[Elisabeth]

Hi Kirsten,
Fellow student here! I’ve been slowly recovering from a severe bout of insomnia over the past six weeks, and Martin’s course has been an enormous help. I completely identify with the performance anxiety you describe as well as the fear that comes when your partner falls asleep. Two things that are helping, me in addition to this course. First, I downloaded the free Mindfulness Training app developed by the Veterans Affairs Department, and I’ve been working my way through it and practicing a little bit every day. The exercises do translate eventually. I can now hear my partner start snoring and notice it without reacting to it. I can also notice and label the feelings I have about the sound (fear, loneliness) without getting swept away by them.

The other resource that helped me is Judson Brewer’s book Unwinding Anxiety. He describes an exercise called True, True, Unrelated. It’s about interrupting ritualistic thoughts. For instance, I might notice that I drank warm milk one night and I slept well. Drank milk = true, slept well = true, but these are not necessarily related. Afterwards I might get anxious if I don’t drink the milk. Then I just remind myself: true, true, unrelated. That helps me let go of ritualistic thinking. Same applies to anxious thoughts when my head hits the pillow. In the past I would have assumed that was a sure sign of a night of bad sleep based on past experiences (anxious thoughts = true, bad sleep = true). But now I just add “unrelated” in my head and it takes away that feeling of self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t know of these ideas or resources will work for you, but I would say keep learning and experimenting and you will find those things that do work.

[Author]

Posts