Sleep issues

Hi there!
Here comes the (success)story about my sleep problems and how I found a way to fix them, hoping that somebody with similar issues might benefit from reading about my experience.

How my sleep problems started and what they looked like:

First of all I have to say, I have never been a really good sleeper (it sometimes took me some time to fall asleep, I can't really sleep with certain noises that bother me like snoring or loud party music, I never could take naps during the day except for when I was pregnant,...), but it never really was a problem. I slept enough, liked to sleep in on the weekends, it was fine and not to the extent that it bothered me in any way.
Then I became a mother, and as you might know, sleep is a big issue once you have children - you generally tend to get less of it. (She is breastfed and we co-sleep in the same bed, for your information) The first months, my baby was an ok sleeper, meaning she woke (me) up only a few times a night and it was easy to make her fall asleep again as I was breasfeeding her. After a few months though, her sleep changed, and that of course affected my sleep too. She had days and weeks when it would feel like she would wake up every few minutes, an then had to be nursed for a long time, meanwhile scratching and pinching me, which made it difficult for me to go back to sleep. And of course the nights when she was sick and teething weren't the best either.
I think it was around that time, that "falling asleep" became something that in my head went from something you do naturally to something that can always be interrupted, making it difficult for me to relax when I went to bed. Even if my daughter would already be asleep next to me, I could never be sure if she would stay asleep for 5 min, 15 min, 1h,..., meaning I could never be sure when I would be woken up again. Being woken up was not even a very big problem for me, as long as it happend after I had managed to fall asleep once - it was not a problem to get back to sleep, but falling asleep that first time was difficult and my mind created a lot of anxiety around it.
Also, before having kids I always had the luxury to choose my bedtime freely, which would be somewhere around midnight on weekends, or around 10 pm on workdays. Now that I would lay down with my baby around 9 pm, it really wasn't my bedtime yet, so my biological clock would make me lie awake for a few hours anyway. And, another luxury you have without kids, you can "catch up on sleep" whenever you want - not possible, if you have to take care of a baby and are bound to their wake-up times.
Another factor that played into it was getting back to work 1 year after my daughter was born. I now had 2 days a week I had to wake up really early and be fit enough to drive to work, do the work itself (I work as a teacher, not a job that is fun when you are overtired), go back home and look after my daughter, so that created some pressure about being well rested too.
So after about 1 year of having not the best sleep (on good night about 6-8 h sleep with many interruptions, on the many more bad nights maybe 4-5h with interruptions), I started to get 1 night a month when I really could barely sleep at all (1-2h max). While laying in bed and trying to fall asleep, I felt really anxious and tense, and although I would try to relax, it would only work for a few minutes, and as soon as my brain noticed I was getting a little closer to falling asleep, it would kind of wake me up and make my very alert again, giving me some kind of adrenalin boost. Needless to say, it was very frustrating, and many times I also developed some kind of unsuppressable anger, that seemed to not be directed at anything specific, but was impossible to get rid of.
But after this one night, I always tended to be tired enough to sleep okayish the next few nights. Until one week I had another of this sleepless nights. And another. And another. I was alarmed and knew I had to address this issue. But how?

What worked and what didn't work for me:

Of course I googled possible solutions for my problems and also looked for success stories in this forum, but couldn't find anything too helpful. (I found some book recommendations here that seemed good, but did'nt order them in the end).
The standard advice Dr. Google gives on insomnia is to have very good "sleep hygiene" (go to bed at the same time, no phone in bed, do something relaxing before, lots of sunlight and exercise during the day, ecc). For me and my TMS history, this sounded like yet another thing to obsess about ("oh my god, today I didn't have time to take a walk, how am I supposed to sleep?!?"), so I decided, this was not what my solution looked like. On the contrary, I decided not to worry about my "sleep circumstances", as it was rarely my surroundings that were an obstacle for my sleep, but my mind that did'nt let my relax. So my mindset had to be like: It IS POSSIBLE to fall asleep if you look at your phone in bed, it IS POSSIBLE to fall asleep even if you didn't have time to do some kind of wind-down activity before lying in bed, nothing of this is a CAUSE for insomnia, it's just a TRIGGER if you obsess about it!
One advice that I found on the internet was actually kind of semi-helpful: if you can't sleep for a certain period of time of lying in bed, STOP TRYING - do something else. I couldn't really get out of bed, because this would wake my baby up, but I put a book I enjoyed reading next to me, a dim reading light, and so I knew, that if I couldn't fall asleep at all, at least I had something enjoyable to do and didn't have to waste my time lying in bed doing nothing. It took a little bit of the pressure of, but wasn't a long term solution in my mind.
So the issue remained - how would I get rid of my anxiety, anger, tension, that kept me awake and uncomfortable? First I had no idea how to do that - I had experience with other TMS issues, but all of them had involved pain of some sort, so in my mind my sleep issues were completely different because the concerned only my mental state, so for me it was a whole new level of problem. Until I figured out it wasn't! It was actually the same! The problem with the pain issues was that it was a sensation I wanted to avoid, that would stress me out, and the more I tried to make it go away the more power it got - the same was true for my anxiety! THE FEAR OF ANXIETY WAS THE PROBLEM, not the anxiety itself. So rather than trying to relax, I did some kind of somatic tracking for my anxiety - I allowed myself to REALLY FEEL IT AND BE OKAY WITH IT, to make me feel anxious, and uncomfortable. No trying to escape. Again, my mindset was: it IS POSSIBLE to fall asleep feeling anxious, stressed out, tense. Don't fight it. Allow youself to feel bad, it is ok, it as a safe feeling to have. No danger here. And this helped.

It's been a month without any sleepless nights, I hope it stays that way, but know well that it can happen again, but try not to be afraid of it. I am still not the best at falling asleep, but it got back to "normal" and I sleep okayish. So hopefully this will help somebody, feel free to message me if you're struggeling with similar issues and need somebody to talk to!

 

Great story.
I also suffered from this 10 years ago. Was baaad
3 diff pills didn't work. Had few nervous breakdowns. And yes over 12 books on sleep and did all recommended things plus meds . Nothing helped. Actually got really bad anxoety after pills didn't work.
In conclusion, I STOPPED it all...ALL. if I didn't sleep I didn't sleep. That was all to it. I didn't give a single care in the world anymore. No more lookin on google , no more pills no more searching and searching ( I was fueling it by searching for at least 2 hours of sleep),

Took about 2-3 weeks but I started sleeping an extra hour each day. And would be over joyous. ..the more I slept the more confident. All the weight load of my shoulders left as soon as I made a decision not to give a fck anymore if I slept or not... and what helped was not taking anything for it ..meds , books, lights off, socks on, mediation music etc. I gave all that up,...
In conclusion .... I sleep like a baby now...enter I just had some soda or with music loud or off. Did I have off days? Of course.. but the main important thing is that I didn't FEAr IT any longer. I didn't fear the fear of not falling asleep anymore.

That was it.

I spent alot of $$ on products that had to do with sleep when in turn it was FREE ..it was me.

Great story from you btw.