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Thanks for posting Cata. I find it helpful to read your reply.
I hope its going well with your meds reduction.I have manged to further reduce from 45% to 25% whilst doing the course over the last 2 months, so I am really pleased with that and the slow reduction means I havent had much withdrawal symptoms and also has been at a pace which doesnt trigger too much anxiety
Thanks for sharing this.
I dont think I have heard the term Hyperbolic Tapering, although this is what I have done/am doing. My homeopath has also given me a withdrawal mix, which contains the meds in frequency form to help with withdrawal symptoms. She has also given me a detox mix which helps me detox all meds current and past.Hi Mike,
thanks for posting.
Yes I use herbs to help with sleep and I think they do help especially as I am slowly reducing my medication. I use Valerian, Passion flower, Oat (Avena Sativa), and recently also bought some Skullcap, Motherworth, Damiana, Vervain and Chamomile tinctures and am experiementing on which ones my body feels drawn to.By the way in the UK, GPs know hardly anything or often nothing about herbal medicines. I also found that my GP didnt give any advice on meds withdrawal. So I just reduced slowly. My homeopath warned it could take a long time due to withdrawal symptoms and indeed I have found I have had to go very slowly
Hi Helene
thanks for posting and sharing. Its helpful to see ideas of things you are moving towards. I am wondering what sort of actions could you take to help bring more laughter into your life?
I sense I would benefit from that as well? I think for me doing silly voices and silly dancing or physical postures helps, or just sometimes when my partner and I leave enough space to be quiet together, we end up laughing. I think its like a muscle that I need to get back into using a lot more.I was coming back to my post to add something. I had an email exchange with Martin and he said
“Thoughts and feelings themselves are not away moves since they are not actions and they are out of your direct control. What you do in response to those thoughts and feelings are what become the away (or toward) moves!”
So I guess I need to take “feeling down on myself and devaluing myself” out of my non-workable action or response list. But when I do have those feelings and thoughts I can still engage the workable action of talking to myself as if I were the best friend ever.
I made the choice to cut out naps for about 4 weeks, but then got to a week where I was feeling extremely fatigued and also a bit unwell and started taking a nap in the afternoon if my body really needed that. I havent found, for me personally, that taking a nap affects my ability to get to sleep, so I have been really pleased about that and now I allow myself to take naps again.
I think its just about experimenting. For someone else it may affect their ability to get to sleep at night.
I’m very interested in this discussion as I have been reducing my sleep medication and am often wondering how much the sleep medication is actually helping me sleep now. I wonder to what degree its more of a psychological attachment to the sleep medication now that I have reduced it significantly over a period of 18 months. I am becoming more confident in my body’s natural ability to sleep since doing this course.
Martin you say “melatonin doesn’t generate sleep — so all the sleep you’ve been getting while taking it is sleep that your body has generated all by itself”.
What does melatonin actually do then?Does the same apply to sleep medication as well?
Thank youHi Martin, you reply doesnt really answer my question because in the Action Plan you say “stop checking the time it begins” (the sleep window), not when it ends. Is it meant to say “stop checking the time it ends”?
Hi @johnb
Thanks for you reply to my post.I’m really sorry to hear that sometimes you get zero hours of sleep. That must be really tough. I do hope you find this course helpful and would be really interested to hear how you get on with applying a sleep window if that’s what you chose to do.
WendyHi Lin, I have a sense it could well have been along the lines of your explanation: that you had expectation that you would sleep well and therefore a bit of maybe unconscious monitoring and some performance drive. I think you worded it really well yourself!
Hi Cata, I notice its over a week or so since you posted, so I would be really interested to hear how you are getting on.
I have been on sleep medication for about 25 years, using it each night, so have been very interested in how people reduce or come off medication or not whilst doing this course. I did ask Martin about this in my one to one Zoom and he said it varies a lot with some coming off very quickly and some taking their time.To my understanding, for those who have been on medication long term, there can be quite substantial withdrawal symptoms. I dont know how long you have been on sleep meds but for me I decided and was advised to reduced slowly, so I have been reducing my dose over the last 18 months, which is as fast as I felt able to go with it, both physically but also in terms of my confidence. If I felt withdrawal symptoms I would slow down with the reduction.
Doing the course I have been staying up until I am really sleepy and starting to notice my natural sleepiness a lot more and having more confidence in my bodys natural ability to sleep, so I think this will help me reduce my medication further although I want to consolidate the progress I am making a bit more I think before making further reductions.
I was quite surprised to hear from some of the testimonials about people coming off “Cold Turkey”. I know its possible to do so, but not what I would choose for myself!
