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The last two nights I tried to stay in bed and implement mindfulness instead of getting up and it was a total bust! Saturday night I lay in bed until at least 2:00 before finally falling asleep. Yesterday I was wiped out all day. Hate that. Then last night I lay there until 3:00 until finally giving up and getting up. Went back to bed around 3:30 and fell asleep maybe around 4:00. So two days in a row of total exhaustion. Going back to SC.
ACT intuitively makes sense because we want to get back to being comfortable with lying in bed instead of being anxious. As I said before, I always used to spend at least 30 minutes or more in bed before falling asleep, so I’d like to be able to get back to that. But I think you would need a professional to help you do ACT the right way so that you don’t spend the entire night laying in bed and never falling asleep, which I felt I could have easily done if I had stayed in bed all night.
Yes this is confusing and frustrating, and it has placed seeds of doubt in my mind – about both methods! But I will go back to doing what I was doing with the SR and SC and hope that over time that my average of 2 bad nights a week will go down. Of course I’ve probably already ruined that for this week. Since I already had two bad night first thing this week, now I need 5 good nights in a row to just keep my average up!
Yes, I probably am wound up. But on the other hand, I don’t like wasting time and effort either, doing something that maybe has reached its limit of effectiveness. I felt like something was missing and that maybe SR and SC was not enough for me although it may be enough for some. I don’t want to live with 2 bad nights every week. The reason that I have those nights are because the exhaustion doesn’t override the anxiety on those nights. So I wanted to find a way to deal with the anxiety.
I don’t intend to throw away SR and SC, but instead to add mindfulness. This may be the missing piece for me.
Two nights ago I had another bad night – just 3. 5 hours of sleep. So yesterday I was discouraged again. And really depressed. I didn’t even feel like writing/venting about it here. Same ole, same ole. Nothing new. I looked over my sleep logs for the last 4 weeks and felt discouraged. Basically since week one, the pattern has been the same – 5 nights of sleep and 2 bad nights every week. I seemed to have reached a plateau.
I decided to check out Guy Meadows. I purchased his book and then went online to his website. I had an hour and a half to kill before my 12:00 bedtime so I went ahead and signed up for his online course and started to go through it. Btw, it’s surprisingly inexpensive. I didn’t care at this point that I was on the computer this late, I just needed some hope.
I like his approach, which is to stop obsessing about sleep and to learn to relax our way into sleeping naturally. Interesting, I just re-read some of the posts here and I noticed some of your language: Mac – “defeat the anxiety” and “psychological discipline“, Daf -” beating this stupid illogical fear.” It’s like a battle that we have to fight to defeat the enemy. Not a very relaxed approach.
His approach involves practicing mindfulness at bedtime and also in our daily lives (in Sasha’s 2nd book, there is a whole chapter devoted to this as well.) Part of mindfulness is the practice of accepting our thoughts and emotions, observing them and then letting them drift away. Coincidentally, just this week I started an 8 week course on mindfulness. So when I went to bed I decided to try this approach. Sure enough, I could feel that black, dark heaviness start to creep in and the anxiety ramping up. But this time I just allowed it to come and observed it. I didn’t keep the monster at bay. I had no idea whether this would work or not, but it made a lot of sense and was certainly worth a try. Also, I decided to relax my sleep window because worrying about not getting enough sleep when that 6:30 alarm goes off also gets in the way. I fell asleep and slept the whole night, waking up refreshed at 7:30. I don’t know whether I fell asleep because I was so totally exhausted last night, because of the mindfulness or a combination of the two. Anyway, I intend to start practicing this regularly and just see how it goes.
This all sounds good. Its funny because I just read in Sasha’s other book (The Effortless Sleep Companion), where she also talked about SC and said that instead of getting up after 20 minutes, if you think you’ll eventually fall asleep, then why get up? This made sense to me because for years it’s always taken me 20-30 minutes to fall asleep and sometimes even an hour. But it was never a big deal. I would just lay there in bed doing and thinking nothing in particular, and eventually would fall asleep.
Going back to her objections to SR and it being used as a crutch. She heard from people who increased their sleep window and then couldn’t sleep anymore. I can see how this could happen with people who are obsessive and worry a lot. They come to depend on SR and think that if they deviate just a little, then they’re screwed. But because they think this way and worry, then they ARE screwed!
