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Went out like a like a light bulb last night and slept all night. Yay! Feel good today. I think maybe I’m starting to get used to the 6 hours of sleep. Yesterday I had a surprising pretty decent day with only 4 1/2 hours sleep. But when it was time for bed I was really, really ready, finding myself reading the same page of my book over and over again as my head was nodding off.
Yes, it helps a lot to vent here and get support – sharing the good, the bad, the discouragement, the hope, the successes, the things that do and don’t work. Sounds like you’re doing good, Mac, with 3 good nights in a row. Hopefully the bad nights will get less and less. Assuming the same thing for me.
Delv – Sasha Stephens also talks about the importance of living our lives and not letting insomnia take over and rule them. So for the most part I’ve kept up all my activities. I did simplify some things though, like Christmas. No one seemed to even notice, which was great. This is probably a good opportunity to remove unnecessary stress from our lives which is always good and will help with the insomnia as well.
Thanks, Mac. Yes I wasn’t at the point of eyelids drooping. But I supposed I would be at that point tonight if I had gotten up when I was supposed to this morning at 6:00, giving me only 2 & 1/2 to 3 hours of sleep. But I just couldn’t bare the thought of being totally exhausted again and wasting the whole day. Somehow I actually had a decent sleep last night even thought it was only 4 & 1/2 hours. I don’t get it. Twice last week I slept 4 & 1/2 hours but woke up tired. But not today. Go figure. I had a very good day with church this morning, a meeting in the afternoon, and going out to listen to live jazz this evening. We’ll see how the night goes however.
Thought I was getting more stable. The last four nights I had gotten up only once or none at all, sleeping either 4.5 or 5.5 hours. But then last night was a mess. Tried 3 times to go to sleep. Didn’t bother to get up again after the third time. It was after 3:00 when I went to bed. I have been so tired all week and was really tired yesterday. Just couldn’t face the idea of getting up at 6:00. Woke up at 7:30. So I got 4.5 hours and feeling not too bad physically, but discouraged.
The thing is, I was calm when I went to bed and was not aware of any anxiety. Have started practicing meditation and mindfulness. Why couldn’t I fall asleep? Hate this.
Here’s a couple of good books to help you start to educate yourself about insomnia and what can be done about it:
The Effortless Sleep Method by Sasha Stephens
End the Insomnia Struggle by Colleen Ehrnstrom
You need CBT-I, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. It is a very specialized type of therapy and there is an explanation of it on this site. It’s not easy to do so it’s best to hire a therapist trained in this or Martin Reed, who created this website. He’s worked with people who have had insomnia up to 30 years.
Pills are just a distraction and will not help you. In the long run, they hurt you. This is because insomnia is a learned condition, where we learn to associate going to bed with anxiety. Insomnia needs to be unlearned. But the longer you rely on pills and go without the necessary therapy, the longer you are strengthening the association between going to bed and anxiety.
I hope that you get the help you need soon.
It doesn’t sound right that you’re still having spells of 2-3 hours of sleep after 3 months of this. I wonder if your therapist should have started you out with a shorter sleep window like Martin did with me. The idea is to start out with a less sleep than we’re used to (in my case, 8 hours) so that we’re tired, and then get to the point of sleeping consistently within that amount of time. So for instance, I hope to soon get to the point of sleeping consistently 5.5 to 6 hours within my sleep window of 6 hours. Then when that’s achieved, you increase your window by 15 minutes. Then when you’re sleeping consistently within the new time frame for a week or so, you raise it again and so on until you reach your ideal sleep window.
I’m not surprised that you’re still experiencing a lot of anxiety about sleep. I would too, knowing that I was still having nights of 2-3 hours of sleep on a regular basis. My anxiety has really gone down a lot because I’m starting to see things stabilizing.
I really did not worry about the 2 cups affecting my sleep that night. But it did affect my power nap, which helps me get through the day.
How’d you sleep last night?
I’m doing CBT-I with Martin. Don’t know about the others.
Slept 5.5 hours last night. I’m grateful that I slept all night minus the half hour to fall asleep. But I’m tired again today. Yesterday I was so tired all day and got depressed too. I was tired of being tired. There’s no chance to catch up with sleep with this system either. I’m hoping to be able to increase my sleep window soon since I’m starting to get more consistent. I’m grateful to be getting more consistent. Since the all nighter on Monday, something seems to be beginning to settle down inside of me. The all nighter was triggered by the discouragement of not being able to fall asleep again after 5 good nights in a row of sleeping all night. I think I kept the fear at bay those nights and then when it came back the discouragement hit me hard. But since then I’m finding ways to deal with the fear/anxiety like using mindfulness. So even if I didn’t go to sleep the first time I laid down in bed, I was able to fall asleep after getting up just once.
Last night I was so exhausted and tempted to increase my sleep time until 7:00, just so I could sleep in a little and try to catch up on sleep. Maybe that would have been ok and not done any harm. I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t give in and decided to stick with the program and not jinx things. So I’m tired again today but ok. I did so something yesterday though that I did regret and that was to drink two cups of coffee instead of my usual one cup, because I was so tired. I’m sensitive to caffeine and should have known better. When I tried to take my power nap later I couldn’t fall asleep. That would have refreshed me so much more than another cup of coffee, which just put more toxins in my body. I dragged through the rest of the day.
