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And just to update you all, this has been my second official week (of my second wave) of SRT and things have really been difficult, to be honest. While week 1 saw me make it to my 11:30p start time most nights and surprisingly resulted in many good nights to start, this week it has been difficult to get to that time. I’ve had to surrender by 11pm several nights and even 10:45pm one night and I’m not sure whether it’s mental or physical, but these early bedtimes have meant early awakenings on a good amount of these last 5 nights. I’ve been calm about them which is good, and that’s something I’ve learned along the way now, but still, I’ve gone to work exhausted most days. I wouldn’t call these flat out “BAD” nights, as 6 hours or so of sleep has been known to be the “iffy” zone for me, but they’re certainly far from good nights. This weekend I will have the ease of anxiety with no work to worry about in the morning so that will help. Hopefully week 3 will see improvement. Most important thing is I’m not a basket case over a bad week like I was in my first go around.
There is absolutely positively no set “timeframe” of how long it takes. It all depends on how messed up the individual is from the start IMO. How chronic your insomnia really is. Someone who has been suffering for years for example probably isn’t going to jump into SRT and be back to normal within a week. With a nervous system as traumatized as that, it could easily take months.
In my case, it took me over 2 years to finally crack down back in January and try SRT. I did it religiously (though a watered down version of it) for close to 2 months and didn’t really end up feeling a lot better until after 3 months. Then I hit a wall again and fell back into a downward spiral. Now since early May I’ve been back at it on my second run of SRT. This time around my anxiety is so much less though and I know what to expect along the way with SRT. For example I know to expect some bad nights and I know it won’t work perfectly every night. Who knows, maybe it will take me THREE waves of SRT before I’m finally close to fully healed. It’s all a process, and a rather difficult one at that when it comes to trying to heal chronic insomnia. Again I was suffering for well over 2 years. Someone who’s been sleeping bad for 2 months might have a much easier and quicker time to get better. It’s trial and error, its positives and negatives, and it’s all about patience and discipline.
There is no set in stone wind down time. That was just my honest opinion after being involved with this for a long time now.
So my point is why should you be scared of anything? You slept well for pretty much 60 YEARS of your life. That’s a sign things are fine with you if there ever was. You hit a rough wall right now and sleep anxiety has been triggered. There is no reason you can’t revert back to normal with some work, and you will.
Steve, you sound all over the place here. The bottom line is that you slept fine for most of your life, and you probably slept fine while having this desk job, too. Right? You need to continue to work around the small sleep window and build the pressure up. You can’t afford to tamper with it at this point. (i.e. Coming home from a night out at 2am on the weekend / sleeping in) I have faith in you. I do. Just curious what is your age?
Update on me – last night as you know I planned to get back to my 11:30pm start time. I made it to 11pm when I could no longer keep my eyes open. Big contributor to this was I probably started my wind down phase too early at 10pm when it should be an hour max beforehand (this goes for anyone). I began sitting on my couch at 10pm with lights off and electronics put away. Then add on the bad night I had the previous night, and it was just a matter of time. That being said, I had a decent night of sleep, but still feel pretty tired today. Woke up briefly around what I estimate to be 5am but then fell right back asleep and was woken by the 6am alarm. Never thought I’d see the days where I’d begin saying I’m happy to be woken up by a blasting alarm.
Going to try and get back to the 11:30p time tonight
Very glad to hear Steve. Not much else to say of course but to stick with it and do NOT slip up. I personally kind of did that but didn’t have much of a choice as I was very sick last week. To answer your question no I didn’t take an antibiotic. Usually I do but this time I let it run its course. In any event, last night I reverted back to my 11:30p bedtime and to no surprise, I wasn’t that exhausted and my sleep pressure didn’t really come full force. I still thought I’d nod off after a half hour or so but even that didn’t happen. I ended up crashing around 12:20aI’d say. While I slept through to my 6am alarm, it didn’t change the fact that around 5.5 hours of sleep is simply not enough for me. Not a horrific night, but I’m still dead tired today. Hoping and pretty much assuming that my sleep pressure will come back either tonight or tomorrow. Gotta readjust after messing around for 4-5 days. With me I know I can at least fall off SRT for a little bit like this since my overall sleep fear/anxiety is nothing like it used to be and I guess that’s a nice feeling. But for you Steve, stay the course 100%
Steve I’m a bit confused by what you’re asking/saying, but I think I had an idea. Bottom line is this..
If you aren’t sleepy by your sleep window start time, then you do NOT go into bed. You wait until you are dead tired and unable to stay awake any longer. But more importantly, this does NOT mean you get extra time in bed. You continue to wake up at the same time. This might sound brutal, but the point of this all is to build up your sleep pressure to the point where you are asleep during this sleep window more nights than not until the point where you can begin opening it up a bit (i.e. earlier bedtime). Right now it seems like you’re in the early stage of training your mind and body to adapt to sleeping during your window. I wish you luck.
