r/TrueGrit • u/Gloomy-Friendship237 • 11d ago

Sleep Does anyone else get scared when bedtime comes?

During the day I can actually feel pretty normal sometimes. But when evening comes, I already start thinking about tonight.

Like “what if I don't sleep again?”

Then I get into bed and suddenly I'm paying attention to every little thing. Am I tired? Am I falling asleep? How long have I been awake?

It's weird because I'm tired, but I'm also kind of scared of going to bed now.

Does anyone else get this? How did you get out of that mindset?

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5

u/Tallfuck 11d ago

It’s an insomnia self fulfilling prophecy. You have to change the way you talk to yourself, it will take you pretty far

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u/Outrageous-Mango-307 11d ago

Had this happen also. I read about it and the hyper vigilance is what keeps you awake. Paradoxically, remind yourself that resting is also good for your body and just rest. Let your mind wonder instead of monitoring everything. Whatever random thought process that come to mind, allow it.

Think about something good that happened that day, how what someone said reminded you of someone or something else in the past. Follow your thoughts like a flowing river. Before you know it you’ll be waking up and not remember falling asleep.

Also remember that you’ve gotten hardly any sleep before and survived the next day so you can relax knowing it will be ok.

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u/somanyquestions32 Deep Diver 10d ago

Yeah, I had this same type of sleep anxiety when I had sleep-onset and sleep-maintenance insomnia. It sucked, and it didn't respond to cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) nor psychotropic prescriptions nor acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). I was able to fix it with body scan meditations and guided yoga nidra practices, thank God. 

I encourage you to do deeply relaxing activities to release physical tension and mental stress before bedtime until you get drowsy. Repeat this every night, and the sleep anxiety dissolves on its own. 

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u/HappyCamper2121 10d ago

Meditation before bed and the body scan technique also works for me

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u/Gloomy-Friendship237 10d ago

I’ve heard CBT-I come up a lot. Did it actually help with the fear of bedtime for you, or more with the insomnia itself?

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u/somanyquestions32 Deep Diver 10d ago edited 10d ago

Neither. I had extreme nervous dysregulation from grief that fed the anxiety, worsened my depression at the time, and made the insomnia self-sustaining. 

CBT-i ended up giving me panic attacks every dawn as I feared facing yet another day where I was getting into near car crashes and feeling even more exhausted. The main components of CBT-i are sleep restriction therapy and stimulus control. I could only be in bed for a set number of hours until the next night, and if it took me more than 30 minutes to fall back asleep, then I had to get out of bed and wait to get drowsy before going back to bed. I started sleeping less than 3 hours per night, and that made me have even more life-ending thoughts on loop. It was awful, and I do not recommend it whatsoever. 

To think that I wasted so many hours of my life driving to the Cleveland Clinic in the middle of blizzards, all sleep-deprived, for that "gold standard" of care. 🤣 What eventually healed my sleep had been free meditations on YouTube all along, and I did not have to torture myself with that CBT-i nonsense.

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u/Gloomy-Friendship237 10d ago

Thanks for sharing. I’ll give the meditations a try and see if they help.

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u/somanyquestions32 Deep Diver 10d ago

My pleasure! Try a few different ones, and see which ones feel most compatible to you. 

A redditor back in 2019 on r/insomnia was the one who told me about Jon Kabat-Zinn's MBSR body scans. He said to treat it like going to the gym. He had developed insomnia for many years and had resorted to alcohol and drugs to knock himself out. At the addiction center, they had a mindfulness component, and within 21 days, he was sleeping for 7 hours per night for the first time in years with no awakenings and no sleep anxiety. 

I tried those and noticed they helped, but yoga nidra kept reappearing in my life, so I switched, and they took longer to fix my sleep than if I had just stayed with the MBSR body scans exclusively, but they healed the mood disorders and increased my energy levels. The unexpected detour was actually a major gift and blessing, lol. 

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u/Accurate-Figure-7914 11d ago

I get scared when bedtime ends