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Behavioral
Techniques I Used To Overcome Chronic Insomnia
While cognitive
techniques were crucial for me to overcome insomnia,
so were behavioral techniques. By behavioral, I am referring
to the behaviors or actions one takes that are related to
insomnia.
One’s behaviors and actions send a powerful message to
one’s subconscious. They are as powerful, and possibly
more powerful, than ones’ conscious thoughts. I found that
I could not have much success overcoming chronic insomnia if
I engaged in cognitive therapy but continued to act like someone
with insomnia. That’s because the subconscious simply won’t
believe positive sleep thoughts if one’s actions contradict
them.
Wrong behavior feeds
the insomnia
As I mentioned here,
I regard chronic insomnia to be a phobia. People often cope
with phobias by avoiding the object or situation that causes
them the fear. For example, people with a phobia of flying often
cope with this fear simply by not getting on an airplane.
This avoidance of the feared object or situation, of course,
does not reduce or eliminate the phobia. In fact, avoiding that
which one irrationally fears feeds the phobia because it sends
the message to one’s subconscious that one does, indeed,
fear the object or situation, otherwise it would not be avoided.
By the same token, gradually and repeatedly exposing oneself
to the feared object or situation or “facing the fear”
is often an effective way to overcome the phobia.
A person with chronic insomnia often irrationally fears that
he or she will be unable to sleep adequately. In my opinion,
this fear is fed by the fact that the person avoids facing it
by engaging in certain coping behaviors.
Below I will describe the coping behaviors that I used and how
they were responsible for perpetuating the insomnia. I will
then show how I eliminated them and how their elimination allowed
me to expose myself to my fear of being unable to sleep, thus
helping to pave the way for me to end my sleeplessness.
Coping behaviors
To properly identify the coping behaviors that I used to avoid
facing my fear of being unable to sleep, I wrote down all of
the ways I behaved differently since I developed chronic insomnia.
Here are the three main coping behaviors I identified:
- I would
often spend a great deal of time in bed, up to 12 hours
a day, even though I was sleeping very little. I did this
mainly out of fear that I would not be able to sleep. I
thought that if I spent as much time as possible in bed
I might just get lucky and get some winks.
- I often
found myself dramatically reducing my activity level. For
example, I did less at work and around the house. I cut
out almost all exercise. I did not do much socially. I reduced
my activity level, in part, because I was tired and did
not feel like being active. More importantly, however, I
was less active out of fear that being active would make
me still more tired the next day if I did not sleep that
night.
- Similar
to the point above, I started to change my goals or plans
for life because of the insomnia. For example, I avoided
having career goals that would put me into a challenging
position out of fear that my sleeplessness would prevent
me from meeting the challenge. So I found myself settling
for much less career-wise. Also, I avoided doing much
travel even though I enjoyed it because I was afraid that
I would not be able to sleep well on my travels and, as
a result, not enjoy them.
In my
opinion, my subconscious correctly viewed my engaging in the
above behaviors to mean that attaining sleep for me was a
real problem; otherwise I would not engage in them. In other
words, my subconscious understood my actions to be proof that
sleep, in some sense, is a danger or at least difficult.
It’s little wonder, then, that the idea of sleep in general,
and bedtime in particular, would cause in me an eruption of
negative sleep thoughts and stress, enough to prevent me from
sleeping or sleeping restfully.
Face the fear
I realized that I needed to eliminate or at least reduce my
coping behaviors because they (along with negative sleep thoughts
) were fueling the insomnia. In other words, I needed to start
behaving as if I had no insomnia or fear of being unable to
sleep.
So I began to set challenging goals for myself, be more physically
active and spend less time in bed. This was very difficult
at the beginning largely because I had great anxiety about
doing these things. I engaged in the coping behaviors, after
all, to deal with my fear of being unable to sleep well. So
the mere thought of eliminating these behaviors made me feel
dreadfully anxious at first.
With this in mind, I found that the best way to eliminate
the coping behaviors was to borrow a technique used to treat
other phobias. Specifically, I am referring to the technique
of gradually increasing exposure to the object or situation
that is the source of the fear, instead of facing the fear
all at once. These small steps keep the anxiety level manageable
and, consequently, increase the chances that the person will
be able to eventually fully face their fear and overcome the
phobia.
Here is how I applied this technique for eliminating each
of my coping behaviors and confronting my fear and apprehension
of being unable to sleep:
- Spend
less time in bed. Over the course of 3-4 weeks, a cut down
the amount of time I spent in bed a little more each day.
At the end of the two weeks, I had reduced my time in bed
to about 8-9 hours. This is the amount of time I had spent
in bed prior to my developing chronic insomnia.
- Increase
my activity level. Over the course of two weeks, I began
to increase my activity level a little more each day. I
established daily goals for myself in regard to work, exercise
and house chores. At the end of the two weeks, I was much
more active.
- Setting
challenging life goals. I wrote down new and challenging
goals and plans for myself, particularly in regard to career
and travel, and when I was to meet them. I also set up sub-goals
for each major goal. My first sub-goals were to be met within
3-4 weeks. For example, I was to make reservations for a
travel destination within that time.
Immediately
upon just starting to reduce my coping behaviors, I felt much
more in control over the insomnia. And by starting to behave
like someone without insomnia, I started to think like someone
without insomnia. And this means I would start to sleep better.
Next: Results and
Summary
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