Last Night Was First Night

Iancdub88 wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 7:09 pm

robysue1 wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 06, 2024 3:01 pm

Untreated OSA can often be worse when sleeping on your back, but it's not always worse when sleeping on your back. Go back and look at your diagnostic sleep study. What does it say (if anything) about your untreated AHI when sleeping on your back. Was it about the same as your untreated AHI when sleeping on your sides or stomach?

I was semi-confused because my sleep study shows that supine apneas were way worse. Almost double at 104 AHI but the last two nights I have slept on my back and I didn't go over 0.9 either time.

Sounds like your pressure settings are plenty to keep your supine events under control.

In other words, if you enjoy sleeping on your back, go ahead and sleep on your back when you are using the machine.

robysue1 wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 08, 2024 2:58 pm

Iancdub88 wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 08, 2024 1:25 pm

Can someone tell me it gets better?

It gets better.

But it can take a while. And it can take some work to make this crazy therapy work for you.

I had an initial adjustment period that could legitimately be described as "hellish". I had severe aerophagia every night, along with a case of insomnia that grew to be completely out of control. And the combo of the aerophagia + insomnia caused my migraines to go critical as well as my TMJ pain to skyrocket.

After switching from a Resmed S9 AutoSet to a PR System One BiPAP Auto and working with the PA on a CBT-I program for the insomnia and a headache doc to get the migraines under control and a dental specialist to get the TMJ pain under control, things did finally start getting better.

Keep plugging away and don't give up hope.

Thank you. I've been curious about CBT-I therapy. How long of a process is that? I never had insomnia issues before cpap so it does feel like hell. Especially when I can fall asleep but keep waking up.

Had another rough night.
https://sleephq.com/public/75195ba1-e1d ... b6bb61b5d5

The sleeping pills have seemingly stopped working at this point. I am nearing my wit's end. I hope the bipap will help but I'm skeptical that it will just fix everything. I took the mask off at 6:30 and tried to sleep without but I couldn't so I'm at a point where I can't sleep with it and I can't sleep without it.

I feel like my quality of life has really plummeted. I really don't know what to do.

Iancdub88 wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 08, 2024 3:35 pm

Thank you. I've been curious about CBT-I therapy. How long of a process is that? I never had insomnia issues before cpap so it does feel like hell. Especially when I can fall asleep but keep waking up.

How long CBT-I takes depends on the person, how hard they're willing to work, and the depth of the problem.

But very, very loosely, it's reasonable to expect a good CBT-I program to take several weeks to a few months to make a difference. Typically you also should expect to see some slow, but steady incremental improvements over several weeks to a few months.

In my case, it took about 3 or 4 weeks of CBT-I before I was starting to see some small improvements in my sleep. It took about 5 or 6 months of CBT-I to fully rein in the insomnia monster that moved into my bedroom when I first started CPAPing.

If you're working with a doctor or PA or counselor who knows something about CBT-I, they may ask you to do one or more of the following things:

1) Work really hard on sleep hygiene issues. In particular, you need to not do anything in the bedroom except for sleep and sex. If you often read or watch TV or get on your cell phone or laptop while in bed, you've got to learn to do those things outside the bedroom. The idea is to reteach your body and brain that the bed is meant for sleeping and not for web browsing, watching videos, or reading. If you can see a clock from your bed, you should at least turn it away from your face to make it harder to see. Don't lie in bed looking at the clock every few minutes when you find yourself awake during the night---so-called clock watching is really, really bad for feeding the insomnia monster. Pay attention to the amount of caffeine, alcohol, and marijuana you are consuming since they can all adversely affect sleep.


2) Keep a simple sleep log. This can be done on paper or in an Excel spreadsheet. Each row of the log/spreadsheet is divided into two basic parts: Part 1 is to be completed just before you go to bed each night; part 2 is to be completed when you wake up and get out of bed the next morning.

