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...
Hello,
I'm new here.
For the past 2+ months I've been struggling with insomnia.
It's been the hardest thing I've ever dealt with in my life and the most damaging to my mental well being.
I think it was brought on by work anxiety, having a new child (which occurred a few months back).... but I'm really not certain.
All I know is that I'm suffering from something I had never before in my life struggled with.
I'll use this to track my success with overcoming insomnia.
I'm 3 nights into it.
I had been only getting about 40minutes (my worst nights) to 3 hours of sleep a night. And those weren't 3 hours in one block of sleep. It would be all chopped up.
At times I felt (feel?) like I'm losing it with the lack of sleep.
I had tried: Ambien, Ambien CR, Trazodone, Klonopin, Xanax.....Lexapro (which one of the side effects is insomnia.... great work mrs. pyschiatrist).
Tired of being a guinea pig for the pharmaceutical industry I decided to try Sleep Restriction. I was VERY skeptical that this would work at all. I never once struggled with insomnia before in my life.... why would I need to try a behavioral/cognitive regime just to learn how to sleep?
But, I was (am) desperate.
I'll note my first 3 nights that I've already done one after another.
I'm new here.
For the past 2+ months I've been struggling with insomnia.
It's been the hardest thing I've ever dealt with in my life and the most damaging to my mental well being.
I think it was brought on by work anxiety, having a new child (which occurred a few months back).... but I'm really not certain.
All I know is that I'm suffering from something I had never before in my life struggled with.
I'll use this to track my success with overcoming insomnia.
I'm 3 nights into it.
I had been only getting about 40minutes (my worst nights) to 3 hours of sleep a night. And those weren't 3 hours in one block of sleep. It would be all chopped up.
At times I felt (feel?) like I'm losing it with the lack of sleep.
I had tried: Ambien, Ambien CR, Trazodone, Klonopin, Xanax.....Lexapro (which one of the side effects is insomnia.... great work mrs. pyschiatrist).
Tired of being a guinea pig for the pharmaceutical industry I decided to try Sleep Restriction. I was VERY skeptical that this would work at all. I never once struggled with insomnia before in my life.... why would I need to try a behavioral/cognitive regime just to learn how to sleep?
But, I was (am) desperate.
I'll note my first 3 nights that I've already done one after another.
Is it common for that anxiety reaction to occur even after having a few nights in a row of no anxiety?
Thanks.
Went into bed at 11:45 to read a book.
Tried to sleep at Midnight.
Took about a half an hour to fall asleep.
Woke up at 1:55am.
Fell right back to sleep.
Woke up at 3:55.
Fell right back to sleep.
Woke up at 5:07.
Was in and out of sleep for the rest of the time allotted in bed.
Woke up at 6:07 and got out of bed right at that time.
It was a better night.
.83
5 hours sleeping (roughly) divided by the 6 hours I allotted for bed time.
I've been having more struggling days recently.
In the evening before bed I've dozed off a couple of times for like 30 minutes.
Could this be throwing a wrench into my progress?
Also, I'm thinking about cutting back to 5 hours and a half....going to bed at 12:30 and waking at 6am.
Think this is a good idea?
Thanks for any input