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I know that since you posted this we have started working together, Chris — but as a note for others who may read your post, I think it’s important to acknowledge that this is a really difficult situation to be in.
And it’s also not particularly unique or unusual; in your post you described all of the understandable efforts you have gone to in an attempt to fight wakefulness and control your thoughts and feelings — which makes sense since all of that stuff can be really difficult and unpleasant.
And yet, it might be all of those efforts and attempts that are causing or exacerbating so much of the struggle you described so well and that so many people reading your post will identify with.
There is always hope — for you and everyone else! Nobody is broken — we just 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.
Hello Andrew and welcome to the forum!
I think it’s probably going to be hard to be OK with getting two hours of sleep, right? What can be a more useful approach might be to practice accepting that you simply cannot make yourself get a certain amount of sleep — and that the more you try to do that, the more you might end up tangled up in a struggle that can end up making things even more difficult.
What’s your goal/intent when it comes to getting out of bed during the night? What are you trying to achieve by doing that?
—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 Justin and welcome to the forum!
Q1: I don’t like it when I have a bad night, especially when it happens on days, I have been looking forward to for weeks and even months. Why is it fair for me to wait all this time for something that will be very fun, maybe a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to only have a bad night before it and be miserable the next day and not enjoy it? How can I say that I should just push through? I just want to enjoy my fun day before my insomnia ruined it.
It’s really difficult when that happens, isn’t it? And, when it happens you face a choice — you can decide to do what matters (even though it might be less pleasant) or you can decide not to do what matters. If you do the latter, will that make things better?
Q2: I heard research done, I am not sure if it is accurate or not, but it says if you lose just one hour of sleep it will take 4 days for that to recover. So, experts say that for every 1 hour of sleep you lose takes 4 days to recover. So, if I have no sleep for just one night, it will take me over a month to ‘recover’ from that single bad night. How can I not stress about that?
Yes, your mind will likely stress about something like that since it’s job is to look out for you! There’s no real science or evidence behind those claims, though. The body compensates for lost sleep all by itself — not only through sleep duration but through sleep architecture; spending more time in deep sleep after getting less sleep on previous nights, for example. None of this stuff can be controlled — and it’s when we try to do so that we get tangled up in a struggle.
Q3: If I have been sleeping really well for a while how can I not be stressed about getting one bad night? I can’t do any mediation because I hear that it is trying which you don’t want to try.
For as long as you are a human being, you will experience stressful and other difficult thoughts and feelings. There’s no such thing as a life without stress or difficult thoughts and feelings. We often end up struggling when we try to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings.
Q4: Does one or a couple of bad nights affect consciousness and awareness in feeling alive and happy? Just a thought.
That’s hard to say, since there’s no magic happiness switch in the brain that we can switch on or off. Some people win the lottery jackpot and experience depression. Other people are homeless or living in refugee camps and describe themselves as being happy. Instead of trying to pursue a certain way of feeling, perhaps something we have more control over is pursuing certain actions — doing things that matter to us and that keep us moving toward the kind of life we want to live, even in the presence of difficult thoughts and feelings and even when “happiness” isn’t present?
Lastly, Q5: Does a bad night of sleep affect your cognitive abilities throughout the day? Will it damage my brain? Can I still be able to learn complex information and retain/remember it even after little or no sleep?
There is no evidence that a bad night of sleep will damage the brain or prevent learning or memory recall.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for the great question — I think this is something that can trip a lot of us up!
If we consider what people without chronic insomnia do in bed, many of them spend a lot of time awake there. They watch TV, they read, they use their phones, their tablets, maybe even their laptops. They sleep fine even though they do all these “awake” activities in bed.
So, why does stimulus control tell us we need to associate the bed with sleep and nothing else?
I think it comes down to the fact that many people with chronic insomnia spend a lot of time struggling when they are awake in bed. And it’s the struggle that’s the real issue rather than the wakefulness (since if wakefulness was the problem, all those people without insomnia who do stuff in bed other than sleep should have insomnia, right?).
So, I think a more useful way of implementing this can be to shift the goal away from trying to get rid of wakefulness when in bed (sometimes this can lead to more effort to make sleep happen, something that’s not usually going to be very helpful) toward allowing wakefulness to happen and only responding if it feels really unpleasant.
