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That’s exactly what my husband went through. He finally became fine with being awake and anticipated it without it upsetting him. When he finally was okay with wakefulness and was finally just like whatever happens happens is when he FINALLY began sleeping. It’s so strange how that works, when you are ok with being awake that’s when you sleep, but when you chase sleep, it becomes harder.
Like Chee said, you just live your life as if there is no problem, and that’s when it has no control over you.Hey Chee!
Completely agree! I think it helped him at first let go of clock watching and worrying about the time. It’s hard when you’re in the mentality of only wanting to sleep and see the hours passing by when you first start in the journey. It’s hard to be on your phone and not see the little clock up there reminding you of the time, especially when you haven’t really grasped the concept of accepting wakefulness. Atleast that’s the struggle my husband went through in the beginning. If that makes sense. But I do know that he’s definitely ‘ready’ to not have the clocks covered up anymore. I think the timeless aspect worked for him, bc it allowed him to give no mind to time and just keep busy until he felt sleepy, and it happen at whatever time that may be. 😊Hi! I think the biggest thing is to know you haven’t ‘lost’ your ability to sleep. If you feel yourself getting worked up while laying in bed, my husband clears his mind and takes note of his feelings and realizes that they’re just feelings and let’s them pass by without ‘feeding’ into them.
A big thing that helped my husband was covering the clocks around 7pm every night. That way the clock-watching doesn’t take hold. We even covered the clock on our tv with a little flap over the top right corner. Don’t fear being awake. If you are awake, let it happen. Fill it with things you enjoy, like your favorite show, a game, book, puzzle etc. if you’re like my husband, he found it hard to find enjoyable things bc all he wanted to do was sleep. But once he tolerated wakefulness and didn’t let it affect his day or his mood, he finally began to grasp that sleep isn’t in control. Since we can’t control sleep, we CAN control our day and what we do with our time. When my husband found himself not being able to relax in bed after giving himself time to calm down, he would get out of bed and watch tv or play a video game or scroll social media until he felt sleepy. He also woke up at the same time EVERY SINGLE DAY. No matter if he slept or not, he woke up every morning at 6am and went for a walk outside. He also wouldn’t go to bed until he was sleepy. Not tired, sleepy. Eyes heavy, beginning to feel drowsy and then that would be his queue and he would lay down. It is quite a change and takes time to adjust in the beginning but that is when my husband began to see the biggest difference and notice sleep improvement.Hi Lynn! It definitely affected me and changed how I view sleep as well. I have always thought I slept fine and fall asleep easily but am up random times of the night and will play games and go back to bed and never really viewed it as an issue before. But then my husband developed insomnia and he freaked when he was up or would didn’t ‘feel sleepy’ when he thought he should and then he would spiral. But I never panicked about waking up some nights and would be fine playing games or scrolling TikTok and would just go back to bed like it was nothing. That was the difference between us.
We also had to set boundaries at night because he would wake up and get himself anxious about being awake and then wake me (which I had zero issues with) but it was feeding into his insomnia and anxiety around sleep. Trust me, I know how your husband feels bc I worried about my husband SO MUCH! I wanted to fix it for him or have all the answers to make it easier for him. But it was more of a mental breakthrough he had to experience. He can’t control what happens in the night and he had to accept whatever the night brings. Whether he is awake or asleep he will be content and be at peace with himself. And it was hard for him to get to that point. It took time for him to unlearn his bad habits which I think many rush through. It took months of consistency. But he tells me now that if he struggles to fall asleep one night, he will just get up and watch his favorite show until he feels sleepy enough to lay back down. And I think him having that plan and being ‘ok’ with the possibility of not sleeping is what helps him sleep and stay asleep. 😊Just a little update! It’s been almost a month since my last post and here we are and my husband is continuing to sleep better than he has in months! I think his hyperarousal has finally settled down enough for him to be able to handle his intrusive thoughts and worries without it sending him spiraling into sleepless nights. He would have countless physical symptoms and now they’re fading away slowly but surely. He says he doesn’t even think about sleep at all until he is in bed and even then, the intrusive thoughts don’t bother him and he’s asleep almost instantly most nights, and if one night happens to take longer he is open to not every night looking the same and that it’s ok. It’s crazy to see how far he has come because things were so awful for so long. If my husband can overcome insomnia, I believe you can too! Give it time. Give yourself grace. And know that progress doesn’t look like only great nights. Tough nights are progress too. It’s how you handle those tough nights that result in them being part of your progress.
Go about your day as you normally would! Easier said than done of course but it helps!
Thanks for your response! He is trying his best to work as much as he can and do things he loves, but he is getting physical symptoms from the lack of sleep and the depression/anxiety that goes along with that. He gets headaches a lot and facial sensitivity etc. He honestly is not too thrilled about the current sleep window bc he BARELY makes it to 11:30pm (on the nights he does sleeps) and gets deliriously sleepy between 9-10pm. Before the sleep restriction he would just go to bed when he was sleepy which was around 9pm, but he was having fragmented sleep and every night was different (could sleep 1 hour or four hours per night, or none at all) so we were trying to work on his sleep maintenance. Before insomnia he’d sleep from 10pm to like 6/6:30am and 7:30am/8am on the weekends. Should we continue the sleep restriction a little longer and then bump his bedtime to like 11pm or 10:30pm? I guess we were hoping to get longer stretches of consistent sleep doing this.
