Insomnia Support Group
Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...
I didn't know there was an insomnia group, if I had known I would have been here four years ago lol. Anyway, I usually am awake til 6am just lying in bed and finally force myself to pass out. Either that or I will be up for 2/3 days straight. When I do get to sleep earlier, I have nightmares (literally every time) and I wake back up and can't sleep. My boyfriend lives two hours away, so I usually stay at his place for a week every now and then. When I'm there I sleep perfectly. But even when he just goes to work, I can't go back to bed. I can't sleep no matter how I try. I was thinking about it, is it possible that I can only sleep around him because I feel safe? and if so, how can I fix that? We're moving in together in a few months, but for the time being I don't know what to do to sleep. I can take as many as 4 sleeping pills and feel nothing. How do you all handle it? And do you sleep better when someone is with you ?
You may have developed a conditioned negative association with your sleeping environment at home that you don't have at your boyfriend's place. Making such a negative association is very common among those with sleeping problems.
Think of it like this: if you allow say 8 hours for sleep, and 5 of those hours are spent tossing and turning, you're actually spending more time in bed awake and frustrated than you are sleeping. So in that case sure it's understandable why you or anyone in that position would make that association.
However, this by itself would not explain why you can't sleep at your boyfriend's place when he is away. That would suggest your theory about feeling safe when he is there may have some validity.
So what can you do? Well, if it's true that you sleep better when he's around, what can you do to make yourself feel more secure when he's not around? That might help you sleep better.
You might ask yourself what kinds of thoughts you have that keep you awake when you're at his place and he's not there. There may things you can do to counter those worried thoughts that are keeping you awake.
This might be the key for you. Understand the negative thoughts you are having, and counter them. That may help you let them go and by doing that you hopefully will start sleeping better.
Good luck!
There are widespread historical records that a century ago, before electric lights, most people spent far longer in bed during long winter nights. People still averaged about 8 hours sleep, but often would awaken in the middle of the night for a couple of hours or more. Then have a second sleep til morning. Today we are only a few generations removed from that widespread practice.
One way to help yourself sleep through the night is to reduce the amount of time you allow in bed. This is known as sleep restriction therapy, and it generally should be done as part of a larger sleep improvement program like CBT for insomnia.
Most insomnia is not caused by a medical issue, but it's a good idea to be sure. There are a wide variety of treatable medical issues that can disrupt sleep, so yes it might be worth a checkup so you can at least rule that out.
Presuming you have no identifiable medical problem disrupting your sleep, then your solution is probably nonmedical. This generally involves better sleep habits and controlling negative sleep thoughts which largely fuel insomnia. From your comments, I see you've definitely got some negative sleep thoughts going.
All the methods I''ve mentioned are included with CBT specifically designed for insomnia. If you want to make better sleep a priority, that might be something worth looking into.