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I think the two week course has been discontinued. Even questions from non subscribers won’t get answered by martin unless it’s about signing up for the paid version. With that said, nothing can really help you if you are still afraid of poor sleep and are extremely averse to it
I was a client of Martin and what I can say is if you can afford it, then do go for it. Martin is a good coach and gives great and reassuring advice. Other than that, I will also say that most of the hard work will have to come from yourself, most likely in the mental form. Doing the course involves nothing external, Martin will never ask you to take a pill, have any specific prerequisites nor guarantee any success so whatever people need to succeed, they already have it inside of themselves. I encourage you to view this insomnia experience more as a journey to be appreciated in the “fuller” sense, because insomnia is really a set of misconcepted thoughts. Insomniacs are really people who have become afraid of their own ideas about sleep, often erroneously. Once you realize this, then hopefully you start discovering new things about yourself and around you and then you find out where and why you have gone wrong and what you can do to get back on track. Good luck.
It’s really quite normal to feel dejected in the early stages of recovery. I was there and everyone who has been through this has been there. It’s hard to describe what I went through to get over it but a mindset shift is the key and very important. It invariably happens when you stop monitoring progress and chasing results. Quit obsessing over the end result, ie the sleep because it is not possible to directly control, focus more on the things that you can control like conducive sleep environment, reducing stress and most importantly, managing your emotions. A bad night or a string of them is not the end of the world because it is not the only time you’ll sleep! There’s plenty of opportunities to catch up down the road.
Think of it like walking. Do you need to walk every minute of your waking hours just to prove to yourself that you can walk? NO. You don’t need to do that because you KNOW and are already CONVINCED there’s nothing wrong with it so you’d rather sit down and relax. Well sleep is kinda like that. You are desperately trying to prove to yourself you CAN sleep, so therefore you create this unnecessary “marathon” for yourself every night, and then you set imaginary but completely unnecessary goals and put undue and unwarranted pressure on yourself JUST TO PROVE A POINT THAT I KNOW YOUR BODY ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO DO NATURALLY. Why? It’s like making yourself run a 20km marathon every single day just to prove to your mind that your walking is fine. And in the progress, you just get worn out and worn down, depressed, sad and STILL unsatisfied with what you get. Well at what point, will you be content? When will you ever be satisfied? Perpetual dissatisfaction only leads to perpetual and needless suffering. Just stop. Suffering is never ended through relentless effort but only through wisdom, empathy and compassion. Mostly to yourself. Learn to sit back, quit the goal chasing and just trust the process. Good luck to you.
Trust me, there WILL be nights you actually want to be up and sleeping starts feeling like a boring chore where you only want to do the bare minimum you can get away with. You ACTUALLY have other things in your mind other than just SLEEP.
Not easy to answer your question, but I will only say one word: Desensitization. And over time. People just get used to it. Your days will go on regardless of what you feel or think about anything. How do you know you WILL have nights of zero sleep anyway?? So if you are not sure, why even bother to worry now? IT STILL HASN’T HAPPENED YET! OR MIGHT NEVER EVEN HAPPEN. Couldn’t you only begin to worry when it actually does happen? No matter the situation, your body will always give you the minimum rest you need, so worrying about future outcomes beyond your control is pretty much pointless
The bad nights that happen after you think you have recovered is your “vaccine” to future insomnia episodes. They are a reminder that temporary sleep disruption can happen at any time and for no reason and that it is important to not over-react. Your insomnia is also a clue you are actually sleeping well! Because it invariably happens after a stretch of good nights, do keep that in mind, and bad nights are absolutely nothing to be concerned about.
Hello Chicca!
It’s assuring to note that as human beings, it’s perfectly normal to worry about anything and that outcomes in life won’t always go your way no matter how hard you try. Give yourself the permission to experience worry, anxiety or any unpleasant feelings, tell yourself that it’s okay and nothing to be ashamed about. Keep reminding yourself like this, “Yes, I am now experiencing anxiety, worry or whatever, but that doesn’t mean I cannot continue to do the things I love or be the person that I want.” Then try to put it behind you and proceed as usual. Such feelings tend to come and go.
In regards to your sleep, it is entirely in a league of its own, it is independent of your worries and everything else that’s going on in your life, so investing too much time and energy into it isn’t worth it. If you can’t sleep in bed while your husband is still awake, well why couldn’t you just get up and spend some time together? Watch a movie, have a chat or do something enjoyable together. Don’t wait for sleep, let it wait for you! Good luck.
