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Can’t imagine a scenario where I don’t get enough sleep and cannot be upset about it. Jamie, truer words have never been spoken! It’s difficult. This whole thing. No doubt about it.
A week ago I began going into my bed before sleep. This was the first time I did this in YEARS. Before then, the bed was turned into this strict, only for sleep sanctuary thing and since I have improved so much over the last year I felt it was ok chill out a bit, with the remaining rules I have in place. I felt like it would actually ease my anxiety instead of constantly sitting on the couch every single night until sleepiness came. Well guess what the first few nights it worked. I went into my bed early, relaxed, realized that this used to be the norm, hanging in my bed for a while before sleep all the time. There was just the overall easing of any sleep anxiety that I had that came over me. It was great. I even ended up looking at my phone a bit (low light mode) and even crashed before my typical sleep window time. Things were fine and I slept ok!
Then like so many other times over the years, reality hit. A bad night earlier this week, followed by a few subtle “oh no here we go again” thoughts, followed by another bad night, and now here I am posting about my troubles. I felt as if this was going to be one of the last steps in returning to good sleep once and for all, I really did. but I sit here today a zombie. I won’t lie at all in that I got in bed last night and the small thoughts were back, plain and simple. Nothing extreme, but enough to know that this was likely going to lead to another bad night. I should have really just gotten out of bed and relaxed on the couch. Something like that. But I didn’t. I was lazy. So here I am yet again, stuck? Maybe not? Maybe thinking I still just need a couple more rounds of SRT? I don’t know. All I do know is that anxiety is the 100% culprit of my Insomnia. I’ve done things over the years that have brought it down and helped me sleep well.
The harsh reality is that these things have just acted as a band aid. I sometimes even feel SRT is that way. It forces your sleep drive to overpower any anxiety, but once you try and go back to a normal sleep routine the anxiety slowly eases its way back. At least that’s been the case for me.
Steve I can’t disagree with you enough there. SRT is bad for those with anxiety induced insomnia?? SRT is still probably hands down the #1 tool to rebuild your sleep confidence as it forces us to rebuild sleep drive and well, SLEEP again. Martin would agree completely. Now, at FIRST I will agree that SRT can make you more anxious which is a given, but if you stick to it and stick to it correctly after a week or so you should start seeing some benefits. I know I did and I have anxiety through the roof about 9 months ago before I started.
Glad to see you are being proactive in trying to help your Insomnia Jamie/JT. You are also lucky to have found this forum. In all my time of dealing with insomnia I can tell you this is the best place, and sadly it took me a very long time to find it. One piece of advice though – don’t ever refer to yourself as an insomniac! Martin is big one this one. You are simply a person going through a phase of sleeping problems 😉
By trial and error I found out that a good window for me was 1130-6a. I don’t really go crazy with percentages in bed and all that. Basically if I’m doing well after a week and on top of that start getting exhausted more earlier (which will happen) like around 11 then I will call that my new time and so on. No matter what though I won’t go to sleep during SRT unless I’m very sleepy so a 11pm-6a night on paper could end up back to 11:30p if necessary.
Overall imo SRT is done to just build back up your sleep drive and your sleep confidence and I feel some of these super strict mathematical rules with moving back/up your sleep time are sometimes unnecessary . That being said you still have to follow the general rules to a very serious degree
And Deb, sometimes I feel like SRT is nothing more than a tool that *forces* you to sleep. Builds your sleep drive up until you are so sleepy at bedtime that obviously it overrides any anxiety. Yes it builds your sleep confidence and for many might just be all they need to get back on track but for more serious cases like mine other action needs to be taken. That’s what I’m beginning to finally do, along with some ACT of course.
Yes deb I know that and expect it to. But the point will be that long term I hope it brings down my sleep anxiety in general. Thanks
But Deb don’t you think that dealing with anxiety should be actions as well as thoughts? For example if the clock is giving you anxiety, take it out of the bedroom. If the sun creeping through your window is bugging you, buy dark curtains. Or in my case here if the pre bed walk/routine gives you some subtle negative thoughts, just cut that out by hanging in your bed early until sleep comes, even if that’s an hour or so.
To continue….
It really is interesting to think about and I’m going forward with it for sure beginning this weekend. One constant thing for a long time has been that before the bedroom walk. I have to shut the tv off, first put the recliner back in, get up and off the couch, sometimes I have to use the bathroom quick before bed (I try to earlier but often I just have to go, can’t help it), then get into bed and set my alarm (I absolutely often try and do this earlier in the day but sometimes I don’t get around to it), and then grab the covers and put them over me. I know this sounds drastic but for a person with chronic insomnia by the time my head actually hits the pillow I’ve usually done way too much to wire me up a little bit.
Point being, I’ve come a long way, and one of the things I’ve tackled largely has been that bed anxiety. I used to be 100% afraid of my bed. That’s not the case anymore. Now its at around 10% if that. So imagine if I was just already IN bed relaxing, whether reading a book or watching tv. Yes in the back of my mind of course some worrisome thoughts would still be there after 3 years, but being able to cut off any sort of chance for anxiety to grow with the things I just mentioned, is essential. So wish me luck Daf. For the first time in 3 years I’m going to start relaxing in my bed before I sleep. I predict that at first I will have some weird thoughts about it which will affect me, but like anything else I have to give it time. After all, its been 3 years of conditioning myself to think that the bed is for sleep and only sleep and that’s it.
I don’t know Daf. I’m really not sure it’s a “solution”. I feel like just because I used to be fine when falling asleep in my bed while watching tv most of my younger years doesn’t mean it’s a cure for me. Bc at the end of the day even before my chronic insomnia started I was sleeping fine for a good few years without a tv in the bedroom.
