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@delv
Look, I know its anxiety. Its no longer a question. I too have experienced the same things such as having a better night sleep if I’m busy in the evening as opposed to laying around watching tv and subtly peaking at the clock as bedtime approaches. Many other examples, almost endless now, to prove that its anxiety. My main obstacle is work as well. I have a 6:15am wake-up call and start work at 7:30. It’s always been rather early for me but it has been what has held my Insomnia in place. Sure I’ve had bad weekend nights as well but the majority of my issues have always been on work nights. Even on Christmas and New years eve when I had no work the next day, guess what? Good nights. Now I can’t quit or change my job right now obviously, so this is something I just have to face and defeat. I honestly just don’t know what its been THIS hard.
Of course it didn’t affect you 6 months ago just like I used to be able to watch TV in bed and then fall right off to deep sleep. Bc we have developed sleep anxiety that needs to be dealt with and fought off. You must accept this. While we may never be able to break certain rules again now that the door to sleep anxiety has been open, I do believe we can absolutely recover. I can bet you pushing to 8am DOES in fact effect you as shocking as that may seem. I’m curious, to your knowledge do the bad nights begin after your later lie ins? Do your bad nights begin after developing some anxiety the night before for whatever the reason?
Sorry to hear for you as well. I personally cannot do this anymore. I’m at work right now and literally cannot keep my eyes open. I have suffered long enough. Is this really how hard it is to kill sleep anxiety? To not be able to go to bed around midnight and sleep through until 6am? Woken twice? It’s insane to me how I’m still experiencing nights THIS bad.
Another bad night. The worst yet of the 11 nights. My first back to back in my light SRT experience too. Really feeling a bit down this morning. As 11:45 bedtime approached, I’ll admit I felt some anxiety Bc of the bad night before, but honestly it wasn’t strong anxiety by any means. I went to bed and then had trouble dropping off. I should have got up. I wanted to get up.
Instead I laid there unable to sleep, thinking things would be ok, but instead I was just letting the anxiety build up by spending time in bed awake as Sasha Stephens put it. By the time I finally crashed my head was probably filled with enough anxiety to 100% guarantee me to a bad night.
I woke up what must have been a few hours later in a sweat. First time that’s happened in a while to me. I live in NY and it was 30 degrees out last night, but I was sweating. I didn’t look at the clock and dozed off eventually, thankfully. I woke again later on and this time saw it was 5:10am. I never went back. This is just misery to me. Yet if I slept on my couch where I’m completely anxiety free , guarantee you I would have had a better night. Sometimes i wonder if the day will ever come where I no longer have any fear at all of my bed again.
Oh well, back battling through another day at the office secretly shot to hell while everyone else is cheery and well rested. (Sorry for the negativity there, but sometimes it’s just too hard, and it’s quite scary to me that even when going to bed at 11:45pm with a 6:15am alarm I can’t manage to grab even 6 hours of sleep. Meanwhile before this nightmare started I’d crash at 10:45 and sleep straight through. Oh, the days before sleep anxiety…
This happens because obviously your own bed is what you associate most with your insomnia. It’s where it started, it’s where most of your fears began, and it’s where you’ve had all the bad nights. I have had the same problem. It started hitting me more and more when I’d sleep better in a hotel or while at my parents house one night. That’s interesting, I thought. I also slept on my couch for 2 nights after painting my room bc of the smell, and while it wasn’t the most comfortable sleep, guess what, I still slept better. I remember feeling so much less anxiety when lying down on the couch too.
So I hear you about the couch thing you experience. How long have you been suffering in general?
With regards to feeling your insomnia problem is “different”, I can say I felt that many many times over the 2 years.
Now, even though I had a bad night last night , I can honestly say I have a better overall mindset than I ever have before knowing that I have a completely different plan now that I am STICKING to. Before, I would be at work right now miserable just wishing this would be gone forever. Feeling that I’m “broken” and just can’t wait to get into bed tonight to “Try again” so to speak. Those mindsets are gone now after just 9-10 days of SRT and knowing that I am doing SRT for the long haul and not just after 2-3 good nights like I used to
Here’s to hoping my severe insomnia days are over and it will at the worst just be a bumpy road until I fully recover, even if that means taking months. Thanks to everyone who has been chiming in here.