Part 1 (night-time entries) contains columns for the following information:

• Quick assessment of how you felt during the daytime. Use a simple scale 0 = Awful in terms of excess sleepiness, 5 = Really good with lots of energy all day long.
• Number of naps, time and length of each nap. Note: If you are working with a professional, they will tell you to try to avoid all daytime napping.
• Time and dose of any medication you took outside of whatever you take on a daily basis at regular times. It's also worth noting if you have any caffeine after lunch or any alcohol during the day/evening.
• Time you physically went to bed.

Part 2 (morning entries) contains columns for the following information

• Quick assessment of how you feel immediately upon getting out of bed for the day. Use a simple scale 0 = Awful as in it subjectively feels like you got little or no sleep, 5 = Bright eyed and busy-tailed and ready to start the day.
• Time out of bed---as in when you get out of bed.
• Estimated time it took you to get to sleep. This is a subjective estimate. A range of time is fine, and remember to not clock watch in an effort to get a precise estimate. What you're looking for is whether you feel like you're spending too long trying to get to sleep at the beginning of the night.
• Estimated number of times you woke up during the night. Again, this doesn't have to be precise or even accurate. You want to record your impression. Do you remember only a couple of wakes? Or does it seem like you woke up at least 6 or 7 times?
• A estimated time for how long you feel like you slept during the night OR (if it is easier) an estimated time for the total amount of time you were awake during the night after you first fell asleep. Either one of these will do. Typically you can estimate 5-10 minutes of wake time for each wake you remember if you don't feel like it took you an excessive amount of time to get back to sleep. If you remember having a restless period, just estimate the whole period that you felt like you were tossing and turning.
• Any comments you want to make about how you felt during the night. If aerophagia is a problem, that's worth noting. If you wake up with a headache or a back ache or other pain, that's worth noting. If you usually wake up in some kind of pain and you wake up without that pain, that's worth noting. If you know fighting leaks kept you awake for a significant amount of time that's worth noting.

Note that AHI data from the CPAP is NOT a necessary part of this sleep log. Yeah, you can keep track of that in the log if you want to, but the purpose of the log is to teach your body about what kind of things are potentially causing the insomnia to be better or worse on particular nights.


3) Establish a regular sleep schedule including both a regular wake-up time and a regular bedtime. (Far too many people only focus on establishing a regular bedtime; but ironically, a regular wake up time is even more critical for fighting insomnia.) The so-called time-in-bed window (TIB for short) needs to be reasonable, but it also needs to be short enough to help force your body to consolidate the sleep cycles by learning how to not fully wake up every single time you happen to have an arousal during the night. In other words, the goal is not so much to eliminate every last spontaneous arousal that you might see in the OSCAR data; rather the goal is to get where you subjectively feel like you are no longer constantly waking up and finding yourself unable to get back to sleep.

To craft the sleep schedule you start with the regular wake up time. Now, if you have a job, your regular wake up time is whatever time you need to be up and out of bed in time to get yourself up and ready to go to work along with getting to work on time. But you have to get up at that same time every day, even the days you don't have to go to work. If you are retired or otherwise not working, your wake-up time should be chosen with the following things in mind:

• It's early enough that you don't feel "bad" sleeping that late.
• It's early enough where you have no trouble sleeping that late. In other words, your chosen wake up time should be about the time when your body seems to wake up for the morning even if you think you're waking up too early.

In other words, you need to think about your body-clock when establishing your wake up time. For ordinary morning larks, wake-up time might very well be as early as 5:00 or 5:30 AM since they often simply can't sleep much past 5:00 AM no matter how hard they try. For ordinary night owls without the need to get to a job, wake up time might very well be as late as 8:30 or 9:30.

Now most people need somewhere around 8 hours of sleep each night, particularly if that sleep is really good quality. But to get your body to both go to sleep and stay asleep during your chosen TIB window, you may need to intentionally shorten the TIB window at the start. For really, really severe cases of insomnia like I had, a professional CBT-I person may insist on a TIB window as short a 6 hours---but that is really, really hard for most people to stick with for any length of time. If you're just trying to see if CBT-I might have some possibility of working, you can set your regular bedtime to be about 7 1/2 hours before you chosen wake-up time.

