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I’m with you Mac. I started the same time as you the beginning of January and now I’m starting all over again too, although for different reasons. I took a long detour, trying out ACT only to totally fail at it, then fell into deep despair and finally came crawling back to Martin, begging for his help to get me out of this hell hole. Now I’m finally back on track again.
It’s been two weeks now and I’m seeing a similar pattern as I had before with 5 good nights a week and a couple bad. I’m very grateful for the good nights. But a part of me like you Mac, wonders if I’ll ever be normal again. I either fall asleep right away due to total exhaustion or can’t fall asleep and have to get up one, two or three times before finally getting a few hours of sleep. I’ll wonder if I’ll ever get back to normal where I don’t have to be so exhausted and can lie in bed for 20 minutes or so before falling asleep. So like you, Mac, there’s that strong association of my bed with wakefulness. I talked to Martin yesterday and he said that just as it took a long time for the insomnia to develop, it will take time for it to go away. I’ll have to keep reminding myself of this. I’m prepared to be very strict with the therapy for as long as it takes. Hopefully by a couple months, maybe I’ll have less of the bad nights and maybe even be able to lie in bed for awhile before falling asleep.
How’s everyone else doing? Delv, Dragon, Daf, Padron?
That’s great that you had 3 good nights in a row! Hopefully your therapy will help with the anxiety. I know for myself that having a smaller window would just make me more anxious.
Is your sleep getting any better yet, Dragon? That will go a long way towards reducing the anxious thoughts and feelings.
Just one other thing about the mindfulness practice. It’s important to practice during the daytime as well as night. When you’ve got the hang of it during the daytime when it’s easier to practice, then it will go smoother at night when it’s a lot harder.
Hi Padron,
Martin gave me this advice: When implementing CBT-I, it is essential to see it as a long-term strategy and to “mentally automate” all the processes involved. Pretending you are a robot can actually make things easier since there is less mental conflict — you don’t go to bed before the start of your sleep window, you always get out of bed by the end of your sleep window, if you can’t sleep you get out of bed, etc.
So this is how I do it. I think of it as training, like training a kid to stay in his bed. The parent hauls the kid over and over back to his bed. I haul my butt out of bed over and over again to train my brain to associate the bed with sleep. That way there is no conflict or anxiety, it’s just training.
In the meantime, you may want to look into developing a mindfulness practice. I’m doing this and it helps me to calm myself by separating from any fearful and anxious thoughts instead of getting caught up in them. Hope this helps.
Yeah, sounds like you need to go back to SR and stick with it until things get really stable. And then when you’ve got MANY good weeks of sleep behind you, then you can get cocky!
Sorry you’re having a hard time, Mac. Yes, I certainly know what it’s like to feel like I can’t live like this anymore and that I’m disabled. Before I started the program again just two weeks ago, I was definitely there, feeling depressed, without hope and despairing. I was starting to get panic attacks too. I was really struggling with my counseling business also, because it’s very difficult to be there for other people when you’ve had no sleep and you’re feeling like a zombie! I hoped and prayed that people would cancel their appointments, because I just couldn’t deal with it. Pretty pathetic.
Since I started all over again, I’m doing much better. In the last week I slept through the night 4 nights and the other 3 it took me 1 & 1/2 hours to fall asleep. So I lose sleep on the front end. Fortunately, I don’t seem to need as much sleep as you do, so I do ok on 5 hours of sleep, which I got the other 3 nights. So I either fall asleep right away, or have to get up at least once and lose about 1.5 hours of sleep. I hope that over time this pattern changes, and instead of having to get up and lose 1.5 hours of sleep, I fall asleep within 10-20 minutes. That was my usual pattern before. Also, I didn’t have to be completely exhausted to fall asleep like I am now.
So it sounds like you’re losing about 1.5 hours on the back end. Is that about right or do you usually lose more sleep than that? Do you do SC? It’s supposed to help with either the front or back end.
I’m aiming for stability, Mac, and this might be a good thing for you to aim for too. It’s not enough to have one good week. We need to have many good weeks before we can put this behind us. So for instance, last week I would call a “semi good week” with a sleep efficiency of 89%. My aim is to have at least several weeks like this, with the pattern gradually changing to “good weeks” with high sleep efficiencies. I will be maintaining a strict sleep window and doing SC the whole time and the sleep window will increase over time, but very slowly. Then when I’ve had many “good weeks” I may finally be able to say I’m over the insomnia.
Sorry you’re having a tough time, Mac. Just curious, what’s a bad night for you, Mac?
