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These ups and downs are normal and are a symptom of being a human being! Just telling ourselves our thoughts are just thoughts can be difficult — but fortunately, there are many different techniques we can try to help us “defuse” from our thoughts in a practical way (a Google search for “cognitive defusion” might help).
You might also find my video on insomnia relapses helpful.
—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 sleep difficulties. Have you tried implementing any cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques to help create better conditions for 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.
Chronic insomnia can definitely feel very lonely — but, as you have seen from the forum, you are not alone!
Can you tell us a bit more about your sleep at the current time? What’s a typical night like?
—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.
Anxiety can definitely make it more difficult to be active during the day — however, we can still take actions, no matter how small, that help move us toward the kind of life we want to live. The alternative is to give up, do nothing, and no longer live life according to our values — and that probably is not going to be helpful over the long term!
Very few of us feel refreshed when we first wake in the morning, thanks to sleep inertia. However, we do tend to feel a bit better once our day has got started and we are doing things that help us live the kind of life we want to live.
The nighttime anxiety can be difficult, too — and much of the struggle with this can be down to our natural desire to fight or avoid it. If we can get to a place where we might be able to let anxiety come and go as it pleases, we might be less likely to get caught up in 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 challenging to come off any medication, and this should only be done under the supervision of your doctor. You might want to ask about a tapering-off plan rather than going “cold turkey” — if you gradually taper-off while implementing techniques that create better conditions for sleep, the process might be a bit less challenging.
—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.
Your description of your experience with insomnia — particularly the ongoing detective work — is not unusual at all, and I am sure you will relate to many of the guests on the Insomnia Coach podcast.
If we can get to a place where we are able to replace the ongoing detective work with actions that help us live by our values and move us toward the kind of life we want to live, and where we are able to drop the often irresistible urge to control sleep or put effort into sleep, we can start to change our relationship with sleep and this, in turn, usually creates better conditions for 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.
CBT-I techniques, such as sleep restriction, can be helpful even in the presence of anxiety for two reasons:
1. Anxiety doesn’t prevent sleep (but our attempts to fight or avoid anxiety can make sleep more difficult)
2. Sleep restriction helps build sleep drive, and sleep drive will always overpower anxiety in the endI 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.
Thanks for the great questions! I don’t think we need to be concerned by nighttime wakefulness and feel we have to take action every time we wake. So, I don’t think we need to get out of bed during the night, as long as being in bed feels good.
It can be very helpful to set an alarm to help ensure you stick to a consistent final out of bed time in the morning. Setting an alarm also gives your mind one less thing to think 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.
The good news is that the body will always prioritize deep sleep, so you are almost certainly getting some deep sleep, even if you are only averaging a few hours of sleep. If you are concerned about your eyelid being partially open during the night, I would suggest talking to your doctor. If there’s no other explanation, this observation could simply be related to heightened arousal and monitoring for everything that’s going on during the night.
—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.
Having a baby is a big decision, and only you can make that decision, Steph! However, since sleep loss is part of “the deal” when having a baby, I wonder if you might be more capable than your brain is trying to tell you? After all, when we consider it all, you are an expert when it comes to getting through the day after little sleep — so you might go into parenthood being ahead of all the other parents who have never experienced insomnia before!
Insomnia never controls us — we always have control over our actions and our decisions. It’s not insomnia that stops us from doing “x” — it’s our mind trying to convince us that we can’t do “x” because of 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.
What you are experiencing isn’t unusual, Flying Fish. Here’s a video about this that might be helpful: How to improve sleep when you don’t feel sleepy and don’t know how to get sleepy.
—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 always waking around one or two hours before your planned wakeup time, you might want to “advance” your sleep window, so it starts and ends a bit earlier. I don’t think there’s any need to get out of bed when you wake during your sleep window if being awake in bed feels good — because that implies that conditions are right for sleep to happen if your body chooses to generate more 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.
I think you shared a big insight in your post when you openly wondered whether letting go of “the struggle” might be a good course of action — and that’s because it’s often when we try to fight or avoid difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions (that seem to get generated en masse when we are living with chronic insomnia) that we get most caught up in those difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions — because they cannot be controlled (just like sleep itself).
I think it can be helpful to focus attention on what we can control — and, luckily, no matter how bad our insomnia might be, we always have control over our behaviors and our actions. So, we can implement new habits that create good conditions for sleep and we can do things each day (no matter how small) that help move us toward the kind of life we want to live, regardless of how we sleep and even in the presence of difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
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.
As you suggested, you are very early in the process! The most important (and relevant!) thing here is that you got started! Those feelings of anxiety are normal and simply provide us with evidence that you are a human being who experiences emotions — yet, you can still control your behaviors even in the presence of that anxiety, as you have proven to yourself!
—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.
Well, waking is a normal part of sleep — so that in itself isn’t necessarily something we need to be concerned about! When you wake, what happens next?
—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.
