My biggest complaint about the book: it's simply terrifying.
If you suffer from insomnia, don't pick up this book. It will have the opposite of the desired effect. It doesn't have a lot of practical guidance. And now, according to this article, much of the terror might be unfounded.
Better books I'd recommend if you have insomnia are "The Sleep Solution" and "The Circadian Code"
Absolutely. I found similar advice to that in this book propelled my insomnia about 4 years ago.
My insomnia responded to CBT-I extremely fast. After 18 months, 2 nights of sleep deprivation (4 hours in bed) and the corner was turned. Now, if I feel my sleep is falling away, my solution is to cut sleep. It rebuilds habits too - what do I do at 6am except run?
I need to figure something out for this. I have narcolepsy and depression and I've fallen into this cycle where I'm tired, so I sleep, then I wake up still tired because I don't get restful sleep, so I go back to sleep. When I'm not at work, I'm unmotivated and bored and I'd rather be asleep, so I go to sleep. Then I wake up tired and so on and so forth. Essentially if I'm not at work and don't absolutely have to do something, I'm asleep.
While I'm at work, I'm daydreaming about sleeping. When a friend manages to get me out of the house, I'm thinking how much I'd rather be asleep. I've got meds for the narcolepsy and meds for the depression, and they make it less bad, but I'm still miserable most of the time. The narcolepsy meds make me able to function and the depression meds keep me from killing myself, but being awake and alive isn't the same as content and fulfilled.
It doesn't help that I work a late shift and have been averaging 60 hours a week for the last 6 months.
Sleep deprivation therapy is news to me and you seem like you might have some knowledge about the subject. So do you have any recommendations as far as therapies and strategies I could look into for this anti-insomnia?
1) It sounds like you really just need a break. Can you take one? Can you ask a friend for help? 60 hrs+ on a whack sleep schedule is tough. Do you have blackout curtains, eye mask, or earplugs to protect your sleep?
2) How is your diet? Under stress if you are eating a crap diet (refined carbs, heavy sugars, caffeine, etc) that will impact your body far more and can even cause cyclical swings of anxiety that impact your ability to rest. See:
3) Come up with an image of relaxation in the highest detail. It needs to be a scene where you feel safe, secure, and feeling the warmth of compassion from someone you trust. Maybe you're on the beach, in the forest, whatever, it needs to be as high detail as you can and engage all the senses. Colors, shapes, smells, textures, temperature, touch. Write it down, draw it out, own it, envision it using every single sense and emotion you can. Practice entering this scene for 20 minutes a day (set a timer) and feel every aspect of it. Take notice of the various details as you are in your scene. Don't expect anything from it, but just work on spending time meditating on and building it for 30 days. Practice this every day regardless of if you feel like it "works" for sleep. After about 3-6 months you'll have a tool you can use to relax pretty quickly, the feelings should follow about 15-30 minutes after spending time in your scene.
4) Insomnia blows ass, I've been there, but the long-term recovery is taking breaks as you need them, writing down a few key actions in your relaxation + nighttime ritual and sticking to it, exactly. Ex: Get tea at 11pm, enter scene at 11:20pm for 20 minutes, read book until I feel tired. Even if it feels like things "aren't working"... Also, get out of bed if you toss and turn. If you're not sleeping anyway, there's no point. Associating wherever you sleep with anxiety needs to end.
There will be ups and downs but you will recover. But absolutely please schedule in breaks to look forward to.
But “Why We Sleep” - recommends CBT-I as “the one of the most effective treatments for insomnia “ ... so why is it bad for people who suffer from insomnia? Your experience seems to echo the point the book makes.
My understanding is that fear of not being able to fall asleep often contributes to the perpetuation of insomnia. So while the recommendation of CBT-I might be helpful, if the book also increases someone's fear of not being able to fall sleep (or more specifically fear of the consequences thereof) it might be net unhelpful. As an analogy, imagine a book that recommends exposure therapy for arachnophobia and also describes in detail all of the ways that spiders can harm humans. Something that provides the recommendation without reinforcing the counterproductive fear is probably more appropriate.
He literally calls out exactly that problem as an “ethics quandary” for approaching this problem. Informing people of the risks can increase the risks. What do you propose he does differently? Just not talk about it at all?
Agreed. I got this book when I started to suffer from insomnia, hoping I could learn something useful about how to cure it or cope with it. The book merely scared me.
If you suffer from insomnia, don't pick up this book. It will have the opposite of the desired effect. It doesn't have a lot of practical guidance. And now, according to this article, much of the terror might be unfounded.
Better books I'd recommend if you have insomnia are "The Sleep Solution" and "The Circadian Code"