Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
It sounds as though avoiding screens hasn’t had much of an impact on your sleep — so, if using screens after 6:00 PM is something you enjoy, perhaps that’s something you can reclaim from insomnia?
What is your goal when you get out of bed after being awake for 20 minutes? If it was working, 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.
It sure sounds as though you’re on a more workable path as you practice moving away from struggle and engaging in a battle every night!
It’s important to remember that your goal here isn’t to make sleep happen. You cannot make sleep happen since sleep cannot be controlled. The goal with moving away from trying to control sleep, your thoughts, your feelings, isn’t to make sleep happen — the goal is to build skill in moving away from trying to control sleep, your thoughts, your feelings.
Without the control agenda, there’s less struggle — and struggle tends to make things more difficult, right?
So, remember that when you’re doing something else during the night (like watching Family Guy) you aren’t trying to make sleep happen. You’re practicing experiencing wakefulness with less struggle.
Since the goal is to practice moving away from struggle, there’s no need to get out of bed or leave your bedroom just because you’re awake. There’s no need to respond to wakefulness in any way at all.
If you find yourself struggling with it, then you have the opportunity to engage in an activity that might help you practice moving away from struggle — and that activity can be done in bed, if you’d rather not get out of bed.
I hope there’s something 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.
Hello Ruth and welcome to the forum. What are you trying to achieve by doing things like not using screens after 6:00 PM and getting out of bed if you’re awake for 20 minutes? Were you doing those things before insomnia showed up, when you were sleeping well?
—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.
Melatonin doesn’t generate sleep — it’s a hormone that acts more as a signal for sleep. People with chronic insomnia don’t usually have any issues with melatonin production or regulation, so taking supplemental doses of the hormone doesn’t usually do anything.
Of course, if we believe that taking something will make sleep happen, we might then stop trying to make sleep happen — we delegate the effort over to whatever we take. And, in the absence of effort, sleep often become a lot easier!
So, with all this being said, I believe that you are sleeping because of your natural ability to sleep — not because you’re taking melatonin. If you have any concerns about this, I’d encourage you to talk to your doctor.
—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 Ernie and welcome to the forum. You might want to start with my free insomnia sleep training course if you haven’t enrolled already. And, if you have any specific questions or concerns, please feel free to post them 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 medication might not be the long-term solution you are looking for since it’s been something you’ve been experimenting with for so long. Do you feel it might be worth exploring a different approach?
Perhaps you’re ongoing (yet understandable!) efforts to control sleep might be the source of a lot of your struggle — and maybe that struggle might be making things 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.
Hello Lrf and welcome to the forum. It makes completely sense that you would have the fear and anxiety you described — that comes from your mind doing its job and looking out for you!
To answer your question, there is no evidence that chronic insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever. It can definitely make living the life we want to live more difficult, but it cannot harm us — the body knows how to sleep, it will always generate the minimum amount of sleep we need (when given the opportunity), and it’s often all our understandable attempts to make sleep happen and to fight or avoid wakefulness and what we might think or feel that makes things a lot more difficult.
I hope there’s something helpful here and that things improve for you. You 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.
When you make yourself stop thinking, are you able to stop all thoughts permanently, or do they end up coming back at some point?
The good news is that none of the things you listed prohibit sleep from happening. What can make sleep a lot more difficult is trying to make it happen. Engaging in a battle, trying to fight or avoid nighttime wakefulness and any of the thoughts and feelings that might come with it.
I wonder whether moving away from the struggle might help not only free up some energy (so you might be better able to do things that matter to you) but also expand your focus so even when all the difficult stuff you described is present, it’s no longer the only thing you can see? Do you feel there might be any value in that kind of an 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.
That does sound really difficult. How do you respond to the arrival of those physical sensations at night and how do you respond to the difficult sensations you described that occur during the 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.
Increased cortisol is a normal part of the body’s stress response — and the stress response might come from the struggle we engage in to make sleep happen or to otherwise fight or avoid wakefulness and the difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with it.
Although nighttime wakefulness can be very unpleasant (especially when we are trying really hard to fight or avoid it) it’s not the same kind of threat as a hungry grizzly bear waiting under the bedsheets for us — and yet, our brain might not know the difference. Sometimes it requires training. It needs to learn that wakefulness isn’t such a threat. That it’s not going to eat us, like that grizzly bear might!
We can work on training the brain by doing things that help us move away from a nightly battle and the ongoing struggle. The more we allow wakefulness to exist without struggle, the more we might train the brain that it doesn’t need to activate the stress response.
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.
It is, of course, important not to make any changes to your medication without talking to your doctor first.
If you want to give yourself the opportunity to sleep without medication — to train your brain that it can sleep without medication — what do you feel is the only way that might be achieved?
I wonder if the medication is making sleep happen, or if it’s the resulting elimination of effort that seems to make sleep more likely to happen. Once we take something we might delegate all the effort we’d otherwise engage in to make sleep happen, to get rid of wakefulness, onto whatever we’ve taken. When we are no longer involved in the natural process of sleep, when we are no longer “trying”, it often occurs a lot easier!
Perhaps there might be a useful insight 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.
You’ll probably always care about things that are important — we’re not trying to trick the mind here!
What we’re looking to do is to accept that there are some difficult things in life that we can’t directly or permanently control (like sleep, what we think, and how we feel).
With that in mind, perhaps all the struggle we might engage in to fight or avoid nighttime wakefulness (and the thoughts and feelings that can come with it) might be making things more difficult since that struggle gets us tangled up in an endless, exhausting, and futile battle?
What might things be like if we were able to build skill in moving away from that struggle? Perhaps we might have more energy? Perhaps this difficult stuff might be less influential and distracting? Perhaps we might be able to better live the kind of life we want to live?
So, we still care — but it’s no longer the focus of all our attention and it’s no longer the only thing we care about.
—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.
All your concerns are completely understandable and completely valid!
CBT-I can help us move away from behaviors and thought processes that keep insomnia alive. If you feel your current approach isn’t working, experimenting with a new approach might be useful!
Going one step further, ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) techniques can help us move away from struggling with all this difficult stuff so we can better do the things that matter (such as taking care of our kids and anything else that is aligned with our values and that keeps us moving toward the life we want to live).
My six-week online course covers both approaches (and more).
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.
This page should help, Pauline: Sleep restriction for insomnia.
—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.
Yes, things can get better — nobody is ever broken, it’s just that we can get stuck from time to 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.
