not be at all sleepy how could
this be honestly it doesn’t add sure I’m probably obsessing on this but how is someone not
supposed to at least have an acute awareness that there sleep is not restoring and you’re constantly fatigued because I’ve had a therapist tell me I need stop thinking about this that’s
making it stick but I would describe it as an awareness that is with me all day.I’ve tried to not make this an issue my sleep but after not seeing any results for like weeks its impossible not to think about it so the question is what would be considered not making an
issue out of it because I feel I’ve done everything possible to not make it an issue yet it persists.Thanks for the response nice to here from you as well I’ve stayed away for a while just out of
frustration with the whole problem and have learned a few things that yes no one should spend hours obsessing ruminating over their sleep as it only creates internal tension but at the same time every once in a while as a stress release I believe its important to let out what’s been building up inside over time whether it be coming onto this forum or talking to a therapist or whatever its no good to be so rigid with any of these so called rules because they get in the way of recovering.The last 3 days I’ve been having some good success,what I’ve done lately is changed my sleep
window and when I take a nap and the length so first I stay up until 5:00 am then I wake at 8:30 am the next day so far I’ve been really tired the potential is there to sleep or come very close this something that I haven’t been able to do for months build real sleep drive but now it seems this is working and realistically I was only ever getting about 3 hours of sleep anyways each night so this sleep window makes sense and seems to be working well so far,as for the naps this I thought about and I’m not gonna make any special times for when I take one only that I must be sleepy enough and no longer than a half hour I can take it any time of the day or night this way everything is kept simple and there’s no over thinking.I always take the melatonin small dosage I’m not drinking the passion flower tea because it has actually caused tension so there’s no point this all comes down to being tired enough to be sleepy in my opinion also staying busy getting movement throughout the day is helpful.
So you might want to give this a try if its possible obviously it not easy because I’ve had the problem of sleeping in an hour later after my alarm goes off for like 2 months before this its taking a hell of a time just to be able to get up when the alarm goes which I never had any problem with that before it could been just overall feeling defeated by repeating the same cycle over and over again.
Anyways nice hearing from you again and hope you had a nice time with your family and wish you best at getting better.
This problem with the light or shallow sleep I’ve been having where I never fall into a deep sleep so basically I’m in the state between being awake and asleep the whole night and by the time the morning comes I’m so exhausted that when my alarm goes off I can’t get up for like an hour so I sleep in which creates more light sleep and the cycle repeats itself.
I’ve had a councilor tell me that I’m making an issue out of my sleep and if only I would not
it would which I don’t agree with because I’ve already gotten out of my insomnia problem twice before and it was because I was thinking about it to the point where I got very little sleep at alland eventually I was able to sleep again also how is someone not to suppose to at least have an awareness at the very least of not sleeping properly when it affects you’re life during the day.The thing that I’m positive on regarding the light sleep though is that the its better to do something with that time then to just stay there in bed while in that state so I’m gonna start by getting outta bed and watch something non stimulating on tv or read a novel also I can do meditation even if I end going to bed at 5:00 am and wake at 8:30 am I will be better off than if I stayed in bed all night receiving light sleep the next day I’ll most likely be exhausted
and hopefully that will turn into sleepiness so my answer is to not stay in bed if your getting
light sleep.No I’m not better at all same problem is happening I had a session with a councilor and he said that I need to stop making sleep an issue which when you have something that’s so impacting your life I don’t know how your supposed to just forget or not at least have an awareness of it.
