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By the time I’m walking to my bed room to go to sleep its like 2:30 am and really I don’t feel like getting up at that point considering my alarm is set for 6:00 am I do like to be in my for some amount of time so no I wouldn’t say with that small of a window I would apply further SC but if I’m not sleeping in bed its better to just stay conscious instead of closing my eyes and just trying to sleep and this is good because at least I’ll wake up tired,during the the window I would say that I’m getting very light sleep which is not very beneficial however eventually sticking with this strategy you’ll sooner or later that during the time before bed you will get extremely tired to the point where you will fall into a deep sleep its just how long will that take and an important factor with this is the couple hours before your window you have to be winding down.
Honestly it took a long long time before I turned the corner even with doing things right and its because there are times when I’m so exhausted that I feel like when noon rolled around I need to take a short nap and this can be the way out some times because if your so tired that you actually fall into a deep sleep during these naps that is great as long as you immediately wake and get out of bed because once you’ve done that you’ve told your brain that hey I can fall into a deep sleep again and its that much easier to do it at night also I then started to feel really tired at night after I was having success with the short nap during the day the problem with it though is you have to figure out exactly how long it should be and I find no more than 40 minutes but that may even be too long and its important to do this when you literally can’t keep your head up when you’re at that point its a good sign because it shows you have sleep drive but like I said too long of a nap is counterproductive as well its only to be done when you’re extremely exhausted.
As far as how long do you wanna stay up with the SC I found that 30 minutes but I only got up like once because to keep getting up over and over again just didn’t seem like it washelpful but that was just me,when I couldn’t sleep I would just stay conscious in bed thinking about random things thus keeping me awake and ensuring I was exhausted the next day this I thought worked better the problem now with me is that I actually sleep but very lightly which
is not helpful because I can never get to deep sleep which I need because my body is thinking
the light sleep is helpful which it isn’t also I think just staying up later is better than the SC but
that’s just me.How long has this been going on for you and do you have a problem falling asleep or wake too early also do you feel tired at any time during the day because that is super important so if you are that means that your efforts are working but if you aren’t it could be that the little bit of light sleep you are getting is actually just preventing sleep drive from building I think that’s what is happening with me.
I have that same issue as well and have come to the conclusion that the 5 hour window is not
cutting it on building sleep drive for me so I’ve cut it down to 3 and a half or 4 hours and what actually is happening is that I’m getting tired but also you will begin to feel the symptoms and downright awful but what eventually happens is that you’ll begin to feel tired enough to sleep but it takes a few weeks being extremely fatigued and having symptoms go through the roof but I don’t think there is any danger as long as you’re getting the small amount of sleep you getting.I’ve already gotten out of my insomnia issue already one time and did by literally accident by not getting any sleep at night like literally nothing for days and days in a row and my chest was so tight it felt like a heart issue but it wasn’t it was muscle tension causing the muscles to contract and while I felt like total crap eventually I became tired enough to fall into a deep sleep and it reset my internal clock after that I slept fully for 6 days in a row and was so happy that I was out of this struggle than on like the seventh day about an hour before I get up I get a phone call from the hospital that my dad who lives with me has lung cancer so needless to say that put my stress through the roof and put me right back in the same situation that I have been in now for like a year but I am now realizing that the whole no less than 5 hours
isn’t as important because all you’re doing by being in bed for 5 hours if you’re not sleeping
is being awake anyway in your bed you may as well be up doing something and maybe rest for a couple hours.All lying in bed can do is give you some very light sleep and rest that in my case keeps me stuck and doesn’t build the sleep drive to get into a deep sleep and break the cycle, light sleep is counter productive to building sleep drive in my experience and plus staying awake longer without sleep will build that drive more quickly and is less likely to keep someone stuck because it the body will have no choice but to give in to sleep so that is the strategy I’m starting to implement.
Same here my window is the same timing and I notice that I’m only able to sleep the next at like
noon and it can’t be for no longer than an hour and I don’t actually go into a deep sleep just get
close to deep sleep I think that when I finally reach that deep sleep during the mid day nap I will
be able to pull it off at night because at bedtime I literally am in a light sleep for the entire night
does this also happen to you.I have lots of adrenaline in my body from living a tense lifestyle for many years and have developed insomnia recently and am having a problem with falling asleep its as if I can never
get to the that deep sleep stage I spend the entire night in stage 1 sleep waking extremely fatigued which you’d think that would be perfect for building sleep drive except that with
adrenaline it doesn’t work out like that.Adrenaline masks sleepiness so its a matter of burning this adrenaline off by not creating more of it and a good way of doing that is by exactly what you’ve said taking a afternoon nap this helps by burning some of the adrenaline off and when you go to bed at night there will be less of it in your bloodstream this only works on people like me and yourself that have large amounts of stress hormones circulating in the blood where as a normal person just suffering from insomnia would not want to partake in any napping because it would work against them building sleep drive so there has to be a different protocol for people whose insomnia is caused by stress hormones because that changes everything.
