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It’s good to hear that you are feeling happier with your sleep! Your desire to experience ongoing improvement is completely logical and understandable — at the same time, though, your might be training your brain to believe that nighttime wakefulness is a threat (because you are so keen to avoid it). This, in turn, can keep us tangled in a bit of a struggle with sleep.
Ultimately, sleep happens best when we no longer try to avoid wakefulness and we no longer to try control sleep! If we can eliminate that desire, that’s when true magic can happen!
—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 kind of things have you both done to stop thinking about insomnia throughout the day? How effective have those techniques been? Have they come with any cost in terms of effort and/or missing out on things that are important to you?
If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant for the rest of the day could you do that — or did you already fail and think of a pink elephant?
—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. If I could wave a magic wand and eliminate your insomnia, what kind of things would you be doing, that you are not doing at the current 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’ve shared some big insights there, BZ!
—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.
Lots of people feel sluggish when they first wake, due to sleep inertia — movement and activity are often helpful for that, as you have experienced.
It’s also very common to feel tired in the afternoon since our body clock naturally dips around that time. Again, movement and activity can help.
It’s also worth considering that fatigue is influenced by so many factors other than sleep alone— sleep itself often doesn’t contribute to fatigue as much as we might think.
You might find these videos helpful:
Why you shouldn’t evaluate sleep based on how you feel first thing in the morning or mid-afternoon
Daytime fatigue is caused by more than just a bad night of sleep
—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.
Great question and a common dilemma!
I think this is best answered with another question — what’s more important to you? Protecting your sleep at all costs, or getting away and spending time with your daughter and grandchild?
Oh, and here’s another question — in 100 years from now, will you be remembering all the best nights of sleep you had, or will you be remembering all the important, enjoyable, and enriching things you did when awake?
By all means, implement CBT-I techniques when away, but consider making the experience of spending time with your daughter and grandchild (and doing things that are life-enriching and aligned with your values) your focus and your priority!
—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 admire your commitment to sticking with CBT-I for a month even though you feel you aren’t making progress.
Sometimes we can get really wrapped up in the behavioral side of things (implementing a sleep window, for example) and neglect the cognitive side of things — I wonder if this might be the situation for you?
Ultimately, if we wake during the night and find it hard to fall back to sleep then we aren’t sleepy enough for more sleep or (more typically) we are putting effort into falling back to sleep, putting pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep, and/or battling with the thoughts, feelings, and emotions our brain usually generates at this time.
This response (although completely understandable!) trains our mind that wakefulness is a danger — that being awake at night is a threat and must be avoided. So, it will often activate the “fight or flight” response to protect us from wakefulness — and guess what happens then? It becomes really hard to fall back to sleep!
So, ultimately we need to teach our brain that it’s OK to be awake. We can do this by eliminating sleep efforts, not putting pressure on ourselves to sleep, acknowledging the difficult thoughts and feelings the brain might choose to generate (rather than trying to fight or avoid them), and exploring how we might make nighttime wakefulness more pleasant and how we might live a rich and rewarding life even after difficult nights and even in the presence of difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
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.
It sounds as though you recognize that it’s an intense desire for sleep/an intense desire to avoid wakefulness that is actually the cause of your struggle, just as it is for pretty much every case of chronic insomnia!
When implementing sleep restriction, you will never be allotting less time for sleep than your average nightly sleep duration — so it’s not set up (or intended) to take sleep away from you.
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.
Welcome to the forum!
First of all, it’s important to emphasize that the body will always generate enough sleep and it will always generate the right kind of sleep. We have no control over sleep cycles or sleep architecture because we don’t need to have any control over this — the body takes care of that all by itself (just as we have no control over our heart rate; we don’t need to have control over it — the body takes care of that all by itself)!
Sleep does occur in cycles — but in real life these cycles are very rarely as neat and tidy as they appear in textbooks! It’s normal for deep sleep (N3 sleep) to occur at the start of the night (that’s when most deep sleep happens) and it’s normal for deep sleep to make up only a small proportion of our overall sleep, especially in older adults.
So, in short, nothing unique or unusual in what you’ve shared — but if you’re concerned, I’d suggest talking 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 CJ and welcome to the forum!
If you wake during the night (which is a normal part of sleep) and find it hard to fall back to sleep, then you aren’t sleepy enough for more sleep and/or arousal is too high for sleep to occur.
Typically, we see arousal being too high for sleep to occur if we start to put pressure on ourselves to sleep, put effort into sleep, or start battling with difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions that the brain might be generating.
Does anything here sound relevant to 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.
I hope that is reassuring (rather than creepy!) by demonstrating that what you are going through isn’t unique or unusual — and so it can be addressed!
—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 additional information — I am sure people will find it really helpful! I’m also grateful that you mentioned there are still some nights where you wake — because that’s normal and to be expected! What’s important is our perception of that wakefulness — how we react to it. Just as each day isn’t always great, each night isn’t always great, either. That’s just a part of 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.
Sorry to hear about your current situation, Smitty. Things sound very difficult for you right now. Have you asked your doctor whether they think you might 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.
The return of that sense of sleepiness can be so encouraging — 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.
The mind is always going to generate thoughts and emotions. Some will feel good, some will not feel good. However, we always have the ability to choose how we react.
We can react in one of two ways — we can respond by giving up, doing nothing, and moving away from the kind of life we want to live. Or, we can acknowledge and accept these difficult thoughts, make some space for them, and then do things that help us move toward the kind of life we want to live.
There’s no doubt that difficult thoughts and emotions are challenging and make things more difficult. We can’t pretend otherwise. However, we can still do things that can help us live a life that’s aligned with our values, even in their presence. If we can do this repeatedly, then difficult thoughts and emotions might start to hold less power and influence over 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.
