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And Deb I must commend you for continuing to be on this forum giving advice and tips to us even through your recovery’s. Not everyone can do that but you have, so I thank you for that. I’m still trying to find what “works” for me at this stage of ACT. I never really ended up pushing my bedtime back like I said I was going to, and instead am just staying the course and going to bed around that 10-10:30 timeframe. Like I always used to pre insomnia days. I’ve typically been having awakenings when going to sleep at this time, but for the first time in probably ever, the awakenings really do not bother me at all. When they happen I remain calm, remain relaxed, and I assume I will fall back asleep. Typically I have most of the time, too, at least into some form of sleep until my alarm goes off. Last night in particular however was a rough night. I had my awakening, estimated by me to be around 4am I’d say, and I really just never fully dozed back off. Maybe some very very light sleep. I am exhausted today. I guess at this point I’m just wondering just how long, if ever it will take for these awakenings to finally subside and go away. Because as much as I don’t let them bother me anymore, it still doesn’t change the fact that they’re not exactly normal and they do affect me, sometimes badly (if I don’t fall back into a good sleep)
By “cruise control” do you mean just riding a good/normal wave of sleeping? I think what happened to you is pretty normal for someone in recovery or “remission” from chronic insomnia. You have one bad night, and then you just cannot help but have a couple of negative thoughts, maybe even subconsciously, which in turn affect you the next few nights. Lord knows we’ve all been there. Almost impossible not to, at least in my case where I’ve been dealing with this for years. But as I’ve learned and hopefully you as well, there really isn’t anything to get worked up over or wonder about. You are simply not fully healed. You might have been 95%, but the reality is things were still fresh and what happened to you was very possible. How long did you deal with chronic insomnia for before you started to get better?
Thanks Deb, that was a great post. Must have been the full moon that threw me off , yes. I won’t be fooled again.
Last night was an interesting night for me. I was exhausted by 9:30pm and even though that’s really too early to go to bed, I went the ACT route and just said “Whatever”, let go of any weird thoughts, and got into bed. I was out cold around 15 minutes later. Then it happened. The usual case throughout the years when I’d go to bed extra early. An awakening.
At first I really didn’t want to look at the clock. I rarely ever do anymore. But by the looks of the light through my window I felt that it actually could have been close to my 6am alarm. Did I simply have a great night of sleep, I thought? I peaked at the clock and it was 3:45am. Wow, I thought. Didn’t expect it to be that bad. Still, I kept as calm as I could. Within a half hour or so I was drifting in and out of sleep until the final hour or so which I believe was uninterrupted sleep. I was woken up by my 6am alarm and got up. I am tired today, but not a zombie. The good thing about this night of sleep is that it was a pretty big step seeing as how I was able to fall back asleep after waking at that time. Typically, if its after 3am I can rarely ever fall back. Last night I did. Hopefully this was all just another step in the journey and another ‘piece to the puzzle’ of getting fully healed.
I simply meant that taking out the garbage shouldn’t give you big anxiety. It’s not anything crucial.
So Deb would you say you’re definitely back on track at this point?
And Delv, good post. But just try to think… its just garbage!! Even if you didn’t take it out life will go on
Good post gsdmom. Sometimes we all need a little kick and reminder that this is absolutely ‘beatable’.
Sounds kind of like me on my “better” bad nights. I’ll have the awakening, will feel VERY calm and will handle it well, but just can’t fall back into regular sleep. Just curious Steve what’s your window like these days? Are you too going to bed earlier than you used to? Really no way I can switch to another room anyway even if I wanted to, short of sleeping on my couch every night. No thanks. I’m going to just start practicing ACT again a little more while slightly pushing my bedtime back to see if things turn around next week. Through the ups and downs highs and (super) lows, I do hope our sleep anxiety goes away more and more. Would you at least say thing are night and day compared to a year ago Steve?
Thanks Deb. Yeah I know we’re supposed to view it all as “normal” and part of the recovery process, but when it’s months later now after starting ACT and I’m dealing with 6 rough nights in a row, it’s hard not to think there’s at least some sort of problem that maybe I can be proactive about helping.
Also, I absolutely wasn’t referring to going back to SR with my comments about going to sleep later. I just meant that, as Delv somewhat alluded to, my body just isn’t an 7.5-8 hour sleep body and maybe lessening my “window” is a natural normal thing to do. I pretty much realized this a while back now as you might know very well. I’m just not a 7.5-8 hour person anymore. I’m more like a solid 7 hour guy in my honest opinion, after years of seeing my sleep patterns. So, it really shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I’m having difficulty making it to my 6am alarm after hopping into my bed around 10pm these days. So maybe if I hit the hay more around 11p things would change a bit, that’s all. Worth a shot, no? But yeah, SR days are behind me, I can say that much. I have weekend lie in’s more often now and don’t worry a bit about them. I’m no longer afraid of my bed, but instead my anxiety is solely only during the awakenings, which I know, is still not any better. Some nights are better than others, but it’s still there.
