eight weeks on a new sleep approach, here is what actually changed

Eight weeks ago I stopped treating sleep as something I could fix with effort and started keeping a very short log instead. Just time I got into bed, rough sense of how broken the night was, and whether I had done anything different that day. I was not expecting much. The first two weeks I felt like I was documenting a disaster. My mother had a hospital appointment mid-month and I had three nights in a row where I did not sleep more than four hours. That skewed everything. By week five something shifted, not dramatically. I stopped lying awake doing the calculation of how many hours I had left. I think writing it down gave my brain somewhere to put the information so it stopped recycling it at two in the morning. My mood during the week improved more than my sleep did, which was not what I expected. I still have bad nights. Last week was rough for no reason I can identify. But I have a review with my GP next month and I have actual notes to bring instead of just saying it has been hard. That part feels useful.