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 have had chronic insomnia for over 3 years. I have been going to therapy for stress for over 18 months with very little progress on the insomnia side. I did this because every doctor, therapist, person said it was your stress. I don't consider myself a severely stressed or depressed person but I was convinced I was. I have tried sleeping pills , anxiety medicine, pot, you name it after a while they all stopped working. I even joined this site and it helped in the first few days but after was not bad or good. Now I needed some therapy to help handle stress better regardless of insomnia so that was not a total waste. While listening to this book I cried through most of It, it spoke to me so much that listening to first 20 mins of it I improved more than 3 yrs worth of work combined. I plan on following its recommendations to the T. I hope it helps you it helped me, I am not 100% back to Normal but definitely on my way there.
The effortless sleep method
by Sasha Stephens
A consistent wake time I agree is one of the best things you can do to help yourself sleep better. That, and like you say not allowing more time in bed than you need.
Both of these ideas are part of what's known as sleep restriction therapy, one of the key behavioral methods in CBT. There are many other behavioral methods as well, including what's known collectively as sleep hygiene.
Not familiar with this particular book, but I learned CBT methods from a variety of sources over the years. I would also note that a lot of this stuff is readily available online. You can google search something like CBT adult sleep training methods for quite a bit. Many counselors also use CBT. No matter how you learn it, the methods help most people. And they are drug free.
I put my alarm at 0700 and 0800. And go to sleep as soon as I feel tired enough to sleep. 2 or 7 hours is the same in the end. All the tricks, little changes in my life I made for my sleep, and my meditation all help. As long I get the minimum sleep I need to enjoy life, the rest is so much easier.
I will probably buy this just to read it. I love learning more easy tricks to get a bit more sleep. I come from almost a year of 20 hours or less per week. Anything more than 35 let's me stay sane. Getting my average higher by using a cheap or easy trick and replacing a more expensive or harder trick in the process feels awesome and like a really nice win against my insomnia.
You gotta keep trying I think. Thank you for posting.