woodenbuick,
I bid you a sad welcome to the CPAP&Insomnia Club and hope that your time in the club is short.
As pugsy said, the root of my most recent and extended bout of insomnia was starting CPAP. But I'd dealt with the beast off and on for much of my life. With lots and lots of hard work, I've reined in the CPAP-induced insomnia monster, but not completely licked him. So now I at least feel like I get close to enough sleep most nights. I just wish that I was sleeping from 12:00 or 12:30 to 7:00 instead of 2:30ish to 9:00.
It sounds to me like you've been dealing with poor sleep and sleep maintenance insomnia for a long time. And while the CPAP can take care the arousals caused by the apneas and hypopneas, it's not a panacea that fixes everything about bad sleep.
One thing that caught my eye in your post is this:
woodenbuick wrote:I have always slept poorly. I wake up a lot.
Last night was one of those nights, looking at the clock every 30 minutes, tossing and turning
and generally sleeping poorly.
Looking at the clock is likely a big part of your problem. Rather than soothing you, it's eating at you. Everytime you look at that clock, what's going through your head is something along the lines of "Geez, another 30 minutes without any sleep at all. And morning is just *** hours (or minutes) away and I bet I'll never get to sleep tonight."
The only way out of this problem is to
get rid of the clock. Move that clock somewhere where you cannot see it from the bed. Or at least turn it around so you can't see it without consciously moving the clock around.
I have had no issues adapting to the mask and hose and I keep it on all night.
Why, then do I still sleep poorly ? No drugs or alcohol are involved . I have been this way all my life though.
Clock watching is only one of a number of behavior patterns that folks with chronic insomnia often engage in at night that aggravate their insomnia. So my guess is that you are still sleeping poorly because over the years you've inadvertently trained yourself to sleep poorly through a number of habits that encourage poor sleeping. My opinion is based on the fact that you say, "I have been this way all my life."
So I bet you've got a variety of other habits that can loosely be described as "bad sleep hygiene" that add to your problems. And cleaning up some of the sleep hygiene issues may help address your on-going issues with insomnia.
It's well worth finding a copy of
Sound Sleep, Sound Mind by Dr. Barry Krakow. Most of this book focuses on cognitive behavior approaches to helping insomniacs both figure out
why they have problems sleeping soundly all night and
what to do to minimize those problems. (There is also a section poor sleep due to OSA and CPAP treatment, too, though; and Krakow clearly believes that untreated OSA can lead to insomnia problems.) Working my way through this book was useful in bringing the worst of my CPAP-induced insomnia under control as well as helping me figure out why insomnia had been lurking in my bedroom for so many years.
