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The one I use I got from Martin. It’s a chart of a whole week and includes spaces for how many hours I slept, rating my sleep from 1- 5, rating my day from 1 – 5, what time I went to bed, when I got up, etc. So you can look at a whole week with a glance and see progress quickly, especially when you look across at the numbers.
Mac – I do hope you do some kind of a sleep diary. Then you’ll be able to track your progress.
Taylor – yes I’ve had sleep like that. I swear that I’ve been awake all night but husband said I was sleeping and snoring.
Taylor – only practice the mindfulness for a few minutes until your mind calms down. Then do nothing. If it’s taking you a long time to calm down, then you probably need to practice mindfulness more in the day time to get the hang of it so then it’s easier to get into that calm state at night.
Hi Taylor – welcome to the forum. That’s wonderful that you found Dr. Guy’s book and you are making so much progress! It might help you to practice mindfulness when you see that you’re catching yourself falling asleep and getting anxious, which then wakes you up. Mindfulness will bring you back into the moment and help you relax and then accept. Also try the “Welcoming” technique from Dr. Guy’s book and use humor if possible. When I got anxious I had the sensation of squeezing in the left side of my stomach. I named that sensation Mr. Worry Wort when this would happen. Mr. Worry Wort was a red, round, furry guy with his face all scrunched up from worry. When I thought of my anxiety in this way, then I felt sorry for Mr. Worry Wort and he would fade away. About the light sleep, don’t worry about it. It’s a natural part of healing and it will go away the more you can accept your sleep and just keep going. At least this is what my experience has been. When I would worry about the light sleep or in and out type of sleep, then it hung around more. But if I didn’t worry then my sleep got better over time.
Mac – thanks for your honesty. We all do seem to have our habits and attitudes that get in the way and this seems to be yours – to slack off too soon. I actually hope that this realization gives you hope, because now you can see that you can do something about it. And yes, the goal absolutely is to no longer have the awakenings. But as long as you are, keep doing ACT. Not too long ago you mentioned that you were going through a period where you were no longer waking but having light sleep. I thought this was a very good sign of progress. I went from little sleep, to a lot of light sleep (and waking up tired even after 8 or 9 hours of sleep) to eventually good sleep. So I think you will see progress if you stick to it and also look for the progress.
Steve – I’m talking about writing it down the next day after you’re already up. It sounds like you also need a reboot of hope.
Also, Dr. Kat will give you things to do to help with your specific type of insomnia which is different than mine because she has experience working with people with sleep maintenance insomnia.
Mac – I really don’t think you’re going to sleep early is causing your troubles. But if it will ease your worries to try it, then move your bed time to later and see if it makes a difference.
The purpose of the sleep diary is to see the relationship between your thoughts and feelings and your sleep. Also, to see if you’re consistently practicing AC and if you are, if there are any small improvements that you can track.
Although you say for the most part you’re relaxed when you wake up, underneath the surface you’re losing hope. This is keeping you from recovering. I remember talking to Dr. Kat and saying how I was relaxed all night but still could not fall asleep. But together we realized that beneath the surface there was tension and fear that ACT wasn’t going to work this time. So this was keeping me awake and from getting any better.
The reason I keep encouraging you to talk to Dr. Kat is to give you hope that people like you, with your particular type of sleep maintenance insomnia, with all of your experiences and struggles with insomnia, have gotten better and healed. I’m sure she’s worked with lots of people and has seen everything, including people like you, and will have faith that you can heal. You need hope now, and I think that even just a sliver of hope is worth it.
Mac – why don’t you talk to Dr. Kat? I’m sure she’s worked with people like you who have the sleep maintenance issue. You need something to give you hope. It seems that when you first started ACT you were having some good nights. Part of that I’m sure was due to having hope in trying something new. That always seem to help with insomnia. That’s another reason I’m so convinced that insomnia, or at least our kind of chronic insomnia, is psychological. Anyway, after awhile it seemed that ACT wasn’t working so well for you. But if I remember correctly, you weren’t putting your focus on practicing ACT specifically when you wake up. That’s where your problem is and not when you go to bed. Finally you started focusing on that, but that was way less than 3 months ago. This is where your focus should have been from the very beginning – 3 months ago. Anyway, again you didn’t see the results you were hoping for so you started getting discouraged. Now I believe that your whole nervous system is stirred up because you’re losing hope, thus you’re having lots of bad nights because of it. But you’re sleeping well on the weekends because you BELIEVE you can. Again, this is psychological.
