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For myself, I’m on my third week of the 6.5 hour window. I’m feeling good about the progress I’m making, but since it’s only been a few weeks since I was at a really bad place, I’m hesitant to make any changes that might disrupt things. So I’m hanging in there with the 6.5 hour window for now, although I could use more sleep (I think my ideal would be more like 7.5 hours). Last night I lost about an hour of sleep so am tired today, but not too bad – maybe a 3 out of 5. I can get things done, but don’t have a lot of energy.
Mac, I don’t think you’re doomed to have insomnia forever. I think the problem is that you relax too soon (get cocky?) You’ve got to take a longer view. When you start feeling better after a month, that’s too soon to think that you’re cured and begin to relax. You know how to do this, but you’ve just got to stick with it longer until it’s really, really stable. That could take a few months or more. You need more patience, Mac. So for instance, when you’re having good, solid sleep within the 6.5 hrs, which could be a few weeks, THEN think about increasing the window. Stay with this window at least a couple of weeks and THEN increase again. Don’t even think about relaxing until you’ve got a few months of solid sleep behind you. This takes time, Mac. That’s all there is to it. You need more patience and perseverance and then you won’t lose your gains and have to start from ground zero again. You might have just gotten lucky before when you had that really good week. But since it wasn’t built on a strong foundation, you slipped back again so easily. So build your foundation really, really strong this time, and then you won’t lose it.
My quality of sleep is good. When it isn’t, it’s usually due to some external factor like a headache or having too much toxins in my system like coffee or alcohol. My guess is that your sleep is all over the board because of your anxiety. When you start to see some improvement and start getting better, the anxiety will go down and your sleep will be better.
Yes, I also liked the idea of staying in bed all night. Only problem was that I was awake all night! ACT was impossible to do without any help.
Clarification of one point. Because things didn’t change much from week 1 to week 8 I thought I had “plateaued” and was never going to get better. So I lost faith in CBT-I. Since then I’ve watched Martin’s video about “holdouts,” the one or two bad nights like I have that don’t seem to be going away. He said that this is common and that it just takes more time for them to eventually go away.
A couple things were going on. First of all, from the very first week of the program I was sleeping through the night for the most part 5 days a week and having 2 bad nights a week (just like now). This didn’t change much throughout the whole 8 week program. I was very aware that it was anxiety that was keeping me from falling asleep the 2 bad nights and I had no idea of what to do about my anxiety. When I heard about ACT I got excited about it because it deals directly and foremost with anxiety. I thought that if I could heal the anxiety, my insomnia would be over. So this is what put me on the other course of giving up CBT-I and trying to do ACT.
Another factor was that I hated SC and and resisted it. So on my bad nights I would basically just fall apart. I had no strategy at all to deal with the bad nights, so I just suffered through them. Now my resistance to SC is gone. My first week back on CBT-I I had a very good week with SC working well. I only had to get up once and lost only 1.5 hours of sleep on the “bad” nights, making them not so bad after all. So instead of ruining the whole night like what happened the first time around, this time I’m using SC and it’s going better.
So to summarize, if I hadn’t had the distraction of ACT and the resistance to SC, I probably would have kept going and would have eventually gotten much better.
But those of us with sleep-onset insomnia can be totally exhausted and still not fall asleep. I’ve laid in bed until 3 or 4 even though I was very, very tired. Just couldn’t fall asleep. That’s why we need the 30/30 rule.
Even now for me on the 2 days a week that I can’t fall asleep, I go to bed exhausted (and very sleepy) just like the other 5 days. But if any anxious thought has a chance to creep in like it does 2 days a week, then I can’t sleep.
Yeah, I would think the problem with a local CBT-I therapist is that they wouldn’t get enough business to really focus on CBT-I. Therefore, they probably mostly do cognitive-behavior therapy with people suffering from anxiety, depression, etc. and maybe have just a few CBT-I clients. That’s what’s different about Martin. Because he’s online he’s got a much greater pool of people who can contact and hire him – the whole country and world is available to him! Also, because he only does CBT-I, he’s got tons of experience with it and is the EXPERT on this.
I went away for a week in April and had the same problem in another bed. For me I guess the problem is the association between going to bed and not sleeping, wherever I am.
