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Hi Irina,
So I actually experienced this a several weeks ago. Actually, for years but I never realized it. I was the type of person who could never do those quick 30 minute power naps that people talked about because I was anxious I’d oversleep. Recently, I learned the term “sleep watching” or “sleep monitoring” from Martin. That’s exactly what you’re describing. I would try to relax in bed and when I’m about to fall asleep, I would jerk awake because I realized I was falling asleep. I enrolled in Martin’s CBTI course which is helping. Another thing that helped which is not recommended but it worked for me was to actually take naps. I don’t mean do it intentionally because that puts pressure on yourself and we know pressure =no sleep. What I did was I would go to bed during the day and just lie there because I was tired and told myself I was just resting because napping is not helping my nighttime sleep. Then, I’d actually fall asleep! I did this for a couple weeks despite Martin’s warning because I was just so tired. But then I had to get serious because my night time sleep was still suffering. I followed his rules religiously for a couple weeks and tried my best to cut off my naps. Eventually, I found it was easy to fall asleep at night because I just pretended I was “resting” like I did during the day. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% cured because I could fall back into another cycle, but I would say I think I’ve learned to relax more and fall asleep easier because now I could take 20-30 minute naps on the couch which I could never do before.
Frozensun,
I can relate 100% to what you’re talking about and can tell you about my story. I started having insomnia issues in March of 2018. I couldn’t fall asleep at all! I would go 3 days without any sleep and then the 4th night will knock out for 4 hours and that’s all I could get. I’ve tried medication (Trazodone, Seroquel, Ambien), herbal teas, exercise, meditation, and bedtime routines. Nothing worked! The only medication that even knocked me out was Ambien and that only lasted 4 hours. None of them gave me restful sleep though so I felt like I didn’t sleep at all. I even contemplated suicide with overdosing because I had all those drugs in my cabinet.
Then I heard about CBTI, got some help, and was “cured” for 7 months. Then in March of 2019, I was experiencing insomnia again. This time, it wasn’t as bad because I’d only go 2 days without sleep before my body was too exhausted and I’d sleep for 4-5 hours and the cycle continues. I enrolled in Martin’s course even though I knew what to expect because I’ve been through it before, but I needed to know I could email/text someone if I have further questions and for the accountability. The first 3 weeks sucked. Even if I was getting a bit better, I still had the majority of the week where I had insomnia. Then for some reason starting week 5, I was sleeping better even if I wasn’t following Martin’s rules 100%. My current sleep diary has 0 days of insomnia and I’ve been falling asleep between 5-20 minutes each night and without any medication. I’m not saying you will not have to use medication because you do have bipolar disorder, but I’m saying you shouldn’t need a medication specifically for sleep in the long term. Short term uses are to get over the anxiety of not sleeping.
I felt those chest pains, the oncoming colds, the racing heart all during my time with insomnia. While it’s true that sleep deprivation increases your likelihood of getting sick because your body can’t fight the infections as well when it’s not rested, there is no way to tell if you being sick is related to not being able to sleep. Also, Martin is right in that everyone sleeps unless you have fatal familial insomnia. You may not think you’re sleeping but you are even if that happens on the 4th or 5th night. The sleep may not be deep sleep so you don’t realize it but you are still getting stage 1 or stage 2.
I think you are suffering from shift work disorder and even if you have been off work for sometime, your anxiety levels are way too high to see any progress. I know I would suffer from this, so when I graduate nursing school, I will be trying my hardest to find a job with a set shift because of my history. What you need is to enroll in a CBTI course or take action and believe those books you’ve been reading and follow their advice. What helped me is to just believe, let my mind wander for a bit if it wants to at night, and then make it go blank when I’ve worked through what my brain wanted. I still have sleepless nights if I’m up thinking about something such as a conversation I just had or if I’m anticipating something nerve-wracking. If I even think about sleeping at night, you can be sure I’ll be up for a while. I’d also like to add I don’t think I’m “cured” because it can happen again at any time, but I just wanted to let you know there is hope and that there are people who have gone days without sleep but are sleeping better for now!
Steve, yes that is a difference then. I haven’t gotten to the point where Martin’s adjusted my window yet so I hadn’t noticed. Dr. Rybarcyzk supported the idea of not being so strict on a lot of things (minus your sleep window) and that included the adjustment of the sleep window. Sometimes we adjusted mine 30 minutes, other times it was 15 minutes depending on how I was feeling. He also had the 85% rule. Since most of it was the same, I would say I trust Martin’s methods. The hand holding is what I needed to. It’s hard to implement even though you know the basics. When you pay, that’s a different story since you’re now being hold accountable. Plus, Martin responds very quickly if you have questions, are feeling discouraged, or just need a supportive text/email. Good luck to all of us!
