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Thanks for sharing — you are clearly absorbing what you are learning with an open and curious mind and you are then doing the most important part. You are taking action. You are getting the practice in!
And, thanks to your commitment to action and your growth mindset, you are learning a lot and moving closer to where you want to be!
I wish you all the best as you continue to move forward
—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 your experience and insights, Woody.
When does your chosen sleep window start and end, and how much sleep would you say you’ve been averaging over the past couple of weeks?
It sounds as though you might still be attached to the idea that you need to make sleep happen — so, there might not be any struggle when you are awake at night but for as long as a certain amount or type of sleep isn’t happening, perhaps there’s going to be some ongoing disappointment and a bigger focus on sleep?
When you wake at night (which is a normal part of sleep) and you aren’t struggling with that wakefulness, I can’t think of any better way to respond — can you?
—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 @Despina and thanks for sharing!
Nights like those you described can be really difficult and they can come with a lot of difficult thoughts and feelings, too. It’s great that, in the presence of all that difficult stuff, you were able to notice and reflect on some of the good stuff that was still present. That’s a really helpful skill that can help you expand the focus of your attention.
Your strengths of self-reflection, curiosity, and open-mindedness are also clear to see. Thanks to those strengths, you realized that you have been chasing after sleep (which is totally understandable!) and that awareness helped you realize how that can make things more difficult.
As your mind does its job of looking out for you it’s going to generate lots of difficult and uncomfortable thoughts and feelings and it’s going to come up with all different kinds of stories and predictions, too. And all that stuff can pull you away from where you are and what you are doing. It takes skill and ongoing practice to remain present (or bring yourself back to the present) when your brain is generating difficult or distracting messages!
Acknowledging whatever you are thinking and feeling can be a helpful first step to moving away from struggling with whatever you are thinking and feeling. If you find it helpful to laugh in response, go for it! You might even thank your brain for those messages, too — since they are evidence that your brain is looking out for you.
If naps help to keep you moving toward the life you want to live (you aren’t withdrawing from life or doing less of the stuff that really matters to you because you need to nap) then how can they be a problem? Of course, longer naps or naps taken later in the day might mean less sleep at night due to reduced sleep pressure — but maybe that’s worth the occasional tradeoff?
Finally, as a reminder, the sleep window is nothing more than a tool that can help us move away from chasing after sleep by doing things like going to bed earlier or staying in bed later. What probably matters most is going to bed when you are sleepy enough for sleep/ready to go to bed (rather than because you are desperate to make sleep happen) and getting out of bed at a reasonably consistent time in the morning.
I hope there’s something useful here and I wish you all the best as you continue to work through the course!
—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 aboard! I wish you all the best with the course
—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 often takes effort, especially at first — and that’s the point since the goal here is to build skill in noticing (and acknowledging) the good stuff that’s still present, even when things are difficult.
I would suggest aiming to come up with 3 new observations each day — copying and pasting the exact same thing over and over again might not help you practice building skill in noticing the good stuff around you!
As @Lambo suggested, these don’t need to be big or complicated things. Breathing can be an example. Noticing a bird can be an example. Seeing a tree can be an example. Drinking or eating something good can be an example.
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.
Hello Jasmine and welcome to the course!
What is your goal with the sleep window? What are you trying to achieve by implementing one?
I also noticed that the end of your sleep window is quite early, at 3:15 AM. How did you choose 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.
You are definitely not alone — and your experience of feeling sleepy out of bed and not sleepy when you get in bed is quite common.
One idea here — if you feel sleepy (and can fall asleep) when you aren’t intending (or trying) to make sleep happen, what changes once you get into bed?
—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 your pregnancy, Erin — and twins, too! It sounds as though your pregnancy has been a powerful motivator for you to move away from medication and to deal with sleep, difficult nights (and the difficult thoughts and feelings that can show up with them) in a different way.
There are no real rules here because there’s no single action or series of actions that can make sleep happen. What matters most is the intent behind your actions — because whenever your intent is to control something your experience tells you cannot be controlled, you can set yourself up for a struggle.
If your intent when you do something in bed is to make sleep happen, that might create some struggle. If your intent when you do something in bed is simply to experience something you enjoy or find pleasant, then how can that be a bad thing?
We’ll be exploring how to respond to being awake during the night in a lot more detail in Week 2. In the meantime, what can be helpful is to think about what you might be able to do that will help you experience being awake with less struggle — not what you might be able to do to make sleep happen (as you know, trying makes things more difficult).
