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Hello MN Mom and welcome to the forum. You are not alone.
You want a good night’s sleep. And you probably don’t want to experience anxiety or feel depressed. You are a human being after all!
The insomnia struggle often comes with lots of difficult thoughts and feelings such as anxiety and depression. It’s rarely about sleep alone. It’s about sleep and it’s about our thoughts and it’s about how we feel and it’s about how we act in response to all those things.
When sleep wasn’t an issue or a struggle, what did you do to make that kind of sleep happen? In what ways — if any — does that differ to what you are doing now?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for sharing your progress! You have noticed that your sleep has improved significantly and anxiety is losing its power and influence. That’s all down to the ongoing actions you’re taking to build skill in experiencing all this stuff with less struggle.
Since you have a human brain, anxiety still shows up — just as other thoughts and human feelings show up. And now, when that happens, you are less likely to get pulled into a battle with your mind. A battle that just makes things more difficult.
Instead, you are acknowledging the thoughts you notice, thanking your brain for looking out for you, and reminding yourself that thoughts are thoughts. Nothing more. Nothing less.
What makes you feel that having a brain that looks out for you by generating certain thoughts and feelings is some kind of disorder?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
When you do something with the intention of making sleep happen, you set yourself up for an ongoing struggle.
Thanks for sharing that powerful insight — an insight that only revealed itself thanks to your superpowers of curiosity, honesty, and self-reflection.
Moving forward, what will your intention be when you practice the AWAKE exercise?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
How will you not let it go so deep? What guidance does your experience have to offer about your ability to directly control such thoughts, feelings, or whether your brain activates the “fight or flight” response?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
You are making change happen thanks to your commitment to action. You are learning from what you are doing and it feels like you are moving in the direction you want to be heading.
Implementing a sleep window has also led to you spending less time in bed and that has given you more time to live your life.
As for when to adjust your sleep window, you can do that based on how things have been going over the past week or two:
1. If you feel you are at the point where your current sleep window is taking sleep away from you (you aren’t spending much time awake during your sleep window), you might experiment with a slightly longer sleep window.
2. If you feel you might be able to get a bit more sleep with a longer sleep window and any time spent awake during your sleep window is pleasant and comfortable (ie there’s no struggle) then you might experiment with a slightly longer sleep window.
And, as a reminder, waking during sleep is a normal part of sleep — nobody truly stays asleep throughout the night 🙂
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for the great question, Phil!
Your wife is a snorer and, although you have experience in sleeping perfectly fine alongside her, you are now wondering whether it might be worth sleeping apart.
As you consider this dilemma, you are concerned that if you get used to sleeping apart, difficulty might show up again as soon as you return to sharing a bed with her. So, the idea of sleeping apart might not feel like a sustainable, long-term solution.
What might be most important here is your answer to this question: would sleeping in a separate room from your wife be an action that moves you toward the life you want to live, or away from the life you want to live?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for the great question! We’ll be exploring how to respond to being awake at night in a lot more detail from Week 2 onward.
In the meantime, I would suggest that it’s OK to do anything when you are awake at night as long as what you are doing isn’t creating a struggle (and struggle often shows up when we try to control what is out of our control).
So, if reading in bed or watching TV in bed helps you experience wakefulness with less struggle, why deny yourself those activities?
As suggested by @Sposs1, the typical advice is to avoid blue light at night. However, in my experience, this is not really an issue (especially among people struggling with insomnia). If blue light was the cause of ongoing sleep disruption, the “cure” for insomnia would be very straightforward indeed!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
That sounds really difficult — and it seems that your experience has an important insight to share here.
The more you try to control sleep (understandable) and the more you try to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings like anxiety (understandable, too!) the more powerful and influential and difficult all those things can become.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
I probably wouldn’t go so far as to say that all such claims are false since that might imply deliberate deception.
Instead, I’d suggest that these claims/findings are often misleading or misinterpreted (for all the reasons outlined in the video lesson that explored this subject).
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for the additional detail, Mary!
It might be worth emphasizing that the goal of the sleep window isn’t to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. The goal is to help you move away from chasing after sleep — something that often makes it more difficult and elusive.
Our body clocks can get used to a regular wake-up time in the morning. So, if you start with one out of bed time and then change it again, you might find things a bit more difficult as your body clock tried to adjust.
This is why I usually suggest choosing your preferred out of bed time right from the start and sticking with that — however you are the expert on yourself!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
A big change is happening, so your problem-solving brain is working harder as it does its job of looking out for you.
You are more aware of waking at night and this can be accompanied by the feeling of a racing heart. You are continuing to practice the AWAKE exercise but it doesn’t seem to have helped.
If the AWAKE exercise was helping, what would be different?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Anxiety can be a difficult feeling to experience — and it’s often something that becomes more powerful, influential, and difficult to experience the more we try to resist, fight, or avoid it.
It sounds like when you notice the feeling of anxiety, it doesn’t always turn into an anxiety attack.
What are you doing in that period between anxiety showing up and an anxiety attack happening? What — if anything — are you doing differently when anxiety shows up and doesn’t develop into an anxiety attack?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
You are finding it hard to shift focus away from sleep at night.
It sounds like you might be trying to “not think” about sleep and/or trying to resist what might be out of your control. If that’s the case, it makes sense you’re finding that hard (and that your attempts have been largely unsuccessful).
When it comes to monitoring of sleep, there’s monitoring that’s in your control — constantly choosing to engage in the action of checking the time, writing down how much time you spend awake or asleep, etc. You can choose to stop that monitoring at any time.
There’s also monitoring that’s not in control — what your mind chooses to focus on, without your direction. In that case, trying to control your mind only sets the stage for a struggle with your problem-solving brain. Therefore, perhaps in that situation, letting go is about letting your mind do whatever it’s going to do anyway?
Sleep can still happen, no matter what your mind focuses on, no matter what thoughts it is generating, and no matter what feelings are present. Trying to control those things is what can often make things more difficult.
Is there anything useful here?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Mary! If your goal is to be out of bed at 7:00 AM, what is making you consider starting with an out of bed time other than 7:00 AM?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello @Haruto and thanks for sharing what you’ve been learning!
When it comes to practicing the AWAKE exercise, you might not notice any thoughts showing up — and, if that happens, there are no thoughts to acknowledge. That’s OK!
You might just acknowledge that you are awake and you might also acknowledge that, at the current time, you are not noticing any specific thoughts being present.
You can then move onto the W of the exercise and see if you notice any thoughts or feelings showing up as sensations in your body. If at any time you do notice a thought showing up, you can then acknowledge it and continue with the exercise.
Thanks to your strengths of self-reflection and self-awareness, you have made a connection between monitoring sleep and difficulty falling asleep. I am curious to know what you mean by “monitoring sleep”? If I saw you monitoring sleep, what would I see you doing?
You shared that you try to focus on your breathing when you notice that you are monitoring sleep. When you bring your attention to your breathing, what are you trying to achieve, and what are you learning from that action?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