Also he said that sleep drive is not important which I disagree and thinks that I just need to
go to bed and magically I’m gonna just fall into a deeper sleep simply from not making it an issue all the stuff he said I disagree with,sleep drive is required in order to become sleepy I know this because about a month ago I was at a friends place overnight and had to sleep on the couch and because it was a foreign place to me I ended going to sleep around 4:30 am and was awakened by 7:00 am I got up at that time and was tired enough to sleep for a nap for the next to two days the sleep drive was built up enough but that’s what it takes getting like 3 hours of broken sleep in order to have the drive to be in a position to even be sleepy and that’s not even guaranteed I’m gonna fall into a deep sleep fact is I have a serious problem that is beyond even the normal procedure of SR is having trouble correcting.I agree I’d do or give anything to stop this and return to my original sleep routine but I’m at
a loss for what to do and the whole SR thing doesn’t make any sense because there are times when I get like an hour and a half of sleep and wake the next day in a state of being exhausted but still wide awake which is not very encouraging.I just feel so lost as to what to do anymore with this problem and I know I can’t turn to the
medical system because they will just lie right to my face and tell me that taking sleeping pills with fix everything when it won’t,I’m already taking melatonin and drinking chamomile and valerian tea and still getting the same light sleep every night only to wake up tired but wired it makes zero sense it must be some deep conditioning going on really sad tbh this is taking so much time out of my life now.I can agree that on some level maybe subconsciously I’m obsessing over this but when some thing like this has continued for well over a year how can one not at least have some kind of awareness about the problem when its causing me to have no energy and whole bunch of physical and mental symptoms as well to not even have an awareness about that is unrealistic our minds will not ignore things that affect us.
All I know is that before when I got better I at least woke up exhausted now I simply don’t it doesn’t make sense and you’d think SR would be working but I don’t notice anything.
Yes the same here I don’t know what to do because the sleep drive just doesn’t improve much at all even though I practice the SR,but the name of the book is called Quiet your mind and get to sleep and the most important chapter that relates to whats happening with our problem is the one titled when thinking about sleep gets in the way of sleeping,this chapter mentions
something called paradoxical intention where instead of going to sleep with the intention of
going to sleep you go with the intention of not sleeping but to just lie there now I know this has been discussed earlier but the fact that in this book they are looking at it from such a different point of view is refreshing instead of the constant same tired advice and they go into a lot of different angles as to why this could still be persisting its the best stuff I’ve come by in any book so far.Sorry for not responding in a while its been taking its toll on me lately and I’m finding it difficult to stick with the sleep schedule when I’m literally getting no results so have been
sleeping in lately which isn’t good.I find the days when doing that sleeping past my wake up time by 2 to 3 hours just
because I’ve so damned exhausted results in having a aching head for the first half of the
day its bad so I need to get on the schedule and now there’s been a session booked with my counselor which is something I should have done a long time ago but I thought that this is something I should been able to get past on my own obviously I was wrong.Also I was reading this book about insomnia that was great and touched upon the
shallow sleep and everything we’ve been discussing on here problem is I can’t remember the name of it because it was the first time I read it in the library but there is a chapter in it about how thinking about sleep will prolong insomnia and it was the best stuff I’ve found yet in
any sleep book so I’m gonna get the name and post it in this thread so you can check it out
if you feel like it just hearing what they say in it could restore motivation.Sorry about the sloppy sentence structure I trying to fix it and actually made it worse and
they only let me edit it once usually I’m given 3 chances.I gained enough sleep drive to enter into delta sleep by literally going days and days with
no sleep just laying in bed at night totally awake and frustrated until the sun came up and then I would complain all day about this and during this time my physical symptoms from
not sleeping were pretty extreme I remember having a very very tight chest and feeling so
bad but the thing was that at the time I wasn’t napping at all so I had in fact built up lots
of sleep drive unintentionally and then I read that napping can actually help to fall asleep at night so I started that and it was easy to get some nice rest or some times actually sleep
and this eventually led to me getting sleepy not tired 2 to 3 hours before my bed time and
at that point I knew that sleep was gonna happen.Also I would mention that all the frustration and anger over this I let go and just had the
attitude that there’s nothing that can be done by thinking obsessively about this and I
know its not as easy as just saying I’m not gonna think about this anymore because there’s
