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Thanks for sharing your experience, Tina!
If going to bed when your sleep window begins feels more appealing than staying out of bed waiting for sleepiness to show up, you might want to allow yourself to go to bed when your sleep window begins.
You might also want to allow yourself to stay in bed when you’re awake during your sleep window instead of getting out of bed (you might also allow yourself to read in bed, too).
I hope this helps 🙂
—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’re right, Sophia — there’s a lot of stuff about sleep out there (and it’s great to see others chiming in with some helpful insights and support here, too)!
Now you’ve enrolled in the course hopefully you’ll be able to develop a more structured “plan of 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.
Quite often, the more we try to control our thoughts and feelings the more we can end up struggling with them. And that struggle can make things more difficult.
Being awake at night or feeling anxious at night doesn’t, in itself, require any kind of action. However, when we find ourselves struggling and battling with wakefulness or our thoughts and feelings, that can be a good opportunity to practice responding in a way that might help us build skill in experiencing these things with less struggle.
That alternative response might involve engaging in an activity (either in bed or out of bed) that’s a bit more appealing than whatever we are currently doing.
We’ll be exploring this more in Week 2 of the course (and beyond).
—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 course, tweg11!
As you’ve shared, it’s hard to be the foundation for the family while struggling with insomnia. And yet, there you are — still doing that, even though it’s really hard. Even if or when you feel you can’t be the foundation, there are still other things you can do that matter. Things that are aligned with your values and reflect the person you are, the person you want to be, and the life you want to live.
After a difficult night you didn’t go outside to play football and baseball with them — but you still watched. You were still involved to some extent. That’s important and that matters. And, you felt crappy about not being out here with them because your mind was generating information reminding you of what’s important to you.
I hope you’ll get a lot out of the course as you continue to work through 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.
This is so common and it kind of makes sense — you want sleep to happen so you make more time available for it to happen. And yet, as you’ve learned from experience, spending more time in bed often creates conditions for more wakefulness and more struggle.
Thanks for sharing this insight and your experience!
—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.
Just to clarify here, I was referring to many people finding it helpful to get out of bed at their planned morning “out of bed time” regardless of how each night goes. So, for example, if the plan is to be out of bed at 7:00 AM, then it can be useful to be out of bed at (or close to!) 7:00 AM regardless of how the night went.
We’ll be covering responding to wakefulness before that out of bed time in Week 2 of the course. In the meantime, there are two options — stay in bed or get out of bed.
I don’t think it really matters which option is chosen. There’s no need to do anything just because wakefulness is present — it’s a normal part of sleep. If wakefulness starts to get really unpleasant and starts to create a struggle, it can be helpful to engage in another activity that will help you practice experiencing wakefulness with less struggle — and I think it’s OK to do that alternative activity in bed or out of bed. Whichever you prefer!
@cjj1970 — If you are saying that getting out of bed in the morning at your planned out of bed time is hard because there’s nobody else around and you feel anxious when you’re alone, you might want to ask yourself how helpful it has been up to this point to stay in bed in an attempt to avoid that anxiety.Has it permanently deleted that anxiety? If not, perhaps your experience is telling you that approach isn’t proving to be helpful. Perhaps acting in ways that are important to you — even if that comes with the presence of anxiety or other difficult thoughts and feelings — might be more helpful?
This is all stuff we’ll be exploring further as the course continues! I hope this helps, in the meantime.
—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 Noel and C5! As you can see, you aren’t alone!
Noel — ups and downs are completely normal. A sleep window cannot make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. It’s just one tool that can be used as a way to help us move away from chasing after sleep — something that experience usually tells us doesn’t help improve sleep!
It’s also totally natural and normal to feel deflated and fearful after difficult nights — you are a human being who experiences human thoughts and feelings. So, please try to be kind to yourself — this is hard!
—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! Moving from long naps to a 15 minute nap is a big change to make, as is creating and observing a new sleep window and sticking to a reasonably consistent out of bed time in the morning!
—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. Have you had any thoughts on how you might address the Kratom use, if that’s something you want to move away from?
—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 think that cuddling with a partner for a bit after the sleep window ends because that feels nice is perfectly acceptable!
