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Burn – One question for you. When you are lying there, do you notice that you may be trying to force your eyes to stay closed? That’s one of the things I noticed I was doing and had to stop. I was lying there forcing my eyes to be shut tight. I should have been lying there with my eyelid muscles in the closed position but relaxed. Once I did that, I found it easier to go to sleep because I wasn’t forcing myself into a sleep position.
Sorry to hear of your relapse Delv. I have a question for you. When you say you were in bed between 11pm – 12:00am and up at 7:00am, was that all or mostly sleep? I agree about the less power insomnia has if you let it in. I am at the stage right now where I just don’t care about the insomnia anymore. If I sleep, I sleep. If I don’t, it’s rough but I know I will survive the next day. I try to do what I would normally do such as going to the gym and out with friends although it still has an effect on what I can do. Having said that though, I do still think about my insomnia more than I should. I try to meditate but it’s difficult to not think about it. That’s probably what’s holding me back some. Hope you get back to a normal sleep soon.
Deb – We haven’t heard from you in awhile. How are you doing?
Hi Mac. I get what you are saying but I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree. There is a reason the Meadows book tells you to not practice strict SRT with ACT. Also, Dr. Kat from his sleep school told someone on here that SRT isn’t really compatible with ACT because it can cause anxiety in the person. The reason I believe SRT is not compatible with ACT is that ACT doesn’t want you to spend less time in bed. I’m not saying it wants you to spend more time in bed than what you would normally need for sleep, but it doesn’t want you to do a drastic SRT reduction. It wants you to get to know your insomnia and practice the tools when you can’t sleep. Night time is the best time to practice them since that is when the demons affect you the most. In addition, staying in bed allows you to get rest and relaxation, and therefore conserve energy, for the next day. If a person reduced their SW by two hours to practice SRT, then that’s two hours less in bed the person has to practice the tools and get to know their insomnia. It’s also two hours less time the person has to conserve their energy since it means they are up and doing activities in order to make it to their bed time sleep window. As for SRT only taking a week to work, that’s not always true. It took me longer, about two weeks for it to work. And then after working for about three weeks, I started to regress until I was only getting 2 to 3 hours of sleep a night. Even when it did work at it’s best, I was only getting about 5 hours of sleep. Clearly SRT wasn’t working for me. And it obviously wasn’t working for others since if it was, this ACT thread wouldn’t exist. Mostly now, I get anywhere from 6 to 7.5 hours of sleep using ACT (mostly about 6.5) so I am far better off doing ACT than I am combining it with SRT.
Hi JT. You obviously have anxiety and that doesn’t work to well with SRT as restricting your sleep window a lot of times only fuels that anxiety. I’m curious why you are doing SRT. You read Guy Meadows book and it only advocates a very small SRT, if at all. One of the people on here, it might have been Burn, even talked to one of the Sleep Doctors at Guy Meadows school and she said that ACT and a strict SRT really don’t mix. There is a reason under ACT that you don’t get out of bed when you can’t sleep. If you really want to mix both, than you have to find a way to get your anxiety level down If SRT is going to work for you, just remember it won’t happen overnight. It could take weeks so don’t worry if you are still just getting 4 to 5 hours after a couple weeks, maybe even a couple months.
By the way, I took martial arts as well. I have a brown belt and hope to go back to it soon.
Nice video Jamie. (Do you like to go by Jamie or JT? Do you really play rugby?) Just remember both ACT and CBT-i take time and there is a “honeymoon” period when it starts to work and then a lot of us regress. Then it picks back up again. Wishing you the best.
I’d like to give an update on my progress. Friday and Saturday nights were relatively good ones for me as I got about 6.5 hours both nights. Friday doesn’t surprise me because I was extremely tired all day. Sunday night was really good as I got 7+ hours of sleep. One night obviously didn’t cure me of all my symptoms but some of the eye problems I have been having did go away. They eventually came back later in the late afternoon as I tired but it was nice to know that some of them are caused by lack of sleep. Last night I regressed a little and I had 6+ hours of sleep but it was very fragmented. I had Monday and today off so I didn’t have to stress about the alarm. I’ll see what happens tonight when I have to get up for work tomorrow.
I didn’t know if I should say anything because I don’t know if she wants it to be known but I decided to mention it because I’m sure she can use your support. Please keep Featherly in your prayers as she is in the evacuation area for those wildfires out in California. So far, her house is still standing and I hope she can go back to it soon.
Deb – Really glad to hear you are back on track again!
gsdmom – Thanks for the encouragement! I’m really not sure if they can tell me anything new. At the most, maybe it will just relieve some of my anxiety. I just hope she doesn’t just try to pass off my symptoms as being due to insomnia and then try to put me on meds. I am NOT going the meds route again. They did more harm for me than good. I just have to stay calm for the three more weeks until the appointment. Sorry to hear about your daughter. I hope the meds help her with the seizures.
Deb – Glad to hear you fell back to sleep again. Hopefully you will continue to do so and forget about all of the “props”. I have started practicing the tools again and trying to forget I have the appointment with the neurologist. The last two nights I was on the verge of falling asleep after only sleeping about 2.5 hours but I just couldn’t get over the hump. A lot of times, I will be half awake and for the life of me, I can’t remember who and what I was supposed to welcome. I probably should get out of bed myself for ten minutes or so and go pet the cats but the bed is just so comfortable. lol.
