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@Sunshine — Before experiencing insomnia, how did you respond if you woke during the night? Did you wonder what you should do? Did you tell yourself you shouldn’t be awake in bed? Sometimes our own experiences can offer some helpful insights!
—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.
Fear sure can feel like a problematic emotion – and without it, none of us would be alive today!
If ACT and mindfulness was getting you results, what would be different?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Larry! That fatigue can be really difficult — no doubt about it. And, perhaps you don’t need to talk yourself through it? Perhaps it might be helpful to commit to doing things that matter to you, even when it is present?
—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 sure sounds as though using those hours to do more of the things that matter to you might 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.
If watching TV is something that stops you from falling asleep, does that mean that when you watched TV in the past (before you struggled with sleep) you didn’t fall asleep?
If you know from experience that you have watched TV in the evenings and have still been able to fall asleep, perhaps it’s not really a big issue — and not watching TV might be one of those sleep efforts that can get you tangled up in a struggle as you try to control sleep while also moving you away from 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 — you are not alone!
First of all, you might find my podcast episode with Cindy of interest: How Cindy tackled the insomnia that appeared after her baby was born by accepting nighttime wakefulness and eliminating safety behaviors (#31).
Remember that sleep restriction cannot make sleep happen, since sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled. It’s a tool that can help us move away from chasing after sleep — with sleep, the more we try to make it happen, the more we can end up struggling 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.
My apologies for any confusion! To clarify:
1. It sounds as though you are (understandably) spending a lot of time focusing on sleep.
2. Are you spending at least as much time doing activities that are aligned with your values and that move you toward the life you want to live? Doing things that represent who you are and who you want to be?
Sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled — but our actions can be. And, it’s our actions that ultimately determine the whether we move toward the life we want to live or away from the life we want to live.
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.
That sounds really difficult — have you discussed those sensations you experience as you fall asleep with your doctor? If there’s no explanation for them, they might be hypnic jerks — and, if that’s the case, you might find this video (and all the comments that come with it) useful: Why you jerk yourself awake every time you try to fall asleep (and what to do about 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.
Your post reminds me of my podcast episode with Vicky who found that sleeping pills stopped working after 20 years. So, she had to explore a new approach — and that approached proved to be very helpful!
Susie also found herself needing to explore a different approach when her sleeping pills stopped working when she was on vacation.
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.
If you’re getting sleepy on the couch, you have sleep drive!
If you have a lot of experience struggling with nighttime wakefulness when in bed, your brain will go about its job and become a lot more active when you go to bed to help protect you from what it believes is the threat posed by being in bed.
Obviously, that’s not too helpful — but as far as your brain is concerned, it’s doing what it should be doing and looking out for you!
Here’s the thing — it’s not the presence of those thoughts that make sleep more difficult. We can still sleep, regardless of what our mind might choose to think about.
What makes things more difficult are our understandable attempts to fight or avoid difficult or unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
Since we can’t control what our mind does, whenever we try the mind will often generate even more intense thoughts and feelings. Then, we might try harder to fight or avoid them — and before we know it, we’re stuck and trapped in a vicious cycle of more difficult thoughts and feelings and more and more struggle. And, in the presence of such an intense struggle, how likely is sleep to happen?
So, a more workable response might involve training the brain that the bed isn’t a place for struggle (by practicing moving away from struggling with wakefulness when it’s present) and by acknowledging all the thoughts and feelings your brain is generating as it does its job of looking out for you. That way, it knows you’re listening so it doesn’t have to yell even louder!
We’ll be exploring this in a lot more detail from Week 2 onward, but I hope there’s something useful here 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.
You’re welcome!
—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.
Right now I do not — but I see how that would be valuable to many clients, so I will look into making transcripts available for download.
In the meantime, you can turn on video subtitles by clicking the “CC” button — not ideal, but perhaps that might be somewhat helpful in the short term.
—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.
Guilt is natural and normal — most of us have to really practice and develop skill in self-kindness. It doesn’t usually come naturally to most of us!
If you find journaling to be a helpful way to practice acknowledging your thoughts and feelings and to practice allowing them to exist (rather than trying to fight or avoid them), then go for it!
I would simply suggest being mindful of how much time you set aside for journaling — you might not want it to end up consuming so much of your time that it ends up making it more difficult for you to do things that help you live the life you want to live and be the person you want to be 🙂
—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 I missed your post — I’ve moved it into its own topic 🙂
Waking during the night is a normal part of sleep and is something we’ll explore in a lot more detail in Week 2 of the course.
If we engage in a struggle, trying to fight or avoid nighttime wakefulness, trying to make sleep happen, putting pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep, that wakefulness becomes a lot more difficult and it becomes less likely that we’ll fall back to sleep — after all, how likely is sleep to happen if we are engaged in a battle in the middle of the night?
What you might want to do is avoid checking the time when you wake during the night (if that’s something you’re currently doing), acknowledge that waking during the night is a normal part of sleep, and then give yourself permission to be awake — to rest, rather than engage in a battle, trying to make more sleep happen.
Again, we’ll explore this in a lot more detail from Week 2 onward — but I hope there’s something useful here 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.
There is no evidence that insomnia causes any health problem, shortens life, or increases mortality. The human body will always generate, no matter what, the minimum amount of sleep it needs to generate for as long as it is given the opportunity to do so.
Here’s the thing about thoughts — you don’t need to “let go” of them! They’re going to show up for as long as you have a human brain that’s doing its job and looking out for you (thanks, brain!).
The more you try to control your thoughts, the more you might end up struggling with them.
What can be helpful (and is something that can be controlled, with practice!) is moving away from trying to control your thoughts — since that often creates struggle and requires a lot of effort, energy, and attention.
Perhaps acknowledging your thoughts (even the difficult ones), being kind to yourself when they show up, and allowing them to come and go as they choose might be a more workable approach?
—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.