The goal of the sleep window is to help us move away from chasing after sleep by staying in bed later in an attempt to make sleep happen.
If you are staying in bed to do something that’s important to you and helps you live the life you want to live (rather than trying to make more sleep happen) then I am not sure how that could be a bad thing!
More problematic would be staying in bed, trying to make sleep happen, and doing less of the things that matter to you!
—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. It’s good to hear that you are really taking your time with the course and working through it at a pace that feels right to you.
It sounds as though you are being more flexible in relation to sleep, being kinder to yourself when things feel difficult, and practicing moving away from battling with sleep, your thoughts, and your feelings.
As a result, conditions for sleep are improving and sleep is starting to have less power and influence over your life.
I don’t think that shifting to working nights is going to doom you to mess up all your progress! As you have learned from experience, the really difficultly comes when we struggle trying to control what cannot be controlled — and, as you’ve been working through the course and implementing new skills, you have been working on moving away from struggling; moving away from trying to control what cannot be controlled.
It’s natural and normal to experience some sleep disruption as you adjust to working nights again — if that’s what you end up doing. What might be most important of all in considering what to do here is to think about what matters to you and what you have the most control over.
Is your career more important to you and is it something you can control? Or, is sleep more important to you and is it something you can control? Is it worth moving away from the career you want to have (something you can control) in order to try to protect your sleep (something your experience might tell you cannot be controlled)?
Ultimately, as human beings we are constantly faced with difficult decisions — we usually have to make sacrifices to live a rich and meaningful life. What often causes problems is when we end up trying to control things that cannot be controlled, or act in ways that aren’t aligned with our values or the kind of life we want to live.
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.
Great stuff here — and you are right to feel proud of yourself!
You practiced experiencing wakefulness with less struggle. You practiced responding to wakefulness and the anxiety and the difficult feelings associated with it in a more workable way. And, you are being kinder to yourself, too.
It wasn’t easy and you did it. There will be plenty more opportunities for you to continue that practice and continue to build this new skill you are developing. Thank you so much for sharing!
—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 mentioned that sleep restriction sometimes “works” — what do you mean by that?
It sounds as though you might be under the impression that the goal of sleep restriction/creating a sleep window is to make sleep happen or to get rid of wakefulness.
That’s not the goal since sleep cannot be controlled (the more we try to control sleep the more likely we are to struggle with it).
The sleep window is just one tool that can help us move away from chasing after sleep — from trying to make it happen by going to bed earlier or staying in bed later, for example.
Something else that can make this all more difficult is when we try to fight or avoid the difficult thoughts and feelings associated with difficult nights since they are things that we cannot directly or permanently control, either.
When our focus becomes trying to control things that cannot be controlled, we can easily get tangled up in a struggle that makes all this difficult stuff even more difficult and makes it harder for us to live the kind of life we want to live. If our goal, for example, was to stop rainclouds forming, how successful would we be? If our goal was to prevent an earthquake, how successful would we be?
Of course, our problem solving mind often encourages us to keep on trying even if our experience tells us that what we are doing isn’t proving to be helpful or workable. And that’s why it’s so easy to get tangled up in a seemingly endless struggle.
The struggle often continues for as long as we continue to engage in an approach that creates a struggle — for as long as we continue to try the same things over and over again, hoping for a different outcome. It usually takes a change of approach (a change that is rarely easy and often requires ongoing practice) if we want to free ourselves from that struggle.
—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!
I would suggest that the first “tool” is to practice experiencing wakefulness with less struggle. To practice acknowledging its presence and allowing it to exist (especially if experience tells you that trying to fight or avoid wakefulness isn’t proving to be a workable strategy).
The AWAKE exercise can help with this. So, if you find yourself starting to struggle with wakefulness you can then practice the AWAKE exercise. And, you can practice the AWAKE exercise for as long as you like and you can repeat it as often as you like. It’s something to play around with and to experiment with.
If you choose to get out of bed because you just cannot seem to be able to practice moving away from struggling with wakefulness while in bed, that would come at the end of the exercise — it’s the “E” in AWAKE (Experience wakefulness with less struggle).
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.
That’s great to hear — thank you for sharing! The “why” each good thing happened can often be a bit harder to consider and is a good opportunity for some reflection!
—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.