The moment you give way to your insomnia is the moment you lose. You just cannot win if you keep doing it! Avoiding things won’t change anything nor guarantee you sleep well either, but you would have deprived yourself of the things you find truly enjoyable. Any connection you make only exists inside your head and is purely imaginary. And therefore any result you get is purely coincidental as well. I encourage you to go outside your comfort zone, stop protecting your sleep and then when you find you can still sleep in spite of it, you automatically debunk it. But then, like most insomniacs, you will start moving on to other things, like noise, husband snoring, rituals, sleepy teas etc etc etc. At some point, you are just going to have to confront yourself and ask “Well when will this nonsense ever stop??”. And it won’t because you keep on engaging in it. You just go on demonstrating to yourself that sleep is unnatural and therefore doing xyz is a must and SLEEP JUST HAD TO BE FIGURED OUT! Well good luck then. You just keep going in circles, your mind will keep playing games with you and sleep still elusive because curiosity, pondering and the fear that sleep is never enough is sufficient to keep you awake!
What an excellent share! Thank you and congratulations. This is what I always tell people who have sleep problems: make light of your insomnia and it will go away. Manage to forget about it and it ceases to exist. The best thing to do is plain nothing. Not cbti, no sleep restriction, no sleep diary, no stimulus controls, no rules basically. Really what everyone who doesn’t believe they have insomnia will do.
Pre and postnatal insomnia is really common so your story is relatable… If you go to the success stories section you will find plenty of mums who suffered like you did and are doing extremely well now like Cindy, who is a mother AND a musician, and she has plenty of insights to offer to new mums like you. For a lot of these stories, the underlying message is always the same: Don’t react, focus on your daily tasks and keeping your spirits up. As you journey through this, you will begin learning that your fears are way overblown, your insomnia can’t continue indefinitely, the longer you stay awake, the stronger your sleep drive gets, and that it is impossible to circumvent this despite your anxieties and worries. Worrying over it unnecessarily just makes it worse and will prolong your suffering, but YOU WILL ALWAYS GET THE MINIMUM SLEEP YOU NEED TO SURVIVE REGARDLESS OF ANY SITUATION. Good luck and congratulations on being a parent.
The final part of the recovery is when you have completely stopped tracking your sleep, stop obsessing over how many hours you get, or how “tired” you still feel despite sleeping X (or whatever) hours. Sleep becomes less and less of an issue, and you completely accept what sleep your body is giving you. At this stage, your pondering stops and you no longer seek answers or ask any more questions because you realize they do absolutely nothing.
The faster you let this matter rest, the faster you recover. You didn’t have insomnia for only 15 years either, because bouts of sleeplessness have always been part of your life from the moment you were born and will always remain a part of you until your last day. The last 15 years stand out because it was some moment that many years ago which triggered your brain to start paying special attention to sleep and that’s when all this efforts and monitoring of your sleep started going on. But of course, monitoring your sleep cannot and will not negate your body’s natural ability to sleep because this ability is separate and independent of thoughts. Thinking you are a bad breather or a bad eater will never prevent your body from breathing or eating because these actions are truly innate to your body in the same way as sleep is. Good luck!
There’s nothing to be creative about when it comes to sleeping. Your body already knows how to do it but your relentless dissatisfaction with it is what’s keeping you from sleeping! Forget everything you learn about sleep, the cbti, the rules etc. Set a get into and out of bed time and completely ignore everything else. Just give up the constant figuring out how many hours you slept and how many times you woke. Abandon the chase and ultimately the struggle! Return to basics and try going back to sleeping like when you were a baby. Has anyone heard of babies getting chronic insomnia at all? NO, because they have no concepts of such things and are not bothered with chasing sleep or results. Good luck.
I apologize for my intrusion but there’s something about this thread that I just had to speak out. There’s just too much detail about sleep here and all I read about are endless attempts to control it. Let me ask you a simple question: Aren’t you supposed to be enjoying yourself or do you want to embark on this trip just to SLEEP?? Haven’t you slept enough already while at home?
You can’t control sleep. Neither can you control when you wake up. Nobody does. The fact that you feel sleepy before your bedtime and not sleepy at some times even when you’re supposed to be sleeping is testament to this fact. Sleepiness just happens when you are up long enough. And waking up after sleeping for some time is entirely normal too! Because your sleep drive is getting reduced once you’ve slept. Getting stressed over this is futile and actually makes going back to sleep worse. Embrace the wakefulness. For people who recover, the time it takes for them to fall back asleep after waking up just gets shorter. Good luck to you.
