Success story

[VinceD]

Hello all. Since I have investigated insomnia and other sleep problems before and read all of the horror stories, I thought it would be good to share a success story. Reading some positive stories with happy endings is what helped me to beat my insomnia. Maybe some of you can relate to my experiences.

My story starts in January of 2006. I was 28 years old and had always been pretty healthy. Then I started to have strange headaches. They were probably initially caused by a kerosene heater that I had recently started using but I’m not sure. I started to worry about these headaches and over research them online and was afraid I had all kinds of terrible conditions. Eventually, I got over these fears and the less I worried about my health, the better it got. However, as I was recovering from these anxiety based health problems, a new problem sprang up; insomnia. I had never thought about sleeping. I always took it for granted that after about 10 minutes of laying my head down, I would be fast asleep. Well one night in March 2006, a thunderstorm woke me up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I wasn’t that concerned but it was in the back of my mind the next night. I had trouble falling asleep but eventually did. Now, I started to lose my confidence in being able to sleep. I started to look up things about sleep online and again, this only made things worse. I read stories about people that had “fatal insomnia” and other horrible stories. The next night, I barely slept at all. I started to be conscious of everything as I was falling asleep and I would wake myself up as I started to dose off. I progressively got more anxious and slept less and less.

Then, I entered my experimentation stage. I read about every possible drug, herb, exercise, and meditation that was supposed to help with sleep and tried every combination of them. I changed my diet, I avoided certain drinks, I stopped watching TV after 9pm, etc. I tried over the counter sleep aids and Nyquil and even prescription drugs like ambien. I tried valerian and melatonin and other herbs and teas. I did controlled breathing and visualization techniques. I kept a sleep log and did sleep restriction therapy. I had limited results with some of these things but nothing really helped me to sleep well or got rid of the intense fear that I now had when I thought about bedtime. There were periods where I went days with only an hour or two of sleep. I spent the nights agonizing over not being able to sleep and wondering if I would ever be able to sleep again. I would work myself up into nervous sweats and my muscles would be so tense it felt like someone beat me up the next morning. I would get up in the middle of the night and just run down the street trying to get rid of the anxiety I was filled with. I would break down and cry out of desperation in my wife’s arms and, although she tried to sympathize, she could never really understand how something so simple as sleep could be so difficult for me and cause me so much agony.

Then, after several months, after I had exhausted all other possible solutions, I decided to look for positive stories online of people who overcame insomnia. They were few and far between but I did stumble onto a few. And one in particular really spoke to me. It sounded like he was just a normal guy like me who had something going on in his life that was a little stressful and started to have trouble sleeping. Then, even after changing his life and removing the stress, the insomnia became a monster of its own. He tried just about everything like I had and nothing worked. Then, he had a revelation with the help of his wife. He realized that although there are many people that have sleep problems because they have physical or emotional conditions that cause them, he wasn’t one of those people. He had always slept fine and been healthy. He never used to have to think about sleep or plan out how he was going to fall asleep that night. He just did it and it came easily and naturally. And so he stopped trying. He stopping doing anything he wouldn’t have normally done before he had insomnia and he started doing the things he stopped doing like spending time with friends and eating what he wanted to and watching TV late. The more that he changed his life, or unchanged it, I should say, back to what it was like, the better he slept, till he eventually recovered and almost always gets a full night of sleep now.

This just made so much sense to me. It was exactly the same as my situation. I didn’t have a medical condition which was causing my insomnia. In my case, I was causing my insomnia and I didn’t know what to do to stop it. The key was that I had to do NOTHING. I had to stop thinking about sleep because I never did before. I had to stop fighting against the insomnia and the anxiety that goes with it and just ACCEPT it. Accept that I had done everything I could during the day to be healthy and sleep well and in bed, I couldn’t control it so I should try to not think about it. If I slept, then great. If not, I could still survive as I had many times before.

As soon as I came to this realization that I didn’t have to fight anymore, I felt a great burden lift off of my shoulders. I didn’t have to come up with a plan of attack for that night. I could just enjoy the day and try not to focus on sleep and just lay down at night and accept that my body and mind need some time to relax and unwind. The first night, I didn’t sleep but at least I didn’t feel the torment that I had been going through. I was nervous but not in dread. I laid down for a few hours, then moved to the couch and watched some tv. I eventually fell asleep at about 6am but I was happy because I was able to stay relaxed the whole night. The next night, I prepared the couch with a pillow and sheet just in case I got bored in bed and wanted to move there again. Then I went to bed fell asleep within minutes. I slept until 3am and was so relieved that I had been able to sleep I eventually fell back to sleep until the alarm went off for work. It was up and down for a few weeks trying to get back on schedule but as long as I kept my new attitude of acceptance, I slept 4-6 hours every night. I had found the secret!

After a month, I was almost back to my old self falling asleep quickly and getting 6 or 7 hours each night. I have suffered two relapses, one a year after (2007), and another that I recently got over. I needed to remind myself of the things that I had learned before. I was trying to fight again as is our natural tendency when we’re scared and not well. When I stopped fighting and accepted that I was going through a rough period of sleep, I began to sleep again, and now I’ve been sleeping better than ever. I do try to keep some of the good sleep hygiene that learned when I was having my insomnia like exercising, eating healthier and avoiding food, alcohol, and stressful things late in the evening. But I don’t plan my life around sleep like I was.

So I hope that my story gives some of you hope and confidence that you can beat insomnia. If you have always slept well before but had a few bad nights that turned into a fear of insomnia that has taken over your life, I was in that same place not too long ago. Stop researching, stop planning, stop thinking, stop fighting. Accept that we can’t control our sleep but it will improve the less we think about it and the more positive we are even if we’re nervous. Believe in yourself and in your body and mind and let sleep come back into your life.

Sweet dreams,
Vince D.

[nightafternight]

Thanks for sharing Vince, it does indeed help to hear success stories and I wish there were more of them around! Glad to hear it worked out for you.

[mastertdavis@hotmail.com]

Hi Vince, I have had this same problem for almost 2 years. it started when i was 21 and was taking a calculus class that i couldn't seem to pass... i stayed awake at night thinking over and over in my head what i could do to pass that class and then i couldn't sleep at all one night. then because of that i created this whole insomnia think in my mind and still haven't been able to let it go... i take an antidepressant at night to help me fall a sleep and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. every now and then i'll go days with out more than 6 hours of sleep. and then i'll just get so exausted that i'll pass out and sleep through the night. anyways, i could go on and on about it... but i was wondering if maybe i could talk about it with you through email or phone sometime. I understand if you would rather not but it would mean the world to me if you could give me some personal advice on this subject....
Thank you, Tyler.

[VinceD]

Sure, I'll email you.

[cleveyu]

Thank you for sharing your inspiring story Vince. It is a story worth telling everyone about. Kudos to you and for what you have done.