In other words, how can you make those periods of wakefulness more “constructive”? What could you do instead of putting pressure on yourself to make sleep happen, instead of putting effort into sleep, instead of trying to fight or avoid whatever thoughts and feelings might be showing up?
Is there anything 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.
Welcome to the course, Despina — and congratulations on your little one! It sounds like you’ve been through a tough time of it and one of your superpowers is clearly your growth mindset — your awareness that things can improve, that there’s always something to learn, that life is a journey of personal growth and development. I think you’re going to get a lot out of the course.
Unfortunately, progress is one of those things we cannot control. A trainee pilot probably wants to fly a load of passengers across the world right now — but there’s a lot to get done before that can happen. There’s a lot of ground work to cover. And, there’s probably going to be ups and downs along the way, right? Times when things feel easy and a lot of progress is being made. Times when things feel hard and that no progress is being made.
How does the trainee pilot continue to move closer to her goal when things feel difficult and when progress feels slow or non-existent? She stays committed to actions that keep her moving toward her goal, right? And she does that over and over again.
As your experience tells you, you cannot make a certain amount or type of sleep happen through effort. The more you try, the more you are likely to struggle — and struggle makes things so much more difficult. It consumes your focus, your energy, and your attention. It can influence your actions and pull you away from the life you want to live.
What matters is approaching sleep and responding to insomnia in workable ways — ways that are within your control (action-based). Ways that move you away from trying to control sleep so you can move toward the life you want to live.
And, as we focus less on sleep and get less tangled up in trying to make it happen it is better able to take care of itself (after all, how did you make great sleep happen a year or so ago — you did nothing, right?).
I hope there’s something useful here and I wish you all the best as you work through the course!
—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.
Glad you are finding this helpful, Helen! As you mentioned, every time you thank your brain you are reminding yourself that those thoughts and feelings come from a good place — your brain looking out for you.
You are also taking action — you are responding to them. And, your response of “thanks, brain!” can be an alternative to battling away with those thoughts and feelings!
—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.
Good on you for getting the practice in! Just as you shared, when we start with noticing and naming (awareness and acknowledgement) we give ourselves space to choose how we want to respond — and those thoughts and feelings can then start to lose their power and influence over our actions.
—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.
What a great example of how you might look for any important information your brain might be trying to bring to your attention!
Sometimes it can feel as though our brain is working against us, but that’s never the case — it’s always looking out for us and as it does that it generates difficult and distracting thoughts, feelings, and stories. Some might be true, some might not be true. Some might be important, some might not be important.
And yet, they can often contain reminders of what’s important. Sometimes we can respond to those reminders in helpful ways (sometimes we can do something with that information). Other times we cannot (and in that case, perhaps simply thanking the brain for looking out for us can be the most workable way to respond).
Thanks for sharing!
—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 about the knee injury — how are you healing up from that?
It makes sense that you worried the injury would make things more difficult, and it would also make sense if the injury did make things more difficult! Life comes with difficult stuff like injuries and our sleep can be quite responsive to things like that!
As you shared, what truly matters most is an ongoing commitment to workable action. Continuing to build skill in experiencing wakefulness with less struggle — being more of an observer rather than an opponent. Continuing to build skill in experiencing the full range of human thoughts and feelings without trying to fight or avoid them. Continuing to live by your values and continuing to move toward the life you want to live, even in the presence of difficult stuff that’s beyond your control.
It sounds as though you are taking what you are learning from the course and putting it into action in a way that makes sense to you — good on you! You are also learning and growing as you continue to move forward. As you said, that is progress!
—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 your experience, Amber!
I think you’ve highlighted what really matters here — the ongoing practice of workable actions.
Skills take time to develop. There will be ups and downs. There will be times when it feels like practice is going well and working. There will be times when it feels like practice isn’t going well and isn’t working. Ongoing practice is really what matters — committing to ongoing, meaningful, workable action.
When we are tangled up in the struggle it can sound ludicrous but moving away from the insomnia struggle truly is a journey and it can contribute to an incredible level of personal growth!
—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! Most of the posts in the insomnia success stories forum are from people who went through my course and most of the guests on the Insomnia Coach podcast took one of my courses.
You can also find testimonials and feedback on the Insomnia Coach reviews page.
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.
