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Congratulations on getting through Week 1 even though it was difficult and even though your mind was no doubt coming up with countless unhelpful and difficult thoughts, feelings, and stories!
Thanks for sharing that your sleep window has allowed you to experience more sleepiness and to recognize that you are sleeping each night.
Do you feel there’s any possibility that mentally timing 15 minutes of wakefulness might be making it a bit harder for sleep to happen?
To answer your last question, ultimately we get more sleep by completely removing ourselves from the process and allowing our body to “do” sleep by itself! The more we try to make sleep happen, the more we tend to struggle 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.
Congratulations on being off the medication @lizacollins007!
I think that both physical fatigue and mental fatigue are very difficult to experience. And there are two ways to respond to that fatigue — continue to do some things that matter (no matter how small) or do less of what matters.
Experience is often our most helpful guide in terms of the effectiveness of either option. And, with either option, our problem solving mind will still be there generating all different thoughts and feelings as it does its job of looking out for us!
—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.
Sleep duration for the sleep window is based on average nightly sleep duration for the night — regardless of how interrupted that might be. So, if you tend to sleep for 4 hours, spend time awake, then get another 1 hour of sleep your average nightly sleep duration would be 5 hours.
In terms of adjusting the sleep window, I usually suggest reflecting on this each week or two based on how you “feel” things are going rather than actively tracking sleep. We’ll cover this a bit more in Week 2 🙂
—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 everything is OK in moderation — our actions tend to only become problematic when they aren’t aligned with our values or when they might distract us or make it harder for us to engage in actions that matter and that keep us moving toward the kind of life we want to live.
So, an example here might be that listening to the podcast instead of going out with friends (if that’s important to you) might not be as helpful compared to listening to the podcast instead of doing things that create more difficulty and 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.
Thanks for the great question! Based on what you’ve shared here it sounds as though you tend to average somewhere between 4 and 6.5 hours of sleep. That’s quite a big range — if you feel you can’t narrow down your average any more than that you might want to start with a sleep window of around 6 hours for a week or so and go from 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.
Many people find it more helpful to get out of bed — but you are the expert on you. If you decide to stay in bed, what would be your reason for that? Does staying in bed when your sleep window ends help you better live the kind of 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.
Welcome to the forum (and the course), Dulce!
What can sometimes be helpful is to reflect on how we approached sleep before the struggle with insomnia began (if it’s possible to remember that far back for some of us!).
If we can identify that our approach has changed, perhaps we can see that it might be that change of approach that is the cause our current (and ongoing) struggle rather than the cause being parasites, mold, heavy metal toxicity, food sensitivities, etc.
Of course, countless things can influence sleep. And yet, if it all feels a bit mysterious and/or if we can recognize that we are engaged in a bit of a struggle trying to make sleep happen, trying to get rid of wakefulness, trying to fight or avoid the difficult thoughts and feelings associated with insomnia, this is more likely to be the explanation for the difficulties we’re experiencing.
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.
Nothing unusual going on here 🙂
You might be feeling sleepy before it’s time for bed because that is a time that’s not associated with much of a struggle and so those sleepiness cues are more noticeable and feel stronger.
Unless you want to start going to bed (and getting out of bed in the morning) quite early, it might be useful to stick to your chosen earliest possible bedtime (or at least get to within an hour or so of it starting) even if you feel sleepy before then.
You mentioned that your issue is related to staying asleep. First, it can be helpful to recognize that waking during the night is a normal part of sleep. What can make these awakenings more difficult is trying to fight or avoid them since that can create a struggle that makes things more difficult.
We’ll be covering this in a lot more detail as the course progresses. At the current time, how do you respond to those awakenings when they happen?
—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.
If lying around after work doesn’t seem to be helping, it sounds as though there might be an opportunity to make a change there, if you think an alternative approach might be worth exploring.
Do you feel as though engaging in other activities that are important or that might help widen the focus of your attention (such as those shared by @GenieB, for example) might be a more useful or more helpful way of responding to all this difficult stuff?
