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Loving the constructive conversation in this thread! One thing I will add is that it’s impossible not to have a bad night of sleep every now and again. The ultimate goal of treatment options such as CBT-I is to make the good nights more frequent than the bad nights (this is done primarily by addressing inappropriate and/or incorrect thoughts and behaviors related to sleep). So, CBT-I will improve sleep if followed consistently — but it can’t guarantee that every single night will be filled with uninterrupted, blissful 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.
Welcome to the forum. Have you discussed CBT for insomnia with your doctor or was this treatment option mentioned by him or her? I am sorry to hear that the first treatment you were offered was medication — particularly since this is rarely a long-term solution to sleep issues.
—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 challenges with sleep. There can be no doubt that the hormonal changes associated with menopause can disrupt sleep. However, there is no need for you to live with sleep issues indefinitely because of this.
What often happens is that sleep becomes disrupted due to these changes, but the body is able to adapt. Unfortunately, because it’s easy to become concerned about sleep and begin worrying about sleep, the sleep problems do not go away once the body has adapted — and the more we worry about sleep the more difficult sleep becomes and we are soon in the vicious cycle of insomnia that I am sure you are familiar with.
Congratulations on the improvements you have made — be sure to give yourself credit where credit is due! How is your sleep these days?
—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, you want to determine how many hours of sleep you get each night by looking at your sleep duration taken over one or two weeks. Then, start by adding half an hour to this time and you have your new ‘sleep window’. If you add half an hour to your average nightly sleep duration and it comes in at under five-and-a-half hours, I suggest starting with a sleep window of five-and-a-half hours, regardless.
You mentioned that you read in the forums that I don’t highly recommend sleep restriction in people with high acute careers — can you clarify what you mean by this? I usually recommend sleep restriction as the first step for anyone with insomnia because it is the quickest way to increase sleep efficiency and help you start relearning to associate the bed with sleep rather than wakefulness.
delv-x: Consolidating sleep does not lead to lighter, more fragmented sleep. In fact, it usually has the opposite effect. By more closely matching the amount of time allotted for sleep with the amount of time spent asleep, sleep efficiency increases and as sleep becomes more consolidated less time is spent awake at night, leading to fewer interruptions in sleep. It’s also worth being reminded that most of our deepest, most restorative sleep occurs very early in 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.
CBT for insomnia helps address the sleep-related thoughts and behaviors that typically perpetuate sleep problems and turn short-term insomnia into a chronic problem.
You can read more about CBT-I here:
https://insomniacoach.com/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-insomnia/
My insomnia coaching course uses CBT-I techniques to help clients improve their sleep. If you’d like to know more, feel free to contact me directly or ask any questions here!
—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.
CBT-I is recommended as the first-line treatment for insomnia by organizations such as:
* The National Institutes of Health,
* The American College of Physicians,
* The American Academy of Sleep Medicine,
* The British Association for Psychopharmacology.It’s recognized as the best treatment for insomnia because it helps address the root cause of most cases of insomnia — sleep-related thoughts and behaviors.
Medication is fine for the short-term, but it is not a long-term solution.
I’ve worked with clients who have struggled with sleep issues for various periods of time (ranging from six months to over 30 years). Using cognitive and behavioral techniques, they were able to successfully improve their sleep.
CBT-I not only addresses the cause of your insomnia in order to improve your sleep, but it also teaches you skills and techniques that will stay with you forever — so if sleep problems ever reoccur in the future, you will know exactly what to do 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.
Hello Patrick. When are you due to take the sleep study? What do you think is your biggest challenge when it comes to sleep at the present time? Do you feel that your tinnitus and migraine are the chief culprits, or do you think something else may be to blame?
—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. Are you currently going through an online course of CBT-I, or are you seeing a therapist face-to-face? After four months, you should be seeing progress.
I don’t want to offer too much in the way of advice here because it’s not typically constructive for you to receive advice from someone other than who you are currently working with since some may be conflicting or slightly different — and this can lead to confusion and poorer outcomes.
With that being said, it’s worth being reminded that bad nights of sleep happen to everyone and they will always occur every now and then. So, make sure that you are looking at the bigger picture when evaluating your progress. At this point, you should be noticing that nights of good sleep are becoming for more frequent compared to nights of poor sleep. If you aren’t, I suggest talking to whomever you are currently working with to seek additional advice and support.
—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 Dallascowpokes. Sleep restriction and stimulus control take time to work, and they require ongoing commitment and consistent implementation in order to work. This, along with the fact the techniques are challenging, lead to many people abandoning the techniques prematurely. I admire your persistence — keep this up, and I am sure you will notice improvements in your sleep.