You might, therefore, give yourself permission to be awake in bed at night for as long as that feels comfortable. If it feels really unpleasant, you might give yourself the opportunity to do something more pleasant instead — and since the goal isn’t to get rid of wakefulness or to stop wakefulness from happening when in bed, you might do something more pleasant in bed rather than getting out of bed.
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.
How are you getting on, Maeta?
—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’s not unusual in the short-term, Chewy! Sometimes it can be a lot harder to fall back to sleep when we wake during the night because we might be putting pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep, we might be putting effort into falling back to sleep, or we might be getting tangled up in a struggle with the difficult thoughts and feelings that can show up — trying to fight or avoid them. How are you getting on since you posted?
—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 definitely not alone, Jenna!
I wonder if there are any pregnant women out there who don’t experience anxious thoughts and fears! Perhaps those difficult thoughts and feelings come with doing things and experiencing things that are important and meaningful?
—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. Things sure sound difficult for you right now. 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.
Most people don’t have any real idea of when they wake and when they sleep — probably because when we are asleep we don’t know what time it is and we don’t know how long we are asleep for (because we’re asleep, right?)! If you are filling out a sleep diary, best guesses are usually the best way to fill them out, in order to move away from clock watching.
When that panic and fear shows up at night, how do you currently respond to it? On those difficult days after difficult nights, are you still doing things that matter to you — or do you find yourself completely withdrawing from life?
—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 Sara! You know, I always find it hard to read at any time of the day — I sleep fine but for some reason always find myself drifting off after reading for a while!
Have you tried allowing yourself to remain in bed when you wake during the night, and to perhaps give yourself “permission” to be awake? If wakefulness continues to feel really unpleasant you might give yourself the opportunity to do something more pleasant instead (for example, you might read in bed if that’s something you enjoy, until conditions feel a bit better for sleep).
When you don’t accept social invitations in the evening, does that make things better?
—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.
Since anxiety tends to show up from time to time, for as long as we are human beings, perhaps taking actions to avoid anxiety might be getting you a bit tangled up in actions that might not be too helpful over the longer term (since anxiety always comes back, right?).
Perhaps you might shift your goal to something you have a bit more control over at night. So, instead of trying to make sleep happen or trying to fight or avoid difficult thoughts and feelings such as anxiety, you might give yourself permission to experience wakefulness (especially since wakefulness is part of sleep) and if that wakefulness starts to feel really unpleasant you might simply do something more pleasant instead — and that more pleasant activity might be something you do out of bed, or in bed.
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.
Sometimes it can be useful to acknowledge the difficult thoughts and feelings that show up by naming them in some way, for example “Here is anxiety” or “I notice I am feeling anxious” and then to make a bit of space for them to exist. To practice observing them and allowing them to come and go as they please, without trying to fight or avoid them.
—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 that being awake means is that you aren’t asleep — sometimes it becomes more difficult when we get tangled up in a struggle with it, trying to get rid of it or trying to figure out why it’s present.
I wonder if the “trying” was the cause of the struggle here? Trying to sleep, trying to get rid of anxiety?
Good on you for trying the AWAKE exercise — how did you find that? What was your goal when you tried 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.
It can be frustrating and scary when any of this difficult stuff seems to come back, right? Hypnic jerks are similar to our thoughts and feelings in terms of the amount of control we have over them (and how they might respond to our efforts to fight or avoid them).
Perhaps it might be useful to practice the AWAKE exercise at night if you find yourself getting tangled up in a struggle with them and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that might come with them. And, perhaps during the day, it might be useful to practice the NOW exercise whenever you find your understandable concern about the hypnic jerks pulling your attention away from where you are and what you are doing.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you might find this YouTube video on hypnic jerks (and all the comments that go with it!) 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.
If you were to change your sleep window, what would your goal be? If it’s connected to trying to control sleep, it might not be useful!
What are the more difficult nights stopping you from doing each day, that you are able to do when you have better nights? If nothing, perhaps there’s no need to be quite so focused on them?
—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.
