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...
Hi All,
I'm very new to this group. I've seen people helping each other. This insomnia forum came across as a hope and light in my life. I've been suffering from chronic insmonia from 1.5 years. Initially, it started off as a very nomal sleepless night, which eventually turned chronic. I made it worse myself by thinking about it and getting anxious about being sleepless. With a lot of self talk and positive affirmations, I was able to manage my anxiety. I was only able to manage my anxiety but, suprisingly that didn't cure my insomnia as I initially thought would. This is beacuse due to many hours of frustration on bed, my mind subconsciously associated bed with frustration and restlessness. Now even though I get sleep, the minute I rest on bed, I'm wide awake. My mind races and tickles me up. I can sleep atleast with some ease elsewhere but not on my bed. How to deal with this? How to reframe my mind? I've seen stimulus control as one suggested therapy to alleviate the situation and to form a positive sleep association with bed. Does that work? I'm not expecting to sleep sound 8 hrs a night. All I need is some improvement somwhere which seems to be quite unachiveable. Any inputs here is greatly appreciated?
I wish all the users in this forum to have a healthy and peaceful life..
Thanks!
It works. I used stimulus control, as one part of CBT sleep training, and can tell you it worked for me. It works for most people, so you should expect it will work for you too.
However, it's important to understand stimulus control is just one of many tools that are meant to be deployed simultaneously. These include, for instance, cognitive restructuring. This is the specific tool to help "reframe your mind" as you put it. There are several others, including relaxation training and sleep hygiene. All these tools complement one another to help you sleep.
Best part: completely drug free, with no side effects.
I first learned CBT sleep training methods about 10 years ago and still use them today.
I don't know about Jeanine's suggestion with the Effortless Sleep Method, but if it uses CBT tools then it is one of many resources to learn this. But I'd suggest confirming it is in fact CBT-based, as those are the proven methods that work and are recommended by the AASM.
There is much info online about CBT sleep training for adults, much of it is free or low cost if you are the self-help type.
Good luck!
Hypnos07.. I'll give it a start by doing stimulus control and sleep restriction together. It looks like most CBT methods prescribe doing them together to see good results. I hope I'll be back to normal.
Thank you, guys.. I wish you both to have a peaceful and healthy life....
If you're still here, that incredibly annoying feeling of being sleepy all the time, but waking up as soon as you hit the pillow (or as soon as you start to drift towards sleep) is very common. I have it every now and then, too, and it is one of the most common complaints on sleep forums.
The good news is the thing often goes away as suddenly as it arrived, without the need for cbt or pills. Sometimes developing a healthy "let go" attitude goes a long way.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with cbt, so good luck if you decide to try it.
You will sleep again!
Thank you for those kind words. I also wish you to have a peaceful sleep and healthy life ahead. Sometimes, it is incredibly difficult for me to "let go". My mind just dreads sleep even though when it knows that it is the root cause of the problem.. Somehow, sleep anxiety entered my life effortlessly but now letting go that anxiety seems like a task to me. Anyway, I won't give up. I had been a good sleeper for 30 years. I won't let this interim bout of insomnia ruin the remainder of my life..
The important difference for me was when I stopped fearing sleep and just accepted whatever comes. Like they say, insomnia never killed anyone.
Didn't cure me, of course, but made it a lot better.
Wishing you the same (or better), hang in there.
I lay my head to sleep I'm wide awake. I have a California king bed, my friend was visiting with her son and I wanted to offer them my bed and I sleep in the guest room, which has a queen bed, but couldn't get myself to do so because I was almost certain I wouldn't sleep. I really need to work on my cognitive restructuring! I know exactly what you're feeling. We can overcome this though. I have hope and perseverance.