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Thank you so much for sharing your transformation! I appreciate you mentioning that you still experience some difficult nights from time to time — because they are a normal part of life and something that everyone experiences every now and then!
As you pointed out, what has changed is how you react to difficult nights. When we can learn to shrug them off and when we have confidence in our own natural ability to sleep, our sleep is able to get right back on track all by itself.
If sleep disruption ever sticks around for longer you now have a collection of skills that you can call upon — and you know that because they worked for you in the past, they will work for you again in the future!
—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 encouraged by your success, @cheg_1! You experienced roughly 90 days of great sleep and 1 night of difficult sleep. So, over the past three months, sleep was difficult 1% of the time and you slept well 99% of the time!
With this in mind, perhaps it might be helpful to focus attention on the 99% of nights that were good rather than the 1% that were bad and to continue implementing the techniques that got you to the point of enjoying good sleep 99% of the time and only experiencing bad nights of sleep 1% of the time?
If you only have a bad night 1% of the time, you are doing great! Everyone has a difficult night of sleep from time to time — even the best sleepers in the world have a hard night every now and then! How long these nights stick around for is often determined by how we react to them. If we don’t react, we give our sleep the best chance possible to get back on track all by itself!
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.
There sure are a lot of light sources at night — but the good news is that light is not something that perpetuates long-term sleep disruption so I wouldn’t suggest being too concerned by light as a cause of chronic insomnia.
A sleep mask might help, as might blackout curtains — but, again, I would encourage you to look at the presence of any other issues that might be disrupting your sleep if you are living with chronic insomnia. Usually, these issues are to do with sleep-related thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate sleep disruption.
—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.
Ups and downs can be very frustrating but they are not unusual and are to be expected, Matt! You can sleep without medication and even when you take medication, please be reassured that the sleep you are getting is still sleep that is being generated by you and your own body (because no medication can generate sleep).
Since your sleep got better before, there’s no reason to believe it won’t get better again — especially if you are able to consistently implement evidence-based techniques that help strengthen sleep drive, strengthen the body clock, and lower arousal.
Since anxiety is such a common driver of insomnia, you might find it helpful to listen/watch some of the many stories of transformation from people who were once in the same situation as you over on the Insomnia Coach® Podcast. If they were successful, you can be successful, 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.
Welcome to the forum, ytviews123! As pointed out by @DrummerFrank, the good news is that there is no evidence that chronic insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever!
It is completely understandable why you would believe this, though — since the media is full of misleading stories about the health issues associated with insufficient sleep.
You might find this podcast episode helpful: Busting sleep and insomnia myths with clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist Dr. Jade Wu.
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.
Welcome to the forum! Your story and experience with insomnia will be familiar with many people here!
I am so encouraged to hear that you are implementing constructive techniques that will help improve your sleep over the long-term. Since you are taking action to improve your sleep over the long-term, what happens on any individual night doesn’t actually matter too much!
As you mentioned, trying to figure out when to get out of bed or if a certain amount of time has passed can be difficult, and often unconstructive since all the mental gymnastics aren’t going to help you sleep!
Since the goal when it comes to getting out of bed is to avoid reinforcing an association between the bed and unpleasant wakefulness, you might find it more helpful to decide when to get out of bed based on how good it feels to be in bed.
So, if you are in bed awake, and it feels good to be in bed and awake, then why not stay in bed? Conditions are right for sleep and you aren’t strengthening a negative association between the bed and unpleasant wakefulness.
If, however, being in bed doesn’t feel good or if you find yourself experiencing the mental gymnastics on whether or not to get out of bed, that can be a good cue to get out of bed and do anything you find relaxing and enjoyable until you feel calm and relaxed enough to return to bed.
Finally, if you feel that worry, anxiety, or a lot of sleep-related thinking and concern is perpetuating sleep difficulties, you might find it really helpful (and liberating) not to use a sleep tracker.
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.
It sounds as though you are on the right path, LynnS! Allotting an appropriate amount of time for sleep and observing a consistent final out of bed time in the morning will help your body clock regulate sleep and wakefulness, build sleep drive, and reduce nighttime wakefulness.
In addition, getting out of bed whenever being in bed doesn’t feel good will help to address any conditioned arousal that might be making sleep more difficult. Over time, this technique makes the bed a much stronger trigger for sleep.
Although your concern about daytime function is completely understandable, people with insomnia are experts at getting through the day after a difficult night of sleep — so I suspect this might end up being less of an issue than you think!
