Insomnia
During my entire working career, I suffered from insomnia. I’d get in bed and just lie there wide awake. As the night progressed, my anxiety grew to panic. “How am I going to feel tomorrow?” I’ve got to get to sleep. Should I just continue to lie here or should I get up? But if I get up there is no chance I’ll get enough sleep.” On and on till maybe 3 or 4 a.m. and then hopefully an hour or two of sleep.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi)
You likely are familiar with CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy), but maybe not CBTi. The little ‘i” at the end makes it Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia. It’s easy to understand, but I consider it tough love because initially, it hurts more than it helps. But it is successful with 70 to 80 percent of clients. I say client, but it can be done as self-therapy if you have what it takes on your own to suffer a relatively short period of discomfort.
Dr. Hugh Selsick a psychiatrist at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine treats insomniacs with Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-i) and breaks it down into simple bites.
Do’s and Don’ts
1. Myth of the 8-hour sleep. Eight hours is the average sleep time. But in a normal curve, the average is on top in the middle and the curve slopes down on either side. I actually met someone in graduate school who said she needed fourteen hours of sleep. Poor girl. On the other hand, Donald Trump says he sleeps four hours a night and feels fine. And a fellow teacher told me he never goes to bed. During the night he reads and watches movies, occasionally dozing. He was the best lecturer I have ever listened to. He captivated every student’s attention for the entire period. And these were squirmy ninth graders.
2. Bedroom means sleep (and sex). No reading, TV, cell phone, studying, etc.
3. No need to get to bed at the same time every night but you do have to get up at the same time every morning, seven days a week, whether you have slept well or slept badly, regardless of when you got to bed. This is the hard part.
4. No naps. “If fatigue is the fuel that drives sleep, then every nap is like stealing some of that sleep fuel from the night. It is better to push through the sleepy periods during the day and save that fatigue for the night. Once your sleep improves it will be easier to avoid napping.”
5. Don’t go to bed until you are sleepy. This will be like parachuting from a plane for the first few times before you can trust your parachute to open. But if you go to bed before you are sleepy, you will lie there waiting to get sleepy. I did not try this, for fear I would not get sleepy until almost time to get up. A natural aid to sleepiness is Melatonin. Try this a half hour to an hour before sleep.
6. Spend less time in bed. This will fall in with not going to bed until you are sleepy. You may likely gradually get sleepy earlier, but don’t try to push it. Maybe you will end up like Trump or my fellow teacher. Just do something relaxing like reading, listening to a recorded book, or watching a movie.
7. If you go to bed or wake up in the middle of the night and are not asleep within another twenty minutes, get up and do some of the things you enjoy. But I stay in bed and do Ki Breathing Meditation because I find it effective. And if I don’t fall right back to sleep, I still feel the next day. Ki Breathing Meditation cleanses your body and mind.
8. No clock watching. Set your alarm and put the clock under your bed. Forget about time.
This is not a quick fix. It takes time for your body and brain to adust. It is kind of like getting over jet lag but may require five or six weeks instead of a few days. If you do Ki Breathing during the day, you will cut way down on discomfort and may feel good. Give it time.
Meds Are Okay When and If Needed
Finally, don’t rule out medications. While teaching in Japan I was able to get a prescription for virtually any medication prescribed by the neurologist I was seeing. So I alternated each night among four or five potent sleeping medications so I would not get addicted to any one of them. I would take the pill around 11 p.m. and then work until I could not keep my eyes open, then slide onto my futon and sleep. To ease my anxiety during the day, I’d take forms of Valium.
When I was teaching in Japan I was able to get virtually any prescription medication available from the neurologist I was seeing. So I alternated each night among the four or five potent sleeping medications, my logic being that I would not get addicted to any one of them. I would take the pill around 11 p.m. and then stay up working until I could literally not keep my eyes open and plop down on my futon and sleep.
Today, though, I don’t need to rely on sleep medications and feel a lot better without them. When I was teaching I needed them to keep my job. Teaching was a huge anxiety-causing mismatch with my OCD. I won’t go into here why I stayed at it for twenty-six years. Partly and so ironically though, it was because of my OCD.
Related Issues
It might be a good idea to be checked out for medical conditions that might be the cause of insomnia, for example, sleep apnea. The most common form of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea. Throat muscles intermittently relax and block airways. You should especially see a medical doctor if you wake up gasping or choking. If you sleep with someone they might notice loud snoring or intermittent pauses in your breathing.
An easier issue to deal with is the lack of exercise or physical activity. You will sleep better if you are physically active during the day.
And just to be aware that women are more prone to insomnia than men and older people tend not to sleep as well as they did when younger.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