The most difficult thing for me is figuring out what time to do the nap which you gave a good
tip about no later than 3 PM which I will now implement this, the other problem is observing an appropriate sleep window because when you’re stuck in stage 1 sleep the entire night its
very hard to determine how sleep you’re actually getting because it just feels like you’re getting none so I find that to be a struggle.I feel exactly like you right now,for me this BS has been going on for almost a year and on top of this I already had extreme anxiety so needless to say not getting any restorative sleep whatsoever just puts my anxiety symptoms through the roof,literally the only time I might
get maybe an hour or two if I’m lucky is during a mid afternoon nap but at night as soon
as I enter my room to sleep its as if my mind just tries as hard as possible to not let me
sleep and I don’t this is beyond words.Just an update that my sleep has gotten worse to the point where I literally don’t sleep at all and wake up tired and with anxiety symptoms it is so strange because I can say consciously that I don’t worry about this problem or that I at least think I don’t,subconsciously though it is there no doubt I think this is anxiety driven for sure and I am gonna be connecting with a therapist I have worked with before who deals with anxiety and insomnia so hopefully something good happens there.
As for what has worked lately the times I have gotten sleep have been when I have went out and did something I enjoyed like seeing a movie or the library this usually takes up about 3 or 4 hours and I find that during this time I am very relaxed even though while at the library I was
actually reading up on sleep disorders it gave me a calming effect and I slept that night almost as if caused a gap in my subconscious worry or something say thing while at the movie I’m sure my mind wasn’t completely switched off from my problem but I was not stuck at home in the same pattern so that is definitely a clue for me.Hello I have panic disorder and yes my recent insomnia has definitely been caused by rumination of thoughts so you’re not alone there,if you don’t mind I’d like to know what you’ve been experiencing.
So do you think that the first time I wake up maybe after 5 hours that I should get up and start my day at that point because even though I do stay in bed for the extra time later on in the day
at around 8:00 PM I’ll be exhausted and be thinking I should go and sleep now while I actually
feel that it is possible to get some restful sleep but instead what I’ve done is to meditate instead
so what do you think about that,should I sleep then or just stay up until my original bedtime.I have anxiety as well so that is most likely playing a role here with my body being flooded with stress hormones that makes it all the more difficult to sleep but as far as whats been happening well I usually go to bed at around 2:00 am and get up at 2:00 pm and I get different amounts of sleep each night sometimes its good like maybe 5 or 6 hours of decent not really deep sleep to whats going on now it feels like I’m getting none at all like I’m literally just lying there until its time to get up which has happened the last two nights so now my body is building up some sleep deprivation so maybe it will be easier to fall asleep tonight.
What usually has been happening the times I haven’t been able to get sleep is at the moment I begin to get up and walk to my bedroom I start getting an adrenaline feeling in my stomach almost like a surge and once that happens I find it extremely hard if not impossible to sleep,
last night though I was able to suppress it and remain calm enough to enter my room and get
into bed without the surge happening but because of my high state of anxiety from the previous weeks I had some breathing symptoms with my anxiety like a very dry throat which
kept me awake.The times of gotten to sleep during all of this has been when I’ve been able to calmly walk to
my room without any anxiety and when I don’t have the breathing symptoms,I just don’t try
and think of anything and concentrate on my body becoming comfortable and relaxed and
while it takes maybe an hour or more I have gotten sleep that way.The problem is these barriers to getting where I need to get to fall asleep are hard to overcome every night if I could just get sleep for maybe 4 nights in a row I would probably be out of this vicious cycle I’m going through so any insight or ideas as to how to get back to regular sleep would be greatly appreciated and thank you for responding to me.
Hello Tina I’m kind of in the same predicament as you with anxiety and insomnia and was wondering about specifically the medication that helped you sleep such as if using maybe once or twice to get sleep has made you become addicted or not because I have Ativan and Trazadone which I’m debating on taking to get some sleep but am afraid of depending on a drug to get sleep and usually I would never even think twice about going the route of using an anxiety medication to get sleep but like you I am very desperate now so I might have no choice but was wondering how the drug affected you afterwards because you mentioned that it did work at getting you to sleep but were there any trouble weaning off of the it or side effects.
