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That sounds difficult @Nevergiveup — and, at the same time, what you’ve shared is not a unique or unusual part of the insomnia experience. It’s hard.
Tossing and turning all night doesn’t sound pleasant — might there be an alternative to that? An alternative that might be a little bit more appealing and might help you experience wakefulness with a bit less 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 sharing that your brain is continuing to do its job of looking out for you by generating difficult thoughts and feelings like anxiety.
There is no evidence that insomnia causes any health problems (association is not causation), the biggest study looking at people with insomnia found no increase in mortality, and 7-9 hours of sleep is an average much like height.
And, like with height, everyone is different and there are happy and healthy people that are living a rich and meaningful life outside of any predetermined “average”.
What should a woman who is 5′ tall do if she wants to reach the average height of 5′ 4″? And, how will those efforts help her live the kind of life she wants to live? Perhaps all her attempts to change her height might end up creating an exhausting, endless, and distracting struggle that makes things more difficult?
—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! Perhaps it might be helpful to acknowledge that urge, thank your brain for looking out for you, and then redirect your focus/attention toward wherever you are or whatever you are doing?
—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 we feel comfortable taking medication or supplements then there’s probably no issue with them.
If they’re something we’d rather not be taking, if we are engaging in an action that doesn’t reflect the person we want to be or the life we want to live in an attempt to control what our experience might tell us cannot be controlled, they have the potential to set us up for a struggle that can make things more difficult.
It might also be worth considering whether taking (or even doing!) something in an attempt to get rid of wakefulness, make sleep happen, or control our thoughts and feelings at night might be training the brain that wakefulness is a threat it needs to be *more* alert to protect us from at night — after all, if it wasn’t a threat, why would be we trying so hard to get rid of it?
Ongoing experiments might also require the brain to be more active in order to evaluate the outcome of the experiment — something else that can sometimes leave us feeling a bit stuck and tangled up in an endless process of ongoing experimentation. Experimentation that can require a lot of energy and attention.
The role of our actions and how they can influence our thoughts (and vice-versa) is something we’ll be exploring further as the course progresses.
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.
Everyone’s journey is different — and progress is another one of those things we cannot control. It’s a bit like how some people seem to be able to learn a new language really quickly and others take longer, right?
We can only focus on ourselves — our own actions — and continue to practice new skills that will help us respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a new, more workable way.
If we can focus on implementation, the outcome takes care of itself.
—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 Bruce! Ive moved your post into the client forum so it gets a bit more visibility from others who are also going through the course 🙂
As you found when you continued to work through the content for Week 1, I don’t usually recommend keeping sleep diaries or using tracking devices.
That’s because both these things can bring more focus and attention toward sleep, it’s hard to accurately record sleep using a diary/journal, and there are question marks over the accuracy of tracking devices (especially among people with insomnia).
As you shared, we might actually feel OK and then check our tracking device and get really concerned about the information it shares with us — information that we cannot directly control anyway, and information that might not even be accurate.
It can be more helpful to widen the focus of our attention so we shift it away from sleep and toward our actions and the world around us.
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.
It can often be helpful to revisit earlier parts of the course and to really take your time with the materials. There’s a lot to take in and there are no prizes for whizzing through the course in record time!
Every human being on the planet can sleep on their own. When we have been awake for long enough, we will always sleep. Always. Without fail. Sleep always wins in the end.
It’s also possible to sleep, even without sleep confidence. Sleep confidence is not a requirement for sleep to happen. And, since your mind is looking out for you with all the thoughts it’s generating, I wonder whether that’s truly a negative thing? Perhaps labeling certain thoughts as negative might be setting you up for a bit of a struggle with your mind?
—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 that there have been good nights, too — sometimes it’s easy to forget about those when things are really difficult!
I know we’ve been discussing a lot of your concerns through email since you enrolled in the 1-on-1 coaching option, but for the benefit of others who might read this topic:
1. That could be a good window if you feel you can commit to it! On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being you’re never going bo be able to commit to it and 10 being you’ll commit to it even if there’s a zombie apocalypse, I’d suggest coming up with a sleep window that you can give a score of at least 7 out of 10 to.
