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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.
Thanks for sharing! You know, as human beings I think we will always experience fear from time to time — but having more knowledge about how sleep (and insomnia!) works and moving away from trying to fight or avoid difficult thoughts and feelings (such as fear!) can help shift all that difficult stuff into the background of our lives rather than it being front and center, blocking our view of the world around us!
—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.
Have you asked your doctor if they think you would be a good candidate for cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)?
—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, Diddy! It sounds as though you are living with the same chronic insomnia as everyone else — there was a trigger for your sleep disruption (or perhaps many triggers) but the sleep disruption has stuck around even when the trigger(s) is no longer present or relevant.
The insomnia sticks around usually because of the changes we make in response to the sleep disruption — the new habits we adopt (for example, changing plans based on how we sleep, spending more time in bed, etc) and the new relationship we might start to have with the thoughts and feelings that are associated with insomnia (for example, we might start trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings — all of which are out of our control).
So, ultimately, we put insomnia behind us by exploring how helpful and how workable these new behaviors are proving to be — and if they don’t seem to be helping, we might practice a new approach.
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.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! If chronic insomnia was caused by a “gut microbe imbalance”, we might expect that fixing that imbalance would cure chronic insomnia. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any evidence that has found this to be the case.
—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.
Shift work can make things a bit more difficult — and it’s not really my area of expertise, unfortunately! As you know from experience, you can’t control sleep. The only thing you can do is to give yourself the opportunity to sleep.
So, with that in mind, you might want to give yourself the opportunity to sleep past 6:00 AM after you have worked a later shift. You might get a bit more sleep, you might not — you can’t control that!
Then, on days when you revert back to “normal” working hours, just be aware that if you slept in later that morning, you might not be sleepy enough for sleep at the same time at night — so it might also be useful to ensure you only go to bed when you feel sleepy enough for sleep.
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 are finding it hard to stay awake during your buffer zone, you might want to try going to 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.
Welcome to the forum, Meryll! When you wake feeling exhausted, is that how you will feel for the rest of the day, or does how you feel change as the day progresses?
At the current time, when do you usually go to bed at night and when do you get out of bed to start your day in the morning? On an average night, how many hours of sleep would you say you are getting?
—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 you’re making real progress — and, at the same time, perhaps there is still some totally understandable resistance to experiencing difficult thoughts and feelings.
So, perhaps it might be useful to continue practicing ways of acknowledging when your body feels tense and uncomfortable. Observing those feelings and allowing them to come and go as they please (even though you wish they weren’t present at all!) instead of trying to fight or avoid them.
Similarly, it might be useful to practice acknowledging and observing the appearance of worry — something you will always experience for as long as you are a human being! Worry doesn’t prevent sleep from happening, but trying to fight or avoid it sure can!
—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.
Can you tell us a bit more about the CBT techniques you implemented for your insomnia? Which specific techniques did you implement, how did you implement them, and for how long? Why do you feel they didn’t help?
—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.
Waking during the night is a normal part of sleep — so the fact you are waking after about four hours is not unusual. In fact, much of our struggle with these awakenings can stem from our desire and attempts to fight or prevent them!
When we try to fight or avoid nighttime wakefulness, we make sleep more difficult. When we find sleep more difficult we might then start chasing after sleep (by doing things like allotting ever-more time for sleep). The end result is often even more time spent awake, more fatigue, and the appearance of more difficult thoughts and feelings associated with insomnia.
This, in turn, can then lead us to exert more effort into sleep. We might start experimenting with medication, supplements, and other gadgets and gizmos. All these efforts can train the brain to believe that wakefulness is a threat — and when the brain thinks we are under threat, it goes into alert mode and that, of course, makes sleep more difficult.
In other words, it’s our (understandable but sometimes misguided) response to sleep disruption that gives insomnia the oxygen it needs to survive.
I hope there’s something useful here, John!
—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 might find this video on hypnic jerks helpful, if you haven’t seen it yet!
—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 think what can be helpful is to do something more pleasant whenever nighttime wakefulness doesn’t feel good.
So, we allow wakefulness to exist for as long as it feels comfortable and if it starts to feel uncomfortable, we have the opportunity to do something more enjoyable instead.
That more enjoyable activity might be something we do in bed or out of bed — I would simply be mindful of intent. The intent isn’t to make sleep or sleepiness happen since if that’s our goal, we are engaged in a sleep effort and they’re not helpful since sleep doesn’t respond well to effort.
The goal is simply to make unpleasant wakefulness more pleasant.
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.
Ah, if only we could control our minds, right? Unfortunately there’s no off switch for the brain and there’s no delete button, either! For as long as we are human beings we will experience all different thoughts and feelings. Some feel good and some don’t. Some are useful and some aren’t.
And yet, at the same time, it’s not our thoughts and feelings that make sleep difficult — it’s usually the battle we engage in, as we try to fight or avoid them.
So, sometimes, a new approach can be helpful. An approach where we remove ourselves from a battle with our minds. Where we allow the mind to generate all the thoughts and feelings it wants. Where we acknowledge those thoughts and feelings and allow them to come and go as they please.
Sure, we don’t want them to appear — but there they are. The difference now is that we’re no longer engaged in a battle. We free up energy to do other things. And, when we aren’t engaged in a battle, we might find sleep becomes more likely!
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.
Welcome to the forum, Aimz35! If what you are currently doing isn’t proving to be helpful, perhaps a new approach might be useful? You always have the choice whether or not to use a Fitbit!
—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.
