Falling Asleep with my CPAP

I have had my CPAP for 5 years and I cannot fall asleep naturally while using it. The only time I actually fell asleep was when I took a prescribed sleep medication for a week which is addictive so I stopped.

The mask does not bother me nor does the air blowing into my nose. The problem is that the air invigorates me so much that I am wide awake. Once I remove my mask, I fall to sleep within 30 minutes. I have attempted to fall to sleep with the CPAP machine numerous times without any luck.

Any comments/suggestions are appreciated.

Eddie

I wonder if maybe your pressure is set too high?

Maybe chat with your sleep doctor about this? Also, maybe your nasal passages are not used to air blowing artificially into your nostrils? It took me weeks to get used to my CPAP machine. And I suffer from frequent rhinitis too, which makes it very difficult for me to fall asleep when only one nostril is open and the other blocked. If you have that problem, then you may benefit from habits like airing your room, using a neti pot with warm saline water, and fluticasone puffs. If nasal stuffiness is not your problem, then maybe you can do some imagination/visualization exercises (like pretending that you're sleeping near a beach with breezy air), or some meditation practices that can lull you to sleep. Or read something dry and boring for a while. Hope you get used to your machine and sleep well.

Hi Eddie,

As long as your brain thinks there is a chance that it can trick you into falling asleep without wearing the mask, it will keep trying to pull that trick on you. Don't let it do that. The only way it will learn that the mask is helpful, not harmful, is if you assert your will over it by refusing to fall asleep without the mask on. Our brains can sometimes be sort of like overly friendly puppies that are just trying to be helpful to us as they get in our way of what needs to be done. Once you have asserted your will over your brain, it will find the use of the mask to be old hat and won't get all invigorated on you. But the thing is that the brain can't get used to what you don't make it get used to, as long as you keep getting tricked into falling asleep without the mask.