[Stirling]

delv-x,

Good catch on my use of “sleep struggle”, which is how I often describe what I’m going through with insomnia, i.e. “I’ve been struggling with my sleep.” Although I understand that, in practice, struggling with sleep only perpetuates the problem, I hadn’t realized that I’ve continued to refer to my experience as a struggle — I’m sending my brain mixed messages!

[Stirling]

Hi all,

I stumbled upon this thread today, and have to say thank you to all the contributing members for creating a wonderful resource. I’m hopeful reading about the success stories and also seeing the full context of the ups-and-downs as we take our own journeys to recover from chronic insomnia.

I’ve been aware of ACT for a few months, and had purchased The Sleep School app back in early July. I also ordered Dr. Guy’s The Sleep Book a couple of weeks ago and have read it a few times. I actually like the book more than the app as I find I can now navigate through the sections quickly.

I’ve been practicing ACT techniques at different times over the last 3 1/2 months of my current stretch of insomnia that started in the 3rd week of May. Early on, one of the biggest benefits I found was simply finding I was more “rested” in the morning, even if I’d had an empirically poor night of sleep. Dr. Daniel of The Sleep Coach School had a video where he mentioned that we sometimes wake up with the scars from having battled our *fear* of a Grizzly Bear that doesn’t really exist, and this resonated with me. On nights when I have lost my composure and struggled with wakefulness, I wake up with a tired head that has exhausted itself playing tug-of-war with sleeplessness.

I’m still catching up on the 108! pages of messages, but wanted to mention a really positive “accept” experience I had last night…

I went to bed at 10pm and awoke at 1:30am to the sound of loud music from my backyard neighbour’s yard. My sleep struggle is with early morning wake ups and being unable to return to sleep. My mind instantly thought, “Oh boy, I could be quite annoyed by this and end up having one of those nights.”, but I didn’t feel that immediate surge of adrenaline that I commonly experience upon waking up. Instead, I closed my bedroom window (hard to do on a warm August night!) and returned to sleep. Probably a few minutes later, I realized the music had stopped, so I reopened my window.

As I put my head back on my pillow, the music started up again. Oh boy! Interestingly, and without what felt like conscious effort, I remained in bed and thought, “I’m just going to listen and enjoy this music.” It was like a physical manifestation of accepting a thought. It happened to be a nondescript heavy metal guitar track, which is usually not my cup of tea.

Sure enough, I believe I fell back asleep quickly, and although I was awake again at 3:30am for the rest of the morning, I really thought of that first wakeup in a positive light.

I’m looking forward to participating more on this thread, thanks everyone!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Stirling.

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