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When I first did ACT a few months ago I had a similar experience of no longer struggling to go fall asleep but then experiencing light sleeping all night long. In that case, I was having many dreams and I remembered a lot of them after waking up. So I wasn’t having the deep, restorative sleep where there is no dreaming. I think I’m experiencing something similar now, but without the dreams. It must be light sleep since I wake up so easily and often. Fortunately, I fall back asleep soon afterwards.
It’s interesting that with SR I slept well, although there are other things that I didn’t like about it. I wonder if with SR you just get so very exhausted that when you do fall asleep you immediately go into the deep sleep. Who knows? Anyway, I’m hoping that over time my sleep gets better and deeper. Right now I’m just grateful that I’m finally starting to fall asleep more quickly, which has been my main issue all along.
Thanks, Borgesbi. Yes, like you, I’ve been accepting everything. But on the nights that sleep quality is poor, I’m not laying in bed all night awake meditating or relaxing or anything. I’m actually sleeping but am in and out of sleep all night. I wake up slightly and then fall back asleep, wake up slightly and fall back asleep again a few times throughout the night. So maybe my experience is different than yours and I hope it works. I’m taking an attitude of “one day at a time,” actually one night at a time, and looking for any small signs of improvement. If I get to a point of no improvements over a period of time I’ll give up on this.
Here’s my update. I’m still sticking with ACT for now. I’m in my third week. The second week was difficult, which wasn’t a surprise. I think I did well the first week because of my hopeful attitude when I start something new. Last week was the second week when reality set in, and 4 nights out of 7 it took me forever to fall asleep, finally falling asleep in the wee hours of morning and only getting 1 or 2 hours of sleep. It was very discouraging. But now I’m on the 4th day of the 3rd week and the last 3 nights have been better, but also with their challenges. The good thing is that I haven’t had any difficulties falling asleep the last 3 nights. But the bad thing has been that the quality of the sleep has been poor, so I’ve been waking up tired.
The poor sleep quality is what I experienced the first time I did ACT and then I became confused, discouraged, depressed and got completely derailed and lost. This time I’m hanging in there and accepting that this is par for the course. I’m still feeling hopeful because I’m having more nights of being able to fall asleep without having to stay up late until I’m droopy-eyed exhausted. What happens during my sleep is beyond my control, such as the poor quality. I can’t control what happens unconsciously, beneath the surface. Consciously, my anxiety is low and I’m not experiencing fearful thoughts or feelings. But it’s going to take some time for the unconscious part of myself to catch up with conscious part and begin to relax as well and drift off into a deeper sleep.
Borgesbi – just curious what happened when you tried ACT.
Mac – Had a few rough nights in my second week of ACT. I’m just experimenting with it. What makes it hard is that there is no place to go to ask questions, to see if what I’m experiencing is normal. It’s hard to keep going if you’re not sure it’s normal or if you’re messing things up. If I don’t see any improvement over time I’ll give it up. I know I can always go back to CBT-I.
With ACT the sleep restriction is more relaxed. He says to just decrease by a half hour on both ends the time you used to sleep before the insomnia.
Borgesbi – If I remember correctly, you did well before with SC and after awhile you were getting up less and less and falling asleep more and more quickly. So you’ll probably do well just doing it alone without the strict SR. It’s interesting, the first book I read that ever mentioned conditioned insomnia only said to do SC. It said that doing SC should cure most cases of insomnia within 2 weeks. Ha ha! If only!
With ACT, you’re supposed to stay in bed instead of doing SC. The idea is to learn to relax in bed and accept whatever happens, and that then over time you’ll start falling asleep naturally because you’re so relaxed. In my first week I fell asleep pretty quickly most nights but now in the second week I’ve had 3 days already where I was awake most of the night. 2 of those nights I couldn’t stand it anymore and broke down and took some Ambien, which I know is a no no. If I just can’t deal with this, I’ll go back to SC. If only I had someone to tell me it’s normal to stay awake most of the night for the first one, two, or even three weeks, and that then I would start falling asleep more quickly, then I could probably hang in there better. But there’s no one to ask and no support for this method.
Yes I would recommend the book. It’s easy to read and understand but not easy to implement just like CBT-I isn’t. It helps so much to have a coach like Martin or a forum like this to know that what you’re experiencing is normal and to give you the encouragement you need to keep going. But the ACT people don’t “have their act together” and there’s no support for the most part. You just have to read the book or watch their videos and then try to implement it on your own.
I’m with you Borgesbi. No offense to Martin either. I know he’s helped a lot of people get completely well using strict CBT-I, and I really appreciated the help he has given me. But for some of us maybe the continued strictness doesn’t help over the long run. It’s like the strictness ends up making us more uptight and worried about everything little thing we’re doing in order to get a good night’s sleep. It goes against natural sleeping, which is about completely relaxing and trusting that sleep will come instead of trying to control it and force it to happen using all these methods.
