[Camille]

I have suffered from on and off insomnia for about 4 years. I am currently learning a lot of techniques from CBT-I that have certainly made a huge difference for me. But, I’m aware that my mindset around sleep is one of the biggest barriers. I often avoid things because of how it will affect my sleep, avoid nights at my partner’s place out of fear that being away from my own bed would decrease my likelihood of sleeping, and I don’t go anywhere overnight without all of my many many natural sleep remedies (that are likely placebo). These fears, dependencies, over-generalizations, and predictions only make it worse. I am practicing changing my thoughts around sleep (and this requires real, repetitive practice!) Ultimately, I need to trust the wisdom of my body to do it’s job – to sleep. Mindfulness and meditation is helping me with this, as well as selecting specific thoughts and working through them to change the narrative (a CBT technique). While I still have a long way to go, I do believe that this is what will allow all of the other tools and techniques to really work in my body. Anything is possible, and our minds are powerful. Does anyone else have any thoughts, ideas, or general mindset shifts that have helped them throughout the journey?

[Martin Reed]

Hello Camille and welcome to the forum!

I think you shared a big insight that avoiding things for fear of how they might affect your sleep only seems to make insomnia worse!

Sometimes it can be helpful to consider that all the thoughts we have that generate fear are just that — thoughts! Nothing more, nothing less. Thoughts can make us feel uncomfortable but they cannot harm us.

The only time we can get caught up by our thoughts is when we try to fight them or avoid them, or when we change our behaviors in response to them in a way that leads us to live our lives in a way that is not aligned with our values.

So, it sounds as though there’s a big opportunity for you to live your life according to your values, independently of sleep. Perhaps if you do that, sleep might not play such a big role in your life — and perhaps if it plays less of a role in your life, you might not worry about it so much, you might not put as much effort into sleep, and you might not put as much pressure on yourself to sleep?

If we don’t care much about sleep and if we can get to a place where we accept the sleep we get (or don’t get), can you guess what happens to our sleep? Hint — what’s the best way to lose the attention of a playground bully?

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