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SR not for everyone

Posted by AJM on November 07, 2002 at 14:08:57:

Hi all,

I'm glad to hear so many of you are doing so well right now. Especially some of you who have been suffering for so long!

I do want to address the Sleep Restriction issue since I have seen it brought up on the forum a lot lately. I am SO glad it is working for many of you! And I think it is something that every insomniac should try. However, it doesn't work for everyone, and I speak from experience.

I'm only 25 years old, and my insomnia is purely from a physical cause. Which means no amount of sleep restriction will help that. They aren't sure what else, but hormonal imbalance seems to be the main culprit. I go through spells of sleeping wonderfully, without medication and sometimes with. Then I'll go through spells of absolute HELL, where my sleep is so poor and almost nonexistent. And during these periods of time, no amount of medication that usually works will work at all.

I did develop anxiety and depression, but AFTER suffering from this insomnia. I was the best sleeper in the world before and perfectly happy. So I can tell that occasionally my sleep is affected by those emotional factors, but at those times medication does help, like Xanax or others.

The times when my sleep is messed up weeks/months at a time due to the physical cause, no medicine works, Xanax and anything else doesn't even begin to help!

Unfortunately, there is no pattern to these sleep cycles, and even worse, my periods of good sleep are very rare now and only last a couple of days, whereas before it would last a couple of weeks. These unexplainable patterns have baffled any dr's that I have actually gone to see, and it seems that whatever happened at the beginning of this year that started this is quite possibly irreversible.

I have no insurance and wish I did so I could go to better dr's that could tell me what the hell to do to correct whatever is wrong but like I said, I know my body, and I believe it is almost irreversible! It is like my sleep mechanism is broken. I'm the type of insomniac that can't take naps, can't sleep at night, can't hardly sleep anytime!!! So it is majorly physical.

And like I said before, I am so glad that sleep restriction works for many of you. I go to bed around the same time every night, but I don't practice SR like the books say because I HAVE done that before for months, and just depending on how my body was feeling (if I was in a good sleep cycle or bad) then that affects whether SR will work or not. So even though I'm glad it works for others, it is so frustrating to me that I seem like one of the only people on this forum that my body physically will not sleep well whether I'm practicing sleep restriction for months or not! I exercise, have a positive attitude, and do twenty thousand other things that people say helps insomnia. Yet nothing. When my PMS week comes around, there's nothing that can stop the insomnia!

So I'm back on the pill now and hate that, but maybe it will fix everything and be the miracle solution like sleep restriction is for so many of you.

And I'm sorry if this post sounded negative; it wasn't meant to be! I just feel alone on this forum as to the type of insmonia I have...it feels completely incurable. Sleep Restriction in theory works for people whose insomnia is due to anxiety, depression, learned insomnia, and for those who for whatever reason keep irregular hours.


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