The Sleep Book: How to Sleep Well Every Night

I rarely write reviews, but here I am. This book was such a game changer for me (and the reviews were so helpful in getting me to try it) that I wanted to add my experience here. I had severe insomnia after the birth of a baby which spiraled out of control really quickly. I had had nights before where my mind would race and it would take me a long time to get back to sleep after wake-ups, but I never felt like I had LOST the ability to sleep until this postpartum insomnia started. I became absolutely terrified, so incredibly scared that I was never going to be able to sleep normally again. I had to use medications on and off for months to piece together enough sleep to function. I really believed I'd never get over this. Even when I was sleeping somewhat decently again for months, I always had that little nagging fear in the back of my mind saying "but what if the insomnia comes back?" and "but what if I can't sleep again?" Then I had a night a few months ago where I (for unknown reasons) just couldn't fall asleep. It sent me straight off the cliff again and I was suddenly freefalling into depression and anxiety and panic all over again. The fear was unbelievable despite the fact that I'd slept fine for months prior. I had a second hellish night, then a third. I really believed I was back in this nightmare and it honestly felt like a PTSD type response.Then I remembered a book a sleep psychologist had told me about during the first insomnia jag postpartum. It was called "Mindfulness for Insomnia" by Catherine Polan Orzech & William Moorcroft. I had not used it the first time around because my sleep had started improving a little already and I hadn't wanted to think about my sleep any more in case it somehow made things worse. I got the book immediately and started the 4 week program it walks through with daily meditation. At the same time I found Guy Meadows' The Sleep Book and was struck by the great reviews and the similar approach using mindfulness. I read the two books in conjunction and these really changed my mindset about things over the course of a few weeks.The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) approach is a game changer. With sleep anxiety there's so much fear around anything having to do with sleep - the bed, the bedroom, pajamas, darkness, people mentioning sleep. Even putting my kids down for naps or bedtime would freak me out because it would trigger this severe and deep anxiety I had around the ability to sleep normally. ACT and mindfulness allowed me to see these reactions as thoughts and emotions and physical sensations - just those things. Not who I am. They are not important, they're not "signs" of some deeper problem or inability - they're just things flowing through my mind and body that I can notice and then let go of. The more I tried to get rid of the things I was thinking and feeling that I didn't like - the more persistent they became. Once I was able to untangle myself from these things and see them for what they are, they lost a lot of power. I was able to observe them and embrace them and be ok with them - even welcome them. I actually loved the anecdote in the book about the client who started to think of herself as the teacher in a classroom, and each night the different thoughts and feelings she was having would show up as pupils in her classroom. I used this imagery and actually still do.I tried CBT-i when I was in the throes of severe insomnia because everyone told me it was the "gold standard" treatment and the drug-free nature of it really appealed to me. Within a few nights of starting it I felt even more stressed and anxious and panicked than before (which believe me felt impossible). I felt I had failed yet another thing - even the gold standard approach didn't work for me. Using ACT/mindfulness instead as a primary "treatment" for insomnia was a totally different approach that changed everything for me. Focusing more on sleep and making changes around sleep with CBT-i was absolutely NOT helpful for me - it made things worse. I can see how it might help some people if their sleep anxiety is not the primary problem. But for me letting go of trying to control things around sleep was the key.Please try this book, and also check out the other book I mentioned - Mindfulness for Insomnia. These approaches have helped me SO much to view sleep normally again. My sleep isn't perfect (although I have stretches sometimes of sleeping really really well). But I don't really freak out anymore if I have crappy nights of sleep. I just rest and don't use up a bunch of energy during the night panicking. I honestly can't say enough about how grateful I am to have found these books. I would also emphasize that these approaches have not only transformed my sleep and nights, but also how I deal with stressors in my life. I feel a million times calmer and less reactive. Thank you to the author of this book for sharing such valuable information!

