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Re: Thank you

Posted by looking for zzz on January 27, 2005 at 14:50:48:

In Reply to: Re: Thank you posted by Seeking sleep on January 27, 2005 at 06:18:21:

SS,

From what I have seen in this forum and from talking in person with some fellow insomniacs, rarely is there a case where someone just has sleep onset insomnia or just has sleep maintenance insomnia. Usually, if you have insomnia, you get them all and sometimes, you get them all at the same time. I personally believe that sleep onset insomnia is the easiest thing to cure. Which of course leads me to be very anti sleep meds as sleep meds never helped me get prolonged sleep.

To your question of, "do people recover from sleep maintenance insomnia?" my answer would be yes. If you look at past threads from beth, sleepynj, chris (2) and a bunch of others, you will notice that they consider themselves recovered. Not from one type of insomnia or another. Just plain recovered. Falling asleep, as I understand it, is a function of three things.. sleep debt, arousal and body clock. The reason it is easy to get over sleep onset issues is that regardless of the amount of anxiety you have (which is a component of arousal), you eventually get enough sleep debt to overcome the arousal. The reason that it is a little more tricky to overcome sleep maintenance issues is that after you have slept for a while, you may have reduced sleep debt enough that it is no longer sufficient to overcome your arousal. So the trick here is to practice. Every time you get sleep maintenance issues, use it as an opportunity to relax in bed. Enjoy your bed and having the time to lay there. After all, the skills you need to overcome sleep maintenance issues is the same skills you learn to overcome sleep maintenance issues. That is, you have to let yourself relax enough that sleep debt is greater than arousal. And like any other skill, practice improves your abilities.

I have insomnia and it's different forms have showed itself on numerous occassions. I can tell you that cognitive behavioral therapy (which incluldes SR) has helped me significantly. Tom also describes in his posts the different techniques he employs so that the balance between sleep debt and arousal tilt in favor of sleep.

Try not to think too much about different insomnias analyze their meaning. Have faith in that you now have a program that will help you sleep better and practice the skills that you will use in your recovery. If you keep at it, you will look back in two months and realize that while things aren't perfect, they are much better than they were when you first started.

ZZZ

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