an awareness of this problem that follows us all throughout the day that keeps this in the
fore front of the mind,so trying to let go as much as possible is essential because worrying
creates more internal tension.Yesterday I did a nap and wasn’t all that tired and ended up spending 3 hours instead of
the hour I was supposed to be there and woke up wide awake for the whole night so when
2:30 am rolled around and wasn’t tired I just said well may as well stay up and do some
thing and that’s what I did ended up going to bed at 4:30 am woke up at 9:00 am this morning and feel tired so that was the right thing to do despite as crazy as it sounds,going
to bed when you’re tired is important.In the morning I usually spend 4 hours inside doing chores and then go out around
noon and either grocery shop,library or work in the yard then around 3 to 5 take a nap
but now I’m thinking only to do that if I’m tired enough and only for an hour then get up study for a course I’m going for and then either watch a movie or listen to an mp3 until
I’m tired enough to sleep which hasn’t been working all that well and its simply sleep drive that’s all it could possibly be our bodies and minds have a ridiculous resilience to sleep
debt so its tough and the worry creates a chemical barrier to sleep so being relaxed
physically and mentally is so important.I’ve actually gotten very sleepy while watching tv at night the times I’ve beaten this I would start nodding off and then know that hey in an hour or so I’m gonna shut this off and go
in the room so again I just this its sleep drive no matter what and all the routine it self could be also making this all stick,I wouldn’t recommend sitting in front of a monitor all an hour before bed but at the same time being rigid and tied to the clock is also not helpful so if you’re wide awake at the beginning of your sleep window its probably point less to go to
bed may as well build stay up and build the sleep drive but try and always get up at the
same time no matter what.In the end the goal needs to be to build sleep drive any way you can.
Totally understand about wanting to get off of the forum its counter productive to getting better because of the constant reminder and obsessive nature of this problem so I agree that
its good to give this a break and to try and keep your mind off of sleep and trying to solve it.Lately that’s what I’ve been implementing is not making how much sleep I get an issue so it doesn’t stick and I notice a difference not huge but definitely an improvement and overall
stress levels reduced it will take some time though for the desired result to take place.Also thanks for the contact info I will most likely check up once in a while to see if any progress has been made so thanks for that and hope you recover.
Are experiencing really shallow sleep instead of the deep restorative sleep because that’s all I
experience now and don’t know how to break the cycle.I agree its terrible not being able to go at full capacity and just do the things you want to do that is one of the things that is so bad about this disorder because I used to be involved in lots of different activities myself but now do very little since the physical symptoms of my
anxiety have been amped up due to not sleeping deeply enough,one of the most difficult
things I’m finding is that sleep drive is so extremely hard for me to build even though I’ve
been faithfully following all of the recommended advice some times I do get the sleepiness
feeling but that is few and far between it feels as though my sleep system is non existent.Totally understand about not being able to take time off from work most people aren’t able to just do that and focus on getting better for me though I feel like what choice do I
have with anxiety disorder and now not being able to sleep deeply I literally have zero
energy anymore.Even though I said previously that things are getting better and which they are to a degree
the fact is I’m still not sleeping deeply just have more of understanding of how I should approach this where as before I was really lost,you say that a few weeks ago you were in a better space do you mean your outlook on this situation or did you mean the actual sleep
you were getting because maybe something you were doing back then was helping and
now you dropped that thing just a thought.Now I have a sleep window of 5 hours from 3:00 am to 8:00 am and get up immediately when the alarm goes off and am definitely tired but about 3 hours later that tiredness has faded and I just never seem to get there again and get the same shallow sleep at night so lately I’ve been on Martin’s youtube channel and he addressed my exacts concerns that if you’re implementing all these steps and still not feeling sleepy then it could be that even sitting up in bed could be hurting the sleep drive and that activity that engages the mind is
a key component into getting to that point of developing sufficient sleep drive and its very strange because I’ve found the times at the library when reading afterwards the feeling of tiredness is more likely for me than if I skipped going to the library and decided to do something else like run errands and the only difference I can see is that my mind was
engaged in the reading so that is a clue for sure.If you discover anything breakthrough wise let me know and I hope you start making some
