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My pleasure!
—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 Damien, and welcome to the forum.
I think you would find it really helpful to implement cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques because they specifically target the perpetuating factors behind insomnia that make it hard to get sleep back on track.
I see many examples of thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate insomnia in your post — these include worry about the effects of insufficient sleep, ruminating about sleep, experimenting with various sleep crutches (such as alcohol or supplements), sleeping somewhere other than your own bed, and sleep effort (in other words, “trying” to sleep).
It sounds as though your experience with insomnia has led to conditioned arousal/anxiety, too. In other words, you have learned to associate your own bed with wakefulness and worry rather than sleep and relaxation. CBT-I techniques are also helpful at addressing this conditioned arousal (just as you learned to see your bed as a place for wakefulness and worry, you can “unlearn” this, too).
You have managed to get your sleep back on track in the past, so I have little doubt that you will be able to do so again — and following a structured plan (or road map) such as the implementation of CBT-I techniques can be very helpful when it comes to improving your sleep for the long term.
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.
Sorry to hear about your struggle with nighttime awakenings. When you wake during the night, what do you think is stopping you from falling back to sleep relatively quickly?
When do you normally go to bed at night, when do you get out of bed to start your day in the morning, and roughly how many hours of sleep would you say you get on a typical 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.
In your case, Insoluble, this could still be a symptom of hyperarousal — you might be self-monitoring for sleep and, at the very moment you are about to (or do) fall asleep, your brain fires into action to tell you it was successful.
If you think I am missing the mark here, please describe your “mental hypnic jerks” in a bit more detail for me!
—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 Amanda, and welcome to the forum.
It would be extremely unusual to go for seven days and get absolutely no sleep at all. So, I suspect it’s quite likely that you are getting a bit more sleep than you think you are — especially when we consider that your partner has reported seeing you sleep!
So, at the very least, this should serve as some reassurance.
From what you’ve described, it sounds as though you may be experiencing paradoxical insomnia.
Here’s a good description of paradoxical insomnia from a patient’s perspective.
Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques can be helpful for paradoxical insomnia since they include sleep education — and this can really help address any incorrect and/or inappropriate thoughts and beliefs that surround sleep.
Furthermore, when you combine sleep education with other CBT-I techniques such as sleep restriction and stimulus control, sleep often becomes more consolidated and this improves sleep quality, helping you feel better during the day and this can often help you more accurately recognize/evaluate the amount (and quality) of sleep you are getting.
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.
I’m sorry to hear about your accident and your ongoing struggle with sleep. Have you discussed cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) with your doctor as an alternative (or addition) to sleep medication?
What time do you currently go to bed at night, when do you get out of bed to start your day, and roughly how many hours of sleep would you say you get on a typical night? When you wake during the night, do you find it hard to fall back to 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.
Sorry to hear about your sleep-related anxiety, ghost1951. This is very common among those of us with insomnia. It’s to be expected, too — after repeated nights of poor sleep, worry, frustration, and anxiety, we come to associate the entire process of going to bed with unpleasantness, and even the very thought of going to bed can lead to anxiety.
Have you looked into cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as a way to improve your sleep for the long term?
CBT-I techniques can be very helpful since they address the perpetuating factors behind insomnia that feed into our sleep-related worry and anxiety.
—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.
Very few people actually get eight hours of sleep — six hours is probably more common among the general population!
Most cases of insomnia begin in a way that’s similar to what you have described. A specific event leads to worry, stress, or anxiety — and sleep is (quite expectedly) disrupted. Usually, sleep recovers by itself but sometimes it doesn’t.
When the sleep disruption continues for the longer-term, it’s usually because of our response to the initial sleep disruption. For example, we can start to worry about our sleep, we can start to research sleep and put more effort and thought into sleep than we ever did before. We might also be tempted to compensate for lost sleep by conserving energy or canceling plans.
Unfortunately, all these responses perpetuate the problem and turn short-term sleep disruption into a longer-term problem.
The good news is, we never lose our ability to sleep — and we can use the core biological mechanisms behind sleep to override sleep-related worry and anxiety and help set the stage for sleep.
Have you tried implementing CBT-I techniques to get your sleep back on track?
—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.
I think you will find it very helpful to allot less time for sleep — you mentioned that you go to bed at 2:00 AM and get out of bed at 2:00 PM. So, you are allotting 12 hours for sleep.
Let’s say your average nightly sleep duration is around five hours — by spending 12 hours in bed, all you are doing is guaranteeing yourself seven hours of wakefulness. This is not only unpleasant but it activates the arousal system and leads to all the symptoms of anxiety that you have described.
I would suggest that you read the page on sleep restriction and start to observe a regular and appropriate sleep window. This will help build sleep drive, give the body clock an appropriate morning anchor, reduce the amount of time you spend awake, consolidate your sleep, and reduce sleep-related worry and anxiety.
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.
If you kept a record of your nightly sleep duration every night for two weeks, are you saying that this would average one hour per 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.
Sorry to hear about your insomnia and your tinnitus, Aries. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that the whole list of things you mentioned didn’t work — because there’s no evidence for any of them being an effective treatment for chronic insomnia.
I would encourage you not to modify your life in response to insomnia — especially when it comes to planning holidays! When you stop doing pleasurable things or try to compensate for lost sleep, you actually risk perpetuating the problem since you can end up spending more time thinking and worrying about sleep, and you actively guarantee that insomnia has a negative impact on your life.
You might find these two videos helpful:
Every time you feed your insomnia, you make your insomnia more powerful and more demanding
Why it is so important not to compensate for a bad night of sleep when you have insomnia
Is your sleep disrupted exclusively by your tinnitus? Or, have you now reached the point where perhaps sleep-related worry and anxiety (not connected to the tinnitus) are disrupting your 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.
Are there any environmental cues that could be waking you at around 7:00 AM? Maybe the neighbors going to work or other environmental sights or sounds?
—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.
So, if I understand you correctly, your current sleep window is 12:15am to 6:30am — but you often wake somewhere between 4:30am and 5:20am. Is that right?
This suggests that your average nightly sleep duration is somewhere around four to five hours (if we allow you some time for falling asleep at the start of the night). Does that sound right? If so, you might find it helpful to reduce your sleep window a bit (somewhere around five-and-a-half hours might be beneficial).
How do you feel when you wake between 4:30am and 5:20am? Do you feel rested? Do you get through your day pretty well, or do you experience very high levels of fatigue and/or sleepiness?
Before you had any issues with sleep, when did you usually go to bed (roughly) and when would you get out of bed (roughly)? Were you more of a night owl or more of a morning lark?
—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 Jo! I was just reorganizing the forum and noticed that your post completely slipped through the cracks and didn’t get a response — I do apologize for that.
The symptoms you are describing are quite common among people with insomnia — after repeated unpleasant nighttime experiences, you have learned that going to bed is not a pleasant activity and this kicks in the body’s fight or flight response.
How has your sleep been since you posted? Did you complete that course of CBT-I?
—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 is your question? Ask and we’ll try to help!
—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.