Once you have established both the regular wake up time and regular bedtime, there are several more things to keep in mind:

• You don't go to bed before your chosen bedtime no matter how tired you are.
• You don't go to bed at your bedtime if you are not sleepy. Wait until you are sleepy to go to bed.
• You force yourself to get up at your chosen wake up time no matter how shitty you feel. This is a critical part of teaching your body to sleep during the TIB wind.
• You don't allow yourself to lie in bed for what feels like more than 20 or 30 minutes while awake and trying to get (back) to sleep. If you haven't fallen asleep in 20 or 30 minutes, you need to get out of bed and go into another room and do something (anything) to get your mind off the fact that you are not sleeping. Go back to bed when you start feeling sleepy.

As for figuring out whether CBT-I is doing any good: If you stick with a regular sleep window for at least 4 weeks and you're keeping a sleep log, you should start to notice some small improvements in your sleep log by then. But those improvements may be very, very subtle. In my case, the first positive thing that I noticed as my sleep cycles started to consolidate was that I was no longer waking up with as much hand and foot pain----you have to understand: I'd been waking up with hand and foot pain almost every day for at least 5-10 years prior to my OSA diagnosis and my starting CPAP. If I hadn't been keeping the sleep log, I don't think I would have noticed that. By the end of the second month there was a noticeable drop in the number of wakes that I remembered and I was getting to sleep much, much more rapidly that I had ever gotten to sleep in my life---but then my insomnia had a significant component of "I can't get to sleep at the beginning of the night" stuff involved.

But because I also had to rein in chronic migraines as well as TMJ pain, it took a lot of work on all of those things along with the insomina work and continuing to plug away at PAPing until things really turned around. So also keep in mind whatever other problems (health or simply life-style stressors) you are dealing with will also have to be considered in establishing reasonable expectations for the quality of your sleep.

Good luck

Iancdub88 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 09, 2024 7:33 am

Had another rough night.

I am so sorry to hear that.

The sleeping pills have seemingly stopped working at this point.

Fixing insomnia is a process. Sleeping pills may work wonderfully for a night or two. And then you have another really bad night in spite of taking the sleeping pills. That doesn't necessarily mean the sleeping pills have quit working. It just means that you had a really bad night.

In fighting insomnia there's a lot of one or two steps forward followed by a step backwards. In other words, there will be bad nights. The goal is that over time the number of bad nights goes down.

I am nearing my wit's end.

I think you need to set some reasonable short-term goals for yourself. Unfortunately, "Sleep all night without waking up" is not a reasonable goal at this point. Your body is just plain not capable of doing that yet.

I hope the bipap will help but I'm skeptical that it will just fix everything.

Don't set yourself up for failure by expecting too much from the switch to bipap. Yes, switching to bipap can make a big difference for certain problems, including aerophagia. But if the real problem is that your body is simply being overwhelmed by the sensory stuff coming from the CPAP, the switch to bipap may not do much to help you rein in the insomnia monster.

Have you told the sleep doctor that you are unable to stay asleep during the night? You may have to keep hammering that point home until the sleep doc or whoever in his/her office is responsible for dealing with you finally sits up and takes notice.

In my case, what helped me get the help I needed with the CBT-I was the results of my first bipap titration study. It was an in-lab study, and what it showed was that my insomnia was objectively even worse than I subjectively felt it was. The study had a TIB window of something like 6 or 6 1/2 hours. In the morning when I filled out the survey about how I thought the night went, I subjectively said I thought I got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep. The study showed that I got 111 minutes (less than 2 hours) of actual sleep during the study. That convinced the PA who was responsible for me that my pleas for help with the insomnia were genuine. And at the meeting to discuss the titration study results we spent more time talking about the insomnia than the switch to bilevel.

