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Ups and downs are a normal part of any journey, @Kmar42!
You know from experience that counting and tracking sleep isn’t a helpful behavior — so there’s an opportunity there.
What does a “bad” night mean to you and how do you choose to respond to them?
—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.
Welcome to the forum. Those symptoms, although not unique or even unusual, can still be really difficult to experience.
Your experience seems to tell you that the more pressure you put on yourself to make sleep happen (and perhaps the more you try to fight all the symptoms you just shared) the more difficult all those things become.
You shared that you’ve tried to befriend wakefulness — what does “befriend wakefulness” mean to you, and if it was easier 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.
Your concern is understandable — and you shouldn’t drive if you have fallen asleep at the wheel (or believe that might happen).
What I will say is that it would be unusual for someone with chronic insomnia to fall asleep at the wheel without warning because people with chronic insomnia tend to experience intense daytime fatigue rather than intense daytime sleepiness. They are often described as being “tired but wired”.
You are clearly a powerful problem-solver, recognizing that you can still get a lift to work and that will help restrict the power and influence sleep has over your life.
And, if you do stay at home, you could also engage in other activities that reflect your values rather than experiencing a day of complete withdrawal from the life you want to live.
I hope there’s something 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 @3perfectgirls and welcome to the forum.
You are waking during the night and finding that you aren’t falling back to sleep. As a result, your problem-solving brain has been firing up as it does its job of looking out for you. And, when it has important things to say, a feeling of anxiety often shows up, too.
As you’ve noticed the presence of anxiety, you have also been finding it hard to fall asleep at the start of the night.
There’s nothing unusual or unique in what you’ve shared. It sounds like your experience is telling you that the more you (understandably) try to make sleep happen and the more you try to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings, the more difficult all those things become.
As you and @Courtypox shared, it can be hard to live your normal life after nights of no sleep — and with the presence of other health issues that might not even be possible. If it’s not, perhaps there might still be one or two things that keep you moving closer to a normal life versus complete withdrawal.
How have things been going since you posted?
—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.
Sleepiness is a sign that sleep is coming. It’s not needed for sleep to happen, though.
Your Oura ring tells you that you average up to 6 hours of sleep.
You typically go to bed at 7:30 PM with a desired wake time of 6:00 AM, so you are allotting 10.5 hours for sleep.
That’s a difference of 4.5 hours.
What — if anything — might the insight (and opportunity) be there?
—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.
Anything by Russ Harris will come with my endorsement. His book “The Happiness Trap” is a good read for anyone interested in learning more about ACT. He also runs an online course by the same name.
—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 have clarity.
A powerful awareness that trying to control the thoughts and feelings your brain generates as it does its job of looking out for you and trying to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen through effort is futile.
Trying only creates more struggle.
Sleep wants to take care of itself. Thoughts and feelings (including all the difficult and distracting ones!) come with being a human being.
That awareness is a superpower. It will guide and support you as you continue to move forward.
Thank you for sharing, @BrianER.
PS: For anyone curious about Michael61’s post, it can be found here: The Paradox of Sleep: How Letting Go of Control Ended My Insomnia
—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 Molly and thanks for sharing your progress. A year after completing the course your sleep and your life have improved — and that’s all down to the actions you’ve taken.
You have learned that you can share a room with a stranger, sleep great during a friend’s party, sleep well after coming home late, and sleep well on holiday.
Not only has life opened up, you have also learned that sleep is not an obstacle to you living the kind of life you want to live. Your actions are what determine the kind of life you live.
Even with all this, there will be times when sleep doesn’t happen as you might want it to — and that’s when it is so easy to get drawn back into a struggle. Struggle is the default path. It takes ongoing practice to respond with less struggle!
You’ve been reminded that tracking sleep isn’t helpful. And, that makes sense when we consider that sleep often gets more difficult the more focus and attention we give it. And, tracking sleep to determine progress might not be useful if your experience tells you that sleep is out of your control.
Anxiety comes with being a human being. It’s a normal, natural, and valid human emotion. The only time anxiety disappears forever is when we are dead.
What matters when anxiety shows up is how you choose to respond. You know from experience what doesn’t work (resistance). I also get the impression that you know from experience what does work.