Like you I hate that with CBT-I I have to be completely exhausted in order to fall asleep. It was never like that before the insomnia. I would go to bed when I was starting to get sleepy and it would typically take me anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to fall asleep. I never worried about it because I would always eventually fall asleep. Also, I read in bed, watched TV in bed and sometimes fell asleep in bed in the evening if I had an extra glass of wine at dinner. Later I would get up, brush my teeth and go back to bed, falling asleep with no problem. I want to get back to this place of being relaxed about my bed and sleep.
That’s why I decided to try ACT again, because it’s about relaxing and learning to trust in our ability to sleep again. I’m in my second week but so far the results have been mixed. I really wish there was a coach for this method so that I could see if what I’m experiencing is normal or not. But because there isn’t, I’m fumbling through it on my own. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it or not, or some version of it.
Hi Syndic – if you stress about your sleep it will only make it worse. You may want to check out the book, The Sleep Book by Guy Meadows. It’s all about learning how to relax in bed again so that you naturally fall asleep. He gives you tools to help calm yourself down such as mindfulness and explains how to use them for insomnia. Since this only started a week ago there’s a good chance that you could recover soon if only you could stop worrying about it. I know that’s not easy to do though so the book might help. I say “recover soon” but it could take a few weeks since you’ve been struggling now with this for a week. But in comparison to others here on the forum who’ve had insomnia, a few weeks is a very short time to recover.
I’ll be hoping you get that new job, Mac. When I was working full time I tended to worry about my sleep more too and would have some small bouts of insomnia. But for the last few years since I’ve had my own business and can make my own schedule I slept great because I could get up 7 or 7:30 or even later if I wanted.
Steve – Yes, I’m still going to bed the same time as my husband. This second week has been more difficult than the first but I’m not surprised by that. I’m always optimistic when I try something new and that affects my sleep. After that the real test begins which it did this week. My falling asleep time has ranged from a few minutes to a few hours, and the quality of my sleep has varied a lot too. My sleep has been decent, but not great, but it’s only the second week so I’m not surprised. At least I’ve had no zombie days. My focus is just on learning how to relax overall about sleep and relearning to trust in my ability to sleep.
Steve – I found for myself too that my 5th week was difficult. It’s like we find ourselves slowly and gradually getting better and more hopeful, and then we’re tested with a difficult week. The fears creep in to try to undermine our progress and make us doubt that we’re getting better. Just keep going and it will get better again. It did for me.
Mac – Is there anyway you could adjust your work schedule to come in a couple hours later? You could cite health reasons, which really is what it is. It’s like a medical condition that you need some flexibility in your schedule for awhile so that you can heal. You do better on the weekend when you don’t have to worry about getting up so early. If this was your regular schedule for say, a couple months, maybe over time you would learn to completely relax and the insomnia would go away.
Syub – I’m sorry that you feel so miserable. Most all of us on the forum have experienced what you’re going through, so you’re not alone. But I’m afraid that your anxiety and now panic about your sleep is only going to make things worse. Also, putting the blame on other things like your health anxiety or alcohol, or trying things like antidepressants to help you sleep won’t help matters. Your insomnia is not caused by your health anxiety or alcohol, although this may have been the trigger. Insomnia is caused by anxiety about sleep and then is perpetuated by this as well.
If you’re going to take your antidepressants, take them to help calm yourself down, but not to help you sleep. When we do things to “try to sleep” like taking sleeping pills, doing mediation, etc. we end up keeping ourselves awake.
This book might help you. It’s The Sleep Book, by Dr. Guy Meadows. He talks about how the “struggle” to sleep results in us staying awake. The thing is to stop struggling and calm your mind. Then naturally you will fall asleep. He gives tools on how to do this.
BTW, Borgesbi – I figured you were a girl! To tell you the truth at first I usually assumed I was talking to a woman here until it became obvious that it was a guy. But it seems like there’s been more guys here than women.
ACT stands for acceptance commitment therapy. Several years ago a sleep doctor in England called Guy Meadows developed an insomnia program based on ACT. The basic focus is on ending the struggle to fall asleep. There are some major differences between it and CBT-I. With ACT you stay in bed instead of doing SC. Also there is not the emphasis on a strict sleep window, but something more moderate. The main idea is to learn to relax in bed instead of struggling. Then eventually sleep takes over you naturally. You learn to relax by accepting whatever happens in the night (and day) including all the negative thoughts, emotions and sensations that come to you. He uses tools such as mindfulness to deal with them by creating some space between ourselves and the thoughts, feelings and sensations and then letting them go instead of buying into them and being dominated by them. It’s all explained in a book he wrote called, The Sleep Book.
