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Wonderful to see a post by Marie-C. I have been wondering how you are doing since Week 1. I am moving along, making some progress, and gaining some insights into myself and into my sleep disruption. My 2 values that I chose to focus on this week relate to my progress. Values are: Patience and Self-awareness. I have quite satisfactorily gained a sleep window that gets me a good sleep onset and very little time now out in the living room on the couch with night time wakefulness, like during Week 1. So, now I am feeling impatient to have perfect sleep every night, so I am focusing on patience and time to retrain and re-process what I am learning. And I am learning self-awareness that it’s a process of getting back sleep rhythm and returning to less disruptions and this takes patience and awareness, regarding how my day contributes.
I found it helpful to follow a structured format like NOW to pause myself and listen to what thoughts and feelings I was having. I was also surprised and especially glad to be made aware of my body feelings. The awareness of the feelings in my body, not just my mind, helped me a lot to have a place to focus that pain and pleasure on.
I want to agree with hiker on everything, especially about the thoughts and feelings and the need to practice and develop the skills to deal with that. I think that is the best part of Martin’s course. He gives techniques, the opportunity to practice and personal feedback to you on these skills. Sounds like you have been able to make progress with some of your sleep difficulties, but one should not have to struggle with the distractions of thoughts and feelings all by oneself. I am in Martin’s course and recommend it. One needs to commit to do this with a sleep coach’s help and really get rid of so much struggle. I sympathize with you and the 1.5 hours ‘trying’ to go to sleep. It’s awful. I have been there in agony, wondering what to do.
I feel that the A could also stand for AWARENESS, that fast, fleeting thought that comes to me that I need to then stop in bed, wake up fully, and ACKNOWLEDGE that I am not falling asleep and that I have thoughts on my mind. So, I’d say that step takes me less than a few seconds. It takes longer to get myself wide awake and in the mood to do the AWAKE exercise than to actually have the awareness of what the thought is come to me, I think.
The W and K are both more personal, and about me. WHERE in my body do I feel the thought and then be KIND to myself.
I remember the A’s in AWAKE as ACKNOWLEDGING and ALLOWING, that is, both things about recognizing and being AWAKE to acknowledge, observe, and know what the thought is. Then, to ALLOW it to happen,
Marie-C, thanks for asking! Initially, I couldn’t fall asleep at all. Or not until 4 am. This went from intermittent to frequent so I started doing sleep window, but mostly I discovered that I was doing my physical exercise later and later till it was like 10 pm and then trying to sleep after that. I have done that when younger but I didn’t realize that the exercise was activating my body. Once I stopped that , sleep onset got much better but then I started wakening during the night. So here I am. Unpredictable insomnia nights with me trying everything I hear of, all the rituals.
When I first started having sleep problems really bad about 2 years ago, I, like you, could not fall asleep at the beginning of the night. Sometimes I would finally go to sleep at 4 am after a sleepless night the night before, then I would sleep soundly till 12 noon. Everyone said my problem was because I had recently moved to new place and had stress. No alcohol and no caffeine. I was just wide awake in the evening and at bedtime. I finally figured out that at new place I was exercising in evening and then when I was tired in the morning I was exercising even later, so sometimes I started exercise at 10 pm and then went to bed. I learned that I was activating my cortisol level so I couldn’t sleep. It was similar to like I was drinking caffeine. I stopped late exercise and after 3 nights notified improvement. I was amazed. However, my brain and body seems to not trust me wholly and I am left with sleep problems but doing much better with the initial going to sleep now that I do no exercise 4 hours before bed. I suppose Martin will talk about these things later in the course
Marie-C, I have already identified you as someone whose posts are worth reading, for content and because you say lots of what I’m thinking. I am grateful for your insights into your struggles. Thanks
Larry and Marie -C, I experience the morning stuff too. Often I feel disgust, anger, shame, or guilt type things with myself for not successfully sleeping. That can override the physical or even the mental stuff
And I don’t get out of bed because sometimes I seem to go into the first stage of sleep in bed and am sleeping so lightly that I often think I am awake, but as we learned, I am in light sleep and am enjoying it.
Now, when I go to bed, I talk to myself first and explain about the approximate 90 minute sleep cycles that we learned about in this Week One. Then,I tell myself to expect these awakenings and that it’s part of the sleep cycle and that the body is just entering another Phase One of light sleep so to be confident that I am transitioning and will fall right back to sleep. I have had such good “luck” doing this, that I can even get up and attend the dog at night during these times and I keep telling myself it’s just this transition and reassure myself that I will go right back to sleep and then I do. I am so confident that I am telling you all this. I used to wake up and write down the time of each awakening. I have lists of up to 8 times a night. Now, I try not to pay any attention instead.
I have listening to other You tube and books that tell you never stay in bed or body learns you associate bed with being awake like Pavlov dogs salivating on bell ringing. Now I think of that every night and am afraid to even say my prayers in bed as I am awake then!
Marie-c, fabulous response. I think you are right on especially about the predisposition. I heard Martin on a You Tube interview say there is no chemical or physiology for insomnia. But your anxiety running in families sounds right on, regardless of where it came from.
