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It sounds as though you are making good progress! If you’re interested in hearing from others about their experience implementing these same techniques, you might want to check out the Insomnia Coach® Podcast. I hope this helps!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Christopher! You said you are extremely tired but can’t fall asleep — can you describe what that tiredness feels like, because it might not be sleepiness and this could help explain why you find it hard to fall asleep when you go to bed.
As you might realize, trying to sleep isn’t usually very helpful because we cannot control sleep and trying to control sleep often makes sleep more diffcult.
What time do you usually go to bed at night, and what time do you get out of bed to start your day? How many hours of sleep would you say you get on an average night?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello again @Enabeling! If you are going to bed at 10:00 PM and starting your day at 6:00 AM, this means you’re allotting eight hours for sleep. If you typically get less than five hours of sleep each night, this means you are — by default — setting yourself up for as much as three hours of wakefulness during the night (or more).
Have you considered allotting a bit less time for sleep to help reduce the amount of time you spend awake during the night, improve sleep quality, and potentially lower sleep-related worry/arousal?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
As you pointed out, social isolation and inactivity can certainly lead to sleep disruption. It’s good to know you are, at least, still able to get outside and walk around (and you do this regardless of how you sleep). I wonder if there are any opportunities for some online socializing, or if there are some new hobbies or skills you might be able to challenge yourself with during these times of inactivity and isolation?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum! It’s good to hear that you have started implementing a sleep window to build sleep drive and reduce nighttime wakefulness — and that you recognize it will likely take longer than two weeks for you to adapt to the new window and experience improvements in your sleep!
Those rollercoaster nights are often associated with allotting too much time for sleep/having a sleep window that is a bit too long. Here’s a video about this that might be helpful: How to stop the sleep roller coaster and make sleep more consistent and more predictable.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Alexander and welcome to the forum. Since you identified yourself as someone with somniphobia and have described feelings of psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia, and feelings of suicide, I would strongly suggest working one-on-one with a therapist.
As you have experienced, in the short-term, implementing CBT-I techniques can lead to additional sleep disruption — it’s not unusual for sleep to actually get a bit worse before it gets better. As Scott mentioned, if being in bed when you’re awake feels good, it’s probably OK to remain in bed since conditions are right for sleep — and we certainly don’t want to do things that increase anxiety or make the nights more unpleasant!
Here’s a short video about this that you might find helpful: When the idea (or process) of getting out of bed during the night creates worry and anxiety.
As you have pointed out, it’s hard to sleep when we have a lot of worry and anxiety — however, sleep drive always wins in the end.
I hope this helps.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Glad to hear you’re getting a bit more sleep lately and feeling better during the day, Kathy! On a sidenote, I don’t think you need to deliberately read the most boring book you can find, unless that’s something you enjoy doing!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum, Socrates! First of all, let me reassure you that you CAN sleep! We will always sleep when we’ve been awake for long enough and we never lose the ability to sleep. No matter how severe our insomnia, *some* sleep always happens, because sleep drive always wins in the end.
Unfortunately, tinnitus is outside my area of expertise — but it sounds as though you are recognizing that being sedentary during the day isn’t proving to be too helpful. That makes sense since being sedentary promotes fatigue, gives the mind more time to think about/worry about sleep, and can even make it a bit harder to build sleep drive. We might also be depriving our body clocks of the signals it needs to help it regulate sleep and wakefulness.
Have you looked into (or tried) cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques? You might find them helpful since they help create good conditions for sleep and help you identify and tackle the thoughts and behaviors that often perpetuate sleep disruption.
I hope this helps.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum, @Nadya_t. First of all, let me reassure you that you have definitely been getting more than just a few minutes of sleep over the past 15 days!
When we have a lot of worry/anxiety about sleep, it can be more difficult to recall sleep — most people with insomnia underestimate how much sleep they get and overestimate how much time they spend awake. You might find this video helpful: How to address paradoxical insomnia (sleep state misperception).
With that being said, it’s clear that you are not happy with the amount of sleep you’re getting, so there are likely some things you can do to improve your sleep.
What time do you usually go to bed at night, and what time do you usually get out of bed to start your day? Do you tend to find it more difficult to fall asleep when you get into bed, or to stay asleep through the night (or both)?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum, @iambyteman! Let’s see if we might be able to do some troubleshooting here!
How long have you been doing that yo-yo-ing as you described, and are you combining that technique with any kind of sleep window?
It sounds as though you are returning to bed during the night at the right time — when you are finding it hard to remain awake. When you go to bed and find yourself wide awake again (a common symptom of conditioned arousal), what is your cue to get back out of bed again?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
This can definitely be a challenge because, as Scott pointed out, sleep drive will be pretty much completely exhausted by 5:00 AM — from that point on, we’re relying on our body clocks to maintain sleep for us (we can help strengthen the body clock by ensuring we are always out of bed and starting our day by the same time each morning and being active during the day).
Since we can recognize that sleep drive is going to be low at 5:00 AM, we might also recognize that any form of arousal/worry/anxiety is going to make falling back to sleep more difficult because when sleep drive is high, it can overpower arousal. When sleep drive is low it cannot.
So, how do we lower arousal? Two things can be helpful — the first can be simply recognizing that waking during the night is a completely normal part of sleep. So, if and when you wake during the night, it might be helpful to remind yourself that the awakening is normal, not unusual, and not a sign that you’re not going to fall back to sleep.
The second technique that can be helpful is not checking the clock when you wake. Checking the clock can increase arousal — even if you don’t feel overly concerned by the time when checking the time during the night, some degree of arousal is required in order for the brain to interpret the time.
You might also find this video useful as it relates to getting out of bed close to the end of your sleep window: Should you continue with stimulus control for insomnia even when your sleep window is almost over?
I hope this helps!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum @calmriver! Have you discussed these fears or anxieties with your doctor or a therapist? You might find it helpful to talk through these fears since you are able to recognize them as something that is proving to make sleep quite difficult.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum, @carolineh!
If you don’t sleep well, you have not failed — because you have no control over sleep! There is nothing you can do to make yourself fall asleep or fall back to sleep (other than being awake for long enough). There is certainly nothing you can do to make yourself sleep for a certain amount of time!
As you pointed out, it’s often our reaction to sleep (or wakefulness!) that can perpetuate sleep disruption. If we worry or even panic about sleep, we increase arousal and our body then needs to generate more sleep drive (spend more time awake) to overpower that arousal.
However, sleep always happens in the end, because sleep drive always wins in the end.
Ultimately, we want to lower arousal so we don’t need to generate quite so much sleep drive in order to sleep! It’s helpful, too, to use sleep drive to our advantage (by not going to bed too early, for example) and to get the body clock on our side by ensuring we’re always out of bed by the same time each day and we are active and engaged in daytime activities.
On a separate note, you might find it helpful to explore what it is about the idea of not sleeping that seems to generate such worry and anxiety — very often the thoughts we have that generate the most anxiety and worry are rarely as accurate as they first seem. Recognizing this can strip those thoughts of their power, lower arousal, and make sleep a bit easier.
I hope this helps.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
What time do you usually go to bed at night, what time do you usually get out of bed to start the day, and roughly how many hours of sleep would you say you get on an “average”night, nosleepyet?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Cyan and welcome to the forum.
Since you started to implement sleep restriction and stimulus control more consistently, what is an average night like?
What is the start time and end time of your current sleep window? How many hours of sleep do you get on an average night? What is your cue to get out of bed during the night when you are practicing stimulus control?
On a separate note, are you doing anything during the day to improve the quality of your days and shift focus/attention away from sleep?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