—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.
Trying to figure out the meaning of a dream sounds like it might be quite natural — so maybe there are two potential approaches to consider here:
1. Allow your mind to explore and think about the dream all it wants (perhaps the difficulty occurs if/when you try to fight or avoid that).
2. Have a pen and paper next to your bed where you can jot down the dream so you can “get it all out” on paper — and then explore and analyze it in more detail the next day, if you still think that would be a useful way to use your time the next day.
—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.
Oh my goodness. That is the last book I would recommend to anyone with insomnia — and it has been completely debunked, too.
—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.
So much great stuff in here — thank you for sharing!
It sounds as though the key theme shared here (from both @skyeisarose and @lynnbet) is that as we build skill in moving away from trying to control things that experience suggests cannot be directly or permanently controlled (such as how we sleep, what we think, how we feel) the less we might struggle.
Without the struggle, conditions for sleep become a lot better — because the more we try to control sleep, the more difficult it can become.
And, as we move away from trying to control our thoughts and feelings, we can free up energy and attention to do more of what matters — to better live the kind of life we want to live, independently of what our minds might be saying or doing.
This usually requires ongoing practice — new skills take time to develop!
—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, @chicca001 — you are not alone!
Reading your post, it sounds as though you have one of those very vigilant minds that is working really hard to look out for you. As it does that job (which it takes very seriously), it’s generating a lot of difficult thoughts and feelings in an effort to keep you safe and help you do what matters.
If your mind sees sleep as something that might stop you from taking care of your son (something that is, of course, very important to you) it’s going to generate a lot of difficult thoughts and feelings in relation to that (such as fear, anxiety, worry, etc).
It sounds as though you have realized that even after difficult nights, you can still take care of your son — that the thoughts and stories your mind generates might not always be 100% true or 100% accurate. That’s a big insight since it suggests that perhaps those thoughts and feelings don’t need to be gotten rid of since they’re snippets of ideas rather than facts or things that stop you from acting in a certain way.
So, with that in mind, perhaps what might be making sleep (and those difficult thoughts and feelings) more difficult might be all the effort to fight or avoid all this difficult stuff?
Does your experience tell you that trying to get rid of certain thoughts and feelings is a workable strategy? Have you found a way of permanently deleting certain thoughts and feelings from your mind or do they always seem to come back anyway, regardless of how hard you try to fight or avoid them?
What might things be like with less struggle and less battling? If, instead of trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings and instead of trying to fight or avoid nighttime wakefulness, you were able to be more of an observer of those things?
With less of a struggle, perhaps you might free up more energy and attention to do more of the things that matter — and, as you do that, perhaps all this difficult stuff might lose some of its power and influence.
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 Carolyn and welcome to the forum. Thanks for sharing that you’ve found the success stories helpful — as you have seen, you are not alone!
It makes complete sense that you experience lots of difficult thoughts and feelings such as fear when you consider eliminating the medication completely — that’s your brain doing its job and looking out for you.
It sounds as though being focused on the number of hours of sleep you might (or might not!) get is something that’s not proving to be helpful. With that in mind, perhaps shifting your focus a little (maybe toward things you can directly control) might be more helpful?
So, for example, instead of trying to control your thoughts and feelings (or your sleep) — all things your experience might tell you cannot be directly or permanently controlled — you might practice acknowledging and making space for all that stuff to do what it’s going to do anyway, while committing to doing things that reflect who you are, who you want to be, and that help keep you moving toward the life you want to live.
If you can become more skilled in doing things that matter, independently of sleep and independently of the difficult thoughts and feelings your mind generates, perhaps all of those things might start to lose some of their power and influence. And, with less power and influence, perhaps they might require less of your attention and less intervention!
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.
Hopefully someone chimes in here to say hello — since the course isn’t run on a cohort basis, there are fluctuations in the number of people working through different parts of the course. What I can say, however, is that you definitely aren’t alone!
—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.
