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Delv – I can’t calculate my sleep efficiency because I’m never fully awake. I’m in and out of sleep all night, in and out of dreams, just barely waking up and then immediately falling back asleep. I’ve had 9 nights like this within the last couple weeks. By the way, I’m not aware of any of that happening last night so hopefully I’m on the right track.
Yeah, it might be best to go back to being stricter, Mac. Like I said, SR worked like a charm for me. I went to bed the same time and got up the same time every morning. After awhile I could give myself a little leeway, like going to bed 5-10 minutes early or lying in bed in the morning an extra 15 minutes or so before starting my day. This small amount of leeway didn’t seem to affect my sleep the following night.
I think like little kids, we need consistency. Maybe your body is giving you the message that it needs consistency. If I were you, I would give it a try. Maybe for 2 weeks go to bed and get up at the same time with no more leeway than 15 minutes. I know it’s hard to stay up when you’re really tired. I had many evenings of nodding off while reading a book before bedtime. Try the 6.5 hours and see if it becomes consistent. If it doesn’t, I would even consider reducing it to 6 hours. Although I know this sounds like hell to you, but if your sleep finally stabilizes with this amount of sleep, it will be well worth it. Because then you can gradually increase it over time and finally reach your goal of 7 hours a night, or even more.
Just have to keep trying different things until something finally works. I was wondering, Mac, is your 6.5 hours consistent and is it approximately at the same time every night?
Day 17 of ACT Speaking of trying something different, yesterday I had an inspiration of something to try that might solve my shallow sleep problem. I remembered reading somewhere that it’s possible that if your sleep is too long it could be shallow and not refreshing. In that case it’s better to sleep less to get deeper sleep. The number of hours I’ve been sleeping is not too long in comparison to how I slept before the insomnia. But since everything has been out of kilter for so long, my body might not be ready for this right now and it might be best to compress my sleep for awhile, i.e., go back to SR. I also re-examined my theory that there could still be underlying anxiety that I’m not even conscious of that is making the sleep shallow. But then I was reminded of how when I first started SR three months ago my anxiety was so much higher than it is now, yet I slept very deep. SR worked like a charm for me and I slept well on the good nights.
So I’m going back to 6.5 hours for awhile and will see how this goes. I’m also going back to my schedule of 12 to 6:30. If this works well and deepens my sleep, then after 2 weeks I’ll add on a half hour and gradually work my way up to the right number of hours for me.
Last night I had no anxiety before or after going to bed. Woke up this morning feeling tired but not too bad. I’ve had so many nights of shallow sleep that I think it might take a couple days to catch up and start feeling more rested in the morning. The good news is that I have’t had a bad night for over a week and a half. I had a couple nights where I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep, but they weren’t “bad nights” in the same way as before with me struggling, getting out of bed over and over, and not sleeping until 3:00 or 4:00, or maybe not at all. I feel like I’m doing so much better with dealing with anxiety so that any potential bad night is nipped in the bud.
For years my usual bedtime has been from 11:00 to 7:30 (give or take a half hour on both ends.) Last night I went to bed at 11:00 and woke up at 8:00. Like you, I’m tired today but not a zombie. It’s crazy that I’m still tired after 9 hours of sleep. Before the insomnia, I always felt very well-rested after 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep.
Davy – what are you doing about your insomnia? Are you trying CBT or ACT? Have you studied these therapies and then put something into practice? The insomnia is not going to go away by itself.
Day 16 of ACT No anxiety before or after going to bed. Fell asleep within 10-15 minutes. Slept all night but woke up tired again. I certainly hope that things settle down soon.
If this just started for you, now is the time to nip it in the bud. If there’s anyway you can do this, try letting go of the struggle to fall asleep. This is what creates insomnia – our worry and desperate attempts to fix it through drugs or whatever we think might work. If we stopped worrying about the insomnia, it would naturally go away. Our worry and anxiety about it, feeds it. Our mind gets in the way. But when our mind gets out of the way by letting go of the struggle and stops worrying about it, then our body takes over and does what it’s been doing for all of our lives – helping us to fall asleep naturally.
So if you can have an attitude of “It’s no big deal if I don’t sleep tonight” and are willing to put up with a sleepless night or two, then the insomnia will go away by itself instead of growing into a problem that can last for weeks, months and even years.
P.S. Stay away from the pills. Insomnia does not have physical cause but is caused by your thinking. So medication is not the answer. Changing your thinking is.
Sounds like you’re doing good. That’s the best attitude to have – if you don’t sleep, no big deal. Then you’ll have a more relaxed attitude about it and sleep will start to come naturally, like it always has.
I ordered my books on Amazon. You know you can find anything and everything there. I recommend The Sleep Book first because it deals directly with calming our anxiety, which feeds insomnia.
Dragon – Should have mentioned this previously because it’s on how to begin to give up the struggle with insomnia using mindfulness. Check out page 85, second paragraph:
“The first step to accepting your insomnia is to be able to notice yourself struggling in the first place. What you don’t see you can’t begin to let go of.” This whole section is very good.
I continually have to work on my attitude because my emotions are still like a yo yo. For instance, even though two days ago I had slept well and felt really good all day, during the evening the old fears crept back in and I felt the dread of going to bed along with my stomach tensing up. So I re-read the chapter on Welcoming and used some of the techniques for reducing those feelings/sensations. I decided to give that feeling a name – Mr. Dreadlocks, and imagined my stomach as a poor, round, red-faced, tensed up creature, that was so scared and pitiful. This made me laugh and then the feelings disappeared.
