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You can do just that, wendye! Have you tried implementing cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques?
—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 been able to identify the thought(s) that generate worry, anxiety, and/or panic, HB? This can be helpful because when we do this we can then test those thoughts for accuracy — and very often the thoughts that can generate such intense arousal aren’t as accurate as they first seem.
I am encouraged to hear that you are implementing sleep restriction and stimulus control since these techniques help build sleep drive, reduce the amount of time spent awake during the night, and help weaken any conditioned arousal that might be making sleep more difficult.
—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’s great to hear you’ve been implementing sleep restriction, sleepyDeb! Have you also been implementing any of the other techniques you learned in the emails you received?
Sleep restriction helps build sleep drive and reduces the amount of time spent awake during the night — two issues that can perpetuate sleep disruption. However, there’s more that can be done to reduce arousal and increase the likelihood of sleep — one very helpful technique is to get out of bed whenever being in bed doesn’t feel good. Is this something you are doing?
You might also find it helpful to explore what it is about the idea of getting a couple of hours of sleep that generates such arousal/worry since the thoughts that generate worry are rarely accurate when we identify them — and this can strip them of their power!
—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 to me as though you are making very clear progress — why would you stop at this point? I wouldn’t usually suggest extending the amount of time you allot for sleep if your sleep efficiency is currently around 80% since this might just lead to more time awake during the night.
You might find it helpful not to check the clock during your sleep window (if you are doing that) since this can increase arousal when you wake, and make it harder to fall back to sleep. Are you also getting out of bed during your sleep window whenever being in bed doesn’t feel good? That can be a good way to reduce arousal, which, like poor sleep drive, is another perpetuating factor behind chronic 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.
Glad to hear you discovered cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques such as sleep restriction, SIAUS, and that is has been helping you!
Difficult nights from time to time are normal and to be expected. Nobody experiences perfect sleep (or the exact same sleep) from night to night. It will take time to chip away at sleep-related worry/arousal/stress — every better night of sleep builds sleep confidence and reduces stress. Unfortunately, there’s no magic “off-switch” or overnight cure!
So, I would encourage you to keep going — keep looking forward, and keep implementing the techniques that are working for you! If you find yourself awake in bed during the night and it doesn’t feel good to be in bed it can be really helpful to get out of bed and do something relaxing and enjoyable instead. This will prevent you from reinforcing any negative association between your bed and unpleasant wakefulness.
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.
Ultimately, to practice this, all you do is go to bed and stay in bed with the express intention of staying awake. So, when you are in bed you try to keep your eyes open and try to avoid falling asleep for the entire night.
In other words, instead of trying to sleep you are trying not to sleep — this prevents you from putting effort into sleep and/or getting mad/anxious/frustrated with yourself for not falling asleep. When this effort and pressure is removed, sleep can become a lot easier.
—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 am so glad you found the podcast episode with Dr. Jade Wu helpful — she busted a lot of sleep and insomnia myths!
—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.
How are you feeling during the day? If you wake and feel as though you aren’t falling asleep because you don’t feel sleepy anymore, maybe you just don’t need more sleep?
If you feel you do need more sleep then arousal might be making it difficult for you to fall back to sleep when you wake during the night. So, working on reducing arousal can be helpful. There are three types of arousal that typically perpetuate insomnia. These are:
1. Cognitive arousal (the sleep-related thoughts we have)
2. Conditioned arousal (we associate the bed with unpleasant wakefulness rather than sleep or associate waking during the night with remaining awake)
3. Physiological arousal/hyperarousal (this can involve self-monitoring for the effects of poor sleep — and sleep itself — and refers to the physical symptoms associated with arousal such as a racing heart, feeling cold, sweating, etc)If you’re able to recognize any of these, you might find it helpful to work on addressing them! Over time, this might make it easier to fall back to sleep when you wake if your body wants to get 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.
Chronic insomnia hasn’t been shown to cause any health problems whatsoever. In the study you linked to, researchers looked at mice. We cannot conclude that what happens in mice will happen in humans. Furthermore, the mice were intentionally sleep deprived (they didn’t have insomnia). Finally, we have no idea what the loss of neurons in sleep deprived mice means — it might be a protective measure that prevents damage, but it might not. We don’t know. So, ultimately, that study is meaningless for human beings with chronic 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.
Welcome to the forum, Iddy! I’d recommend starting by familiarizing yourself with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques and see if you think they might be helpful or appropriate for 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.
Those big ups and downs are often associated with allotting too much time for sleep and/or getting out of bed at a different time each day. With a more consistent (and appropriate) sleep window you might find your sleep becomes a bit more consistent, too!
Here’s a short video related to this: How to stop the sleep roller coaster and make sleep more consistent and more predictable.
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.
What you’ve described sounds like typical, run-of-the-mill insomnia. It seems from your post that you are putting effort into sleep and this is likely contributing to sleep issues because as soon as we put effort into sleep we generate arousal and this makes sleep more difficult.
Trying not to have a bad night, for example, almost guarantees a bad night. Engaging in experiments and behaviors in a bid to generate sleep also perpetuates sleep disruption — doing things like modifying diet, for example, will not improve sleep since diet is not a perpetuating factor behind chronic insomnia (but thinking it might can generate arousal).
Since cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques help address the thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate chronic insomnia (and some of those thoughts and behaviors seem to be present in your post) I think you’ll find it very helpful.
Finally, perhaps I can reassure you that there is no evidence that chronic insomnia causes neurological damage or any other health problem for that matter!
You might find my podcast episode with Dr Jade Wu helpful since we discuss a number of insomnia and sleep myths — beliefs that can perpetuate insomnia.
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.
I’m excited to be working with you, Brian! You aren’t broken and you can get your sleep back on track!
—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 transformed your sleep because you remained committed to implementing behaviors that strengthened sleep drive, strengthened your body clock, and reduced arousal. You are enjoying better sleep because of your efforts and because of your natural ability to sleep, Nao!
It was an absolute pleasure to work with you. As you rightly pointed out, there will always be occasional nights when sleep is a bit more difficult — because that’s a part of life!
As long as you resist the temptation to implement behaviors that perpetuate temporary sleep disruption, insomnia can never work its way back into your life!
Thank you so much for sharing your transformation!
—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 your transformation, @wsh. I really appreciate the fact that you don’t sugarcoat things — that you emphasize that these techniques can be challenging, especially over the short-term, but that they do end up changing the way you think about sleep and give you a set of behaviors to follow that improve sleep over the long-term.
Furthermore, since CBT-I techniques are, ultimately, a collection of skills, you know exactly what to do should sleep disruption ever return and prove difficult to shake off at any point in the future.
I have no doubt that your experience will be motivational for many people and will encourage others to implement techniques that will improve their sleep for the long-term, just as you did.
—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.
