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It sounds as though you are on the right path, yawning. How are you getting on? Any updates 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.
Great to hear that you’re getting out of bed when unable to sleep! Are you following a sleep window? If so, when do you normally go to bed and when do you get out of bed in the morning to start your day? How many hours of sleep are you getting 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.
I am 99.99% certain that the reason you were able to sleep away from your own bedroom was due to conditioned arousal — and this is best tackled using CBT-I techniques.
Browsing the web when in bed is more to do with sleep hygiene than a CBT-I technique — and sleep hygiene doesn’t fix chronic insomnia. So, I just want to double-check — have you tried CBT-I techniques such as following an appropriate sleep window and getting out of bed when unable to sleep?
If so, how long did you implement these techniques before determining that they weren’t helpful?
I think it would be constructive to focus on this because I have yet to come across someone with chronic insomnia who implemented CBT-I techniques correctly and consistently for at least eight weeks and didn’t get their 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.
Thank you for the update! It’s one thing me always telling others about how effective CBT-I is over the long-term but it’s quite another when someone posts an update and reports that they’re still sleeping well six months after finishing a course of CBT-I!
How long had you struggled with insomnia for, before you enrolled in my coaching course?
—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 are on the right track, Warrior! Please 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.
Hello Sallyann and welcome to the forum. It sounds as though you would really benefit from observing a regular (and appropriate) sleep window as a first step towards making your sleep a bit more consistent.
Unfortunately, when you experience a really long period of sleep after a night of minimal (or zero) sleep, you reduce sleep drive to such an extent that sleep the following night becomes almost impossible. As a result, you repeat the cycle of poor sleep followed by lengthy sleep followed by poor sleep, etc.
Another problem with not keeping a regular sleep schedule is that when you get out of bed at a different time every day, your body clock doesn’t have a strong morning anchor. This is needed because the body clock has a natural tendency to drift. If we don’t make sure we’re out of bed by the same time every day, and when we perhaps combine this with going to bed early, we end up going to bed long before our body is ready for sleep. This leads to anxiety and less sleep.
Finally, I urge you not to take sleeping pills contingently since this constantly reinforces the incorrect assumption that you are incapable of sleep without a pill and that any sleep you get after taking a pill is sleep that only happened because you took a pill. I talk more about this in the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnOZ8BrYeno
—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 Jodi and welcome to the forum. I am sorry to hear about your struggles with sleep — have you experienced this before, or is this something new that only started four nights ago? If it started recently, do you know what triggered the initial sleeplessness?
—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.
Thanks for sharing your experience, impendia — as suggested by @jazzcat22 this is a classic sign of conditioned arousal. In other words, you have learned to associate your own bed with wakefulness rather than sleep. So, as soon as you removed yourself from that environment, you were able to sleep.
Have you tried implementing CBT-I techniques such as stimulus control? Stimulus control will help you relearn to associate your own bed with sleep and, therefore, improve your sleep over the long-term.
—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, Worrier — and I am sorry to hear about your almost 50-year struggle with insomnia. First, let me reassure you that you are capable of sleep and that you have not lost the ability to sleep.
What made you decide that your sleep goal is to get six hours of sleep? When do you currently 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 at the present time?
—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, yawning — and thank you for the great question!
The short answer is if you can’t fall back to sleep when you wake then you should get out of bed until you feel sleepy again. If you wake close to your alarm time and can’t fall back to sleep, then it’s usually best to just get the day started.
When do you normally go to bed at night? Is there a certain time during the night when you wake and find it hard to fall back to sleep? When do you normally get out of bed in the morning? How much 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, whitelori and thank you for sharing your story. The myth that we all need eight hours of sleep does so much damage and is the trigger for so much insomnia — it is something that we need to get rid of and the sooner, the better.
The good news is, just as the idea that we should all be getting eight hours of sleep has no evidence to support it, there is no evidence to say that insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever.
Many people feel that keeping a sleep diary is going to make sleep more difficult but are then very surprised at just how helpful they find it once they get into the routine of filling it out. CBT-I techniques themselves can definitely be challenging for the first few weeks, but I strongly believe they are the best way to improve insomnia for the long-term and within the shortest amount of time.
I am yet to talk to someone who has recovered from chronic insomnia using ACT for insomnia — but I am sure the techniques could be helpful for some.
—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 discussion is a good example of why evaluating sleep solely on sleep duration is not helpful.
We all need different amounts of sleep. One person may only need five hours of sleep to feel great, another person may need six.
When it comes to insomnia, the primary complaint is fatigue (not sleepiness). Interestingly, fatigue is associated more with inactivity during the day than it is a lack of sleep. More on that in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvUG_JcKFpM
Although insufficient sleep might lead to an increased risk of a car accident, there is not one documented event of someone with chronic insomnia falling asleep at the wheel — because people with chronic insomnia are highly fatigued during the day, not excessively sleepy.
In other words, people with insomnia are “tired but wired” — the body responds to our lack of sleep by giving us an extra boost to keep us awake and to get us through the day.
If you are excessively sleepy during the day (ie you fall asleep at random times without warning) then there is another issue involved that needs to be addressed.
Finally, to reinforce Edgar’s point, there is no evidence that chronic insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever. A couple of supplementary videos on this can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoX04HJihNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnVHQpVmFLw—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 shaner and welcome to the forum. Since your sleep issues only cropped up recently, it is very likely that your sleep will get back on track by itself very soon. In the meantime, try to avoid compensating for lost sleep by doing things such as going to bed early, staying in bed late, napping, and/or rearranging your life/schedule around 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.
Hello Aika and I am sorry to hear about your ongoing struggle with sleep. To be honest, it is not all that surprising that your sleep has been affected by your AICD implant discharging. When was the last time this happened?
Sleep aids such as l-theanine & GABA aren’t going to help if the reason you can’t fall asleep is worry about the AICD discharging. Have you discussed this problem with your doctor? Have they offered any advice or suggested solutions?
—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 and I am sorry to hear about your long-term struggle with sleep. As you know, sleeping pills such as Ambien are not a long-term solution for insomnia — and these drugs are not supposed to be taken for more than a few weeks. As I’m sure you also recognize, alcohol is not the answer, either.
Have you tried cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)? When do you currently 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?
—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.