As painful as it might be, you might want to ask whether your insurance would pay for an in-lab titration study with a bilevel machine more to try to establish just how little sleep you are getting each night.

I took the mask off at 6:30 and tried to sleep without but I couldn't so I'm at a point where I can't sleep with it and I can't sleep without it.

Been there, done that, and unfortunately I have the scars to prove it.

Yes, it's awful when you feel like you can't sleep with or without the machine. Try to not beat yourself up about this. Think of it this way: The fact that you are having trouble sleeping without the machine means that there is some part of your body that is now craving the idea of being able to sleep without all the mini-suffocations caused by the apneas. And that means that when you do get some sleep (even if it's not very much and is highly fragmented), there's a part of your body that understands the highly fragmented sleep with the CPAP is somehow physically better than your old apnea filled sleep was.

In other words, try to focus on this idea: Part of your body wants to sleep with the CPAP. But the problem is that an insomnia monster has moved into your bedroom and it's the insomnia, not the CPAP that is causing your sleep to be so bad right now. If you can find a way to fix the insomnia, then your sleep will improve.

I feel like my quality of life has really plummeted. I really don't know what to do.

Again, my heart goes out to you since I've been there, done that, and have the scars to prove it.

My first four months on CPAP were hell. And the quality of my life plummeted. In the first 3 weeks fo PAPing I went from being fully functional to being terrified that I would fall asleep while driving---so my husband was driving me everywhere. I also was finding it difficult to concentrate while teaching and there were times when my students would ask me in class if I was ok. People at work were asking me what was wrong since I looked physically ill---as in my eyes looked sunken and my face was pale and grey looking. I had a whole series of emergency appointments with the PA in my sleep doc's office as she made one adjustment after another and nothing seemed to help, not with the aerophagia and not with the increasingly severe insomnia. About two months into therapy I was shocked when she suggested the bilevel titration with the idea of switching me to bilevel. It was another month before that titration study could be done.

The switch to bilevel helped with the aerophagia. But it was really the PA's willingness to do several months worth of CBT-I with me that finally got me to where I could sleep with the dang hose on my nose and actually sleep well with it on my nose.

Now I want to be honest with you: My sleep remains somewhat fragile even today, even after 15 years of xPAPing. The only thing is, I now know enough about my own sleep patterns and my own body to know when things are starting to deteriorate long before they start spiraling out of control. And I was fortunate enough to find a really good sleep doctor who trusted me enough to work with me rather than just "ordering" tests and "prescribing" pressures and sleep medication, and as a result, I'm now confident enough to know that if my sleep starts to deteriorate, I have a variety of different tools that I can use to fix the problems. And so, most nights I get a reasonable amount of reasonably good quality sleep and I am functioning better than I was in the last couple of years before my OSA diagnosis was made and before my CPAP adventure began.

But looking back on those first 6-9 months of xPAP therapy? Those were some of the darkest days (and nights) of my life. I would never have gotten through them without the support of my husband as well as the support from the folks here at cpaptalk.com.

So for what it's worth, my advice for what to do now is quite simple: Keep posting here. Find support among friends and family as you can. Tell the sleep doc you need more help than just a prescription for sleeping pills for dealing with the insomnia. Ask for a referral to a person who can direct you through CBT-I if the sleep doc's office isn't willing to do it. (Such a person might be a sleep doctor, or a PA or nurse practitioner, but it might also be a psychologist who specializes in CBT.)

I sincerely wish you the best of luck: You're having a tough transition to therapy, one that is quite honestly far tougher than most people. But if you are stubborn enough to keep plugging away at it, things will eventually turn around and you will eventually start feeling better.

robysue1 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 09, 2024 7:24 pm

1) Work really hard on sleep hygiene issues. In particular, you need to not do anything in the bedroom except for sleep and sex. If you often read or watch TV or get on your cell phone or laptop while in bed, you've got to learn to do those things outside the bedroom. The idea is to reteach your body and brain that the bed is meant for sleeping and not for web browsing, watching videos, or reading. If you can see a clock from your bed, you should at least turn it away from your face to make it harder to see. Don't lie in bed looking at the clock every few minutes when you find yourself awake during the night---so-called clock watching is really, really bad for feeding the insomnia monster. Pay attention to the amount of caffeine, alcohol, and marijuana you are consuming since they can all adversely affect sleep.

