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Jamie – what do you think keeps you from letting go? The need to have control? Like I said before, throwing myself completely into ACT required me to take a big leap of faith. I felt like I was jumping off a cliff into the darkness. I had no idea if there was anything out there that would catch me as I fell and it was scary. But the alternative of continuing to struggle with insomnia was worse. Also I’ve taken other leaps of faith in my life and always survived and many times thrived afterwards. So that made it easier to take another leap.
ACT is retraining of the mind to “let go.” Counselors and other people I talked to about my insomnia told me that I just needed to “let go.” This really annoyed me. I thought to myself “Well that’s great advice. Easier said than done.” I knew that this is what normal sleepers do but I just couldn’t seem to do it. ACT gave me a method to relearn how to let go. That’s why my recovery from my relapse was so quick. The first night I let go of any expectations, fears, frustrations – everything – and just laid there in bed doing nothing. By the second night I was falling asleep because through this process I was remembering how to let go and not worry or think about anything.
I think some people here are not understanding something very fundamental about ACT, which is what the big “A” and the big “C” in ACT really mean. The big A refers primarily to “Complete Acceptance of each sleepless night” on a night to night basis. It’s not talking primarily about acceptance of our anxious thoughts and feelings. That’s secondary. Of course you may need to accept and “welcome” them in order to finally let them go and calm yourself down. But the GOAL of these techniques is to help you get to the place of the big A, the Acceptance of your insomnia on a nightly basis instead of struggling with it in any way. Guy makes this very clear in practically the first page of the 2nd chapter. In my case I really “got this” and was pretty much able to get to this state without having to use much mindfulness or acceptance and welcoming of negative thoughts and feelings. Once I knew what the big A “felt like” I could return to it nightly.
The big C means Complete Commitment to the big A. Without committing to acceptance of whatever happens from the very beginning of every night and then committing to do this for a substantial period of time you will not see results. When I first started practicing ACT in March I was amazed that I was finally falling asleep regularly. But then when I got confused by the light sleep and thought maybe I needed to practice SR as well, then things got worse. But once I completely committed, I recovered.
Just one other point. I’ve said this before but I think it’s important. ACT is about learning to relax completely about sleep. Therefore SRT is not compatible with ACT (in my opinion and also Dr. Kat’s) because it’s so strict and you’re always pushing yourself hard to do it. Also there’s a lot of worry involved about messing up your sleep when you don’t practice it strictly. This strictness, hard work and worry are the opposite of relaxing about sleep. In SRT you control. In ACT you let go. So if you say you’re doing both ACT and SRT together you’re not practicing ACT in the full sense of what it really means. You may be practicing the little “a” but not the big “A” and are missing the main purpose of the therapy.
Last night I wasn’t even very tired when I went to bed because I had slept really well the night before, getting a solid 8 hours minus one trip to the bathroom. But it was “bedtime” (10:45) so I went to bed. Fell asleep soon and am well rested again today. I’m back to sleeping again like a normal person, not worrying about being sleepy enough or anything. Through ACT I’ve re-learned and “remembered” how to let go and fall asleep like I did before the insomnia.
I understand what you’re saying Mac. But the fact is, you’re still struggling after all these months of SRT. The anxiety just keeps coming back.
It’s been a week now since I got back into ACT and I’ve fully recovered. The first night my thoughts were, “This is probably going to be a long night. Oh well.” The second night it was more like, “Well last night wasn’t too bad. We’ll see what happens tonight.” The third night was, “Oh yeah, just lay down and do nothing. This is easy.” Then I was well on my way to recovery.
Gdsmom – you’ve been through a lot. No wonder it’s taking longer for your insomnia to heal. My life is so much easier – I’ve got a supportive husband and am doing work that I love (I’m a very late bloomer – better late than never.) I also was neglected as a child but I’ve been through therapy and have healed a lot of things. My younger life was much more difficult but now I’m finally seeing the fruits of all my efforts and things are getting easier and I’m a lot happier.
Besides letting go of anxiety, maybe it’s time to let go of that husband of yours! Ha ha! (Sorry – I’m a marriage coach and prejudiced. I believe that people shouldn’t have to suffer in their marriages and that everyone deserves to be loved by their spouse.)