So I do a lot of re-reading of the chapters to help me with my attitude and remind of things to do and practice. And then I practice, which is very important.
You’re welcome, Dragon. The first, most important thing is to give up the struggle. We got into this mess because instead of just accepting one night of sleeplessness, we started to worry about it and then started doing different things to try to fix it – taking pills, whatever. Worry feeds insomnia. So the first thing is to stop struggling with the insomnia (read pg. 72.) The first technique is mindfulness. It is through mindfulness that you’ll first begin to “observe” yourself struggling, which creates some space between yourself and the struggle. Then it will be easier to let it go.
Next is Acceptance. Re-read chapter 2. It’s very important. It’s on acceptance, which first of all means to accept your insomnia and stop struggling with it. It doesn’t mean resignation, just acceptance that you have this temporary condition of insomnia, just like you might have a temporary condition like the flu. You also accept whatever shows up in the night – anxiety, fear, panic, whatever, and don’t try to escape it by getting up. Instead you practice mindfulness which creates some space between yourself and your thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Then it is easier to let them go, or they will drift away by themselves. Guy Meadows emphasizes the importance of practicing mindfulness during the day as well as night for a couple reasons. One is that then it will be easier to practice at night when you’re tired and there’s no distractions and thus easier to become overwhelmed by our negative thoughts, emotions and sensations. Also, we have negative thoughts and emotions associated with insomnia that come to us during the day. We need to practice mindfulness to let these go during the day. Otherwise, they can feed and worsen the insomnia at night.
The third technique is called “welcoming” which has some similarities to acceptance but it goes even further than accepting. As you welcome everything that shows up, you “befriend” them. As you do, they become less frightening.
So these are the basic techniques. I encourage you to re-read the chapters to really understand them more deeply so that you can start practicing them.
Day 15 of ACT Yesterday was tired all day. Went to bed at 10:45. Fell asleep within 15 minutes. No anxiety at all showed up. Felt like the good old days of going to bed and expecting to fall asleep soon. But then the same thing happened during the night – in and out of dreams all night. Woke up at least 3 times and then would fall back asleep again. Finally woke up at 6:15 and had to get up to go to the bathroom. Felt very tired still. Went back to bed and laid there for a long time but eventually fell back asleep again until 8:00. Woke up and felt decent. Yay! Not well rested, but decent. I’ll take that.
Day 14 of ACT This is really more like the 10th day, since last week when I was sick I slept well all 4 nights. The body just took over.
Yesterday evening started to have that feeling of heaviness and dread about going to bed. Could feel my stomach tensing up too. Decided to re-read the section from the book on “Welcoming.” Was able to create some distance between myself and the emotions and sensations using that method. The bad feelings went away and I was back in a good space again. Went to bed and fell asleep within 15-20 minutes. Unfortunately, the sleep was shallow again with dreams and waking up in the middle of the and falling back asleep again. Even though overall I got 8 hours, did not wake up feeling well rested. Am tired again today. Oh well. Just keep going and hope it gets better. At least there were no negative thoughts, feelings or struggles during the night.
Day 13 of ACT Slept all night – got 8.5 hours of sleep. Yay! Yesterday was really exhausted so maybe that overrode everything last night. Hit the sack and was out like a light. Feel good today (finally) after 3 days of tiredness.
Day 12 of ACT Yesterday was a hard day and the night was hard too. I was tired all day but worst was my mood. Was feeling some depression about the insomnia and fear of the next bad night, like I had last Sunday. Would it overwhelm me again like it did last time, with me finally having to get up to calm myself down? Was this going to go on FOREVER? You know how the mind goes when our mood is not the best!
Anyway, I did a 45 minute long recorded meditation from my mindfulness class and got into a much better space. Then the night came. Couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. Then I realized it and the panicking began. But this time my mindfulness tools came to the rescue. Tried breathing and a few different things to calm myself down and finally did something that worked. I “noticed” what was going on with my body – the tingling, burning, sensation around the edges of my arms caused by the tension buildup, as well as some other things. Then miraculously, my whole body and mind settled down and I was calm again. I felt that this was a big victory for me. I still wasn’t able to sleep much the rest of the night, but at least I was calm.
Today I am tired again, but feeling more positive and hopeful than I was yesterday. I am reminded of Carlos in the book (page 114) who after two weeks said that his sleep had not dramatically improved but he felt more relaxed than he had ever been about his sleeplessness. Within two months he was sleeping normally. This is my goal – to not fear the night anymore and know that I can handle whatever happens – any fears, any sleeplessness and anything else that shows up in the night.
I thought about you some more and I was wondering if since you’ve only had your insomnia for a couple weeks, then it might be easier for you to nip it in the bud than for others who’ve had it for months or even years (like many of us on this forum).
If there’s anyway you can do this, try letting go of the struggle to fall asleep. This is what creates insomnia – our worry and desperate attempts to fix it through drugs or whatever we think might work. The second book I mentioned is based on this idea. If we stopped worrying about the insomnia, it would naturally go away. Our worry and anxiety about it, feeds it. Our mind gets in the way. But when our mind gets out of the way by letting go of the struggle and stops worrying about it, then our body takes over and does what it’s been doing for all of our lives – helping us to fall asleep naturally.
