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It is definitely good to have something to hold onto!! It isn’t a useless struggle, and it’s not all for nothing. It helps a lot to know that.
My boyfriend also sleeps like the dead. 🤣🤣🤣 And he’s also very supportive. He wakes up and takes care of me when I’m literally bawling in the middle of the night. I just hate it for him because his job is very physical and I don’t want him to be tired at work.
I will say, sometimes I think I’m going through this just because it is teaching me some incredibly useful mental strength. I never imagined I’d be able to function without sleep, but I’ve been doing it regularly for 7 months. And the recovery process is something I can see the mental value of in the long-run.
Oh geez, I get that. You know, I bet I wouldn’t mind not sleeping if I didn’t mind what it represents to me. It represents feeling like I’m losing my mind / crying a lot (vs having the dignity and self-control I value). It represents looking tired, possible weight gain and skin issues (as a female coming up on 40, now I’m worried about these things).
Yeah, I think the fear is my real problem for sure. Like with 9 billion flawed people on the planet, I’m not allowed to have a season where I’m just not at my best for awhile. Time to give myself permission to have whatever I need now.
Yes. I’ve been told time & again that having a bad night is normal for normal sleepers, and what makes it insomnia is becoming anxious and perpetuating it into several nights of bad sleep.
That’s what I’ve been doing ever since I started making progress. I’ll sleep great for like 6-8 nights, get confident, have a bad night, get scared (this seems to be the key), and it snowballs into days of insomnia.
I had a bit of an epiphany on this forum, though. I really do focus too much on wanting to sleep well, and – at least for me – my real problem is the fear. I need to treat this process less like I’m hoping to sleep well, and more like a long game of treating the fear of not sleeping.
I had read that and I knew it, but after 4 nights of sitting up literally bawling in frustration, I think I finally accepted that trying to sleep well tonight shouldn’t be my goal simply because it’s not working – it’s making me more afraid.
It doesn’t really work for me to think of it as working on not being afraid to be awake. It works for me to think of it as working on not being afraid, period. Something about the wording makes a big difference.
Hi there, thank you for the response. I gotcha on the concept – I also know sleep restriction backfires for some people.
I believe the point of sleep restriction is to increase sleep drive, reduce time spent anxious in bed, and lead to a different relationship with both bed and sleep over time.
I am concerned sleep restriction instead caused me to ignore the signals telling me I was sleepy just because it was too early, and increased anxiety as my sleepiness passed and never returned. Getting up and down out of bed seemed to agitate me (& the critters in my household) further.
I’m not sure it’s the right path for my personality. It seems like I’d be better suited going to bed whenever I feel sleepy and working on letting go of the anxiety around falling asleep.
Stuff I’ve read about in ACT-I ideas.Basically I was doing sleep restriction because I “should”, not because it made sense or felt right. And I’m not feeling at all confident that it makes sense to do it more. But I haven’t slept in days so I’m starting to mentally spiral in general.
Thank you all for your feedback. I’ve been utilizing the advice on this page as well as others for a few weeks now. I’ll get sleep for sometimes 6-8 nights in a row (that is the current record), other times 3-4 nights. But then there will be a few nights where it feels like I’m back to square one. I know I’m supposed to not worry about it. I haven’t mastered doing that at the beginning yet – I’ve only been able to get there when I’m at my wits end.
To answer your question Martin – I do a pretty good job not changing anything for sleep. I had learned that letting sleep control my life was making insomnia worse. I still got up to go for a run this morning. I still attend social events. I’ve found no matter how tired I am, I can still function. My poor boyfriend is the only one who really suffers – he gets me crying in the middle of the night (crying at home in general, actually).
The nights that throw me badly are the ones it just doesn’t make sense. If I’m over thinking and that keeps me up then great – I get it, no problem. Work on mindfulness.
It’s when my mind isn’t thinking, but I never get to sleep – or past stage 1 sleep. It baffles me because it starts off feeling like every other night. That’s why I asked what to think about. Though I don’t know why I asked that – I know what comforts other people won’t be what comforts me. I just feel confused and tired of not having the security of trusting my body to sleep.
