Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Thanks for sharing, Brad! It sounds as though you have a clear plan in place — and following a clear plan is often more helpful than not having (or following) a plan 🙂
—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.
Sorry to hear you’re having difficulties finding those parts of the course.
If you click the link for the client area in the top right corner of the page, you will be taken to the course dashboard.
From there, you can click the “Continue” button to continue from where you left off, or you can click the link that says “Access the course content here” and you will then see all the lessons that make up each week of the course. If you click the lesson you want to see, you will be taken right to it.
If you continue to have issues, please let me know.
—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 the body movements (or trying to suppress them!) could be connected to chasing after sleep, trying to make it happen (“I was limiting my positions to just 1-2 and was sleeping better” / “When sleep takes awhile, I start losing patience and move more frequently”).
Ultimately, we can sleep regardless of what position we are in. There’s no magic sleep position, and some people move a lot during the night and others don’t move a whole lot!
If you think this might be connected to chasing after sleep and it’s causing a bit of a struggle, do you think there might be any value in practicing an alternative approach such as the AWAKE exercise at that time?
—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, Brad! What’s the plan for the medication? Has your doctor given you any suggestions?
—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 smoke free, Bruce! What an accomplishment!
What might have happened here is there was some sleep disruption associated with quitting smoking after 50 years — and that’s probably to be expected! Then, in response to that sleep disruption you understandably tried to fix it.
When those attempts didn’t work, you tried harder but found that the more you tried, the more difficult it all became — and that is normal because, with sleep, the more effort we put into it, the more difficult it often becomes.
This is the way insomnia typically develops. There’s a trigger (sometimes memorable and sometimes not) and the insomnia is then kept alive by all our attempts to get rid of it — even after the initial trigger is no longer present or relevant.
Does anything here resonate with your own experience? Is your approach to sleep different now, compared to a year or so ago? Are there any insights 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.
It makes complete sense that you miss that feeling and want to feel refreshed every morning! After all, who wants to feel exhausted, groggy, and fatigued, right?!
Does your experience tell you that it’s possible to directly and permanently control how you feel? That there’s something you can do to make a certain feeling appear (or another one completely disappear forever) and remain that way for as long as you choose?
If not, perhaps the pursuit of that goal has the potential to set you up for a bit of a struggle — a struggle that can consume your energy and attention and actually make it a bit harder for you to do things that matter?
—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 apologize if my post came across as dismissive — that was not my intent! My intent was to share that no studies have found chronic insomnia causes any health condition whatsoever. That fact doesn’t dismiss the fact that insomnia is really difficult — this website wouldn’t exist otherwise!
I also wanted to clarify the difference between associations and causation (using ashtrays as an example) since that can trip many people up and create some confusion.
Thanks for your feedback 🙂
—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, Richard. It’s good to have you here.
Losing memories and finding it harder to spell words must be difficult. And it’s not your fault that you’re experiencing that. So, I hope you might be able to consider ways of being kinder to yourself in response to that difficult stuff.
When you wake during the night to use the bathroom are you finding it hard to fall back to sleep?
—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.
Lots of “links”, “associations”, “mays”, “mights”, “coulds” etc! However, not one study has found chronic insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever.
Also worth considering is that many of these studies don’t involve people with insomnia — some don’t involve human beings at all and many look at sleep duration independently of insomnia presence and might also involve sleep deprivation (the deliberate reduction of sleep opportunity).
We might expect there to be a higher risk of cancer in people who live in houses with ashtrays. Does that mean ashtrays cause cancer? 🙂
—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.
One of the most common issues I hear related to insomnia and fatigue is a sense of experiencing “brain fog” — which I think implies mental fatigue rather than physical fatigue.
Of course, everyone is different and I am yet to meet someone with insomnia who doesn’t experience fatigue in some form or another and to some degree! Perhaps that’s true of most human beings, regardless of whether they have insomnia or not!
—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.
In terms of realistic goals, I think that comes down to the controllability of the goals we set ourselves.
If your experience suggests that you cannot directly or permanently control how you sleep or how you feel when you wake, it might be worth considering whether that’s an appropriate (and actionable) goal.