When you talk about someone who’s suffered for YEARS such as myself (2), it’s almost a guarantee that they haven’t STUCK with the rules or got cocky once they began going through a short good phase of sleeping. This is why I’m not more serious than ever about sticking to my form of SRT until I feel my sleep anxiety is completely gone, 100%
It’s not that simple once your brain has learned a habit. You need to implement certain things in order to calm and eventually get rid of the anxiety. Getting out of bed if you can’t fall asleep is part of that. I’m not saying jump out after 15 mins. But if a good amount of time has gone by, it’s probably better off to get out.
In my opinion it’s a tough spot. On one hand you could say jumping out of bed after 20-30 mins would only help feed insomnia and what not. On the other hand, one of the most if not the most important things in recovering from this is building such a strong connection between the bed and sleep that it gets ingretared into your brain like it once was.
You did what you had to do in order to get over that bad night. I’m glad you’re back on track. If you happen to have another bad night, just repeat what works. Just know that overall you’re doing well.
Last night was interesting. For whatever reason I felt exhausted around 10:30 even though I slept until my normal time of 6:15the night before.
I listened to my body and went to sleep. I know that <u>REAL</u> SRT requires you to force yourself to not go to bed until the set time, but I am going for a light version SRT as of right now and it has been working alright for me. Out of my 9 nights before last night, I’ve only had 2 bad nights.
Anyway, back to last night, I crash almost immediately around 10:45pm, and then I’m up at 4:00am. I eventually fell back asleep around what I’d say was 5, but it was anxious/REM type sleep. I’m shot today. I view it as only 5.25 hours of sleep.
What happened here exactly? I went to bed when I was shot/tired/eyelids drooping seriously. Not much anxiety at ALL once I got into bed.
So why did I wake at 4am which was around only 5 hours sleep as opposed to lets say 5am which would have pushed my total to around the 6 hours I need? Do I really have to torture myself into always staying up until 11:30-11:45?
Sorry to hear you had a bad night, Deb. But don’t forget, it means NOTHING. Does not mean you can’t sleep. Of course you weren’t fully cured. I hope you weren’t thinking that way. Not saying you were, but take it from 2 years experience. Cockiness will not lead to anything good.
So continuing on, ok, you had a bad night. This is your test. This is your big moment. This is the foundation of what got you into this mess. Just take the entire day today to not only think about the previous 5 nights of very good sleep, but how about the past 5 YEARS before you began this problem. You were sleeping fine. You CAN sleep fine. One bad night, ok, yes it sucks, no doubt about it, but is it the end of the world? No way. Can you sleep perfectly? Yes you can. Hell, even if tonight if another off night, it DOESN’T matter. You can sleep, and you WILL sleep, fine. It might take some time, but you must understand that eventually you’re going to get there. I know it. Just stay the course.
On a side note with regards to all I’ve learned, I’ve realized that if you’re laying in bed trying to fall asleep and anxious thoughts are all over the place, it’s basically a 90% chance you will have an off night. Whether that means an arousal or waking up too early, it just sets the tone in your brain. So I can’t urge you enough to get out of bed if you’ve laid there for long enough to the point where you know, ok, I’m not falling asleep right now. Get up, even sit on the couch and think of something nice/peaceful before you feel sleepy again. Then, return to the bed and relax. Don’t “TRY AGAIN”. Just relax.
Thanks for the encouragement, Deb. I agree 100% to not think you’re cured after just one week of averaging 5 hours of sleep. It’s great you have that mindset. Took me 2 years to have that mindset.
During previous phases, I’d have 3-4 nights of good sleep and think that was it, I’m better. Bad sleep is behind me. At one point I think I even went a good 2 weeks. Before I knew it I had a bad night or two and boom, anxiety city. The goal in my opinion is to sleep well enough for long enough, however long that may be, that it becomes extremely difficult for the anxiety to take back over. For example if you are dealing with over 2 years of Insomnia like I have and you have a few good nights and then one bad night, what do you think a person in that situation will feel? They will likely feel scared that they’re about to go back to the bad old days. Why wouldn’t they? It’s been the norm of their life for the last 2 years or however long it may have been. A normal sleeper isn’t phased by a bad night. Sure it sucks but they push through and they get back to sleep the next night without thinking much of it at all.
Bottom line is stay the course, and try everything in your power not to let a bad night, or even two, affect you. Because we can do this, as proven already in 75-80% of the SRT nights.