Here’s a suggestion if you don’t want to talk to Dr. Kat: Start keeping a sleep diary again. Record specifically what happens when you wake up – things like any anxious thoughts, whether you were able to let them go or not, whether you were able to accept and relax or not, if you then slept at all and what kind of sleep it was – light sleep, good sleep, whatever. Just record everything you remember about the night. Also record how you felt during the day and how your attitude was concerning your insomnia. Record anything else significant related to your insomnia.
I believe that if you do this every day and practice ACT consistently every night, you will start to see some improvement, even if small. I know that you tend to be impatient and want quick results. SRT was able to give you quick results, but you know that it took you a long time to get to the point of disciplining yourself to practice it consistently – maybe 2 years or more? ACT will give you results as well if practiced consistently, although the change may not be as dramatic as with SRT. But if you keep a record, you will see it and you will see a relationship between your thoughts, feelings, actions and your sleep. For myself, I kept a diary of my practice of ACT but only needed to do it for 2 weeks because I was cured then. Maybe my practice of ACT and then my healing was more concentrated into 2 weeks because of having sleep onset problems where I would have to practice ACT the entire night. But yours is just a couple hours at night, not all night. So maybe the length of time in terms of days needed to heal, will be longer.
I actually started keeping a sleep diary about a week after my relapse started because I began to wonder if I was doing things that were contributing to my insomnia. Sure enough, I was, and I could recognize patterns. I would try ACT for a night or two, then struggle and worry that ACT wasn’t going to work this time, then give up, then take a pill until finally I would get around to trying ACT again. But I was going around in circles and my mental blocks were getting in the way of sticking with ACT consistently. Finally after about 2 months and after talking to Dr. Kat, I was able to get past the mental blocks and practice ACT diligently. It only took 2 weeks then, after I got off the merry-go-round of being on and off with ACT. I believe that if you start keeping a sleep diary you may start to recognize some of these on and off patterns in yourself as well which are keeping you from making gradual, consistent progress.
You may want to check out another, little known therapy called ACT. I tried it and it worked for me. Read The Sleep Book by Dr. Guy Meadows who developed it. It’s based on learning to relax in bed so that you naturally fall asleep.
Hi Mac – Well, first of all the relapse was rough because of my own mental blocks about getting back on the program. Once I got past the blocks with the help of Dr. Kat, I just did what I did before back in July. I went to bed accepting the fact that I might sleep or I might be awake most the night. Then I relaxed and let my mind wander. When I woke up tired the next morning I would just tell myself that I’m not too bad and that I’ll get through the day fine (assuming I wasn’t a zombie, which I never was fortunately). Then repeat the next night.
The first night I was awake most of the night but managed to catch a few hours of sleep in the early morning. The 2nd and 3rd nights I fell asleep after a few hours. The next few nights I was awake from 1/2 to 2 hours. It kept getting gradually better and better. I was in bed long hours until maybe 8:30 but still waking up tired. But within a week or so my sleep had deepened and I was falling asleep within 20 minutes and waking around 7-7:30 which is my normal time, fully refreshed. I was back to normal.
Hi Steve – I’m glad you’re going to be taking meditation classes. Hopefully, this will help calm down some of your anxiety. I actually asked Dr. Kat about people like you, who have a lot of anxiety and seem to be taking longer to recover than it took me. I was wondering if there was anything that could help you. She said that the sleep anxiety gets mixed up with the other anxieties, making things more complicated. She said that folks like you really need help with your other anxiety as well and should consider going to a therapist for this. For myself, my only anxiety was the sleep anxiety. My life is relatively anxiety-free these days, fortunately. It wasn’t always this way, but thank goodness it is now. So it was easier just to cure my sleep anxiety.
Mac – Yes please give yourself a break and be easy on yourself. There’s nothing wrong with taking something occasionally. Much better than to get down about it which could possibly contribute to more negative thoughts about sleep.
How are you ladies doing – Gdsmom, Lori, Karen, Pam, others?
How are you guys doing – Mac, Delv, Steve?
Delv – I noticed in one of your posts that you said that the bad nights are tough and your arousal is high. This makes me think that you are still struggling with your sleep and not accepting whatever happens in the night. This is a great opportunity for you to learn how to practice ACT correctly and gets results, instead of having to wait until the next string of good nights comes around. When I finally understood how to practice it correctly, just laying in bed doing nothing but resting, then I recovered in less than two weeks. It was not easy at first, and the first night I was awake most of the night. But the next night I was awake fewer hours, so this gave me hope. You might be surprised by how quickly it works when you do it correctly and diligently.
