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It’s incredible how much alike we all are. I could have written your description word for word about myself, The good nights, the wake-up nights, the “can I fall back asleep THIS time??” nights. But it gets better, and the best part about it getting better is that you care less and less about it, which is definitely how you want to feel. You can’t force yourself not to care (which is what I tried to do in the beginning) But time just brings it on naturally. It’s really gonna be okay!!!!
Packer Fan, you have no idea how happy that makes me! I’m still not there every night either, but, yes, the improvement is such a blessing and makes all the difference. God bless you right back!
I kind of think that’s how it works. I think someone once said it could take about six months before steady, dependable progress sets in. I’m a lot like you in that, I finished the course about six weeks ago and initially did really well, falling asleep easily and waking up with the sun, which is SO sweet (but always with that middle of the night brief wake-up to contend with.) Now, I’m in setback territory again. I haven’t had a no-sleep-at-all night for months, but some nights I have to settle for around four hours of sleep, waking up around three and unable to go back to sleep. The difference is that I don’t panic anymore, though I admit to feeling some resentment after so many weeks of success. The great thing is that the AWAKE exercises still work when I need them to contend with that performance anxiety arousal at the beginning of the night, and in the middle of the night too. I don’t even have to do the whole A-W-A-K-E thing anymore, just an abbreviated version, and it almost always sets me right sooner or later. So there’s hope for sure. It just takes a LONG time to retrain the brain, so don’t get discouraged!
We’re all so much alike, aren’t we! All the same struggles, all the same life lessons we have to learn. But Timh, that’s exactly how it goes. You are SO on the right track! And ironically, once you truly become completely OK with not being in control, everything starts to get better! Who knew?
Yes, it’s that calm, rational talking to yourself that can sometimes make all the difference in diffusing an onrush of hyper-arousal. Those are almost identically the same words I use to relax myself!
I admire your spirit of experimentation, of doing what’s right for you. I recognize a lot of the anxiety, especially when one night doesn’t look like the the one that went before, as well as the “time slips” that used to take me regularly by surprise… actually sleeping when I could have sworn I was wide awake. I hope the sleep window helps you, and I really wish you luck!
I found that the sleep restriction, ie, setting up a sleep window and sticking to it come what may, was really, really helpful. First of all, you feel like you have a “plan”, which makes you feel a little more in control. And then, getting up at the same time every day, no matter how the night went, really helps with building up sleep pressure. I actually didn’t find it hard at all, especially since it started to improve my sleep within the first week. As for stimulus control, I tried that in the past and had an awful time with it…I’m assuming you mean the thing where you get up after fifteen minutes in bed if you can’t sleep. I found that really stress-inducing, and it never worked for me, just made me furious! Staying in bed no matter what suited me better, even during all-nighters, painful as they were. For me, the combination of the six-hour sleep window and the ACT exercises worked the best. I haven’t pulled an all-nighter in several months!
My sleep is erratic once in a while, instead of being totally missing in action like it was before the course. Like BorgC, the course has taught me to accept whatever comes. When life throws a few curveballs, then my sleep might get a little patchy, but never for more than, say, one night a week. Most of the time I’m fine, with six hours on average, and sometimes, on miracle nights, seven. (Always with an intermission in the middle, but I manage to fall back asleep quickly.) This is SO much better than before the course, when every night was a battle to the death just to squeeze out two crummy hours of micro sleep. There is hope!! It gets better!!
Absolutely! I just got back from a short holiday too, where everything went haywire because I wasn’t in my own bed with my own cozy routines. But I didn’t get too excited about it, just pushed through and tried to relax, and now I’m back home and back on track. Sleep is always going to be a little bit unpredictable, I think, if you’re “insomnia-prone” or tend to be overly anxious in general. Just accepting it, though, is 90% of the battle. It really, really does get better!!
Packer Fan, I’m so happy to hear how well you’re doing! It’s amazing, isn’t it, how a situation that seems so hopeless can suddenly begin to fill with light as hope returns. As someone who once thought I would NEVER be cured of raging insomnia and who has come out the other side at last (not 100%, but close!) it pleases me no end to hear about other people’s success. Keep going!!
Yes, Kevin, I agree! That’s right on the money. Bad nights help to put everything in perspective.
Hi Masharay,
I have indeed had a few setbacks since going through some really good patches, though nothing as dramatic as the stuff described above. It almost seems that after you’ve been doing well for awhile, the tiniest little glitch somehow seems worse than it would have before because you’ve begun to feel confident and expect everything to go well night after night. So when a bad patch crops up again—for me it happened because I was traveling, sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, etc—it feels scarier than it would have before because you start thinking: Am I going to lose everything I’ve gained? So soon?? But the good news is, it’s not too hard to get back on track. Just go back to the basics, the AWAKE exercises, etc, and remind yourself of how well you’ve been doing and that your body knows perfectly well how to sleep without you struggling to help it. Your good nights have proved it! I bet you’ll be back on track before you know it.I will! I also found that turning the clocks around helped me tremendously. It seems like such a little thing, but it really helps to lighten the anxiety load.
Playing around with the AWAKE exercise is really good advice…I also started out doing it really rigidly, letter by letter, but in time I found I was able to reduce it to a brief, formal welcome and recognition of the anxious thoughts and then immediately proceeding to imagine those thoughts as drifting clouds that have no real power over the sky (me.) That one image really clicked for me, and now, all I have to do is imagine the random grey clouds and I already feel calmer. If you can find that one visual image that works, it becomes so much easier. And when I’m doing the NOW exercise during the day, I’ve reduced it to noticing when my thoughts and feelings are spiraling and simply telling myself to “Come back to here, come back to now.” Sometimes the effect only lasts for twenty seconds, but since it’s so easy to do, it’s easy to keep repeating.
Yes, Packer Fan, you sound exactly like me. Especially during my previous attempts at finding a “cure” before I finally decided to take this course. I tried to follow various books for months and months, and my experience was just like yours, especially the part about falling asleep before the window begins and then snapping wide awake as soon as it started, with immediate panic setting in. I understand that’s really common! I used to listen to podcasts too and fall asleep in the middle and then wake up at the end, still miserable. One and a half to two hours of sleep a night…a really great night was three hours! But it got better, it really did. It took time and lots of AWAKE practice and self-kindness and surrender to wakefulness. I thought I was incurable, a special disaster case, and in the beginning I saw no light at the end of the tunnel at all. But there is light, even if it’s faint at first. It will get brighter! I truly wish you every success in this very difficult (let’s not forget that) process!