You are responding in a workable way by practicing being (and returning to the) present, and practicing acceptance, self-kindness, and being more of an observer rather than an opponent of all this stuff.
That doesn’t magically get rid of thoughts and feelings and make sleep happen. It can help reduce the power and influence all these things have over your life, though. And when they lose that power and influence they tend to become less problematic.
Pills aren’t what generated progress. Your actions are what generated progress. And no pill can make sleep happen (and sedation is not the same as sleep).
All the sleep you experienced and all ways your life opened back up are all down to the actions you took — not the pill(s) you took.
Nothing you’ve shared here is stupid. It’s human. You are far from sitting and doing nothing. You are taking action — and you are taking action that’s workable.
What are the “good times” you mentioned in your post, what degree of control do you have over them, and what do you need to do to bring them back?
—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 want to respond with more acceptance. What do you need to do to practice building that skill?
—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! With education comes the opportunity to act and make change happen.
You are both taking action and that leads to learning — and learning means progress!
—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.
This is a great question and we’re digging into this in a lot more detail from this week onward.
It sounds like you find it useful to remind yourself of your experience and your natural ability to sleep. And that might be more helpful compared to trying to fight or avoid fear.
Fear is natural and normal and probably not something you can make go away through effort. In fact, trying might make it even more powerful and disruptive. Has that been your experience?
If resistance doesn’t seem to work and you wanted to practice making a bit of space for fear to exist (rather than trying to get rid of it), what might you do first?
—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 Jason and welcome aboard!
Your experience has taught you that drugs and alcohol are not the right long-term solution for you.
You also have a number of strengths that are going to help you move forward in a different way — commitment, determination, awareness, to name just a few that I see in your post.
You are ready to withdraw from the psychological battle in your head and it’s my hope that this course will help guide you in the direction you want to be heading!
I wish you all the best with it 🙂
—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 Beth and welcome to the course!
You have a lot of experience to draw from as you chart a workable path forward.
As you shared, it’s so easy to get pulled back into a struggle when sleep doesn’t happen as you want it to. And, sleep isn’t always going to happen as you want it to!
The superpower at your disposal (in addition to your experience!) is awareness. You are able to notice when you are struggling and that means you have the opportunity to respond differently.
You know that feelings of panic and anxiety come and go. That doesn’t necessarily make them any easier to experience, though. And, as you pointed out, those thoughts and feelings aren’t always connected to sleep happening (or not happening). They seem to just show up when they choose. And that’s normal.
Your problem-solving brain is always working away to look out for you. And it’s always going to focus on worst possible outcomes and all the doom and gloom scenarios because the good stuff isn’t a potential threat.
It is far more important for your brain to prepare and protect you from a bad experience and be wrong, than filter out unlikely scenarios and be wrong!
As you reflect on your experience, what feels like a workable way to respond when your brain starts firing up to protect you? (This is also something we’ll be exploring in a lot more detail from Week 2 onward.)
—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 letting me know my last post wasn’t helpful. What specific guidance can I offer that would be of more help?
The sleep window is a minor part of everything covered in the course. Success isn’t determined by your ability to implement a certain kind of sleep window.
The sleep window is nothing more than a tool intended to help you move away from chasing after sleep. It’s not something that can make a certain amount or type of sleep happen.
Pacing around the room or sitting on the floor when awake sounds really unpleasant. What is your intention with that? What are you trying to achieve?
—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.
Starting a sleep window at 4:00 AM sounds challenging. I wouldn’t usually suggest a sleep window of much less than six hours — but you are the expert on you!
Normally, I suggest anchoring the out-of-bed time because that’s a strong cue for the body clock — we can get used to a consistent out-of-bed time and find ourselves naturally waking at that time after a while.
So, changing the time of the end of the sleep window over time can be a bit more difficult compared to shifting the start of the sleep window over time.
It’s not impossible — it’s just a bit more difficult. Your body might get used to waking up at 6:30 AM and then you want to change it to 8:00 AM.
So, you might want to just go for 8:00 AM now and combine that with a start time that feels a bit more realistic (ie not 4:00 AM)!
I’ll also add that gradually reducing the amount of time you allot for sleep rather than making a massive cut all at once can be more helpful compared to having a sleep window that seems totally unrealistic!
Does this help?
—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.
