Can't fall asleep after WBTB

I took about a 2 year hiatus from LDing, but now I;m getting back into it.

I’ve been attempting WILD with WBTB and have been waking up approximately 5 hours after going to bed. The first few nights were fine. I woke up, was tired, attempted WILD for a while (with slow progress, and getting SP for the first time ever, very strange feeling).

Now, I wake up automatically after a few hours of going to sleep (uually 3-4 hours for some reason). Once I wake up, I feel completely refreshed. Some nights I try WILD and others I just want to get back to sleep becuase I need to wake up fairly early. I usually end up laying in bed for several hours before feeling tired enough to fall asleep. Once I do fall asleep and my alarm rings in the morning, i feel pretty tired and could definitely sleep for much longer.

I guess the reason question is, what can I do to help myself get tired enough after I wake up for WBTB feeling awake?

I personally don’t have a problem getting back to sleep, but I have read several people suggesting reading to help get yourself sleepy. This can also be helpful for WILD if you read something LD related.

Also I think we have an Insomnia thread somewhere on here; I’ll see if I can find it and add the link to this post; might have some good suggestions for getting to sleep.

Edit: here it is : Big Insomnia Topic

I think I might have the answer :smile:
Your first tried with WILD and WBTB, both worked fine (you made progress), then you woke up in the middle of the night by yourself, right?
When you wake up by yourself, it often means you’ve just left a REM period. In the end of some (all?) REM periods we wake up for a second or so, but we often don’t notice it- But when you go to sleep with the intention of waking up in the middle of the night, you remember this and forces yourself to wake up as soon as you regain consciousness.
Meaning you’re not in the middle of a REM period, and you won’t go straight from awaken state to a dream.

My tip is to use an alarm clock or something :smile:

Well, it doesn’t look too much like a WBTB/WILD related problem to me. It can happen that you cannot fall asleep if you try too hard to do WILD, but as I see it you do not try at all.

Maybe you try too hard to fall asleep - but that would be another problem entirely. Maybe you should try relaxing and just not care whether you fall asleep or not. Just think you are going to get some rest. This usually works for me (sometimes - sometimes it doesn’t, anyway, it prevents me from panicking about not getting enough sleep :wink:).

Anyway, I’d agree that it is an insomnia related problem, not so much a LD one.

ive been using an timer on my phone to wake up after 5 hours of sleep and it works pretty well.

my problem seems to have disappeared. im not waking up in the middle of the night on my own anymore, i only wake up to the alarm now. still no real progress with WILD, but at least i can sleep which is helpful. i guess just talking about it helped, or maybe it was a short spell of insomnia.

thanks for the advice

I used to wake up every night for two months when I was really into my ld training :wink: I think it’s because you kinda’ wish and hope for yourself to wake up in the middle of the night.