Cannot stress enough how I second that. A nervous person (who you, a reader, completely are, despite thinking you’re normal) is at risk of self-feeding the problem they have with something.

Also as a person who couldn’t find interest in life events anymore in general (not suicidal, just boring to death), CBT theme itself is like a fresh breath. Like as a geek you never knew what a computer is and just found out.

Therapy makes a difference thru acceptance and working with you as you are more than fixing. Part of that is getting a more realistic way of perceiving your self as you are, and part of that is finding the strengths in how you are. Also taking very good care of your precious life. Sleep when you are tired. Eat when you are hungry. Seek help when you could benefit from it. It you hate someone, don’t hang around. Etc etc.

Between the acceptance, self awareness, less shame about your actual self, and a life that meets your needs, therapy can transform your life, but not by transforming you. You are fine.

This was my concern as well, I asked about it on third or fourth session right after acute symptoms relaxed. I really didn’t want to change into someone else. The therapist laughed and said to not worry, because I lived more than 30 years along with my core beliefs and it would take an inhuman effort to move that mountain even slightly. All you do is getting familiar with yourself and being aware of tons of your automatic thoughts and what they result in, if you allow them to act without your noticing. Speaking in software terms, we are legacy monsters with no source code or self-testing, and CBT is basically a set of (pretty effective) blackbox testing methods with a goal to (a) create additional routines to work around detected issues and (b) accept that this is you and it’s normal/okay/justthat.

If you can do that, congratulations, you don't have insomnia.

> need to eat a heavy breakfast (…) Some people think they are special snowflakes who "have never been able to eat in the morning"

If I don't wait one or two hours after waking up before eating I'll puke, or at best have some severe nausea for hours, no thanks.

I'm insomniac and it drove me quite close to death, try getting a total of 6h of sleep in a week, 48h without rest, or staying still and conscious for 8h. Sleep deprivation is torture and everyone has their idea of how badly people manage their lives, how insomnia isn't a thing, and how they should just "go to bed", "quit screens", or "eat proper". You think we have not tried everything and anything?

Melatonin saved me, not condescending uninformed counsel. When I started taking melatonin I discovered what feeling sleepy was like. I only knew exhaustion until then, and it was not always enough. I've been able to sleep for the past two years and it still feels like a luxury.

There's no recognition that there is variation between people and maybe we should make things easier for a diverse set of needs rather than forcing people to do a bunch of labor to comply with someone else's lifestyle.

"But I'm having trouble sleeping and I'm bored, can't I just watch a couple episodes of something?" they'd say. NO, we'd say. "Well how about I work on some homework on my computer?" NO. "Alright, well I guess I'll text my friends" NO. "But..." NO.

And if sleep across the population of kids had indeed been getting worse over that time period, I'd bet that'd fix it for most of them.

We have trouble enforcing rules like that on ourselves, though, and maybe even trouble recognizing what's surely suspect #1 in any kind of declining sleep quality epidemic.

(as for any "tricks" we're all sharing, the ones I've had success with are: a loud and powerful fan for air circulation and noise-masking; keeping the thermostat for our bedrooms quite low at night, even in the Summer; heavy curtains; and a weighted blanket, which if nothing else is very good at keeping any sheets or other blankets under it in place all night—and yes, I'm terrible at sticking to the obvious solution above, just like everyone else, but damned if it doesn't work like a charm on my stupid "I think I might have an abnormal sleep cycle LOL yeah, must be that, not all the low-effort hyper-stimulative entertainment" ass)

Generalizing that everyone has terrible habits is ridiculous, it's the equivalent of telling someone who is suffering from depression they just need to exercise to feel better, or someone who is obese to just "eat less"

I think not being able to wake up early at the same time every day is actually a symptom of insomnia. If you've been up half the night and only fell asleep an hour or 2 ago, jumping out of bed when the alarm goes off is pretty hard actually.

Even if I eat 10 mg dexamphetamine and a Red Bull as soon as I wake up, I will sometimes fall back asleep. Some mornings I don't even get that far, and manage to sleep though half a dozen alarms.