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Thanks for your post!
You shared some big insights here and I appreciate you taking the time to highlight them!
As you pointed out, shifting our goal when going to bed from sleep (something we cannot directly control) to rest (an action we can control) can really help take the pressure off. Rest is often a lot more restorative than struggle and when we reduce the pressure we might be putting on ourselves to make sleep happen, we also create better conditions for sleep to happen 🙂
Doing nice things for yourself after difficult nights can be a great way of building skill in self-kindness and self-compassion, too. As you shared, it can really shift our mindset around difficult stuff since we are now giving ourselves an outcome/consequence that’s not just more difficulty and struggle. I love your terminology here — being kind and doing kind things (especially when things are difficult) can help soften the blow!
It sounds as though you are really embracing the approach that is shared in the course and making change happen. That’s all down to your own curiosity and willingness and it’s evidence of your growth mindset, too 🙂
—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 be difficult, right? Not many people enjoy experiencing it! And yet, anxiety is a natural and normal human emotion so it’s going to show up for as long as you are a living, breathing, human being.
Perhaps what matters most, and what might determine how much struggle and power and influence anxiety has, is the way we respond to it.
If, for example, we try to fight or avoid it we might find it consumes more of our energy and attention and creates more of a struggle. And the anxiety remains anyway.
If we practice acknowledging it and allowing it to come and go as it pleases, perhaps that might free up energy and attention to do more of the things that matter to us, even in the presence of anxiety.
What are your thoughts? Does your own experience offer any guidance or insights 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.
Hello Mentjes and welcome to the forum! A sleep window is only one tool — many people need more than one tool to move away from struggling with insomnia.
A sleep window can easily become an additional sleep effort — something we are doing in an attempt to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen.
For as long as our goal with any action is to control sleep, what we think, or how we feel, we can end up setting ourselves up for a struggle since we cannot directly or permanently control any of that stuff.
I like to think of the sleep window as a tool with one main purpose — to help us move away from chasing after sleep (since the more we chase after it the more elusive it can become). It does that by giving us an earliest possible bedtime and a consistent final out of bed time in the morning. That’s really all there is to it.
A sleep window isn’t intended to help with daytime anxiety or other difficult thoughts and feelings associated with insomnia — they require different tools.
It makes complete sense that you want to be able to relax and to not care and to eliminate fear — and yet, we can’t usually force ourselves to relax and we can’t usually choose what we care about and we will always experience fear from time to time since that’s a normal and natural human emotion.
These are things inside us that we cannot directly or permanently control and the more we try, the more we can end up struggling.
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.
I can’t speak for others but what I can say is concern that the course might not work is common — and, to me, it often predicts success.
That’s because having that concern proves you have a problem-solving mind, that you are a strong self-advocate, and that you are determined to succeed.
I am yet to meet anyone who struggles with sleep who doesn’t experience difficult (and distracting) thoughts and feelings. They come with the struggle.
When it comes to insomnia, the struggle doesn’t exist only at night. It shows up during the day, too. In fact, I’d suggest that the biggest impact of insomnia comes during the day, since that’s when we are typically living (or wanting to live) the life we want to live.
The six-week course deeply explores the thoughts and feelings that tend to come with insomnia — why they show up, how we typically respond to them, workable ways of responding to them, and how to reduce the power and influence they have over us.
In conclusion, nothing in your post is unique or unusual. It sounds as though you are going through the same experience with insomnia as others. That knowledge might not make it any less difficult to experience but hopefully it gives you the understanding that change is possible if you are ready to make change 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.
Welcome to the forum 🙂
My course doesn’t specifically address moving away from medication (since I am not a doctor) — but it does explore the workability of all our attempts to control sleep and how those attempts might not always be aligned with our values or reflect who we are or the life we want to live.
Many people are taking medication for sleep (even if they feel it’s not doing a whole lot for them) because they feel they have no other options. My course provides alternative options (many of them!) and, as a result, many people decide to start withdrawing or completely eliminate their medication as they work through the course.
The last time I checked the numbers, of those who were taking medication when they first enrolled in my six-week course, three out of every four were taking less or completely eliminated their use of medication by the time they graduated.
In my experience, it doesn’t matter too much when you start to wean off — what matters is talking to your doctor and having a clear plan in place (and sticking with it, regardless of how each night goes).
Oh, and since my course is based on action and skill development, there’s no need to be off medication (or be on a withdrawal plan) before you get started.
Does this 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.
Hello Ajbar — thanks for sharing how helpful you’ve found it to acknowledge anxiety and allow it to come and go as it chooses. That is an approach that can reduce the level of struggle it can create and reduce the power and influence it has over your life.
