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There’s help for you. Insomnia is an anxiety-related disorder and most sleep doctors don’t understand it or know how to treat it. There are two different types of therapy for this. One is CBT-I (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia) which Martin, the host of this website explains. The other is called ACT. To understand ACT, read The Sleep Book by Dr. Guy Meadows and/or go to his website. Some of us on the thread here, ACT for Insomnia, are using this method. My insomnia started in Oct 2018. I first tried CBT-I and made a lot of improvement. Then I changed to ACT and am now completely cured.
Mac – so are you actually getting 6 hours of sleep these days?
Pam – have you committed to SRT before to see if it works for you and consolidates your sleep? It seems to me that you have to commit to either doing SRT or ACT. With SRT you would do what Daf recommends and shorten your window until your sleep begins to consolidate. Then you gradually increase it every week or two. With ACT, like I suggested earlier, go to bed at 8 or 9 and learn to complete relax and accept whatever happens. As you relax about sleep, your sleep will begin consolidate because your brain will settle down and begin trusting that the bed is safe. But the point is to really focus on one or the other, because if there is any confusion or going back and forth between the two, then this will only cause anxiety which will result in poor sleep. So commit to one or other for a few weeks and see what happens. My two cents.
That’s probably a good question for the sleep doctor, Steve. But I would think that anything that helps with anxiety would be good for you. That’s great that you could lie in bed all those hours and stay relaxed. I think over time your sleep will get more consistently good because of this. You’re on the right path by staying calm and relaxed in bed. You’re teaching your brain that the bed is a safe place to be.
Pam – it sounds like you need more hours of sleep. Since you automatically wake up at 5, then how about going to bed at 9:00? Obviously you are very tired since you say you can’t stay awake reading or watching TV from 6 to 8. I’m sure this is due to the fact that your sleep is so light. You’re simply not getting enough sleep.
When I was doing ACT I was having mostly light sleep. So I was tired during the day (but not a zombie, thank goodness.) By the evening the tiredness started to hit hard. I went to bed at my regular time of 10:30-11:00, but then I let myself sleep as long as I needed, usually at least until 7:30 and sometimes sleeping until 8 or 8:30. So I was in bed anywhere from 8.5 to 10 hours. Since you know you’re going to wake up at 5 then you should go to bed earlier, at 9 or even 8. The thing about ACT is to relearn how to relax about sleep. If you think you must push yourself to stay awake until 10:00, and then know that you might wake up at 12:00, and then wake up all the way at 5:00, you probably have anxiety about not getting enough sleep. I suggest you let yourself relax more about sleep and let yourself sleep longer hours. Also, don’t disappear from the forum for 2 months. We are here to help you and you need more regular support to overcome this.
I agree with Mac. I don’t think a lot of sleep doctors know much about this type of insomnia. It’s an anxiety condition and we’re not born with it like some physical condition. Therefore we can heal from it just like any other anxiety-related condition. We may be predisposed to having some relapses, but we don’t have to “struggle” with it the rest of our lives. I consider myself healed in that I am sleeping like a normal person again. I have the memory of the insomnia but now I know what to do if I start getting anxious about it so that I can continue to sleep normally.
Gdsmom – glad you’ve been getting some good sleep lately. Hope it keeps up.
It’s great to hear from all of you! I wish for all that you could be experiencing what I am, which is sleeping well like I did before the insomnia. But everyone has their own journey.
Borgesbi – glad to hear that you’re doing well, but still having some challenges.
Jazzcat & Pam – when I would have long nights I would not be “thinking” about anything – no thoughts of observing or accepting or doing mindfulness. I would get to the place of acceptance of whatever happens, which is an “attitude” shift. Then I would let go of any thinking and just let my mind wander like it did before the insomnia. Yes, it might be a long night but probably there was some light sleep mixed with periods of being in and out of sleep and that’s why I was “decent” the next day. Over time, my sleep consolidated and deepened. So if you’re willing to hang in there and just let go of any thinking at all, you’ll eventually start to sleep better.
This is why I went on in my earlier rant about the difference between the little “a” and the big “A.” You use the little “a” (acceptance of negative thoughts & feelings) to calm yourself down if needed. But when you’re finally able to make the big mental shift to the big “A” (acceptance of whatever happens – whether you sleep or not) you then let go of any thinking.
It’s the willingness to “do nothing” and “think nothing” and just be with it even if it’s all night long which helped me re-learn (and remember) how to “let go,” which is what normal sleepers do all the time. Pam – you may want to re-read the section on Carlos’s case study because he learned how to let go and lie peacefully in bed without any expectations. It says his sleep did not improve for two weeks so he probably had a lot of long nights. But because he let go, then eventually his sleep improved. All of us need to learn how to “let go.” This is the key. But I know this isn’t so easy for us controlling types. But if want to sleep well again like we did before the insomnia, then we need to re-learn this skill.