Mac – my only concern about you combining the two is that with SRT, worries always come up. For instance, if you didn’t go to sleep as late as you should have, or got up later than you should have then you worry that your bad sleep that night was due to not doing SRT correctly. So when you’re always concerned about “following the schedule exactly” because if you don’t you’ll mess up your sleep, then you can’t completely relax about sleeping, which is what ACT is all about.
Whereas if you relaxed about your sleep window as well, say making it from 10:30 to 6:30, then you would learn to relax overall about your sleeping. When I started practicing ACT I went to bed between 10:30 and 11:00 and woke up anywhere between 6:30 and 7:30, depending on the quality of my sleep during that time. I didn’t an use an alarm clock because I don’t need to. Now I’m starting to wake up closer to 6:30 since my sleep is consolidating and good.
You got it, Mac! It’s interesting because others here including myself (Gdsmom in particular) said that once she started practicing ACT, she might still not be getting enough sleep but she functioned better during the day. Guy says this too. It takes a lot of energy to struggle with insomnia at night. So give up the struggle.
Remember Carlos in the book, who took awhile to learn how to completely relax in bed. His sleep didn’t improve the first two weeks but he was finally peaceful at night. Then his sleep started improving after that.
The main ACT technique that I used was acceptance of a sleepless night and giving up the struggle to try to sleep. And when I caught myself struggling or getting anxious at night I would always go back to acceptance. Sometimes the anxiety was too much and I would have to get up and write for awhile before my mind would clear and I could finally realize that I was struggling again. Then I could relax, go back to acceptance and go back to bed.
I wouldn’t exactly call this a technique and it wasn’t mentioned as one in Guy’s book, but when I was in the state of acceptance my mind would relax and start wandering. I wasn’t thinking about anything particular, just like the old days before insomnia.
All those things you listed are good, but then always go back to acceptance of whatever happens that particular night after you wake up, and just “rest” in bed without thinking about anything particular. You want bed to be associated with peacefulness and not thinking much about anything.
When I first started practicing ACT back in March the first couple weeks I don’t remember having any sleepless nights except possibly the first night. Mostly I had nights of light sleep or in and out of sleep. The same when I started again in mid July until I recovered the beginning of August. Most of my nil nights were in between practicing ACT or CBT after I had slipped back into my old ways of having a white russian or sleeping pill for a few nights. When I stopped using those crutches and got back into ACT I might have a sleepless night or just an hour or two of sleep the first night. So overall, my experience with ACT was mostly light sleep or in and out of sleep all night.
Now that I’ve had a relapse and recovered easily, I feel even more relaxed about sleep and confident about ACT. It’s reminded me that normal sleep is all about letting go, and it gives you a method to re-learn how to do this.
In some ways I’m not the best model of ACT because I really didn’t practice mindfulness or welcoming that much. I did use it a few times when I felt I really needed it though. I was lucky in that I could get to the place of acceptance of sleepless nights fairly easily and that’s what led to my quick recovery. When I first started it felt like I was leaping off a cliff into the abyss. But I’ve done this before in my life with other issues and knew I would survive even though it might be very hard. I prepared myself to willing to accept 2 weeks of sleepless nights, which I hoped and prayed I could handle. I told myself that if I didn’t see any improvement within that time I would give up and go back to CBT.
The first night was very long and I barely slept at all. Somehow though I was “ok” the next day and not a zombie. I told myself that the way I felt was “not too bad.” I knew that thinking negatively about how I was feeling during the daytime would only increase my anxiety and make my sleep the next night more difficult.
The next few nights were a combination of wakefulness and light sleep. Again, I would wake up in the morning feeling “not too bad,” so could keep up the generally upbeat attitude. Soon after my sleep began to lengthen and deepen and then I fully recovered.
I think for those of us who have been on this path for awhile, the anxiety isn’t super high like it was in the beginning. That’s why I didn’t have to practice the mindfulness and welcoming very much. But I absolutely had to practice acceptance (of a sleepless night), and that was key for me. Also, I could break out of struggling or getting anxious once I “caught myself in the act” of struggling. Then I could press the acceptance button and get back to a place of resting in bed without any expectations. And many times sleep would come then.
Mac – I’m so sorry that you’re having such a hard time. I hope sometime you’ll give ACT a try and I don’t mean just adding some of the elements of ACT to SR, but really committing to it. It gets to the core of the anxiety. I’ve had one relapse so far and when I finally buckled down and practiced ACT again it only took me a couple nights to start sleeping normally again. It really works. It teaches you how to completely let go, which is what normal sleepers do.