Hi Deb. On Thursday of last week I actually came down with a bad sinus infection and it ended up just throwing everything off. Some nights I felt so unwell that I passed out super early and other nights more towards the normal bed time I had. I slept well on most of these nights but they really can’t count obviously. Feeling back to myself today so I plan on picking back up the regular sleep window which was 11:30p-6a. Will report back. How are you doing? What’s gone on this last week?
6 weeks?? That’s a small price to pay if it means turning a serious corner on chronic insomnia
you’ve been dealing with this for 6+ months, right? Then that is considered chronic insomnia and its not going to resolve overnight, not in one week, and probably not even in a month. Take it from someone who was dealing with this for over TWO YEARS before I finally cracked down this past January and took real action, this will probably take some real time. But great news is you are in the right place. You have some great minds around you here. Seems like you are very much in the full blown anxiety phase still, even if it has subsided a small amount. Not saying this will be the case with you, but it took me some serious trial and error and a good amount of work to finally get to the point of where going to bed didn’t make me nervous anymore. You will get there too. You just have to stay the course and be disciplined.
Mac
Thanks Deb. As long of a road ahead that I may still have, (and this is good for you or anyone else to read) its good to always keep looking back and seeing just how far I’ve/we’ve come. I remember when I started SRT on January 1st and the fiRey two nights it worked. I thought wow! Ok this is great. I’m basically going to be fine for here on out. Then on night 3 I had a very early awakening and felt awful all day. I let it bother me so much. I figured well, even 11:30pm bedtimes /6 hours windows aren’t going to work now either???? I basically lost it. Now after last night, I know better. I know that its almost impossible to snap your fingers and begin sleeping through the night every single night from the start. Especially when you’ve been a chronic insomniac like myself for well over 2 years.
I guess I’m not so worried about the bad night as much as I am mad at myself for causing it. I pushed up my bedtime way too much and it affected things. It worked for the first night but then the second night I learned it wasn’t going to be a long term success. I need to go back to 11:30 and really stick with it for at least 2 weeks or so. The next time the insane exhaustion occurs I will just turn my living room lights back on or go sit in an uncomfortable chair instead of my couch.
Update:
First entire week of SRT went well for me as some of you may know. The first 2 days I felt ok but not great, then this was followed by FIVE solid nights of what I’m assuming just ended up being better quality 6 hour nights of sleep. My window is 11:30p-6a and I would nod off around midnight after getting into bed. Then Monday night as I approached bedtime I did my usual winddown routine at 10:30 or so. Electronics cut off and lights turned down. Suddenly by 10:45pm I was so droopy eyed and sleepy that I knew there was no way on Earth I was making it to 11:30pm. The full week of 6 hour nights had finally caught up to me and increased my sleep pressure. This was a good thing I figured. A sign that it was time to push up my bedtime! I couldn’t even make it to 11. At 10:45pm I went in bed and out cold by what must have been 11. Slept til my alarm at 6am. 7 hours! Tuesday(yesterday) I felt great.
Then it happened. Last night by 10:30 I began feeling the same feeling. Maybe not as strong as the night before, but I was very tired and mostly droopy eyed. I thought about pushing it to at least 11pm but then remembered my great night the previous night. Thought thins would be ok if I kept up this 10:45ish bedtime. I entered my bed at that time. Was out probably by a little after 11 or so. And guess what? Horrible night. First a brief middle of the night awakening, and then an early awakening at 5:30am or so. Broken/poor quality sleep that has left me a zombie today. I honestly am not 100% sure what I did so wrong. Obviously I jumped the gun by moving up my bedtime a little too much, sure, but for it to result in such a horrible night last night is really crazy to me. Oh well, back to trying to push to 11:30p tonight.
Hi Deb thanks for asking. Yes it’s been a week now and I’ve been doing extremely well so far. Not even one bad night like the first time around in my first week. Not jinxing things though. I’m just rolling with whatever punches might come. I am sleeping through the night, yes, but let’s not forget that’s only 6 hours. (I get into bed around 11:30p and usually nod off by 12a). Alarm is 6am. When I can get into bed at 10:30p, crash at 11 and THEN make it to 6a routinely, well that’s when we’ll have true success.
I am a big believer in taking something to get you a couple of nights a sleep in the beginning of all of this. When your anxiety is simply too high, it is really beneficial to have a small boost to give you a head start and a small bit of sleep confidence. Tylenol PM or ZZZquil, something like that.
This morning for me it happened for the first time in my near week of my second wave of SRT. I laid in. My window during the week was 11:30pm-6a and I stuck to it. On the weekends I would set my alarm for 6:30am instead and treated myself to an extra half hour. Figured it wasn’t the absolute end of the world since I consider myself at least half recovered in general and my anxiety is significantly lower than where it was during my first wave of SRT. But anyway, I awoke at 6:30am today and was simply too exhausted to pop right up. The next thing I knew it was 7am. I got right out of bed, but I wonder just how much damage was done. I guess I will find out for sure tonight when I see if I’m sleepy around 11:30