That’s great, Mac! Glad you’re feeling “decent” the last 4 nights and days. That’s how it was for me too. Try not to worry about whether or not it will work because it WILL work if you stick with it. Through ACT you’re training yourself to have no expectations and most of all to completely relax in bed, which will lead to sleep. Over time, more and more your brain will associate bed with relaxation and sleep, and I think you’ll stop having the sudden relapses that seem to come out of nowhere like you’ve had with SRT. The anxiety that was beneath the surface will have calmed down.
Glad you felt great yesterday because of not having to use the alarm. That’s how it was for me. I don’t have to get up early so if I felt I needed more rest, I just stayed in bed, sometimes until 8 or 8:30 instead of my usual 7 or 7:30. It didn’t impact my sleep the next night.
My sleep has been great since I recovered from my relapse. I’m actually glad that I had a relapse because I’ve learned important things from it. I remember when I first recovered in August, Nik Burn suggested that I have a sleepless night so that I wouldn’t fear it. Well I didn’t know exactly how to do that, but the relapse gave me the wonderful opportunity! For one thing, I learned that recovering from a relapse is really short with ACT. One of the reasons I put off implementing ACT again after my relapse was that I was afraid it might not work as well as it did the first time. But it only took a couple nights really and I was on my way back to sleeping normally. I also learned that if I start worrying at all about my sleep, then all I have to do it let go of that thought and relax, and so far, I always go to sleep. I’ve learned how to “let go” and fall back asleep like a regular sleeper. I think I actually had my relapse because I started worrying about having a relapse! Now I don’t fear it anymore, which feels great.
How’s everyone doing that we haven’t heard from in awhile? Steve, Gdsmom, Burn, Suren, Pam, Featherly, Padron, TiredDad, Karen, Jazzcat, Borgesbi?
Hi Noel,
Check out The Sleep Book by Guy Meadows. It’s based on a therapy called ACT, and focuses on reducing anxiety so that you can sleep. It’s the anxiety itself that is keeping you awake. On the thread, ACT for Insomnia, some of us are practicing this. I completely recovered from insomnia by using this method.
There’s also CBT-I for insomnia, another therapy. Martin from this website is an expert on this and explains the therapy here on this website and is a great coach if you want to try this method.
You don’t have to suffer. Get some help!
Glad you’re sleeping well for the most part, Delv. Just try to relax when you don’t sleep, and then you will sleep.
Is your typing really small too? This is irritating because I can hardly see what I’m typing. Maybe I’ll email Martin about this.
How is everyone else doing? Haven’t heard from some of you folks in awhile.
Yesterday, this website seemed to be compromised and I was getting redirected to other websites that wanted me to download a bunch of junk. Did you guys experience this too? Even today, it’s still a little funny. As I’m typing, my print is very small and hard to read.
I’m realizing more and more that ACT is about learning to “let go.” The night before last I couldn’t fall asleep right away. It was my own fault though because I had played the piano right before bed so all these musical ideas were passing through my head. But then I realized that I wasn’t falling asleep and started to worry. The thought to get up and have a white russian even crossed my mind. But I didn’t want to get back into that. Also, I knew that I was tired so I should be able to fall asleep. So I just let go of the worry, relaxed and then I did fall asleep. I’m remembering what it feels like to “let go” to fall asleep just like normal sleepers do all the time.
Thanks, David. Yeah, even though I loved Guy’s book, I wasn’t very happy with his office because it seemed very disorganized.
I can see how the anxiety-reducing tools of ACT like mindfulness, and the acceptance & welcoming of negative thoughts or emotions, can compliment SRT. But the overall approach of ACT to give up all control of your sleep and to just learn to relax is very different from SRT, with it’s rules.
I’m glad that what you’re doing is working for you. For myself, I wanted to get back to how I was sleeping before the insomnia and for most of my life. I’m as old as you (or older), but I’ve always slept around 8 hours, give or take a half hour. I would go to bed between 10:30 and 11:00 (lights out and eyes closed) and it would take me 10 to 20 minutes to fall asleep. I woke up in the morning between 7:00 and 7:30. So the shortest amount of sleep I got was 7.5 hours minus one trip to the bathroom. I wanted to get back to sleeping like that again and now I am because of ACT. With ACT you don’t need to build up sleep drive. As long as you have a reasonable bedtime and wake up time, you will sleep fine.
No, just let them wander like they did before you had insomnia. Only if the thoughts are troublesome would you need to do something about them.
Don’t worry about venting. Say whatever you need to say and what helps you. We all do, including myself who goes into long rants about things like above!
The thing to do is commit to something, either CBT-I or ACT. Otherwise, chances are that you won’t get any better. But I know it’s easier said than done. There’s other people here who also took awhile before they could finally commit. Sometimes you have to suffer awhile until you get completely sick of it and then start to make changes. Because of my life experience, I don’t waste time anymore as much as possible. When I decide to do something, I do it fully and don’t look back. I’ve found that when I commit to something, then things get clearer and the support I need comes to me.
Just curious, what do you mean by the “existential threat”?