2. Not checking the time can be helpful for sure! There’s no need to get out of bed just because you’re awake (we’ll explore this in a lot more detail in Week 2). If things start to get really difficult you can engage in another activity instead — an activity that will help you experience wakefulness with a little bit less struggle. That alternative activity can be done in bed or out of bed.
3. Only you can answer that question. Many people find that doing less doesn’t help them feel any better. When we do less, there’s less for our minds to focus on and it can be harder to continue moving toward the life we want to live.
4. There’s no need to convince your mind of anything! What can be helpful after a really difficult night is acknowledging the situation. Acknowledging all your thoughts and feelings. Being kind to yourself in return. And then doing things that matter to you — even in the presence of all this difficult stuff.
5. Medication use should be discussed with your doctor and it might also depend on your goals. If your goal is to make sleep happen or to delete certain thoughts and feelings, does your experience tell you that’s possible? If not, perhaps the ongoing attempts to do so might be creating more of a struggle and be pulling you away from the person you want to be and 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.
As you implied, it might not be too realistic to expect a transformation in your relationship with sleep and the difficult thoughts and feelings associated with insomnia in just a few weeks!
You are learning new skills, and that takes time.
If I gave you a set of bagpipes, would you be able to become a skilled bagpipe player in just a few weeks? Would the process of learning to play the bagpipes be easy, all of the time — or would it be a challenge (and generate lots of difficult thoughts and feelings)?
If you are using the AWAKE or NOW exercises in an attempt to shut your mind down, control your thoughts or feelings in any way, or make sleep happen, you are going to be left feeling frustrated — because, as you know from experience, you cannot directly or permanently control what your mind chooses to do and you cannot directly or permanently control sleep.
The goal of the AWAKE exercise is to help you build skill in experiencing wakefulness with less struggle. The goal of the NOW exercise (introduced in Week 3) is to help you refocus your attention on where you are and what you are doing whenever your mind tries to distract you or pull you away from the present moment.
I don’t think it matters too much whether you engage in the course during the day or in the evening — and the light from your phone isn’t going to cause any problems. If that caused insomnia, we’d probably see close to 100% of adults in the western world struggling with insomnia!
Is there anything helpful 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.
It sounds as though you might still be a bit tangled up, trying to make sleep happen — and that’s understandable! And yet, as you know from experience, the more you try to make sleep happen, the more attached you are to the elimination of wakefulness (all things you cannot control) the more struggle it creates.
A sleep window can be a helpful tool to help move us away from chasing after sleep, trying to make it happen by going to bed earlier and staying in bed later. It can also give the opportunity for sleep drive to reach higher levels before going to bed, meaning conditions for sleep are a bit better.
A sleep window won’t help with your response to wakefulness, though — and that’s something that probably influences things to a far greater degree.
What might things be like if you withdrew from the battle you’re describing? If you completely moved away from trying to control sleep, trying to avoid insomnia, trying to fight wakefulness, or trying to control your normal and natural thoughts and feelings?
You might also find my podcast with Maria helpful since she describes how allowing wakefulness to exist and allowing her mind to generate whatever thoughts it wanted soon stripped insomnia of the power it needed to survive.
I hope there’s something useful here, NikC14 — and it’s good to see that you’re still here, exploring this new approach that’s almost certainly completely different to what you may have tried in the past!
—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 questions!
If you were to average your sleep over the past week or two (the zero sleep nights with the good sleep nights), how much sleep would you say you average? You can then add about 30 minutes onto that to get the duration for an initial sleep window.
If you still have no idea or feel you probably average less than six hours of sleep, starting with a sleep window of six hours can be useful.
The goal of the sleep window is to help you move away from chasing after sleep. So, if you find that you are currently allotting a lot more time for sleep than you usually spend asleep — and that wakefulness is causing a lot of struggle — then any reduction in the amount of time you allot for sleep to more closely match the amount of sleep you are currently generating would probably be a step in the right direction.
