Anyone had CBT for anxiety related insomnia?

[UntamedWisteria]

And did it work?

Background: 56, on HRT which has sorted everything except the bouts of sleeplessness.

Eat healthy & get fresh air & exercise every day & know all about good sleep hygiene... just really fed up of waking up at 3 am unable to get back to sleep.

Sorry to hear you are having trouble sleeping. Are you anxious about anything particular or is your anxiety about the fact you will wake up/not get a good night's sleep?

Thanks for replying, Blue. My anxiety usually coincides with a busy time at work, upcoming travel, or sometimes events. And is exacerbated when I wake up in the middle of the night by concern about not getting back to sleep & having a bad day the next day as a result.

Yes I have suffered in the same way before- it can be so exhausting and hellish. Things I found that helped me were mindfulness techniques- trying to practise mindfulness during the day.
I also used lavender oil to good effect- I suspect it's purely psychosomatic but now I associate the smell with sleep, so if I wake up in the night I just put a few more drops on my pillow and it helps me go back to sleep.
Before I built the sleep association with lavender oil, if I woke up at 2 or 3 I would try not to be anxious about it or 'fortune tell' / catastrophise about what impact it would have on me the next day. This meant challenging thoughts such as: oh god I'll never get back to sleep, I'll be a wreck the next day etc. I would allow myself to think those thoughts and then consciously ask myself 'so what if you're a wreck?' and work through that thought right til the end. Usually the end point was: I will feel grumpy and crap but then work will finish and I can come home and relax. This is a technique I learnt in CBT.

Another thing I would do is turn on my bedside light and get out my 'boring book'- any huge heavy tome which you're relatively uninterested in. And I would read until I felt sleepy again and would usually drop off within 45 mins.

The last thing that I have found helpful is visualisation- so visualise my anxious thoughts like clouds in the sky and just watch them pass, just as in real life clouds move through the sky. I found part of my anxiety was often about the fact I knew I felt anxious and then became anxious I was feeling anxious (if that makes sense!) and the more I tried to 'fight' the anxiety, the worse it got. So I've found generally the best thing to do is allow myself the anxious thoughts, recognise them, acknowledge them and then prod them a bit and try and get to the bottom of them by doing the 'and then what/so' technique, until they are fully unravelled.

Other things therapists have recommended to me have been to acknowledge the anxious thoughts that have woken me up by writing them down- keep a notepad and pen next to your bed. Then tell yourself they are written down now and you can deal with them in the morning. I didn't personally find this one worked for me- but I know others who have found this technique helpful.

Good luck- it has taken me a good while to build these habits, but they are probably 75-80% effective at helping me when anxiety impacts my sleep.

I bore myself to sleep if I wake at that time - counting to 100 then back again, doing it in French, doubling numbers, listing the states of the US. They require some concentration so crowd out actual thinking, but they’re so intrinsically boring I nod off. if it’s really bad I get up and make peppermint tea with lots of milk first 😊

Thank you both, very helpful advice

I had horrific insomnia that was relentless. The only thing that has ever helped (and I really had tried everything!) is the sedating antidepressant, Mirtazapine. Completely solved the problem. I sleep like a baby now.

I was very desperate by the time I was prescribed it, though, and would say it’s probably best to be used as a last resort, when other things, like the suggestions from the previous posters above, have been tried and failed.

I'm using sleepio, it seems to help