We've been pretty good about this. My wife and I used to say a prayer in bed before trying to sleep but we've started doing that on the couch and then moving to the bedroom to sleep. I don't have a visible clock, I read in the living room and I don't look at my phone or watch TV in the bedroom. I also don't drink or us marijuana. I have one cup of coffee in the morning and that's it for caffeine.

2) Keep a simple sleep log. This can be done on paper or in an Excel spreadsheet. Each row of the log/spreadsheet is divided into two basic parts: Part 1 is to be completed just before you go to bed each night; part 2 is to be completed when you wake up and get out of bed the next morning.

I need to be better about this one.

3) Establish a regular sleep schedule including both a regular wake-up time and a regular bedtime. (Far too many people only focus on establishing a regular bedtime; but ironically, a regular wake up time is even more critical for fighting insomnia.) The so-called time-in-bed window (TIB for short) needs to be reasonable, but it also needs to be short enough to help force your body to consolidate the sleep cycles by learning how to not fully wake up every single time you happen to have an arousal during the night. In other words, the goal is not so much to eliminate every last spontaneous arousal that you might see in the OSCAR data; rather the goal is to get where you subjectively feel like you are no longer constantly waking up and finding yourself unable to get back to sleep.

To craft the sleep schedule you start with the regular wake up time. Now, if you have a job, your regular wake up time is whatever time you need to be up and out of bed in time to get yourself up and ready to go to work along with getting to work on time. But you have to get up at that same time every day, even the days you don't have to go to work. If you are retired or otherwise not working

I need to be better about this as well. I do work and have a scheduled time to get up but on the weekends, I just feel like laying in bed. My depression has gotten so much worse with the lack of sleep that I don't feel like facing the day a lot of the time. I just feel cursed with this whole thing. I'm only 36. I wish I had gotten this diagnosis later in life.

I think you need to set some reasonable short-term goals for yourself. Unfortunately, "Sleep all night without waking up" is not a reasonable goal at this point. Your body is just plain not capable of doing that yet.

I'd settle for just waking us less at this point. I'm going on vacation this weekend and I'm so scared of my sleep ruining the trip.

Don't set yourself up for failure by expecting too much from the switch to bipap. Yes, switching to bipap can make a big difference for certain problems, including aerophagia. But if the real problem is that your body is simply being overwhelmed by the sensory stuff coming from the CPAP, the switch to bipap may not do much to help you rein in the insomnia monster.

That's what I mean, I don't want to assume that it will just solve things.

Have you told the sleep doctor that you are unable to stay asleep during the night? You may have to keep hammering that point home until the sleep doc or whoever in his/her office is responsible for dealing with you finally sits up and takes notice.

Yes, the sleep doctor, all of my respiratory therapists, a sleep tech I worked with, my primary doctor, my psychologist and my therapist. Most of them have only thrown pills at me. The sleep tech was very helpful in helping me understand my data on Oscar and all that. My therapist wanted to try this new therapy with me that is supposed to promote REM sleep. We were supposed to do that today but she has Covid so it will have to wait till next week.

As painful as it might be, you might want to ask whether your insurance would pay for an in-lab titration study with a bilevel machine more to try to establish just how little sleep you are getting each night.

They have actually ordered one but I have to try the BIPAP out first. If I struggle with it, they will do one. The thing is, I think I'm sleeping, I'm just sleeping very light.

