Sleep management
Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 6:23 am
Has anyone here played with Dr. McDougall's "sleep management"? How did it go for you? I stumpled across this in the March 2004 newsletter and it caught my attention and I have started to experiment with it.
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougal ... ession.htm
Does anyone know where I can read more about this? He presents sleep management as a cure for depression. I am not depressed but I have somnophobia....yes that's an irrational fear of sleep. This means that just getting ready for bed causes anxiety. Before anyone tells me how to cure this....trust me, I've already done it. If I actually catch myself falling asleep or sleeping, I will wake up with a full blown anxiety attack....difficulty breathing, sweating, rapid heartbeat etc. I do sleep but I have to kind of fool myself into doing it. Now before anyone gives me tips on how to relax at bedtime...let me remind you that the stress factor is sleep itself....so this would be like telling someone with an irrational fear of spiders how to relax and reduce stress before climbing into bed. Oh, and by the way, the bed is covered with live spiders. Unless you have a phobia, you don't have a clue. So anyway, I thought, why not give this a try...I've tried everything else. I've only been on it for a week now and I'm down to 5 hours a night. I doubt I was sleeping more than that before except that this was uninterupted. I don't remember waking up last night and I was out of bed before I realized I'd been sleeping. Why McDougall's version of "sleep management" intriqued me is that (like everything else he says) it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. I've paid good money for hypnosis so that I could get "more sleep"....it has never even occured to me that maybe I need to get less sleep. So if anyone has had experience with McDougall's sleep management....or would like to try it.....I'd love to compare notes.
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougal ... ession.htm
Does anyone know where I can read more about this? He presents sleep management as a cure for depression. I am not depressed but I have somnophobia....yes that's an irrational fear of sleep. This means that just getting ready for bed causes anxiety. Before anyone tells me how to cure this....trust me, I've already done it. If I actually catch myself falling asleep or sleeping, I will wake up with a full blown anxiety attack....difficulty breathing, sweating, rapid heartbeat etc. I do sleep but I have to kind of fool myself into doing it. Now before anyone gives me tips on how to relax at bedtime...let me remind you that the stress factor is sleep itself....so this would be like telling someone with an irrational fear of spiders how to relax and reduce stress before climbing into bed. Oh, and by the way, the bed is covered with live spiders. Unless you have a phobia, you don't have a clue. So anyway, I thought, why not give this a try...I've tried everything else. I've only been on it for a week now and I'm down to 5 hours a night. I doubt I was sleeping more than that before except that this was uninterupted. I don't remember waking up last night and I was out of bed before I realized I'd been sleeping. Why McDougall's version of "sleep management" intriqued me is that (like everything else he says) it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. I've paid good money for hypnosis so that I could get "more sleep"....it has never even occured to me that maybe I need to get less sleep. So if anyone has had experience with McDougall's sleep management....or would like to try it.....I'd love to compare notes.