How is everyone doing? gsdmom? Deb? JT? Everyone else? I have run into some problems as I have had two straight nights of about 2.5 hours of sleep. Thankfully though, I can still function after having those two nights. Not sure what the problem is but I have to keep on track with doing the mindfulness. To be honest, setting up the appointment with the neurologist has probably affected me as I keep thinking about what she will say and that’s when the negative thoughts start hitting me. I am not using the tools to get rid of those thoughts either.I am just sitting there thinking those thoughts. One other thing I noticed. Whenever I use a new method that should help me get more sleep, it only works for awhile and then it seems my body adjusts and I start getting poor sleep again. As an example, I got the CPAP machine and started sleeping very well for about a week and then started regressing. I switched CPAP masks for a better fit and I started sleeping very good again. Then a week later, which was two nights ago, I start regressing again. It seems my body just seems to compensate after awhile to everything I do. I might not get better sleep until after I hear what the neurologist says and I can unwind from these thoughts again.
I have to disagree with you Mac. I was doing SRT for three months and after the second month, I started to get worse sleep. I would go to sleep for 3 hours and then have to get up to do SC. By the end of that third month, I was never feeling sleepy enough to get back into bed, Plus, I wasn’t even sleeping that three initial hours anymore. I was spending most of the SRT in the living room until my alarm would ring to get me up for the day. That’s why a lot of us switched over to ACT because SRT wasn’t working.
If you are interested in learning more about ACT, I suggest you get The Sleep Book by Dr. Dan Meadows. It is relatively inexpensive and a quick read. Dr. Meadows is the one who came up with this system. If you have any specific questions, go to the thread ACT for Insomnia here in the forum. We will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Suren – Yes, I do think my sleep is better with the CPAP. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about 5 or 6 years ago before I got insomnia. Last year, I got an oral appliance to treat it. Things were going well but about 4 or 5 months later, I got insomnia. This year I noticed the oral appliance wasn’t working as well in stopping me from gasping for breath so I got the CPAP. I think mostly it works. It doesn’t treat the insomnia any but what it does do I think is stopping the wake-ups due to gasping for breath. Once I stopped that, the only thing that wakes me up is the insomnia.
I think overall I am getting better but this certainly isn’t linear. I have my ups and downs and if you have been reading my posts, I am going to a neurologist soon to try to rule out any neurological issues. Where I live, near Syracuse, New York, we are getting very cold at night as we go into Fall so I put the fan away for the season. So a lot of times, i am either too cold or too warm depending on the weather outside. It’s funny though that when I do get a good night’s sleep, I never notice how cold or warm I am. I just sleep straight through until I have the early wake-up. Only then do I start noticing how hot or cold I am. Good luck with your sleep. Just keep using the tools and things will get better for you.
Deb – No, you aren’t a discouragement at all. I think we all realize that relapses happen and you are correct. As the book says, they will happen but will happen less and less. It just depends on how we react to them as to whether they become major relapses or not. Keep singing! That will help you stay in a good mood.
gsdmom – Thanks for the words of encouragement. I wish I could get into the neurologist sooner but I’ll just have to wait for 4 weeks I guess. Nothing else I can do. I hope I can get back to that sleep state soon as I had no problem getting back to sleep after I woke up during most of the night. Last night seemed to be an aberration. I hope it was. And I hope you start sleeping better as well. Just remember to keep meditating.
Last night was a rough night as I regressed some and only slept for about 5 hours. Maybe even less. As a result, I am really tired today. I miss those 6 to 7 hour sleeps. I still wake up about an hour to an hour and a half after I first go to sleep at night. I am thinking of taking a melatonin about 15 minutes before I go to bed to see if that helps me stay asleep in those early hours. I hate to go back on meds again. I stopped taking the Passion Flower after a couple doses as it was overpowering for me and putting me to sleep in the morning at work. Yesterday I didn’t have the chance to do much meditating. I hope to get back to it today. Hopefully the gym as well. I think I also have a new unwelcome thought I have to welcome and that is the thought I have to get up to go to work the next day. It usually doesn’t pother me in the very early hours when I wake up because getting up is actually a long way off, but as I get closer to the time that I have to get up, I have trouble putting it out of my mind. I have to start welcoming that thought. Not trying to go into this too deeply as I don’t want to over-analyze. How is everyone else doing?
Sorry to hear you’re having a rough time Deb. But as you say, at least it isn’t as bad as before. I wouldn’t worry about taking the one Ambien. Remember that “normal” sleepers take a sleeping pill every now and then as well. And don’t “force yourself” to get back on track as that is like forcing yourself to go to sleep. It can’t be done. Just keep trying to use the tools.
I am having a semi-rough go of it here. I am back to getting between 6 and 7 hours of sleep and last night was more towards 7. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it seems the more sleep I get, the more dizzyness, brain fog and eye focusing trouble I get as well. it’s almost like the more insomnia I get, the more it masks those systems and when I get more sleep, those symptoms are more exposed. I have an appointment with a neurologist on November 13 (I know, a month from now but it’s the best my doctor could do) and I’ll see what she says about it. There is one other encouraging sign though. While I am getting more sleep, I also got really tired yesterday and actually had a small nap. That’s amazing because I haven’t been able to take a nap since this insomnia started. So, I am hoping that I’ll continue to get more sleep which will erase the insomnia symptoms and get me back to being normal.
How is everybody else doing out there?
