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Hey Lynnbet,
I’m so happy to hear my story was able to help you! The fact you’ve been sleeping 6 hours for five months is incredible 👏🏻
I will say that I no longer focus or give thought to sleep hours or quality. Time slept doesn’t always equate to sleep quality and I’ve found that not worrying about those things really help. For instance, I probably get around 6-8 hours of sleep but I don’t care or track it whatsoever. I just go to sleep whenever i start to pass out watching tv then I go lay down. I always wake up at the same time no matter what.You said “ I am suddenly finding it a little hard to accept the difficult thoughts”. The thing is you don’t have to accept them! When I have an intrusive thought, I just clear it out. I don’t accept it or even acknowledge it. I definitely don’t battle it .
I had another ah-ha moment that may help you. My wife almost couldn’t sleep. I think that all the talk of my insomnia scared her. She started to get anxiety and when she laid down to sleep that night she couldn’t! She came in scared to death. I told her don’t worry it’s ok! It’s literally just a bad thought keeping you awake nothing more lol. When I said that out loud it kinda sounded so funny. Like months of no sleep and I’m letting something as simple as thoughts control me enough to stop me from sleeping 😂. That night she laid back down and went to sleep. Seeing her in my same predicament but being able to clear the thoughts and go to sleep after being scared to death gave me an incredible boost of confidence!
I still get negative thoughts before bed. Sometimes they are stronger or worse than other nights depending on how tired I am. The majority of times I just clear it out and think of something else other times I’ll even laugh at the thoughts. I laugh because I find it funny that I let an untrue intrusive thought create enough of a reaction to prevent me from sleeping for months.
When you go to lay down and you have a negative thought. Clear it out! Remember that it is just a thought nothing more. Don’t let thoughts control your emotions! Easier said than done of course but with practice you’ll find that you’ll be able to clear everything out. Bad, good, everything. Literally thinking of nothing before bed helps me fall asleep within minutes.
I hope this helps!! Let me know if you have more questions.
Sleep tight,
Mr.SandmanAlso wanted to add.
Alternatively,If blocking thoughts out is too difficult, you could also try just accepting them and let them pass. See what works best for you. Don’t ever think past the initial thought. Never add to the thought. Never challenge a thought.
For example, you lay down and the intrusive thought is “you’re not going to sleep tonight and tomorrow is going to be horrible”
At that point, you accept that it’s just a thought and let it pass. No other thought given to it. You understand that it’s a thought but that’s the extent. Soon enough you’ll probably get the point were you can laugh at intrusive thoughts because you realize thoughts don’t control you. You are in control of how you respond
Hey Lynnbet
I’m not sure why my message didn’t go through. Anyways, congrats on your success so far!! Staying consistent with cbti techniques definitely helps retrain the mind but just like anything it takes time. As for intrusive thoughts, you asked how I observe, acknowledge and accept them. I don’t! Haha . Here’s the way I like to think of it, pretend a salesman comes to your door while you’re sitting on the couch watching tv. You have 3 choices, You can either 1 open the door and acknowledge him or 2 open the door and argue with him on why you don’t need what he is selling. Or the third and best option, don’t open the door, don’t acknowledge him and keep watching your show. When I lay down and have an intrusive thought I just let it pass by and clear it out. I don’t acknowledge it. I think of it as a rain cloud just passing by. It’s because I know now that intrusive thoughts only affect my emotions if I let them.
Thoughts are thoughts, nothing more. Thoughts don’t control you but how you react to thoughts determines the outcome. Learn to not react to intrusive thoughts by blocking them. Practice meditating with your eyes closed for 5-10 mins at a time. Try to block out all sounds, thoughts etc. If a thought comes in try to either let it pass or accept it as just a thought and nothing more then clear your mind.
Hope this helps!!
Yes, I did experience hypnic jerks along with variety of extremely weird symptoms. Some so strange even the doctors didn’t have answers to what they were. As for the hypnic jerks, my legs and arms would move by themselves or my shoulders. Sometimes my head would twitch. Super weird feeling almost like some type of scary movie. I looked into it during that time and it seemed to be fairly common so I tried my best to think of it as just a small side effect of the sleep deprivation. Luckily for me , I only experienced the jerks for about a week or so. You just have to let them happen. If it wake ups you up then just relax and go back to sleep. Hypic jerks can be a scary feeling but they won’t hurt you 🙂
Hey Kylie,
Going to bed at the same time isn’t necessary. Only go to bed when you are extremely sleepy. For me it ranges, sometimes I fall asleep at 8pm other times midnight. I don’t care either way, I just look for my sleepy cues.
Being relaxed definitely helps you fall asleep but only if you’re are actually sleepy. I could be completely relaxed and probably still not fall asleep unless my body was ready to sleep. You just need to wait until your sleep drive is strong enough to actually fall asleep. As for quitting your job and moving back to your parents, I personally don’t think that’s a good idea. Changing your life around to revolve around your sleep issues just gives more power to the sleep bully and adds to the anxiety/fear.One thing that helped me a lot in the beginning was having a plan. For example, when I laid down to sleep I would already have it in my head that if for whatever reason I woke up early or couldn’t fall asleep after awhile I’d get up and play my steam deck (video game) or watch a certain movie. Most times just having that plan in place helped me fall and stay asleep because I wasn’t nervous or anxious about what would happen, I already knew what I was going to do. I tried not to see the night as scary but just a time I could do something I enjoyed that was already planned.
I can only give you my best advice from my experiences but the choices are up to you. I suggest trusting in your own ability to sleep and have confidence in your body. Let me ask you something, prior to experiencing sleep problems did you ever worry about sleep? Or meds, supplements, time etc? Most likely the answer is no. You just slept because it didn’t matter. You are the same person now as you were then. You can sleep!
Hey Lynnbet,
I replied to you but it’s says it’s awaiting moderator approval? I’ll wait a few and see if it shows up.Hey Kylie,
I highly suggest starting Cbti asap. Even if you just implement a couple things for the time being it will definitely help. Like getting out of bed at the same time every morning regardless if you’ve slept well or not. Also going outside in the morning and get 15-30 of sunset. As far as sleep deprivation goes, it was beyond difficult for me mentally and physically. I took lots of warm baths since I constantly was in pain.I also played games on my phone and that caught my attention enough to take my mind off how horrible I felt. You just have to stay strong and know that even if you don’t sleep, everything is going to be ok. Have confidence in knowing the longer you go without sleep the stronger your sleep drive becomes. I suggest tonight trying to go to bed later. Wait until you can’t hold your eyes open any longer. You’ll find that it’s much harder to have anxiety or intrusive thoughts when you’re barely able to keep yourself awake.Hey Kylie,
I actually didn’t find out about Martin’s program or this forum until I had been doing Cbti for an about 3 months. I did zoom calls with someone local who taught me the basic principles of Cbti . As for starting Cbti, my sleep seemed to improve slowly after the first month of being consistent. Instead of 0-3 i started getting around 2-4 hours. The following month slightly better. There were tons of set backs though where I wouldn’t sleep at all but my overall trend was improving. It took a good 4 months of implementing Cbti to get to 6 hours of sleep.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions!