Would a tv back in my bedroom help the situation? Maybe, yeah. But would it completely cure me? Doubtful. It would certainly cut out that semi anxious walk to the bedroom/getting in bed scenario. But i think the ROOT of what I was discussing was more of the fact that the bedroom used to be this comfortable place where I’d spend a lot of time and now it’s some sacred area that has an underlying weirdness to it, if that makes sense. This is all Bc of the conditioning I’ve gone through with learning that the bed is “only for sleep”.
Maybe before I start buying new tv’s and hooking it all up I’ll first try and welcome the bedroom back into my life more, like it used to be. Because again I have to say, as much as I’ve improved one thing has stayed the same and that’s that feeling, even if it’s small, of awkwardness when I get into bed at night.
You don’t get it yet, and that’s ok. One day, you will. Your sleep system is compromised? What does this mean? You just can no longer sleep properly out of nowhere? Unless you have a broken back or something else beyond rare, it’s anxiety, even if it’s very underlying, like I still have.
Yes xanax would do the trick. Only problem with that is it’s a pill and we don’t do pills here. Everyone, including Sasha Stephens of course knows that pills are nothing but a band aid. Certainly you should never take Xanax long term for sleep imo and once off of it the underlying issues would likely arise again.
Yes I understand how it can ruin your face. Take it from me, I’m a 35 year old male and I’ve been putting concealer under my eyes for most of the last 2 years. Nothing to be proud of there. It’s what this has done to me. In general I have fair skin and there’s always been a touch of purple underneath, but after nights of bad sleep, forget about it. They’d probably send me home at work if they saw me without it covered up.
Just try and understand nothing is broken at all, inside of you. You must implement everything from stimulus control to good sleep hygiene until you barely want to post here anymore Bc your sleep is getting better. You are nowhere near there yet, but you will be in due time. No journal btw. Not a fan of those.
Sasha Stephens’ book is one of the very best. Glad you read it. While ACT can never hurt at any point, it’s just my opinion of course but I do at least somewhat agree that yes, you have to at least be at some point in a recovery to implement ACT as far as when it becomes your only tool. Just by reading your post I can tell you that you are nowhere near a good place with your sleep. No offense, just being brutally honest. If I were you I would implement a very strict sleep window, even if its as small as 4-5 hours to start, 12a-5a, whatever works best with your schedule, and stick to this like you’ve never stuck to anything in your life. You need to understand that SRT isn’t the be all end all, but it will at least begin to build your confidence back up which will eventually lead to you tackling the real issue which is your general sleep anxiety that has been built up.
You have what I had. A completely traumatized nervous system and your sleep arousal is becoming dominant because of this. You can and you WILL sleep perfectly fine again in due time, but it won’t be after one night, it won’t be after one week and it probably won’t even be after one month, but you’ll get there. I did. I’m not 100% clear but I’ve come a very long way from being an absolute nervous wreck over sleep. I was so afraid of the bed that I had to get out of it if I didn’t fall asleep even after just 15 minutes. Now I lay there as relaxed as I can until sleep comes because I know it will.
Tonight I want you to think and say to yourself, if you’re struggling in your bed… “This is just a traumatized nervous system. There’s nothing actually wrong with my sleep, silly. I can sleep and I will sleep, eventually.”
Suren, if you’ve been doing SRT for a legitimate 5.5 months straight and have bad nights 95% of the time, then you are doing something wrong, plain and simple. Whether you never did the correct sleep window for yourself or you’ve been breaking the window too often, etc. There is just no way. SRT done correctly will build up a sleep drive. Can you give me some details of you and your story? Age/how/when did it start, etc.
Thanks Daf. Even after all this time I’m often still a victim of the “Sleepy until I get in bed” problem, where I’ll be nodding off on the couch, but when I have to get up to go walk to bed and then get IN bed, suddenly I feel more awake. Not completely wired awake, but enough to where I start having a few small, subtle anxious thoughts. These days I often think about what it would be like if I did have a television in my room and watched tv in bed before bedtime like I did for so long before I moved out. Then I could literally just click the remote and pass out. For most of my life this was the case. I’d watch tv until I was tired and then I’d be out cold eventually.
I also used to have a very serious habit of spending too much time in bed in general. It would just be my “spot” a lot, especially when still living at home. My bedroom was my one area to have some privacy and often I’d just hangout on my bed, on my laptop, talking on the phone to friends, watching tv, etc. This carried over to when I moved out too until Insomnia hit and I was told use the bed only for sleep and sex. I wonder what would happen if, now that my sleep/bed anxiety has tremendously died down, if I reverted back to the old me in spending more time in my bed, at least maybe during my hour wind down time. I know most would say that’s the ultimate no no for helping build good sleep, but I’ve just been thinking outside the box a lot lately. Any thoughts?
Daf I just wanted to grab a line you said above. “Sleep drive will beat the greatest anxiety in the end”
This is true, 100%, yes. But what happens when your strong sleep drive/pressure WEAKENS, after weaning off of SRT? Then what do you do? Just stay up until you’re exhausted for the rest of your life? I used to go to bed not being completely sleepy all the time and I would sleep alright. Now days I feel I can only get good nights when my sleep drive is strong (usually during SRT). So, what do you say? Have you been able to reach a point where you can go to bed only semi tired and not very sleepy/head nodding?
First things first you can’t go by the “first two nights” or anything of the such. Depending on how long your insomnia went on for, SRT might not even begin working for weeks and there will almost always be some bad nights, especially in the beginning. With regards to ACT, can you describe some of the routines you are doing?