I can’t offer you specific advice since you are not a client, but I can certainly answer your general questions. When observing a regular sleep window, the start of the sleep window is the earliest you should be going to bed. So, if your sleep window starts and you don’t feel tired, then you shouldn’t go to bed — because you aren’t ready for sleep yet.
Going to bed before you are sleepy is akin to sitting at the dinner table at 3pm when you know that dinner isn’t served until 6pm. It’s a pointless endeavor that only leads to more time awake, and more time spent in bed feeling worried, frustrated, and anxious about sleep.
When you are practicing stimulus control and getting out of bed when unable to sleep, you should go back to bed within around half an hour or when you feel tired and ready for sleep. I recommend clients wait around half an hour rather than continuously think about whether they feel ready for sleep because continuous self-monitoring can lead to an increase in sleep-related worry and anxiety.
The key purpose of stimulus control is simply to get you out of bed when you aren’t sleeping so that you can relearn to associate the bed with sleep rather than wakefulness.
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 struggles with sleep and urticaria, Sarah. Has your sleep specialist mentioned cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as a potential treatment option?
I know you mentioned counseling in your post and that you feel it is unable to flip the sleep switch in your head. CBT-I does take time to work, and the techniques can be challenging to implement — but CBT-I has been found to be helpful even for those who have suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Heres something I wrote about sleep and traumatic brain injury. I hope you might find it helpful:
https://www.healthcentral.com/article/how-and-why-traumatic-brain-injury-harms-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.
Waking during the night is actually quite normal and tends to occur between sleep cycles. These only tend to become a problem if we start to worry about these awakenings because worry activates the arousal system and makes it harder to fall back to sleep. When you wake during the night, why do you think you find it difficult 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.
Sleep compression and sleep restriction techniques will naturally increase the amount of time you spend in bed asleep rather than awake, and — over time — will also lead to fewer awakenings and less time spent awake during the night. I am glad you are experiencing these beneficial effects and that you are finding the relaxation techniques and resources provided in the Insomnia Coach course to be helpful.
—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.
Sleep studies aren’t typically helpful unless you exhibit symptoms of a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea (symptoms include snoring, waking during the night with a gasp, waking with a dry mouth or headache, not feeling refreshed after a full night of sleep).
From what you’ve described, it sounds as though you are experiencing sleep disruption due to stress and worry — and this is very common. Normally, sleep will recover naturally once the stressful period comes to an end.
There are three key mechanisms that help control and regulate sleep:
1. The sleep/wake cycle,
2. Sleep pressure/sleep drive,
3. The arousal system.Our arousal system (the same system responsible for the ‘fight or flight’ response) can interrupt our natural ability to sleep. This is a survival mechanism designed to delay sleep during times of danger. Unfortunately, when we live with insomnia for long periods of time, the repeated sleep problems become ever-more worrisome and frustrating, and this kicks the arousal system into overdrive. In effect, the longer we have trouble sleeping, the stronger the arousal system and its power over our sleep. So, over time, sleep can often become progressively worse.
Fortunately, the arousal system is outnumbered by the two other mechanisms that help us sleep — the sleep/wake cycle and sleep pressure. In particular, sleep pressure will always lead to sleep when it builds to a high enough level. Unfortunately, as we catch up on sleep, sleep pressure falls and this allows the arousal system to become the dominant sleep mechanism once again, which leads to another period of poor sleep. This probably explains why you tend to go through periods of good sleep, only for the insomnia to return.
Have you looked into a course of CBT for insomnia or discussed this with your doctor? From what you’ve shared, I suspect you will find it to be very beneficial.
—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. Is your narcolepsy currently under control, or are you still falling asleep without warning during the day?
—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.
Many people with insomnia do underestimate the amount of sleep they get each night. However, this doesn’t mean that sleep restriction or stimulus control is without merit. That’s because these techniques don’t rely on completely accurate estimates of time. Instead, they are intended to help you more closely match the amount of time allotted for sleep and the amount of time spent in bed with the amount of time spent asleep.
To use your example of stimulus control (which involves getting out of bed when unable to sleep), it would be rare for someone to get up needlessly for a couple of reasons. First of all, if the individual is actually asleep, they wouldn’t physically be able to get out of bed. Second, if they are awake and feel that around half an hour has passed, it’s still a good idea to get out of bed in order to strengthen the association between the bed and sleep.
It’s also worth mentioning that the amount of time allotted for sleep should be constantly adjusted based upon an individual’s progress as they go through a course of CBT for insomnia. So, although there may be a slight discrepancy when it comes to how much time someone thinks they are sleeping compared to how much sleep they are actually getting, constant adjustments to the amount of time allotted for sleep over time will still lead to improvements because the way we estimate time tends not to change over time.
It’s usually best to think of the fact that many insomniacs underestimate sleep duration as a way of recognizing that you are probably getting more sleep than you think you are — and this should lead to less 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.
