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Starting my SR on Saturday night. I will complete my sleep diary on Friday night and will determine what my sleep window is, although, I strongly suspect from these first four nights that it will be 5.5 hours. I failed miserably the first time for various reasons. Hoping to do better this time around. Good luck to all of you doing SR now (or soon).
No problem Mac. We can do both because the people who are doing SR thread is probably going to fill up fast. I’ll start the second thread.
We should start a new thread as a support group for those of us retrying SR. This thread has a lot of pages and not all of them related to those of us doing sleep restriction.
Hi Deb, I am going for round two of sleep restriction starting this Saturday night. I have to complete my sleep diary Friday night. Like you, ACT totally failed for me.
Hi Matt. I am not a doctor but I wanted to jump in here and assure you that it probably isn’t neurotoxicity or something like that. Especially since you were checked out at the hospital. I can assure you that almost everyone on this board, including myself, has thought that they must have some kind of disease when their insomnia first hit and wouldn’t go away. It sounds more and more like you have a high state of anxiety and you have worked yourself up about your insomnia so that you can’t sleep. You have all of the classic signs. I know because I am going through this myself. That’s why CBT-i, with its sleep restriction and stimulus control can probably help you, especially since you haven’t had your insomnia long. (I have had mine about 7 or 8 months now.) I also wanted to mention that you say you have vivid dreams. That can definitely be from the meds they are giving you.
I do have a question for you. You say that you are getting physical symptoms from the insomnia. Can I ask you what some of them are? I myself, besides the exhaustion, have the brain fog, dry eyes, dizzyness, tremors, weak in the legs and in the last couple of weeks, vertigo. (I have had CT scans and other tests and they have all come back negative.) That is why I am going to try doing the Sleep Restriction again in the free insomnia course Martin has here on the site. It is getting really tough to do my job and so I need to do this. I suggest you check out the free insomnia course yourself as I think the principals in it would help you immensely. Good luck to you.
Steve
Okay Martin. I can accept that answer. Especially for two reasons. I have been redoing my sleep diaries again in anticipation of re-starting SR this Saturday night. I wanted to get a fresh set of diaries to see where I’m at so I can set a proper window. (It’s looking definitely like 5.5 hours.) The first thing I found is that I am probably not really getting an average of 5 hours of sleep a night. While I do get 5’s and an occasional 6, I am also still getting a lot of 2’s and 3’s. I was too optimistic in what I was getting. So if I did get a solid 5 almost every night, that may suit me just fine. The second reason is that even when I get 5 or 6 hours of sleep, it is very, very fragmented sleep. I get an hour here, maybe two there and so on throughout the night. Sometimes I wake up once every hour like clockwork. If I was getting the 5 or 6 in one straight chunk, again, that might suit me just fine. I am much more prepared to start the SR Saturday night this time as I know what to expect.
Good luck Mac. I start with my sleep restriction again Saturday night. I want to update my sleep diary first.
I will go to bed at my regular time. I am trying to get an accurate measurement of my sleep again so I can try sleep restriction again.
Nao & Padron – So are you saying that the course isn’t helping you any? How far along in the program are both of you? Thanks.
I have had insomnia since October of last year. They say I had a couple traumatic experiences that triggered it and while those triggers have gone away, I then started, and still do, stress about the insomnia. I’m glad I found this site because I thought then that I had some horrible illness as well. Now I know that others have the same problem. Last night was a bad sleep night for me. I worked around the yard a lot yesterday so I was exhausted but when it came time to sleep, I couldn’t do it. I only got two hours sleep last night. So, I got up a little early and sat in a chair for awhile and actually nodded off once. That should tell me that I am anxious about the bed and why I can’t sleep. Insomnia has really affected my life. I am so exhausted and my legs are so weak. Lately though, the biggest problem has been my eyes as I can’t focus them. I read awhile back that your eye muscles are one of the first muscles to be affected as you can’t control them due to lack of sleep and therefore you can’t move them to focus in on things. That’s what is happening to me. May have to get new glasses to compensate. Good luck with the course. It is relatively easy until you get to the sleep restriction stage. Feel free to come back here for support.
Hi Alva. I am a lot like you. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the ER but it turned out they said it was only stress. Then they put me on all sorts of anti-depressants which either made me real nervous, didn’t work, or only worked a couple of nights and then quit. Mirtazapine was one of them. It worked for 4 nights and then stopped. The doctor wanted me to up the dosage but when I did, I was a walking zombie.
I also feel very fatigued during the day but no matter what, I can’t nap. I lost that ability when the insomnia started. Now I get anywhere from 4 to 6 hours of sleep but it is usually very fragmented. I am taking Martin’s free sleep course here and if you don’t want to try the paid course, you might want to consider the free course. It is very good and I recommend it. My problem is it is hard to stay on the sleep restriction without a coach so I am thinking of paying for the course. I just have to come up with the money.
Hi Nao. I think it’s the fragmented sleep that is killing me. I get 5 to 5.5 hours many times but not in one shot. It’s split up. And what is really odd, the more sleep I get, sometimes the worse I feel the next day. As an example, If I get 6 or more hours, I sometimes get vertigo attacks the next day. But if I get no more than 5, I usually don’t get the attacks. I’ve gotten to the point with my insomnia that it is affecting my eyes and I can’t focus them anymore. I’ve read where the eye muscles are affected by insomnia and it is hard to control them, causing the inability to focus. Hope I can get more sleep soon. Good luck to you with your final weeks in the program.
Karen – Can you tell us how much sleep you were getting before you started Martin’s course? In Nao’s threadline, you state that after 8 weeks, you still have a 6.5 sleep window. Are you feeling refreshed after your 6 hour on average sleep? Thank you.
I should probably also say that the weak legs and tremors in arms and hands could also be because even thought I got 7 hours sleep, 1 hour in one stretch and 6 in another, it was still not my normal sleeping time. I remember that I usually needed 8 hours in order to feel refreshed. So it was still a shortened night of sleep.
