Chronic insomnia

When I was looking for a referral to a therapist for insomnia (different type from yours), I went to my (large, university) employer's employee assistance program, where they had a staff of therapists and interns who would do short-course therapy or referrals to outside sources for services they couldn't provide.

They were very disappointed that I didn't have the type of insomnia you describe. They told me that they had had really good success using a short course of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with people who either couldn't get to sleep, or couldn't get back to sleep, because of overactive thought processes. I can't prove that they're right, because - like I said - that wasn't my problem. But that's what they, professionals in the field, told me.

I also have a friend who has found that learning simple meditation techniques was helpful in a situation similar to yours, and I do that myself in the rare case when I can't sleep because of cycling thoughts.
This doesn't need to be something complex or mystical. I usually use something like the Relaxation Response:

http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/

This was researched and popularized by Dr. Herbert Benson (medical doctor, faculty at Harvard, etc.).

I don't know whether any of the above will help, but it's what I've understood from 20+ years now of wrangling with a different type of insomnia. Might be worth a try, if you haven't.

suzette8716 wrote: »

I only slept between 3-6 hours on a nightly basis. My goal is to get at least 7 but I was never able to get it in. I have no problem falling asleep, my issues is that I wake up in the middle of the night around 3/4 and can’t go back to sleep, so many things going through my mind and I am up for another 2 hours before I fall back to sleep I might catch another hour so before my alarm goes off at 6. My watch said only slept for 4 hours 😩😩

This used to happen to me quite frequently in the past and maybe once or twice a month now. When my mind starts to roll my go to is meditation. It's not so much about clearing my mind but accepting and letting go of the thoughts that come my way and then focusing on my breathing. This allows me to be OK with being present in the moment and not worry about the "what ifs". It definitely takes some practice and some time meditating outside of bed as well.

The other thing that helped was reading about the past practice of biphasic sleeps (two sleeps). It's something that was once really common. I used to fret over waking up in the middle of the night and not getting set amount of consecutive sleep. These days when I wake up I don't worry about not getting enough sleep and this is just a natural process so accepting that helps me return to sleep.

Between the meditation and acceptance of a short waking moment helped me take the pressure of my mind fretting about not getting enough sleep or other things that at that moment in the night are out of my control. Every once in a while a Sunday night into Monday morning will keep me up but that tends to be the transition from weekend to week day and work.

I have this happen to me when I'm anxious about something--also I'm 67 and sleep problems are common as you age. I've started (after reading a few threads on here, posted recently) catching it early. As soon as I start waking up during the night and I'm still half asleep and my mind starts whirling, I decided to start distracting my mind. I think about someone, like a good friend, or something really nice that I enjoyed in the past, like a trip, or hiking in the woods. I start to play it in my mind like a movie and, since it's happened twice now--it works! I then drift back to a deep sleep.

Like everything, you have to try and see what works.

YouTube has a lot of sleep hypnosis/meditation channels. Today evening I just found mind rest and I'm someone who cannot meditate,I'm a restless, agitated person. i was instantly relaxed. At the start of the video my fist and jaw were clenched and then suddenly I began to relax! I'm hoping I'll sleep well tonight and if I do i plan to view that video everyday although I do find meditation music to be creepy lol but thats just me. Regards.

I used to wake up at 2:30 to 3 am most mornings, couldn’t get back to sleep. After 6 months or so, I found out my neighbor set his alarm for 2 am to take a pill. He let the dog out while he was up. His dog never barked, day or night, so it must have been his jingling tags that woke me up, but not immediately. Slept on the divan to make sure. Yep. Slept all night. (Woke up with a sore back. Lol). Put a white noise machine in the window between the dog and me. Peace.
Sometimes you just have to figure it out.

Hi there. I had a similar insomnia problem until recently. I don’t know if our situations are otherwise comparable, but I’ll mention what helped me - iron supplements.

For over a year I was waking up almost every night around 3am, often staying awake for 2-3 hours before a second sleep. I also had a terrible problem with restless legs before sleep. I’d toss and turn before being able to sleep. I thought it was just being a middle aged woman and some recent life stresses I’ve had.

Then I had a medical and it turned out that my anaemia had got worse over the last couple of years, and that instead of having mild iron supplements during my period, I need to take a large dose of iron every day.

It cured both my insomnia and my restless leg problem pretty much overnight.

I hope any other insomniacs reading this, especially other women with heavy periods (common reason for anaemia like mine) may take note and check their iron levels.