When you are falling asleep and that anxiety shows up in your chest, it’s natural that you are going to feel the pull of the struggle — you are going to have that desire to put on the armor, call in the warhorse, grab the sword and go to war to defeat the anxiety.
Yet, as you know, that’s not a workable strategy. Battling makes it more difficult.
So, perhaps the way forward here is to continue to practice acknowledging and making space for anxiety and any feelings that might come with it to be present and to come and go as they choose — even though you might wish they weren’t present, here they are.
You might practice being more of a curious observer of them rather than an opponent. And, please don’t forget to be kind to yourself when things feel difficult, too. Talk to yourself in a kind way. Act toward yourself in a kind way.
Things feel difficult because they are difficult. And, as suggested by @Eggink, continuing to do things that matter each day can help expand the focus of your attention and reduce the power and influence all these difficult things have over your 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.
That sounds difficult. Perhaps your experience suggests that sleeping pills don’t generate sleep — which means that any sleep you got in the past while taking them was sleep you generated all by yourself?
Many people find they don’t experience true sleepiness, even after many difficult nights in a row — here are a couple of videos that might be helpful:
How to improve sleep when you don’t feel sleepy and don’t know how to get sleepy
What to do when you feel sleepy early in the evening but don’t feel sleepy when it’s time for 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.
Ah yes, it’s natural to get pulled back into the struggle — it’s like your problem-solving brain is repeatedly throwing you that tug-of-war rope and telling you to hold on tight!
What’s changed (and what matters) is your awareness of that happening when it happens. With that awareness, you have the opportunity to change your response and either refuse to take hold of that rope, or put it down and refuse to continue with the battle!
It sounds as though you are also putting less pressure on yourself to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen (something that’s out of your control anyway), you are being kinder to yourself, and you have more flexibility — you now have options when it comes to responding to difficult nights and difficult thoughts and feelings.
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.
Welcome to the forum!
As far as I know, there is no scientific evidence that long-term use of sleeping pills causes brain damage. Why are you no longer taking Ambien?
Typically, if sleep issues stick around (or reappear) when we stop taking medication that can be because the real problem was never addressed — namely all the effort we put into making sleep happen and our understandable attempts to fight or avoid being awake and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with insomnia.
In other words, there’s nothing unique or unusual in your experience — and it’s unlikely to be evidence of brain damage. It’s just that it might be time to explore whether it could be helpful to change any behaviors that might be keeping your struggle alive and supplying insomnia with the oxygen it needs to survive.
There are many stories of long-time Ambien/medication users who have moved past insomnia over on the Insomnia Coach podcast.
Some specific episodes:
How Vicky changed her approach to insomnia when sleeping pills stopped working after 20 years (#43)
How Jim stopped chasing after sleep and put over 10 years of insomnia behind him (#42)
How Sally improved her sleep after 60 years of insomnia and 10 years of sleeping pills (#19)
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.
Ah yes, my wife always wakes me up (intentionally — I think!) whenever I go to bed before she does 🙂
Here’s the thing — you know you are capable of falling asleep, since you fall asleep fairly easily at the start of the night. So, when you wake (in this example, when your husband comes to bed) something is happening that makes it hard for you to fall asleep again.
Sometimes when we are attached to sleep — when we tell ourselves or put pressure on ourselves to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen — things can get really difficult whenever obstacles appear that might prevent that from happening.
Then, when the obstacle shows up it comes with lots of difficult thoughts and feelings which we, in turn, also recognize as additional obstacles so we then start trying to fight those thoughts and feelings.
So now we are at war with being awake and we are at war with our thoughts and we are at war with our feelings. Probably not a good recipe for sleep, right?!
How might we get ourselves out of this loop or sequence of events?
Maybe giving ourselves permission to spend time awake during the night and/or not having rules or attachments to getting a certain amount or type of sleep might be helpful?
Maybe being kinder to ourselves and not putting pressure on ourselves or being hard on ourselves when things are difficult might be helpful?
And, perhaps building some skill in allowing difficult thoughts to be present and to come and go as they choose (instead of going to war with them) might be helpful, too?
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.
Hello Stacie and welcome to the forum — you are not alone!
It sounds as though you have some understandable concerns when it comes to using medication and they might be best discussed with your doctor.
What I can tell you is that there’s no right or wrong answers here; you are the expert on you and you will always make the decision that is right for you.
Have you explored any alternatives to medication, if you feel that’s an option you won’t wish to pursue 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.
