Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hello @Bobbie21 and thanks for the update!
I am not sure anyone really knows how much sleep their body needs from day to day — just as I am not sure anyone really hows how many breaths their body needs from day to day!
And, trying to come up with an answer might be little more than a distraction since the body figures this out by itself.
Over the past week or two you have been reminded that your body knows how to generate what you’d consider to be “good” seep all by itself. You’ve also been reminded that sleep might be different from week to week and day to day.
Since your experience suggests that sleep is out of your direct control, I invite you to refocus attention toward what you can control — your actions.
When you wake at 4:00 AM, how are you responding? And, what are you learning from your chosen response?
—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 brain is a thought generating machine ⚙️💭⚙️💭⚙️💭⚙️💭⚙️💭!
As it goes about its job of looking out for you, it’s going to produce a lot of thoughts and feelings. Some useful and relevant, some not useful and not relevant!
It sounds as though you are starting to lower your resistance to what your brain chooses to do. As a result, things are feeling better.
Your mind is still busy (it has an important job to do, after all) and every time you notice that happening you have the opportunity to choose how to respond.
You can try to fight, resist, control (and where does that get you?). Or, you can choose to acknowledge and make space for all those thoughts and feelings to flow.
—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 for sharing your experience.
You took your time working through the course. You stayed committed even when that commitment was hard. And, thanks to your efforts and your practice of what you learned, you are noticing that insomnia is losing its hold over you and your life.
Now, you are less likely to battle when you are awake. You are less likely to get pulled into a struggle with your mind when it generates difficult or uncomfortable thoughts and feelings.
As you loosen your grip, there’s a sense of release. A weight is being lifted. Your future seems to be filled with more opportunity.
I wish you all the best as you continue on your journey!
—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 have been reminded that sleep doesn’t always happen as you might want it to! And, the more you are able to practice experiencing whatever happens without a battle and a struggle, the less power and influence sleep has over your life. As a bonus, the more you remove yourself from the process of sleep, the better able sleep is to take care of itself.
You have a strong awareness of the thoughts and feelings that your brain generates as it does its job of looking out for you. With that awareness, you are better able to make a conscious choice on how to respond.
Since your experience tells you that trying to fight or avoid certain feelings (like anxiety) only pulls you back into the quicksand, you’ve been practicing making space for feelings to come and go as they choose. As you shared, their presence doesn’t mean that sleep will not (or cannot) happen.
This new approach is resonating with you because you are putting it into practice and you are learning from what you are doing!
You are practicing skills, and skills develop with repeated and ongoing practice, over time.
Thanks again for sharing and I wish you all the best as you continue to move forward!
—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 shared, living a full and meaningful life comes with hard stuff. And not living a full and meaningful life can come with even “harder” stuff!
As for that button — imagine if we did have a controllable “on/off” switch for thoughts and feelings. What if we accidentally left the switch in the wrong position one day or we turned the switch one way and then couldn’t respond to an immediate threat or danger? 😬
—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 @AnthonyE and thanks for sharing that you are noticing that nights when sleep doesn’t happen as you might want it to are starting to feel less difficult.
As you pointed out, having expectations (especially when it comes to things you can’t control — like sleep) can set the stage for some struggle. And, the thing about expectations is the best possible outcome from having them is neutral — because you expected them to happen!
With that being said, expectations don’t stop sleep from happening — just as thoughts and feelings don’t stop sleep from happening. What stops sleep from happening is trying to make sleep happen 😜
Your experience tells you that trying to make sleep happen only makes it more difficult. Your desire to resist that wakefulness is understandable and it isn’t serving you. You get to choose how to respond to that desire.
Reading can be an alternative to trying to make sleep happen (as long as your goal with reading isn’t to make sleep happen)! The AWAKE exercise might offer an alternative, too.
As pointed out by @ccummins — resistance can be subtle. And, just because you are awake that doesn’t mean there is resistance. It just means you are awake. And, being awake is a normal part of sleep.
There’s no obligation to practice the AWAKE exercise just because you are awake at night (you can simply rest and experience that wakefulness without doing anything with it). The AWAKE exercise is just a tool that’s available to you as an alternative way of responding when you notice a struggle happening.
That struggle might be your awareness that you are putting effort into sleep, putting pressure on yourself to sleep, trying to make sleep happen, and/or trying to fight or avoid whatever thoughts and feelings are showing up.
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.
Thanks for your reply! It sounds as though your experience tells you that the more you try to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen, the more difficult it becomes.
That is common, and that is the reason why this course makes no attempt to offer “techniques” that promise to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen.
Instead, it offers action-based skills that can be practiced to shift focus and attention away from trying to control sleep so it has the opportunity to take care of itself.
Are you able to recall a time when sleep was effortless? If so, what did you do back then to make that kind of sleep 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.