Regarding myself, this triggered something in me and I wondered if I was using SR as a crutch. I thought about how on the good nights when I fall asleep right away out of total exhaustion, I’m basically keeping the fear at bay. But the monster is always there, lurking in the background. The monster is the fear of not falling asleep right away and then staying up all night (or just sleeping a few hours). I realized that I need to learn how to deal with the times when I don’t fall asleep right away and thus deal with this monster. So last night was a good start. It took at least 30 minutes or more for me to go asleep, but I reminded myself that this was always how it has been in the past. So chill out. If I can do this regularly, then my insomnia will basically be cured.
I hope this is making sense to you. I’m a little tired.
Also, Sasha was contacted by people complaining about SR who had sleep windows of only 4 or 5 hours, which is way too little sleep. I think that turned her against it too.
I think for me, it definitely helped to kick start things. In my first week I slept 5 out of 7 nights which was so much better than before I started.
Yes, we want our lives back. No problem venting. I’m actually not a nap person either. For years I’ve had 8-9 hours of sleep every night so didn’t need a nap. It was only when I was sick or something that I would take one. Now I need them after a bad night. And I was needing them when my sleep window of 6 hours wasn’t enough. Now, on the days I get 6.5 hours of sleep I don’t need a nap fortunately.
I ordered another book that Sasha referenced to – Desperately Seeking Snoozing. I wanted to know what the author has to say about SR. It also has the his story in it and I hope he talks about how he recovered, unlike Sasha. He has a chapter on night time awakenings as well. I’ll let you know what he says about it, since that seems to be both of your issues. Delv – do you struggle with going to sleep in the first place like me, or is it just the early morning awakenings?
60% compared to 30% sounds great, Mac! I certainly know that the feeling of let’s just get over with this already. That was me yesterday. Got depressed and discouraged. The nap really helped, but I should have done it earlier in the day so I could enjoy more of the day. I didn’t take it until 4:30. But at least I had a nice evening and was still ready for bed by 12:00. Mac, is there anyway for you to take a short nap during the day? I’m lucky because I work part-time from home, so it’s easy for me to do. A 20-30 minute nap works wonders for me. I can handle the bad nights better this way.
Sasha talks about our moods being like a roller coaster. That’s us, Mac. They will even out as we get better. I’ve been reading Sasha’s other book, the “companion” book and she talks about attitude. She says the better our attitude, the less anxiety we will experience and the better we will get. I know it’s hard to do, but gotta try.
I don’t know how long it took Sasha to get over her insomnia, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it took at least a few months. We’ve only been doing this a few weeks. So let’s keep going. As long we see progress, that’s what counts.
Slept through the night. So I’ve had 6 bad nights out of 25. Then again there were a couple where I only got 4.5 hours of sleep, but I didn’t call those bad nights because I only got up once and then fell asleep right after that. So you could call it 8 bad nights, but I prefer the 6. Anyway, for me it’s much better then before when most nights were bad with an occasional break of a couple days. Now that my sleep window has increased to 6 & 1/2 hours this week, I’m actually feeling pretty rested too when I get up, which is nice. The 6 hours was just not enough.
Mac, how’s it compare with before you started?
I was totally exhausted. But once I lay in bed the fear started creeping in. You see my insomnia is opposite of yours in that my trouble is in falling asleep. But once I do I’m out for the night. I don’t have early awakenings. But I can be completely exhausted and still not fall asleep for hours.
Went asleep around 3:00 so only slept about 3 & 1/2 hours last night. I’m so tired of this. Starting to have doubts about this SR method. Sure, it’s great when I fall asleep immediately because I’m so exhausted. But I used to regularly take between 20-30 minutes to fall asleep with no problem or worries about not falling asleep. Now I doubt myself when I don’t crash out right away and as a result end up staying up for hours. This is crazy. Somehow have to regain confidence in my own ability to fall asleep naturally like Sasha says. I don’t know if the SR is helping or hindering that.
That’s how Martin calculated my sleep window. Even though I had a couple of 7 hour nights and one 9 hour night, when you averaged in a zero sleep night plus the nights of just a few hours of sleep, it came to 5.5 hours. Then he added on a half hour.
I actually was surprised how quickly it worked for me. In the first week alone, I only had 2 bad nights and 5 good nights. This was a huge difference from before when most nights were bad with an occasional reprieve of a couple nights.
I wonder if this has worked well for me because I’ve had the insomnia less time than others. I know that my spiritual beliefs also help me. I trust in a benevolent universe that wants the best for us. This doesn’t mean that I don’t get bent out of shape at times just like others, but in general, I’m trusting. But not in a naive way. It comes from years of experience. So when I found Martin online, it felt right to me and I trusted my intuition. It usually guides me well.