Thanks for the great questions about the sleep window (I’ve merged them both into this topic to keep things organized)!
For figuring out an initial sleep window, I usually suggest considering your average nightly sleep duration over the past week or two. If that doesn’t make things any clearer you can simply start with a sleep window of 6 hours and go from there.
As for what to do when you are awake, it might be worth asking yourself this — what is your intention? What are you trying to achieve? That might help you determine the workability of your plan and the actions you might engage in.
When it comes to your second question/point — it’s very common to feel really sleepy and then go to bed and feel anxious and wide awake. That’s your brain doing its job of looking out for you, trying to protect you. Since you’ve struggled so often with wakefulness your brain sees it as a threat that it needs to be alert to protect you from (thanks, brain!).
Since your experience tells you that you cannot directly or permanently control what your brain chooses to do (just as you cannot directly or permanently control sleep itself), we know that’s not going to be a workable strategy.
So, let’s consider what can be controlled — actions. Through our actions, how can we struggle less with being awake when we want to be asleep. Through our actions, how can we train the brain that being awake isn’t a threat it needs to protect us from?
We’ll explore this in a lot more detail in Week 2 but in the meantime, perhaps engaging in another activity as an alternative to struggle (you can do this in bed if you like!) might help you build some skill in experiencing wakefulness with a little bit less struggle and also help train your brain that being awake isn’t a danger.
There’s no need to pretend you aren’t upset or even terrified — all those feelings are valid and fighting difficult thoughts and feelings typically makes them more difficult and gives them more power and influence. An alternative might be to acknowledge them, allow them to come and go as they choose, and be kind to yourself.
Again, this will all be explored in a lot more detail from Week 2 onward, but I hope there’s something useful here in the meantime!
—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.
Speed bumps might be a more accurate way to describe difficult nights versus “relapse” since “relapse” might suggest that we are back to where we began and that’s never the case!
At this point, everyone here has tools available (and hopefully some practice under their belts) that will help them respond in a different, more workable way, compared to the past.
As you pointed out @paulasim5, it’s hard to shut the problem-solving mind off — in fact, I’d suggest it’s impossible. And, thank goodness for that because if we could shut the problem-solving mind off or stop it from monitoring, none of us would be alive today!
The more we try to control our minds (or sleep) the more likely we are to find ourselves struggling — and that struggle consumes so much energy and attention, makes things more difficult, and makes it harder for us to live the life we want to live.
It’s great that you are continuing to do things that matter to you, independently of sleep. You are drawing on your strengths of tenacity, commitment, and resilience. Perhaps the final pieces of the jigsaw might involve continuing to practice moving away from trying to control your mind (or sleep) and continuing to build skill in self-kindness and self-compassion.
Difficult nights are difficult and they are not your fault. They can also be an opportunity to practice building skill in responding in a more workable way and proving to yourself that you can continue to move toward the life you want to live, independently of sleep (even though that’s not always easy to do).
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.
Thank you so much for sharing! You are experiencing change due to your willingness and commitment to make change happen through ongoing practice. That’s not easy!
It sounds as though insomnia is losing its power and influence over your life and that you are better able to live the life you want to live, independently of sleep.
Your actions now serve you — rather than the invisible insomnia gremlin 🙂
—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 Chantal!
Your recognition that “good” and “bad” are labels that can so easily change our relationship and interpretation of things is a huge insight — for example, we often label anxiety as “bad”. Is anxiety “bad” when it stops us from jumping off the viewing platform of a skyscraper? Is it “bad” when it makes us double-check that the batteries in our smoke alarms are still working?
To answer your question about looking at insomnia in a loving way — that might not be straightforward! If I gave you a million dollars to fall in love with the next person you saw in the street, would you be able to fall in love with them? What if they were an axe murderer, a bigot, or a racist? Would you be able to fall in love with them then, for a million dollars?
If not, perhaps this suggests that feelings cannot always be controlled. We can choose how we label things but we might not be able to choose whether we like them or not. Perhaps what matters most is how we respond to difficult things that are out of our control.
Do we respond by trying to fight or avoid them and, in consequence, struggle more and get distracted from where we are, what we are doing, what we want to do, and actions that matter to us?
Or, do we respond by acknowledging them, being kind to ourselves, allowing them to come and go as they choose, and refocusing our attention on where we are and committing to actions that keep us moving toward the life we want to live?
Finally, perhaps there’s some “good stuff” that comes with insomnia(!) — what does it teach you about yourself, how you see yourself, what you can accomplish, your resilience; what opportunities for personal growth and development does it offer?
Is there anything useful here, Chantal?
—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.