Also, I think some more ACT can do me good. Can’t say I’ve been practicing lately. Was just trying to ride the wave of a few decent weeks and then suddenly things took a turn for the worse the last couple and now definitely this week.
How are you doing with your relapse recovery, Deb ?
And another bad night to cap off a rough week overall. While I am not calling it an official relapse, it certainly looks like I’m in the middle of something here that began this past Saturday night when I had a rare rough weekend night that lead to a bad Sunday. It carried over to the work week and here I am a zombie today at the end. I know I have to keep calm, keep cool and all that. No secret there. I’m not panicking or venting here like I used to. But I just can’t seem to put my finger on what even really happened this week. I’m at that point where I feel like maybe I should change something or take some sort of action, but that’s really not what ACT is about, is it.
I’ve simply been going to bed completely anxiety free around 10-10:30, and what’s happened is (as I’ve wrote in a few previous posts) I’ll have an early awakening that will lead to light sleep for the rest of the night. Sometimes this can be an estimated couple of hours. At the same time during said awakenings I will admit that is when the anxiety surfaces and I have these visions of all the bad history in that bed and how it may “never be stopped” until I move, or until I sleep in a different room. Things to that effect. I think about stories where people say they were never fully cured until they moved and think about that. It’s hard to not feel that way sometimes, especially when I have slept better in other places (i.e. my parents, hotels). What do you think… Deb? Steve? Daf? Perhaps I have been going to bed just a LITTLE too early after all?
It is difficult Steve. There is no other way to describe it. For us chronic sufferers with rather deep underlying anxiety it can take a long, long time before we come out of this. In my opinion this awful experience will clearly always be stuck in our minds, so we almost have no other choice but to accept the fact that we are “tainted” sleepers now and that insomnia can always come back, possibly. That being said, as long as we learn how to deal with it and take care of it we can bring those possibilities down to as little as 1%. But as we’ve learned in this long thread, there really is no way out, at least for long term sufferers, unless we begin to truly accept the hell that are zombie days, under eye bags and everything else. Only then can we possibly move forward (with some other tools of course).
I too seem to be in the same boat as you and a few others on here lately, Steve. A bit all over the place. A few good days, a few bad, a few great, then a few decent. Overall feeling like I’ve progressed good enough to where I’m really having a bit of a breakthrough, but at the same time having 2-3 pretty crappy nights in a row like I’ve had Mon Tues Weds of this week now brings me down. Very tired today to the point where i’d actually call last night a flat out bad night. Had a very early awakening. Didn’t look at clock, but I know it was early. I didn’t stay fully awake or panic when it happened which is the case a lot lately which is a huge improvement for me IMO, but rather I just accept the awakening as much as I can and instead experience light sleep for the remaining 1-2 hours of my night. This light sleep really may as well be no sleep though as many of us kind of know, especially when I see just how brutally tired I feel the next day.
There’s still anxiety there in us even if we don’t think so, I’ve realized. For some like myself it may not be there AT ALL anymore when falling asleep or in the hours leading to bedtime but instead might appear when we have an awakening which is what is the case with me. I don’t freak out by any means anymore, but I’ll admit when I wake at 3 or 4am, there is still some frustration. Enough to still upset me to the point where I can’t drift right back off like I did for most of my life when I’d have a similar awakening. Hopefully some more time will help ease things more and more, but boy am I tired today.
Funny you mention that Deb. It actually ended up being canceled! …And I ended up having a pretty decent night of sleep 😛
I really think I can benefit from some more ACT. So easy to get comfortable/lazy in all of this even after just a couple of good nights.
Another “great” piece of info I got this morning after my first check up in two years last week. I have high cholesterol. That’s odd, I thought. I’m getting older, sure, but at 35 should I really have high cholesterol considering I don’t usually eat THAT bad. I googled some stuff and although there’s no concrete evidence, there are quite a few articles explaining how some studies apparently show a link between lack of sleep and your “good” cholesterol levels lowering. Oh joy, another thing to add to my list of worries.
Also, Deb, I responded to your previous question and it says my post is “awaiting moderation” again. No clue what’s going on with this forum lately.
Ugh, my first bad *weekend* night in a long time. Maybe over a month. Not really sure what happened either. I just remember crashing around 11pm and waking early and finishing the night in a light haze of sleep. Exhausted today. When I was up, I knew it was way too early and proceeded to put my head right back into the pillow with no real anxiety or fear overcoming me. No big deal, I thought. But yeah, just a bad weekend night. Gotta take a few of these still from time to time I guess. Gotta accept them. Still, always an awful experience. Wanted to go to the gym today. Not possible.
