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I just lay in bed, don’t touch my phone and try to relax and not let wakefulness bother me. I feel like I’m actually quite calm to be honest. If it wasn’t for waking up, I’d be 100% cured as I can mostly get off to sleep quite well. I think I do get nervous when I wake in the night, but not enough to completely keep me awake I’d have thought. In fact, when I had that 2-3 month recovery, I’d wake up and go back to sleep quite easily. I am going through another bout of stress at the moment due to moving house.
Perhaps due to a difficult night I’m maybe not thinking rationally about it and it’s possibly not as bad as it seems. However, my sleep has definitely not been the same for months.
I miss being able to fall asleep at 11pm and wake up at 7am.
I find they are very useful. I think that’s why they are so frowned upon, it’s because they work so well. While there is a placebo element, they make me so zonked I have no chance of my anxiety overiding its effects. The real issue is they become the fix for me after a bad night because I’ve lost the confidence in myself to believe I can recover on my own after a very bad sleep- and I’m usually very desperate not to make it consecutive nights. So I end up in this on and off pattern with them. I think working through the difficult nights and building that confidence on your own is key to making real progress. However, they can be very helpful at ensuring you can show up in your best form if you have something really important and meaningful the next day. I don’t really believe they are pure placebo though, they genuinely do make you extremely drowsy.
It won’t last. After some time with insomnia your brain eventually begins to move into acceptance. You may still struggle, but it will be much better and sleep will always return. You’ll see that pattern even with people who don’t implement any strategies such as getting out of bed when not sleeping, sleep restriction etc. They may continue to struggle, but eventually you will move into an acceptance phase and things will improve to a degree. My favourite thing to remind myself is no night is the same, some days and weeks I’ll sleep well enough and then I tell myself im not an insomniac, just someone who has sleep difficulties from time to time.
I’m seeing others posts in this forum from people who claim to not sleep at all for four days in a row, or that sleep restriction just doesn’t work. It seems impossible to me that people’s body’s could actually go with so little sleep for so long. It’s making me lose hope and think that maybe my insomnia is transitioning to that level of severity. Previously I didn’t think it was possible to not sleep at all for more than a day! Now I’m afraid to try sleep restriction- if it doesn’t work, what hope is there? I feel like this forum has harmed my sleep more at this point
Just remember bad nights are normal, sounds like you got your sleep back on track but you’re still anxious about the way things were. That’s normal. Your confidence will continue to build and eventually you’ll be back on track. Seems like you’re heading in the right direction though. Martin has said that it’s normal after the program to still have a rocky relationship with sleep at times. Bad nights are common and expected on the journey to recovery