It’s completely understandable why you’d feel scared about implementing a sleep window. That’s your brain looking out for you. Where has not implementing a sleep window got you? Has it eliminated all anxiety? Is it getting you closer to where you want to be? If not, perhaps a change of approach might be useful?
—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 Chrissy and thanks for sharing. Since your brain’s job is to look out for you, it’s going to generate a lot of thoughts, feelings, and stories in connection to sleep, wakefulness, and the role of medication.
The truth is, sleep doesn’t require medication. When we have been awake for long enough, we will always sleep. ALWAYS.
It’s when we (understandably!) get tangled up in the natural process of sleep that it can all start to get a lot more difficult. That’s because sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled — so the more we try, the more likely we are to get tangled up in a struggle that leaves us feeling stuck.
In addition, the more we engage in a battle with wakefulness the more we might be training our brain that wakefulness is a threat that it needs to be alert to protect us from. Of course, if the bed has become a bit of a battleground, the brain is going to fire up and try to suspend sleep to keep us safe. It’s really good at doing that (thank goodness, because if it wasn’t we’d have all been eaten by sabertooth tigers a long time ago).
And yet, in the end, sleep will still happen. Maybe not that night, or even the next but sleep drive always wins in the end.
Moving away from the battle, the effort, and the struggle can often make things a bit easier.
Have you discussed your desire to move away from sleep aids with your doctor? In my experience, it doesn’t usually matter too much how someone approaches this (whether they taper or go “cold turkey” — and that’s a discussion to have with your doctor). What matters is putting a plan in place and sticking to that plan as best as you can.
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.
Sleep can still happen, even in the presence of difficult thoughts and feelings.
What can make sleep a lot more difficult is engaging in a battle with those thoughts and feelings — because then we are at war and how likely is sleep to happen if the bed is a battleground?
Another thing to consider is that the more we try to fight, avoid, or control our thoughts and feelings, the more likely they are to get stuck and the more likely they might be to create a struggle (it sounds as though you have experienced this for yourself).
When we are less resistant to them, when they are allowed to come and go as they choose, they are better able to flow — to come and go as they choose — and perhaps less likely to get stuck and perhaps less likely to create a struggle.
With all this in mind, do you think it might be worth moving away from trying to fight, avoid, or control what’s happening inside you — especially if your own experience tells you that doesn’t seem to be a workable response?
Of course, this stuff is difficult. Adding struggle on top of the difficult stuff doesn’t usually make it much easier, though, right?
—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.
To help you explore this further, I invite you to answer the following questions:
1. What have you tried to do, in an attempt to turn hyperarousal down?
2. How did each of those attempts work out? Did they permanently lower hyperarousal or did hyperarousal return (or increase) after varying amounts of time?
3. Did your attempts to lower hyperarousal come with any costs in terms of the energy and attention they required?
4. Did any of your attempts to lower hyperarousal end up making it harder for you to do things that matter? Did they create more or less struggle?
5. Now, upon reflection, what does your own experience tell you about whether it’s possible to intervene and turn hyperarousal down? If your experience is telling you that hyperarousal cannot be directly or permanently controlled, perhaps all the ongoing attempts to do so might be creating a lot of ongoing 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 sharing! A couple of key insights really stood out for me here:
1. Making space for difficult thoughts and feelings to exist can often be a more workable approach compared to trying to fight or avoid them.
2. Committing to actions that help you live the kind of life you want to live, even when this difficult stuff is present, can often be more workable compared to using all your remaining energy and attention to go to war with all the stuff you can’t control.
All human beings experience difficult nights from time to time and difficult thoughts and feelings from time to time.
It’s how we respond that really matters since our response is something we can control and our response determines whether we get tangled up in an endless struggle that gives this difficult stuff even more power — or whether we continue to move toward the life we want to live, even when this difficult stuff shows up.
—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.
