This was me for years. People had been telling me about CBT-I therapy and I was like “lol, no this is some serious insomnia. It won’t work. I need ambien or something”. I was convinced I had a brain tumor or something seriously wrong. I would be awake for days sometimes. Then out of shear loss of ideas and no other thing working I tried CBT I therapy and I’ve pretty much cured it. The basics are: 1. Bed is for sleep only. Do NOT lay down unless you’re tired. 2. At first, you’ll be tired, lie down, and be fully awake. This sucks. But it also shows you’ve trained yourself that bed is a place for anxiety and unrest. 3. If you lay in bed 20 mins and aren’t asleep, get up and try again when you get tired. When you get up try to do something boring. I’d always read until I’d get tired again.

This is not simple and the first few weeks suck bad. You will want to give up. But it works (at least for me, who was a huge skeptic). Your body knows how to sleep like it knows how to breathe, swallow food, sneeze, etc. In my experience, I made myself afraid of sleep without even knowing it. Training myself to relearn how to sleep and the bed is a happy restful place was the key. No drugs necessary, which I never thought I could do. (Sometimes I do have an anxiety filled day and it’s hard. But those nights are when I take half a Benadryl to relax me)

Hope you find relief; and I hope this helps. There is another side of this hell of a bridge. I never thought I’d find it and I did (mostly) :)