So for what it's worth, my advice for what to do now is quite simple: Keep posting here. Find support among friends and family as you can. Tell the sleep doc you need more help than just a prescription for sleeping pills for dealing with the insomnia. Ask for a referral to a person who can direct you through CBT-I if the sleep doc's office isn't willing to do it. (Such a person might be a sleep doctor, or a PA or nurse practitioner, but it might also be a psychologist who specializes in CBT.)

I sincerely wish you the best of luck: You're having a tough transition to therapy, one that is quite honestly far tougher than most people. But if you are stubborn enough to keep plugging away at it, things will eventually turn around and you will eventually start feeling better.

I really appreciate all of your help and I promise you that it is making a difference for me. The support from my wife, parents, siblings, church and co-workers has been invaluable but it is still easy to feel alone because they can't quite understand what I'm going through like the folks on this board do. I will keep posting even though I do feel like a nuisance sometimes.

I've been on the BIPAP the past two nights and have felt better. Looking at the data from Friday, these are the longest stretches I've had without arousals so that's promising. However, there are more CAs popping up. I can't check last night's data because I'm on vacation but can anyone tell me if there are any settings I can try to alleviate some of them? I read maybe turning up the trigger and cycle can help?

https://sleephq.com/public/4126c103-834 ... 04506e793d

Your CAs/centrals aren't likely "fixable" with machine setting tweaks because they aren't real asleep centrals.
They are all post arousal false positives.
Again....it's a sleep problem and not an airway problem.
So screwing around with the settings is unlikely to help unless one of those setting tweaks happens to help you sleep more soundly with fewer arousals. Now.....that's not an impossibility though but resist the urge to change anything at this time.

You REALLY, REALLY need to give a set of settings a period of time (week or two) before you go changing things....unless one of the changes causes a disaster then we won't delay changing it back.

Sounds good. Thanks, Pugsy. I have not messed with anything.

FWIW I have also heard about centrals and the trigger settings BUT you have to realize that those people were having a LOT more centrals than you are having and they were all pretty much real asleep centrals and often had some periodic breathing bordering Cheyne Stokes Respiration. I am talking central index in the 20's or even more.
You aren't having enough centrals to warrant concern even if every one of them was a real deal asleep central......and I failed to spot one for sure asleep flagged central.

Again they(centrals) are a symptom of the sleep quality problem but NOT the cause of the sleep quality problem.

You need to be seeing a central index (not AHI but just central) above 5 and happening every night and all night long to get a doctor to even bat an eyelash at the central index.

Okay good to know. I feel like I'm getting somewhere. The past two nights, I can tell that when I'm sleeping, it's more sound and I'm even remembering my dreams. I just need to wake up less. May be looking into CBT-I when I get home.

And of course two good nights lead to an awful night. I don't think I can do this anymore. My life has become awful.

Iancdub88 wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 15, 2024 8:10 am

And of course two good nights lead to an awful night. I don't think I can do this anymore. My life has become awful.

I know you don't want to hear it, because I certainly didn't want to hear it when I was where you are right now, but: Patience.

There's a lot of two steps forward, one step back in this process when you're dealing with a very difficult, seemingly impossible, effort to make this crazy theory work for you.

My advice right now: Hang on to the good nights even if they seem too few and too far in between. You had two good nights in a row with the bilevel; remember them instead of focusing on how bad last night was. One bad night is just the "one step backwards". Go into tonight trying your best to not expect it to be yet another bad night. Because the quickest way to another long set of bad nights in a row is expecting every night to be "bad" even before you go to bed.

And I also do think some CBT-I would be useful for you. But if you decide to try it, you have to go into it with reasonable expectations. CBT-I is not an instant fix; it can take several weeks to a few months before it "works" in the sense of allowing you to get what feels like a full night's sleep on more nights than not each week. And CBT-I can (ironically) make things worse at the very beginning if you are asked to do a sleep restricted schedule. If that happens, keep in mind that there is a point to the sleep restricted schedule: You have to teach your body to not wake up in the middle of the night, and sometimes the only way to do that is to make it clear to the body that time in bed is precious and that if the body wants sleep, then time in bed = time to be asleep instead of waking up and fretting about being awake.