My bad nights used to be me being awake until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. I’d only sleep for two or three hours and would be a zombie the next day. Now it’s more like 1:30, with me getting 5 hours of sleep, which for me is decent. With my current sleep window, on those nights I’m only losing 1.5 hours of sleep instead of 3, 4 or even 5 hours of sleep like I used to. I attribute the lack of really bad nights to accepting SC. I used to just fall apart when I couldn’t fall asleep so then the whole night would be ruined with me struggling and not falling asleep. Now I just accept that I’ve got to get up and the few times I’ve had to get up it’s only been getting up once. So this is a huge improvement and in a sense I’m not really having “bad” nights, at least not lately.
Do you practice SC? I wonder if you did, it might help. I just do it in a mechanical way, not thinking or fretting about it – just doing it. I think because I have this attitude then I don’t get anxious and as a result fall asleep after the first time.
I was in your place just a short while ago, having nights of no sleep or maybe just 2 hours. I was a zombie during the day. But the worst part was my emotions – I was in despair and beginning to have panic attacks after months of insomnia. A couple weeks ago I hired Martin. I got started on a strict sleep window and using SC. I am doing so much better! My sleep is much better and emotionally I’m at a completely different place that was hard to imagine just two weeks ago. It’s worth it to hire Martin and get the professional help you need. It’s not worth it to keep on suffering, when help is available. He’s the expert on helping people with insomnia like you and if you do what he says, even if difficult, you will get better. There is hope!
I’m glad my journey has been inspiring to you, Nick, even with all its twists and turns and getting totally lost! Sorry about the meltdowns – those aren’t fun and I have certainly have had my share. I’m glad though that you’re determined to make this work because determination is what it takes. Really, when you think about it, we don’t have much of a choice – do the hard work or live with insomnia the rest of our lives? So we have do the hard work, sooner or later. I’m also glad that you’re getting help from Martin. It can be very hard in the beginning, so getting the help you need is really important. Good luck!
I’m finally getting back on track. I’ve been back on CBT-I now for one week. The first two days were horrible, with no sleep the first night and just two hours the second night. Made for a really lousy weekend. But since then things have improved a lot. I talked to Martin this week and he said it would probably be easier for me this time around since I had already done this before. That has turned out to be true. My sleep window is from 12:00 to 6:30 and the last 5 nights the number of hours I slept were 5, 6.25, 6, 4.5 and 6.5 last night, my first full night of sleep.
It’s hard to believe that just a short while ago I was mentally falling apart with extreme anxiety, depression, despair and the beginnings of panic attacks. Now everything has settled down and I’m starting to feel like my old normal self again, thank goodness.
My attitude towards CBT-I has totally changed since the first time I did this. I realized that the first time around I made a mistake by relying on my night caps to go to sleep. By doing that I denied myself the opportunity to learn to trust in my natural ability to fall asleep. Also, I used alcohol because I was so desperate to avoid any bad nights. When I did have bad nights I would just fall apart and didn’t know how to deal with them. This time around I’m alcohol free and am willing to deal with whatever happens, including the bad nights. My attitude towards SC has also totally changed. I hated it and struggled with it before, but now I just think of it as training. It’s like a parent training a young child to stay in bed – she takes him back to his bed over and over again. I’m training my mind to associate bed with sleep, so I just make myself get out of bed over and over again, as needed. No emotion or struggle is attached – I just do it because it’s part of the training. Same for the sleep window. As a result of this, my anxiety has gone way, way down.
I plan to stay with this sleep window for at least another 2 or 3 weeks. I want to make sure my base is solidified before making any changes and increasing the sleep window. Stability is what I’m after, not just an hour or more of sleep in the short term.
Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that CBT-I really works if you do it right. If I had done it right the first time I wouldn’t have had to take this long circular journey to get back to this starting point. But I guess this is what it takes sometimes for us to learn our lessons. Now I understand CBT-I more deeply than the first time around and as a result, I’m more committed and am getting good results.
Dragon,
How are you doing? I talked to Martin and he said the first two or three weeks can be the hardest. That’s why getting support is essential. I hope you’re hanging in there.
Yes, the anxiety is the basis of the insomnia. The treatment will reduce the anxiety over time when you start seeing some results.
The nice thing about working with Martin is that when you’re struggling or get stuck, you can talk to him right away via email or text unlike your CBT-I therapist who you probably see only once a week or less. He guarantees that he will respond within 24 hours and usually it’s a lot quicker than that. When you’re struggling, you don’t want to have to wait days or weeks before talking to someone and getting the help that you need.
For some encouragement, go to the thread: 6 months after completing Martin’s course