progress.Hi sorry for not responding earlier I’ve had a lot of things on the go lately too much tbh but as far as my sleep goes there’s been some breakthroughs and now unlike before meaning the last few months I feel as though now there is a system that could be implemented that could reverse this as I’ve been getting tired once again and have a good grasp of what works like for instance I’ve learned that lingering for as much as a half hour to an hour after the alarm goes off even sitting up in bed will kill sleep drive so its imperative that I get outta bed and this was what I was doing before when I got over this problem also having a routine during the day that gets me out of the house and some human interaction is important as well I use the library mostly for this and I’m involved in a book club there and at night I sit on the
couch and watch tv for a couple hours and then listen to a bit of talk radio in a dim room
just really non stimulating stuff.I totally understand what you’re saying about keeping in shape especially being a female us guys its not as important if we let ourselves go where as with females they tend to be judged harshly on how they appear but just remember that any other exercise besides light aerobic will probably keep your body and mind charged and make it more difficult to sleep where
as the lighter forms of exercise will have the opposite effects things light hiking and walking are good examples.As for videos about meditation not really because most of what I learned was from the
site anxietycentre and that was mostly contained in their program which is on the site and
it is very informative and thorough goes through meditation and deep breathing other
forms of deep relaxation and how adrenaline wreaks havoc on our bodies and keeps us
amps up which also literally creates a chemical barrier to sleep.I’m not young(36) and no not a college student and I’m like the last person that would go to
a library but because of the anxiety disorder and now chronic sleep problem I’m doing anything possible to have a routine because there is no way I can work atm with both
of these problems its way too much at least the sleep has to return both of these things at
the same time are doing me in as far as energy this year has just been brutal for me but I’ve got to look past it and figure out how to get outta this problem.Yes when I recovered before twice once it was just no sleep whatsoever if you can believe that I was literally awake for four days straight and really worried about my health until my body just gave in to sleep but it was pure and hell the second time it was the light sleep phase that I’m going through now and basically I implemented the strategy I’m trying right now of getting up when that alarm goes off and if I’m not tired during the day not taking a 40
minute nap that built up sleep drive and eventually I broke the or overcame the arousal system to eventually fall asleep during one of those naps and then started sleeping at night and that is what I’m trying to do now.First off so sorry to hear that you’re still struggling with this and I don’t do the warm shower habitually or anything like that just had some good results a few times but that doesn’t even mean that it had anything to do with that,the exercise I find that helps is stuff like walking doing chores very light because the fact is we’re struggling with sleep because our bodies are so stressed and charged up so the light exercise works to burn off stress hormones where as anything greater than that increases these stress hormones in the blood stream so its in our best interest to practice activities that promote relaxation that will calm the body down as a whole I do meditation and deep breathing.
One thing I’ve discovered is that human interaction is important during the day
probably because during this we’re distracted I find the days where I’m out and about the most are the days I do the best going to the library running errands for a few hours
seems to do the trick and that was literally the main thing that got me out of this pattern the last time the worst thing possible is to stay at home in the environment where everything
is going bad this only reinforces the negatives feelings and thought patterns associated
with not getting better.I don’t keep a sleep diary because in my opinion what occurred the day before really has no bearing on what could happen in the coming days now don’t get me wrong at one time I
did but soon realized that all it was doing was reminding me that I haven’t slept in
weeks that’s not to say it can’t have a positive effect but I’m just speaking from my experience.The mind chatter yes absolutely that is one of the barriers to getting sleep its most
always a result of too much stress hormones in the blood stream adrenaline causes all
the symptoms that’s why I practice deep relaxation and the mind chatter is reduced the
problem is that by not getting deep sleep at night that is stress on the body which
adds more adrenaline the next day so its a vicious cycle but the best advice I’d give to deal with it is to practice deep relaxation(meditation,deep breathing) and during the mind chatter
to remain as neutral and uninterested as possible to the chatter.Hi Twinkle I’m experiencing the exact same thing I seem to be stuck in stage 1 sleep
the entire night and wake up feeling unrefreshed and basically non functional and I’ve tried having a sleep window of like 5 hours for months and haven’t gotten anywhere so now I’ve come to believe its adrenaline preventing me from breaking through the light sleep phase and also a deep conditioning of this pattern of sleeping lightly all night that is very hard to break.I’ve made a thread in the insomnia help section called “stuck in stage 1 sleep the entire night”
you might want to check it out as another member is having this exact
problem.