What if I just can't adapt? There have to be people that that's the case for, right?

Iancdub88 wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 10, 2024 10:47 am

robysue1 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 09, 2024 7:24 pm

3) Establish a regular sleep schedule including both a regular wake-up time and a regular bedtime. (Far too many people only focus on establishing a regular bedtime; but ironically, a regular wake up time is even more critical for fighting insomnia.) The so-called time-in-bed window (TIB for short) needs to be reasonable, but it also needs to be short enough to help force your body to consolidate the sleep cycles by learning how to not fully wake up every single time you happen to have an arousal during the night. In other words, the goal is not so much to eliminate every last spontaneous arousal that you might see in the OSCAR data; rather the goal is to get where you subjectively feel like you are no longer constantly waking up and finding yourself unable to get back to sleep.

To craft the sleep schedule you start with the regular wake up time. Now, if you have a job, your regular wake up time is whatever time you need to be up and out of bed in time to get yourself up and ready to go to work along with getting to work on time. But you have to get up at that same time every day, even the days you don't have to go to work. If you are retired or otherwise not working

I need to be better about this as well. I do work and have a scheduled time to get up but on the weekends, I just feel like laying in bed. My depression has gotten so much worse with the lack of sleep that I don't feel like facing the day a lot of the time. I just feel cursed with this whole thing. I'm only 36. I wish I had gotten this diagnosis later in life.

I know you feel cursed right now. But keep this in mind: If you hadn't had that sleep test done, then you might have gone through 10, 15, or 20+ years of your apnea slowly getting worse and damaging your body. And whatever daytime symptoms led to you getting the sleep test? They too would have gotten worse the longer your apnea was left untreated. There are folks here who look back on the daytime fatigue and exhaustion that they suffered from for decades and wish that they'd had a sleep test done much, much sooner than they finally decided to get one done.

As for the sleep schedule: As hard as it is, your body will consolidate its sleep cycles a lot better if you go ahead and establish a wake-up time that is consistent across all 7 days of the week. Yes, it's a bitch to have to get out of bed on a day off work when you don't feel like it. But one thing you can do to make it less onerous is to reward yourself by doing something that you really, really enjoy and don't have time for during the work week when you get up on those days off at the same time you get up during your work week.

Iancdub88 wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 10, 2024 10:47 am

robysue1 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 09, 2024 7:24 pm

I think you need to set some reasonable short-term goals for yourself. Unfortunately, "Sleep all night without waking up" is not a reasonable goal at this point. Your body is just plain not capable of doing that yet.

I'd settle for just waking us less at this point. I'm going on vacation this weekend and I'm so scared of my sleep ruining the trip.

"Waking up less" may or may not be a "reasonable" goal since you can't really control how many times your body is waking up during the night.

What would be reasonable goals that may help your body to consolidating its sleep cycles? Here are the two that I would start with:

1) Force yourself to get up at the same time on your days off even if you don't feel like it.

2) Do your best to prevent yourself from worrying about your sleep during the daytime and dreading bedtime for fear that tonight will be yet another bad night.

Yes, I understand just how hard those two short-term goals are. But unlike "waking up less", these are things that you can control.

If you force yourself to get up every day at the same time, the body will eventually learn that it can't hope to get a bit more (bad) sleep just by staying in bed a bit longer. All by itself that can lead to fewer long wakes during the night, but it can take several weeks for this to happen on a consistent basis.

As for doing your best to quit dreading bedtime and worrying about your bad sleep during the daytime: You don't want to get trapped in another bad feedback loop of self-fulfilling prophecies: The worse you expect your sleep to be, the more likely your body is to accommodate those expectations by not sleeping well. People with decent sleep seldom spend anytime worrying about their sleep. People with really bad insomnia often spend huge chunks of time worrying about their sleep, both in bed when they are trying to sleep and when out of bed during the day. All that worrying can make it even harder for the brain and body to actually get some decent sleep.