—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 Gracie! As suggested by @Edgar, that high level of sleepiness is quite common in the short-term — and is one of the early goals of sleep restriction since many people with chronic insomnia have actually lost that strong sensation of sleepiness. Getting it back can be very reassuring!
What is the start time and end time of your current sleep window? If you are feeling very sleepy during the day then it’s worth making sure that it’s not too short. The goal with sleep restriction isn’t sleep deprivation — we simply want to build sleep drive and reduce nighttime wakefulness.
Feeling sleepy before going to bed and then awake when you get into bed is a symptom often associated with conditioned arousal. One way we help to tackle that is to get out of bed whenever being in bed doesn’t feel good.
As you said, these techniques are challenging but they are very effective.
—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 Jim! Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your story! How have you been doing since you posted?
You might find it helpful to explore why you become concerned about not falling asleep. When you don’t fall asleep relatively quickly and find yourself worried about this, what is going through your mind? Is the thought that the next day will be ruined if you don’t fall asleep? Is the thought that you won’t get any sleep if you don’t fall asleep really quickly?
Sometimes it can be helpful, during the day, to explore the accuracy of such thoughts and the likely outcome of such predictions. When we do this, we can often see that the thoughts we have that trigger arousal often aren’t very accurate — and often the consequences we envision or predict are rarely accurate or realistic.
When we can recognize that these thoughts and predictions are rarely accurate, it can really help lower the intensity of the arousal they can produce.
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.
Hello Jess! Great to hear that you are implementing sleep restriction and stimulus control to build sleep drive, improve sleep quality, and reduce arousal.
It will probably take more than a week for you to notice significant improvements from these techniques so I’d encourage you to keep going and to keep looking forward!
What makes you think you are only getting very light sleep? Ultimately we have no control over sleep architecture but I can tell you that the body always prioritizes deep sleep if we are sleep deprived — so it would be unusual for you to only be getting light sleep for a long period of time.
It might be that hyperarousal is making you believe you aren’t getting as much deep sleep (or even as much sleep in general) as you might actually be getting. Here’s a video related to this: How to address paradoxical insomnia (sleep state misperception).
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.
Glad to hear you are considering cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques to improve your sleep for the long-term!
You can find plenty of insomnia success stories here in the forum, you can listen to and watch a number of success stories in the Insomnia Coach® Podcast, and you can check out the case studies page, too!
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.
Why do you think you find it hard to fall back to sleep when you wake 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.
Since chronic insomnia is perpetuated by sleep-related thoughts and behaviors, it’s very unlikely that a vitamin deficiency is the cause of your long-term sleep problems. If you are concerned about headaches or a vitamin deficiency, I’d encourage you to talk to your doctor.
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.
Hello NWSleepy! Are you currently following any kind of sleep schedule? That would probably be a good place to start!
—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 encouraged that you are exploring evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques as a way to address the thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate sleep disruption!
Your concern about job performance is understandable, but how we sleep usually has far less of an impact on our days than we often think.
Trainee doctors and surgeons, for example, often have to deal with life-or-death situations while getting as little as three hours of sleep each night (and often working more than 100 hours each week) — but they get through it and successfully complete their training.
In studies, the only consistent observations we see connected to sleep loss are daytime drowsiness (usually when sedentary), reduced performance on routine and boring tasks and more irritability — and even these effects subside after a couple of weeks as the body becomes accustomed to less sleep.
What can happen, however, is that every time we make a mistake or experience a negative moment during the day we blame the previous night of sleep — whether sleep is truly to blame or not.
Sleep restriction is only one component of CBT-I and usually takes a few weeks of consistent implementation. If you are spending a lot of time awake in bed during the night, and that wakefulness is not pleasant, it can be really helpful to get out of bed and do something you find a bit more enjoyable instead.
Shifting unpleasant wakefulness out of bed often helps calm the mind a bit quicker and it prevents you from reinforcing a negative association between the bed and unpleasant wakefulness.
If you are spending hours and hours awake in bed on most nights, this suggests that you might be allotting a bit too much time for sleep, but it’s hard to say for sure based on your post alone.
Ultimately, nothing you have described is unusual so I have no reason to believe you won’t find CBT-I techniques helpful. I don’t typically coach clients on ACT techniques because I feel that staying in bed when being in bed doesn’t feel good and accepting any worries or thoughts (really the only main difference between ACT and CBT-I) is a very high cognitive skill that requires a lot more practice compared to just getting out of bed and doing something enjoyable.
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.
