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Hello Sleepy43 and welcome to the forum. First of all, please be reassured that you can sleep! Can you tell us a bit more about your current sleep pattern? Can you describe a typical night for us?
—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, Greenday1 — and I am sorry to read about your past trauma and your current problems with sleep.
Can you tell us a bit more about your current sleep pattern? When do you normally go to bed at night, when do you get out of bed in the morning, and roughly how many hours of sleep are you getting on a typical night?
Do you tend to have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, 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.
It sounds as though you have tried many things that don’t have much evidence to support their use as effective treatments for chronic insomnia. Have you tried the best long-term treatment for chronic insomnia, namely cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (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.
How are you getting on, Sonia?
CBT-I techniques, although relatively straightforward, can definitely be challenging to implement — especially in the short term. The key to success is staying consistent and not giving up too soon.
As suggested by @KarenP, working with a therapist or coach (it doesn’t necessarily have to be me!) can be really helpful since they can offer you support and guidance and help address any concerns you might have about whether or not you are implementing CBT-I techniques correctly. They can also provide you with accountability which is another important factor that can help keep you consistent in order to get the results you are looking for.
Please do give us an update 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.
This is actually quite common. Setting aside time during the day for constructive worry/thinking can be really helpful when this is a problem that affects your sleep.
Basically, you set aside 20 minutes or so during the day to write down any worries or thoughts that are on your mind (and particularly those that tend to occur during the night). Alongside each thought or worry, write down a possible solution. If there isn’t a solution, then write that there is no apparent solution just yet.
When you get into bed at night, if you notice these thoughts appearing again, don’t fight against them. Instead, recognize that you have already processed these thoughts and worries at a time during the day when you were better able to address them.
You can also tell yourself that you will examine these thoughts in more detail during tomorrow’s scheduled constructive thinking time when you will be more alert and better able to process them.
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.
Generally speaking, the best advice when it comes to shift work is not to do it — it is so bad for our sleep, and overall health, that I expect to see legislation regarding shift work (and a lot of compensation claims) in the not-too-distant future.
Generally speaking, you really want to aim for as much consistency with your sleep and wake patterns as possible. Also, try to be consistent with mealtimes and light exposure. It can also be helpful to use naps to help alleviate sleepiness.
I would suggest working with a sleep doctor who specializes in circadian disorders and has experience helping shift workers in order to get the most helpful advice.
Good luck!
—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, LLMarks and I am sorry to read about your struggle with sleep. To be honest, if you are splitting the Ambien in this way and taking half of it halfway through the night, it is not surprising that you are feeling somewhat groggy/cloudy/fatigued during the day.
Have you looked into an alternative to the sleeping pills, particularly CBT for insomnia (CBT-I)? This treatment has been proven to be far more effective than sleeping pills and is recognized as the best first-line treatment for chronic insomnia.
In fact, in the United States, CBT-I is supposed to be offered as the initial treatment for chronic insomnia (before 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.
There are as many triggers for insomnia as there are people in the world — however, there are only three ongoing causes of chronic insomnia:
1. Homeostatic disruption (in other words, you are not sufficiently sleepy for sleep)
2. Circadian disruption (usually caused by an inappropriate or irregular sleep schedule)
3. High levels of arousal (this includes cognitive arousal, physiological arousal, and conditioned arousal)I talk more about this in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fEOA9BTzDs
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, Lam123.
First of all, I would suggest keeping a sleep diary for at least one week. Here’s a basic sleep diary you can use:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/insomnia-coach/Short+Sleep+Diary.pdf
In one week, figure out what your average nightly sleep duration is. Add half an hour to this and you have a sleep window (make sure your sleep window is not less than five-and-a-half hours).
When you have the duration of your sleep window, figure out when you want your sleep window to start and end. So, let’s say you have a six-hour sleep window and you need to be out of bed at 6:00 AM every day, you would start your sleep window at midnight.
Next, make sure you don’t go to bed before your sleep window begins. When it does begin, only go to bed if you feel sleepy. However, no matter what happens during the night, make sure you are out of bed by the end of your sleep window every single day.
Keep doing this for at least two weeks, while continuing to keep a sleep diary. For best results, combine this with stimulus control techniques — if you can’t fall asleep, get out of bed until you feel sleepy, then go back to bed and repeat the process.
In the meantime, please be reassured that there is no evidence that chronic insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever. More on that in these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoX04HJihNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnVHQpVmFLwI 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, robrtstar! It’s so good to hear that you are starting an exercise program — I am sure that it will make you feel better. At the very least it will likely help reduce the effects of fatigue.
Can you tell us a bit more about your current sleep pattern? When do you go to bed at night, when do you get out of bed in the morning, and roughly how many hours of sleep do 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.
Welcome to the forum, katielisaaa — and I am really sorry to read about your struggles with sleep. You mentioned that you have received CBT for insomnia and you recognize that your symptoms are caused by conditioned arousal.
The best way to address this conditioned arousal is with stimulus control — so, when you are in bed and highly alert, unable to sleep, you get out of bed until you feel sleepy and then get back into bed and repeat the process.
This technique won’t improve your sleep on the night you implement it. Instead, it is a long-term strategy to train the mind to see the bed as a place for sleep and nothing else. So, when you are in bed and not sleeping, you get out of bed.
For best results, stimulus control should be combined with sleep restriction — observing a regular and appropriate sleep window.
If you commit to this, you should notice improvements within a few weeks — just like Zoe described (thank you so much for your contribution, @zoe).
—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 Lala and welcome to the forum. If you are tired and falling asleep at 5:00 PM, it’s not very surprising that you wake between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM (after between six and eight hours of sleep) and can’t fall back to sleep — because you have got all the sleep you need!
So, it seems as though your issue isn’t really to do with sleep drive, it’s more of a sleep scheduling (ie circadian rhythm) issue. In other words, right now you have an advanced sleep schedule (you are going to bed early, and waking from sleep early).
You should be able to get your sleep back on a more appropriate schedule by gradually delaying your bedtime from 5:00 PM.
So, for example, tomorrow you would try to stay awake until around 5:30 PM. The day after, you’d try to stay awake until around 6:00 PM. Then, around 6:30 PM, and so on until you reach an appropriate bedtime.
Have you tried something like this?
—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, Cocosa! You should have picked up all the good advice you need to get your sleep back on track in the online CBT course you took — if it was specifically CBT for insomnia.
Was it a CBT-I course? If so, did you try implementing CBT-I techniques such as sleep restriction and stimulus control?
—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 struggles with insomnia, Duke. Can you tell us a bit more about your current sleep pattern? When do you normally go to bed at night, when do you get out of bed in the morning, and how many hours of sleep do you get on a typical night?
Do you tend to have more trouble falling asleep at the start of the night, or is your challenge more to do with staying asleep throughout the 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.
This is a classic symptom of conditioned arousal, shaner37. You may also be hypervigilant and highly reactive to the normal physiological changes that happen as we fall asleep.
You may find these videos helpful:
Why you feel a sense of panic when you drift off to sleep (or when you wake during the night): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKbQJOHezs
Why you feel so sleepy before the sleep window begins, but feel wide awake as it gets closer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxx5aET1CgA
—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.