It’s certainly something you can work toward, but perhaps it’s not something you can *make* happen — and trying to control what cannot be controlled has the potential to create some struggle.
What you might want to explore is why this is a goal. If you woke up feeling great every morning for the rest of your life, what would you be doing differently? What would you then be doing that you are not doing now? Is there an opportunity to move toward that, even if you don’t feel great when you wake in the morning?
Since you are working with a therapist it would probably be best to explore these issues with them — and I wish you all the best 🙂
—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 and welcome to the forum! Yes, sometimes our brains can wake us up — the brain is always active, even when we are asleep, working hard at its job of keeping us safe.
There’s nothing we can do to stop our brain from waking us up if it chooses to do that. What can make things more difficult is trying to control the brain — trying to get it to stop waking us up, trying to make sleep happen, trying to get rid of wakefulness when it shows up, or otherwise battling with our thoughts and feelings.
Trying to control the mind (and sleep itself!) requires immense effort and attention — and exerting such effort and attention might not create the best conditions for sleep, right?
With this in mind, I wonder whether allowing your mind to do what it’s going to do anyway might help you move away from struggling during the night? And, perhaps with less struggle, things might start to feel a bit easier, and conditions for sleep might get a bit better, 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.
That anxiety is natural and normal, Birdie! Can you think of any other times when anxiety has shown up before (and maybe during and maybe even after) doing things that are important?
Anxiety related to a job interview? Anxiety related to being a parent? Anxiety related to meeting new people?
How did you respond to that anxiety? Did you cancel the job interview? Did you give your kids away? Did you stop socializing and lock yourself in an isolation unit?
If not, why?
Was it because you recognized that doing things that matter involves the presence of difficult thoughts and feelings such as anxiety?
If so, perhaps what’s really important here is doing things that matter, even if they come with anxiety. Perhaps what really matters is traveling, meeting your cousins, adding good stuff to your life — even if that generates anxiety and even if there might be some difficult nights that come with it?
Sleep you cannot control. Anxiety you cannot control. Going on an adventure that will enrich your life, even in the presence of difficult stuff you cannot control, is completely within your control.
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 Sam!
What made you decide on a sleep window of 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM and what is your goal with that sleep window? If it was working, what would be happening?
I think it’s OK to go to bed earlier if you are finding it hard to stay awake. If you then find you lose that sleepiness when you go to bed, that doesn’t mean any kind of “failure” has happened — it just means that you have temporarily lost that sense of sleepiness.
This can happen if the brain has learned to associate the bed with struggle — so it fires up to protect you from the battle that it thinks is to come.
You can’t change what your mind thinks or feels (at least nor permanently anyway) — but you can train it that your bed isn’t a place for ongoing struggle. That your bed is a place for rest rather than a battleground. That you are safe when you are in bed, even if you are awake. That it doesn’t need to be quite so alert to “protect” you from nighttime wakefulness!
When you go to bed and feel awake, how do you respond and does that response feel workable to you?
PS: Can you remember a time when sleep didn’t feel like a struggle or a concern? A time when you slept pretty well? Did you use blue light blockers then?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
That sounds really difficult. Thank you for sharing.
It sounds as though you are putting quite a lot of pressure on yourself to make sleep happen and perhaps to control what you think and how you feel, too.
This makes sense since you want to sleep and you don’t want to experience difficult thoughts and feelings because they don’t feel good and they feel like a barrier to sleep happening, right?
Does your own experience tell you that putting more effort into sleep makes sleep more likely to happen? Does effort to sleep and effort to get rid of wakefulness make sleep happen upon command and permanently get rid of wakefulness upon command?
Does your own experience tell you that it’s possible to permanently delete difficult thoughts and feelings from your mind so they never come back ever again?
If your answer to these questions is no, perhaps that might suggest that sleep and the thoughts and feelings your mind generates as it does its job of looking out for you is something that’s out of your control?
And, if so, perhaps trying to control what cannot be controlled might be setting you up for a bit of a struggle — a struggle that can make all of this difficult stuff even 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.
