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Small world! I completely agree about his humor. It helped to not have anyone encourage my drama but instead poke fun at me and lighten the mood. I’ve seen therapists during tough times at various points of my life, and very few were “good” or resonated with me. Dr. Zhou was definitely an exception.
Hi Dazzio- Sorry for the delayed response. I was also hesitant to use the lexapro but in retrospect I don’t think its wrong to use any tools that are available. The idea is not to be on them indefinitely, anyways. At the beginning, I don’t think I noticed the effects as much because my anxiety was so severe. However, once I started gradually improving, I think that is when I really felt like it helped take the edge off. I still haven’t come off of them, as I was told to wait 3-6 months after I have been very solid with my sleep and anxiety. Hopefully that time will be approaching soon.
Yes, it’s so true about the books. To be honest, Dr. Z has been involved in tons of insomnia related research and currently works at Dana Farber Cancer Hospital (I believe studying insomnia in cancer patients), and I got the impression he’d never even read those books. He would actually roll his eyes if I mentioned them ha! He is much more credible, and his reviews (as you can see) are phenomenal.
I do live in Boston, but I still worked with him virtually. I don’t believe he sees CBTi patients in person unless you are a cancer patient at Dana Farber.
Quick, interesting video of one of his earlier insomnia studies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQnXpjttkCI
My insomnia was pretty bad at the beginning (I’d say 1-4 hours a night) and I would have huge crying melt-downs to my husband and Dr. Z. Right now I’d guess I sleep around 7-8. I have very little to no sleep anxiety left. It was definitely not a linear recovery, I was still very emotional and having vey frequent wake-ups until two months ago…but then one day I just stopped feeling sad about this. It all clicked. Dr. Z was right – that things were still “Recovering” in the background even when it didn’t always feel that way. I just had to keep going. I still have bad nights but they are more like my “old” bad nights and I don’t even mind them because I KNOW and believe I’ll sleep the next night.