So I think in these early stages of recovery it’s best to avoid those things we know that might make things worse like drinking too much caffeine, being on the cell phone or computer too long, messing with the sleep window, etc. Down the road when we’re well on the way to recovery I think it won’t be as much a big deal. Yes I miss those days too when I could take my sleep for granted, indulging myself by sleeping in until 8 or 9 on the weekends and knowing that I would have no problem falling asleep that evening.
Sorry you guys had bad nights. Mine wasn’t great, but I did sleep 4 & 1/2 hours, getting up just once around 1:00 when I couldn’t fall asleep at my bedtime of 12. But I am tired again today. Probably will take my power nap later.
Mac, maybe this is a test for you now. You want so badly to sleep on the couch, but you know if you do this you won’t break the negative association between your bed and sleep. I hear you saying you want to give up, but are you really, really sure? I figure the exhaustion in you is speaking right now. Let me ask you something. If you look over the past 11 nights, is there any improvement at all? If you can find even just a little progress, I would hang in there. On the other hand, if you see absolutely no progress at all and you’re sure you can’t continue like this, maybe it’s time to get some help from a professional. You say you live in NY. I would think that there you could find someone who has experience in CBT-I, unlike myself, who lives in a smaller town you probably never even heard of.
I have found that since I started this program, my anxiety has gone way, way down overall. For me the SR has been like an anchor. Also the coaching from Martin and knowing that I have someone to turn to if I get stuck. So I work within the anchor of my sleep window of 12 to 6. I’ve seen that I’m sleeping more regularly using it, so I’m building trust in it. And trust reduces fear and anxiety. Now I’m finally beginning to feel less anxiety about SC as well. Before when I tried SC on my own, my sleep was all over the place. I’d have nights where I couldn’t sleep at all and others where I didn’t fall asleep until 4, 5 or 6 and then would sleep until 9 or 10 (if I didn’t have to work those days.) Also, my sleep was literally all over the place, sometimes sleeping on the couch, in the guest bedroom and maybe, just maybe in bed. Since I started SR my sleep has been stabilizing and I’m only sleeping in my bed.
So my trust has been slowly building one step at a time, first in SR and now in SC. The SC without the SR was a disaster for me as I just mentioned. But it’s working within the SR. Last night again, I only got up once which is another small victory for me. I really did not want to get up, knowing that I wouldn’t be getting my 6 hours of sleep and would be tired again in the morning. Yesterday I felt so good after having over 6 hours of sleep and I wanted that again. But I knew I would have to get up and go with less sleep if I wanted to achieve my overall goal of breaking free of this insomnia.
Mac, if you see any progress at all, please focus on that as Sasha Stephens says. Don’t let this bad night take away all of your hard work and accomplishments of these last 11 days. You’ve made the determination that two years of insomnia is enough. You can do this.
Good for you, Mac, for deciding that two years of this nonsense was enough and so now you’ve committed yourself to the process. Daf, you remind me of something Sasha Stephens said about herself when she talked about one of the main issues of some insomniacs. They think they are “different” and that their particular form of insomnia is “different” so therefore, the methods that other people use won’t work with them. Could this be you?
Daf – I agree with Mac. if I were you I would get up and start practicing the SC as well as the SR. What you’re doing does not seem to be working. You’re still struggling with insomnia. Even though you go through periods where you do better, it keeps coming back. Martin says he’s worked with people who have had insomnia for 30 years and have been cured. My guess is that they have had the kind of insomnia like yours, where it comes and goes, rather than mine which was so intense that I would have committed suicide a long time ago and never made it through 30 years!
Maybe it’s best to stick to your regular schedule until you’re consistently sleeping through it. At least for me, I don’t want to mess with something that’s working.
Well I had the bad night a few nights ago where I was up all night. So because of that then the next night I was feeling anxious when I went to bed. Sure enough, I couldn’t fall asleep. After I got up I managed to calm myself down and when I went to bed I fell right asleep, getting 4 & 1/2 hours of sleep. Yesterday I was tired all day and when I was finished with my work by 5:00, I was exhausted. I know you’re not supposed to take a nap, and especially this late, but I had zero energy to make it through the evening until my bedtime at 12:00. So I took my “power nap” of 20 minutes, was refreshed and had a good evening. By 12:00 I was very tired again and ready for bed. This time I fell asleep right away and woke up at 6:30 instead of 6:00 because I accidentally didn’t set my alarm correctly. This was the best sleep I’ve had for awhile.
My faith in the SR system is growing so now I’m working on my anxiety, so that I can actually sleep as much as possible through my sleep window. Two nights ago when I got up and fell back asleep was a breakthrough for me. In the past, once I realized that I couldn’t sleep and got up out of bed, the anxiety was so high that it was difficult to fall back asleep even though I may try many times. But this time when I got up I managed to calm myself down, so I fell asleep right away when I went back to bed. What helped me was reading some stuff from Sasha Stephen’s book on dealing with fear. She also referenced the Sedona method, which I looked up online and watched a short video on. Yesterday also I talked to Martin about how to deal with fear and this helped.
So last night I decided I would try to meditate before going to sleep, hoping this would calm any fears. I did it between 11:30 and 12:00. Actually, that was not a good time because I kept falling asleep while meditating! Anyway, I plan to start some kind of meditation or mindfulness practice to learn how to calm myself.
