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Welcome to the forum. It’s usually a good idea to taper off the medication slowly and on a planned schedule rather than going cold turkey.
Typically you’d reduce your dose on one or two nights of the week until you feel ready to continue. Then, you’d reduce on more nights of the week until you are on a reduced dose every night. You then repeat the process, by either reducing the dose further or eliminating the pills in a gradual fashion.
Have you discussed a tapering-off plan with your doctor? That is likely going to be the best course of action.
Remember that sleeping pills don’t generate sleep. They can certainly help you feel relaxed — and this can make it easier to fall asleep, but you are still the one generating sleep. Unfortunately, if you take a sleeping pill contingently, it might be harder for you to get your sleep back on track without them.
You might find this short video helpful: Does cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) work if you are taking sleeping pills?
—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.
Some people are more predisposed to sleep disruption due to factors such as higher levels of anxiety or stress. When sleep becomes disrupted, our thoughts and behaviors can perpetuate the problem and lead to sleep issues sticking around long after the initial cause or trigger is no longer an issue.
Telling yourself a story is a great way to distract the mind from thoughts of worry and anxiety and can be a good relaxation technique. Thanks for sharing!
—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, Blossom. I think many people will identify with the frustration of being told to just close your eyes and go to sleep! If only it were that simple!!
Congratulations on getting off the sleeping pills. When you wake during the night with a high level of anxiety, what is causing that anxiety? Have you tried getting out of bed until you feel calm and relaxed enough to give sleep another try?
—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.
The problem here is this person intentionally tried to stay awake for as long as possible to obtain a “Twitch Stream record”. Reassuringly, he eventually fell asleep even though he was trying as hard as he could to stay awake (so, sleep drive still did its job).
—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.
Insomnia can certainly co-exist with sleep apnea, although sleep apnea has some distinct symptoms.
In insomnia, it’s quite common for people to find it hard to fall asleep at the start of the night and to wake during the night but then find it hard to fall back to sleep. Sleep apnea isn’t characterized by difficulty falling asleep, but there are often many nighttime awakenings that are short and often not noticed or remembered.
People with insomnia generally feel very fatigued during the day, while people with sleep apnea will typically feel sleepy during the day (and are more likely to fall asleep during the day while sedentary).
Let us know how you get on at the sleep study!
—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, Nan. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to make you sleep seven hours since we can’t control how long we sleep for — sleep works autonomously and when we try to get involved, our sleep tends to take a turn for the worse!
With that being said, there are things you can do to improve your sleep. Can you tell us a bit more about your current sleep pattern? When do you go to bed at night and when do you get out of bed to start your day in the morning? Do you feel as though you average three hours of sleep 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.
The fact you work nights does, unfortunately, make things very difficult. That’s because your internal body clock is going to be unable to follow a regular, predictable rhythm. As a result, it’s going to be extremely difficult for you to obtain consistent sleep.
You may want to look for someone who specializes in circadian rhythm disorders and has experience (and success) in helping shift workers.
Good luck and do let us know how you get on.
—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, Syndic. Let me start by reassuring you that it’s quite likely you at least got some sleep over the past seven days (it probably occurred during that “meditative state” you described).
Normally when sleep is disrupted by a specific event it soon gets back on track and recovers by itself, as long as we avoid compensatory behaviors like going to bed earlier than normal, staying in bed longer than normal, napping during the day, canceling plans with friends, etc.
I suspect that, as long as you stick to your normal routine, your sleep will likely recover by itself very soon.
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 Edgar
It’s not completely unusual that you woke at 5:00 AM even after going to bed really late one night. We all have an internal body clock that can become surprisingly good at waking us at a certain time each day. If you regularly wake around 5:00 AM, then the fact you still woke at around this time — even after going to bed late — isn’t very unusual.
If you go to bed around 11:00 PM and wake around 5:00 PM without much wakefulness between, this suggests you are getting around six hours of sleep each night. Are you unhappy with this amount of sleep? How do you feel during the day?
As explained by Borgesbi, CBT-I is specifically designed to help address conditioned arousal so it’s far more likely to be effective for you than not. If you don’t give it a try, you’ll never know!
—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, titanicgwh. Worrying that you won’t get a good night’s sleep is very common among people with insomnia — so you certainly aren’t alone! As you suspected, when we worry about sleep we trigger the arousal system and this makes sleep more difficult.
Of course, knowing that you shouldn’t worry about sleep is easier said than done — so what’s the solution? Well, we want to improve your sleep so that you gain more confidence in your ability to sleep, so you worry less (and eventually don’t even think) about sleep.
Typically, the best way to improve sleep for people when you have chronic insomnia is through cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques. Is this something you’ve tried (or even come across)?
—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, Syub40! Deb has given you a lot of good advice and support here (thanks for that, Deb!).
What I will add is that nothing you’ve described here is unusual. Some of us are naturally predisposed to experience sleep disruption — as you pointed out, you feel as though you’ve never been the best sleeper and sometimes knowing you have something important coming up the next day will disrupt your sleep.
So, what can happen is we can already be predisposed to sleep disruption, then an event happens that disrupts our sleep (known as the precipitating factor). For you, this could be a big event coming up or drinking a lot of alcohol and having a hangover — and this is completely normal!
Normally sleep will recover by itself unless we engage in what’s known as perpetuating factors. These factors involve thinking and worrying about sleep and trying to compensate for lost sleep (perhaps by spending too much time in bed, going to bed earlier than normal, staying in bed later than normal, canceling plans with friends, rearranging our lives to accommodate lost sleep, napping during the day, etc).
When we engage in these perpetuating factors, we make it very hard for our sleep to recover. So, I think the best thing you can do is recognize that you are perhaps a bit more predisposed to sleep disruption and that your sleep was temporarily disrupted due to alcohol consumption. Recognize that this is completely normal, try to avoid compensatory behaviors, and your sleep will likely get back on track sooner rather than later.
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.
In that case, I think you can dismiss the idea that GABA levels are to blame for your insomnia.
There are only three drivers of chronic insomnia:
1. Sleep drive disruption (for example, going to bed before sufficiently sleepy)
2. Body clock disruption (for example, getting out of bed at a different time every day)
3. Anxiety or arousalAre you able to identify with any of the above three drivers?
—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.
Just to clarify, @jazzcat22 — the study said that hypnotic meds were associated with increased mortality risk (not decreased mortality risk as you posted). I suspect this was a typo on your part, but just wanted to clarify! As quoted in the paper:
“Therefore, when hypnotic medications are not controlled is it likely that the insomnia group have a much higher usage rate of these medications and it is the medications which are associated with increasing mortality risk not insomnia.”
—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 it sounds as though you will typically go to bed around 10:00 PM or 11:00 PM and then start your day around 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM. During this period, you will get between two and three hours of sleep. Does that sound about right?
—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.
A very important insight that you made sure you went out for walks and visited the gym — it’s so important to stay active, especially when not working! Do keep us updated with your progress!
—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.