No I don’t. His treatment is very similar to Martin’s. Those were the only 2 big differences I noticed. I’m not too far into Martin’s program to know what to do in case of a relapse so I can’t speak about the differences there. Dr. Rybarcyzk told me to temporarily do sleep restriction for a few days which should set me back on track. Unfortunately even when I did this, I was still “sleep watching” because I was already anxious. The most important thing to know is you know how to sleep. If you continue to monitor whether or not you’re asleep, you won’t be sleeping which is my issue. Also, I’ve gotten into the habit of napping during the day that I need to break. I can almost always fall asleep when wanting to nap because there’s no pressure. I wonder if even though we know how to sleep, our brain is in the habit of sleeping badly. Thus, we need to train our brain to sleep well through SR and SC in order to get back on track. After that, it’s a matter of using the techniques you know to not sleep watch/reduce anxiety.
I have all three. The one that bothers me the most is the onset. If I can’t fall asleep within 30 minutes, I can get anxious enough that I won’t sleep at all and this has made me go 3 nights without sleep before. I don’t mind the early awakening as much. I’ve always woken up before my alarm went off even when I was a good sleeper. For years I’d set my alarm for 7:15am but would always wake up around 6:50am. So, if I wake up 30-40 minutes before my alarm goes off, I’m perfectly happy just resting in bed. The maintenance is kind of annoying. I’ve been waking up 3-4 times a night if I’m able to fall asleep right away. As long as I don’t think, I can fall back asleep. I’d take this over not being able to fall asleep at all though….
I completely understand what you mean. I’ve been trying to not nap per Martin’s recommendation, but I usually fail after 1-2 days. That or I accidentally fall asleep on the couch while trying to wind down for the night. I used to have people help me stay awake until 30 minutes -1 hr before my sleep window begins. After that, I would try to sit up and read or do something relaxing. Most of the time this actually caused me to have anxiety because even when I’m reading, my mind is going back to the fact that I want to sleep. Either way, I did it because it was keeping me awake enough. Eventually, the treatment started working. If you want to try a 5 hr sleep window, go for it. If you think about it, Martin recommends a 5.5 hr sleep window. But if you’re not sleepy, don’t go to sleep so essentially, you may be having a 5 hr sleep window anyway.
You’d be happy to know that once you go a couple months post-insomnia, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world. I started doing things in my bed again (not a good idea) but was able to sleep every night. The most important thing from courses like these are that you know how to stop freaking out after 1 bad night which like everyone said, is bound to happen. I think my relapse was my trigger made me think of “how to fall asleep” which like you know, you can’t do anything to fall asleep… I didn’t get that.
Hi Padron,
I actually have worked with Dr. Rybarcyzk as a client before. The only reason why I stopped was because it was extremely expensive since he wasn’t in network. When I first started with him, I was seeing fantastic results and was actually “cured” after 6 weeks of treatment. I was insomnia free from August – February. However, I never really came to accept that our bodies naturally know how to sleep and I was still afraid of sleeping outside of my bedroom. I was relying on routine. When a trigger happened in February, my insomnia came back. I started seeing Dr. Rybarcyzk again, but I already knew all the techniques such as SR and SC. It was the cognitive stuff that I still wasn’t getting/remembering. So… since I couldn’t continue paying him, I hired Martin instead ($400 vs $1080). Also, I like that Martin provides transcripts of all his sessions so I can go back and look at them later on. I can’t remember a lot of stuff Dr. Rybarczyk and I talked about since it was in person.
If you want to follow Martin’s program, you follow his minimum of 5.5 hour rule and follow SC. Dr. Rybarcyzk is a little different. He never asked me to get out of bed unless I was feeling anxious. If I was calm and awake in bed, I was fine to stay in bed. His idea was that people would get anxious if the 20-30 minutes have passed which results in bed=anxiety. Additionally, if you’re only sleeping 4 hours, your sleep window is 4 hours even if that sounds dangerous. His policy was getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night temporarily isn’t going to affect you much because it’s only going to last a few weeks until your sleep drive takes over. Plus, you probably are getting this much right now anyway and the goal is to break you out of associating your bed with anxiety for those 2 hours you’re awake. I had a friend in college who only got 4 hours of sleep a night until he graduated and functioned perfectly. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow of course. My window started at 5 hours in this program which is what he usually recommends at first. If it wasn’t working then you move that time to 4.5 or 4 hrs.
The thing that I like but also dislike about Martin’s program is the SC. I dislike it now because it’s making me anxious and I don’t want to get up (I haven’t actually started this phase yet as I’m only on week 2 but have tried it). But I think in the long run, it’s a lot more helpful than staying in bed awake even if you’re calm because when this happens months to years from now (which is a guarantee), you know that it’s okay to be awake and get up to do something. In Dr. Rybarcyzk’s program, it was fine while I was fixing my insomnia but when I couldn’t sleep after that February trigger, I started freaking out and didn’t want to get up.