Life is full of ups and downs. The “good” times never last indefinitely. The “bad” times never last indefinitely. And, most of the time there’s “good” and “bad” stuff all happening at once 😜
Feeling sad, confused, and heartbroken means that you are a human being. Your superpower is your awareness of what you are feeling and your acknowledgement of those feelings. I hope you are also able to practice being kind to yourself, too.
This difficult experience has taught you (or reminded you) that sleep doesn’t really care what thoughts and feelings your brain is generating as it does its job of looking out for you — it can happen regardless.
It’s perfectly OK to modify your sleep window. What matters most is choosing a window that fits into the life you want to live and what you know about yourself. Some people are natural early risers and want to get their day started earlier. Other people, less so.
You are the expert on 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 initial nights with a new sleep window can often be the most challenging — and that perhaps makes sense when you consider that your brain is going to be at a higher level of alertness as it adjusts to your new routine.
What might be useful to reflect on is this — what makes your chosen action of committing to an initial sleep window important to you?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Gary and thanks for sharing how your first week went!
You chose a sleep window of 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM. That means you were allotting seven hours for sleep.
Most nights, you fell asleep pretty quickly and slept until the end of your sleep window. On three nights, less sleep happened and it sounds like, on those nights, it took longer to fall asleep.
Since sleep is out of your direct control, there’s no way for you to go backwards based on what your sleep is or isn’t doing. The only way you can go backwards is if you engage in actions that you know only create more struggle and more difficulty. And, even then, you’ll still be learning — so perhaps it’s not even possible to go backwards 😜
What matters most are your actions. How you choose to respond when sleep isn’t happening as you want it to. How you choose to respond when difficult or uncomfortable or distracting thoughts and feelings show up.
And, as you’ve since discovered, this is explored in a lot more detail in Week 2 of the course!
—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 course, @festik!
You know from experience that doing things that matter and living a life that reflects your values is a helpful way to respond to sleep not happening as you might want it to. With that approach, you don’t give sleep more power and influence over your life.
At present, you are noticing your mind generating lots of difficult, uncomfortable, and distracting thoughts and feelings. And, because you identify them as an obstacle to sleep, you are trying to fight (resist) or avoid them.
Your experience seems to tell you that you cannot directly or permanently control what your mind is doing as it does its job of looking out for you. The more you try, the more you struggle and the more difficult all that stuff gets.
The jerks you describe can be one of those uncomfortable feelings or sensations that you’d rather not experience and you cannot directly control. And if they are out of your control, there’s only one possible outcome every time you try to fight or avoid them…
You shared that you’ve tried to accept them — and it sounds like you feel that doesn’t work because they don’t go away. If you are accepting something with the goal of getting rid of that thing, is that true acceptance?
As you reflect on what you’ve shared, what — if anything — is the opportunity presenting itself to you?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Lokidc 🙂
First, I would suggest (if you haven’t done so already) speaking with your doctor if you are regularly finding it hard to stay awake during the day since that can be a symptom of other issues (such as sleep apnea).
If your issue is related more to falling asleep closer to bedtime when you are relaxing and unwinding, and then finding it hard to fall asleep at bedtime — that is not unusual!
It sounds like when there is no intention or effort or pressure to make sleep happen, it seems to be more likely to show up.
How does that compare to when you go to bed — and what’s the insight 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.
You can control the action of staying up late if that’s important to you. And your experience tells you that you cannot control or program yourself to sleep to a certain time of the day. So, there seems to be a conflict here between what you want and what you can control.
What do you mean when you say that you feel so much “peace” sleeping in? What is peace? What makes the presence of peace so important to you? What other sources — if any — of peace are there (or could there be) in 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.
Thanks for sharing! You are taking action and you are learning from what you are doing.
You have learned that you can sleep without medication even though you thought that was not going to be possible.
Taking meaningful and important action (in this case, tapering off the medication) is moving you closer to where you want to be. That compares to taking action solely in response to whatever thoughts your problem-solving mind might generate as it does its job of looking out for you (such as “you’ll never sleep without medication”!).
You are moving in the direction you want to be heading. That’s progress, no doubt about 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.
Hello Colibri and welcome to the forum. Things are really difficult for you. And you have a number of superpowers including problem-solving, commitment, resilience, curiosity, and determination.
Your experience seems to be telling you that the more you try to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen, the more difficult it becomes.
Your experience also seems to be telling you that the more you try to fight, avoid, or control whatever thoughts and feelings show up (or might show up) the more difficult they become.
Of course, you want to get a certain amount or type of sleep. That’s totally understandable! So you try harder. That makes complete sense.
Of course, you don’t want to experience anxiety and panic attacks. Who does?! So you try harder to fight or avoid them. That makes complete sense, too.
And those strategies don’t seem to be moving you closer to where you want to be. The endless and exhausting struggle is pulling you away from the life you want to live. Your actions are also less likely to reflect who you are and who you want to be.
Your experience tells you that you can sleep. Your experience tells you that in the past, sleep happened without effort. Without trying.
What changes — if any — do you need to make to move closer to where you want to be?
—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.
