[TodaysEscape]

Hi, Scott,

Thanks for following up.

Reading or watching videos was not a part of my routine before insomnia, and I am doing them now just for the purpose of making myself drowsy and relax. I used to work or watch movies in the night, but i am afraid i can’t do those because they can be arousal.

I am aware that I am making (a lot of) extra efforts to try to sleep and that can be counter productive, but don’t know what else I should do. My plan was to do these extra things to get myself back to normal sleep routine, and then slowly remove them, but its not going as smooth as I had planned.

The pandemic plus the recent fire hazards in my area has caused a lot of anxiety for me. I have learned to change my perspectives and I have new plans, but it is still here and there is no sign of going away anytime soon. So that is definitely a thing that concerns me everyday.

[TodaysEscape]

Scott,

Thanks for the encouraging words.
My current routine is to go to bed between 12:30am to 1am, and wake up from 7am to 7:15am.

I usually watch some light hearted short videos leading to 12am, then switch to reading either on computer or with paper book. There is not a whole lot i can think of to sooth me before the bed. Reading is the one that I enjoy and also get me drowsy fairly quick at the late night. Maybe I can try a little bit of meditation, and stretch too. Do you have any recommendations for those activities?

I have been following this routine for almost two months, slowly tuned down my medicine intake after seeing significant improvement in sleep. But about a week after I completely stopped my medicine, I started to experience hardship of falling into sleep again. Its been two and a half weeks since then, the time it took me to sleep varies from 30 mins to 3 hours. Its been quite rough in the night, but I managed to stay productive the following day so I feel a bit more relaxed in the last couple of days and saw shorter time to fall asleep.

[TodaysEscape]

I agree with you that you were probably “waiting to go back to the living room”. To get a good sleep, according to Martin, you need to not worry of having bad sleep.
What Martin said and i also found true is, I am able to function mostly normal after a bad night with 2-3 hours of sleep, so we shouldn’t worry too much about not able to sleep, which then help us to relax and not worry too much.
Think of insomnia as a bully, it feeds on your attention. If you can stop caring about it, it will go away by itself, but if you worry about it, it will stay.
If you haven’t tried the free training, i highly recommend it: https://insomniacoach.com/sleep-training

Good luck,

Ken

[TodaysEscape]

Susie, Thanks for sharing your experience here. Looks like you are well on your way to perfect sleep. Good luck and keep us posted please.

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