In my experience with fighting anxiety and depression, I found ACT to be much more helpful than CBT. Trying to talk reason into my thoughts and feelings never made them go away and I would always feel like a failure for still thinking that way or feeling that way, even though I knew it was irrational. But I found the principles of ACT to be revolutionary and so helpful for me for depression and anxiety, but for some reason I never considered that ACT principles could be equally as helpful for my issues with insomnia.I've never been a great sleeper and it got much worse when I was a grad student. I was prescribed Ambien, spent a couple years on it daily, then it stopped working and I had to find another solution. Enter CBT-I, which actually did help me start to develop a more normal sleep pattern after years of insomnia and using Ambien. But it's a lot of work and, when life gets tough, it's easy to fall back into the old patterns that insomnia leads you to that actually end up making it worse. It becomes a self-perpetuating problem at that point.I am working on the Sleepio program through my work, which is online CBT-I, then for some reason I thought, why not look into an ACT-based insomnia program. That's how I found this book. I actually am starting to think the main reason CBT-I worked for me was the sleep restriction, which meant that I would be so tired when getting into bed that I fell asleep easier. I always hated the 15 minute rule they teach you in CBT-I, which, although it sounds like it makes sense at first in terms of associating the bed with sleep and not tossing and turning, it was a huge source of stress for me when implementing CBT-I. Now I can just lie in bed and focus on accepting the thoughts and feelings I may be having instead of fusing with them, getting more and more stressed about not sleeping and then getting out of bed. It makes so much sense to me that, although laying in bed resting may not be as good as sleeping, it's better than getting up out of bed, as long as you do that while also using mindfulness, defusion and expension instead of fighting yourself. I was often getting back into bed and back out of bed! I hated that so much.Also, the thought challenging of CBT-I often felt like I was trying to lie to myself. On the one hand, we know how important sleep is for mental, emotional and physical health, on the other hand, I'm telling myself it's all going to be fine if I don't sleep tonight. I much prefer ACT's method of dealing with thoughts and feelings around my insomnia.I do think some sleep restriction at the beginning is helpful so your sleep drive is high when you get into bed. I'm using my last week's average sleep time + 30 minutes as my sleep window, and I will increase it by 15 minutes for every week when my sleep efficiency is >85%. It sucks because you will be tired during the day even if you slept your entire sleep window, but it's a lot of bang for your buck in terms of getting consistent sleep that helps you get out of the helpless insomniac mindset. Just doing this I've already consistently gotten 5.5 hours of sleep while spending only 6 hours in bed the last two nights.If you've tried CBT-I and you hated the 15 minute rule and other aspects of it, read this book to see if this ACT-based approach might work better for you.

Definitely a different perspective than your typical cbt-I advice which I enjoyed. Worth trying some of the suggestions in here and seeing what works for you. Between this and NATTO a good range of alternatives.

Love it appreciate all the tips and information

I don’t say this lightly, but this book has changed my life. After years of insomnia, I became a pretty good sleeper in a matter of days.If you ask a good sleeper what he does to sleep well, he will say: “nothing“. If you suffer from insomnia, you put sleep on a pedestal. It’s time to get a more relaxed attitude towards sleep. Reduce expectations and anxiety by just going to bed to relax. And if you have recurrent thoughts which put you under pressure, greet them and let them go – if necessary, dozens or hundreds of times.This and a lot more is explained very well, there’s also a chapter about relapses. Highly recommend it!

I've suffered with insomnia for around 10 years and have tried so many things to free myself. Its felt like a never ending cycle of poor sleep, anxiety and control measures.My sleep improved within the first couple of days after reading this. If you are a fellow insomniac then this book is must read! At the very least you may learn that the things you think are helping you are actually holding you back...

I have had horrible insomnia for close to 5 years, which had created immense stress and struggle. I had done everything you could imagine to get rid of my insomnia, only to see my life shrink more and more and the fear I felt about not sleeping continue to grow out of control. This past year, I managed to improve my sleep to more manageable levels, achieving what I felt was a fragile truce with my insomnia. Regardless, my fear of not sleeping still dominated my life and it felt as though I would have to accept that this was as good as it could get. Having felt like I had tried everything, I had given up on being a normal sleeper when I stumbled on this book. I actually found it comforting to know that I been doing everything wrong and that all of the mainstream information on sleep is so misguided. Learning all of this was a huge relief. Perhaps the most significant relief was learning about the symptoms of hyper-arousal (sleep-onset twitches, jerks, adrenaline rushes, etc.). In addition, his approach of "welcoming the unwelcome" was not only effective for reducing hyper-arousal, but has been a life changing concept for all parts of life.I also read Set it & Forget It by Daniel Erichsen concurrently and I ultimately ended up implementing a combination of the approaches from these two books. I am only two months into changing my approach to sleep, but I have already experienced a huge shift, both in my anxiety around sleep and sleep itself.

excellent read and extremely helpful, can't recommend enough