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You’re welcome 🙂
—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 like a great way to practice acknowledgement, move away from the struggle, and be kinder to yourself, 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.
Hello @bipal24! and welcome to the forum! I am sorry to hear of your ectopic pregnancy and the sleep issues and the anxiety that you have also been experiencing.
All the thoughts and feelings you shared are valid and understandable — and they come from your brain doing its job of looking out for you. Since that is your brain’s main job, it’s probably not going to back down if you attempt to challenge or overthrow or fight or avoid the thoughts and feelings it’s generating.
An approach of resistance, fighting, or avoiding is understandable and it can often make things more difficult as you find yourself drawn into an endless battle with your mind.
If your experience tells you that your brain is going to generate whatever thoughts and feelings it chooses to generate (good, bad, nice, hard, helpful, unhelpful, accurate, inaccurate, constructive, unconstructive, etc) then perhaps a more workable approach might involve acknowledging whatever thoughts and feelings you notice and allowing them to come and go as they choose — rather than getting pulled into a battle with them?
—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, @vandeinseg1 and thank you for sharing your thoughts, experience, and support @hiker!
I think your brain might be onto something when it says something along the lines of, “you’re trying to do what Martin told you to do and just accept and recognize me in hopes I go away…”.
If you are acknowledging and accepting your thoughts with the aim of getting rid of them, you aren’t going to get much from the practice — because acceptance isn’t about trying to get rid of your thoughts. It’s more about accepting what you cannot control and accepting that the more you try to control what you cannot control, the more difficult things can become.
Remember, too, that there’s no need to counter your thoughts or get involved in a dialogue with them. You can simply observe them. Acknowledge them. Thank your brain for them. Give them space. Allow them to come and go as they choose, without resistance.
This doesn’t mean they’ll magically disappear (sometimes that might happen as a bonus side-effect, though). It does mean that you aren’t engaged in an intense (and endless) tug-of-war battle with them that only gives them more power and influence and leaves you exhausted!
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.
Welcome to the course and thanks for sharing your story and experience so far! You clearly have a growth mindset and understand that life is a journey of change, learning experiences, and personal development. You also have the superpowers of self-reflection and self-awareness!
Ultimately, sleep happens best when it is effortless. Whenever it’s not effortless, we are more likely to find ourselves struggling with it.
With that in mind, anything we do in an attempt to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen can backfire — because we are now putting effort into a process that doesn’t require (or want!) effort.
Of course, “not trying” can be hard — especially when we want to solve a problem! So, it’s OK to try and to exert effort to fix the problem of insomnia — but we probably need to do that not by trying to control what our experience tells us is out of our control, but by focusing on actions that don’t make things more difficult. Actions that reduce the power and influence of all the difficult stuff. Actions that help us do what matters independently of sleep.
As we continue to focus on our actions (and our engagement in — and awareness of — the world around us) and as we continue to life a life that’s aligned with our values, we are less likely to get drawn into trying to make sleep happen. That, in turn, gives sleep the best opportunity to take care of itself and become effortless once again 🙂
This is usually a lot easier said than done! It is a process that usually requires the development of new skills. And developing skills takes time, involves ups and downs, and requires ongoing practice!
I wish you all the best with 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.
Good on you for putting into practice what you are learning here by implementing a sleep window!
Being bored with nothing to do between 9:00 PM and 11:50 PM doesn’t sound very pleasant. What might be you be able to do with that time to make it a bit more pleasant or productive?
You certainly could go to bed earlier if you like — just bear in mind that spending almost nine hours in bed (if you went to bed at 9:00 PM) might create more wakefulness in bed. Whether or not that’s a problem for you, only you know since 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.
Giving yourself permission to not sleep sometimes can be a wonderful act of self-kindness and help reduce the pressure you might be putting on yourself to control what is out of your control.
And, as you shared, it’s normal and natural to not sleep sometimes — just as it’s normal and natural to have bad days sometimes, to trip over sometimes, and to say (or do) things we’d rather not sometimes!
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.
Ups and downs are part of any journey, Jolanta!
What matters is how you choose to respond during the “downs”. Do you acknowledge what’s happening, practice being kind to yourself, and keep moving in the direction of where you want to be?
Or do you engage in actions that you know don’t help (because they are easier and perhaps more familiar and so they feel safer), try to control what can’t be controlled, be hard on yourself, and get pulled away from the life you want to live?
You always have the power to choose your actions — and that’s what counts!
—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 are you looking for alternative to scrolling on your phone or watching TV?
Sleep doesn’t much care what you do before sleep — it’ll happen regardless of what you do, once you’ve been awake for long enough.
Of course, some common sense can be helpful here! Kickboxing while jumping on a trampoline might not create the best conditions for sleep — but if that’s something you enjoy, perhaps that’s more important compared to trying to bore yourself to sleep at 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.
If in doubt, I’d suggest leaning toward actions (because you can control those!) that are aligned with your values and that keep you moving toward the life you want to live.
Doing less and withdrawing from life in an attempt to protect or control sleep might be more likely to pull you away from the life you want to live and give sleep more power and influence over your life. It might also make things more difficult as you do less and avoid actions that matter to you.
Life happens when we are awake — and in 100 years when you reflect on the life you lived I suspect you’ll reflect and remember all the things you did when awake (rather than the time you spent asleep)!
With all that being said, you are the expert on you! What do you feel is the best way forward?
(On a related note — perhaps attempting to make relaxation happen might be creating some additional struggle since relaxation might be a feeling that we can’t always switch on through effort.)
—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 your observation, Jolanta! Sleep can be sensitive to stress — and, quite often, stress comes with living a rich and meaningful life. So, it can’t usually be avoided (and trying can end up pulling us away from the life we want to live).
It sounds as though moving away from the pills is important to you and better reflects who you are and who you want to be. If that’s the case, congratulations — you are already getting your life back from 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.
Hello Jasmine! If you had a mantra that worked, what would be different?
Many people find that allowing their mind to think whatever it wants to think is the most workable way to deal with their thoughts because their experience tells them those thoughts are going to show up anyway — so why go to all the effort of trying to change or resist them?
With that being said, 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.
Thanks for the great question, and good on you for putting into action what you are learning from the course!
There’s nothing we can really do to make sleepiness or sleep happen — other than being awake for long enough! And your experience with feeling sleepy and then losing that sense of sleepiness when you go to bed is quite common.
It’s typically explained by the fact that before we go to bed there’s less pressure to feel sleepy or to make sleep happen. So, we feel sleepy! And, when we go to bed something changes — we might put pressure on ourselves to sleep or put effort into making sleep happen. And so, the brain fires up and we lose that sensation of sleepiness (even though sleep drive hasn’t fallen since no sleep has happened yet).
So, with this in mind, we might consider that the way forward here is to ensure:
1. We aren’t putting pressure on ourselves to make sleep happen,
2. We aren’t putting effort into trying to make sleep happen,
3. We aren’t battling away with wakefulness (and any of the thoughts and feelings that might come with it).This approach won’t magically guarantee the maintenance of sleepiness (or the appearance of sleep) since that is out of your control. However, with ongoing practice it can help move you away from trying to maintain sleepiness (or create sleep), which in turn can reduce effort and arousal and also train your brain that wakefulness isn’t a threat that it needs to be alert to “protect” you from.
Anxiety only shows up for one reason — your brain doing its job of looking out for you. And, since anxiety is a normal human emotion, it’s going to show up for as long as you are a human being! What matters is how you respond to it, since that determines how much struggle it will create and how much power and influence it’ll have over your actions (and your life).
You can battle away with it, trying to fight or avoid it. Or, you can acknowledge it and make space for it, be more of an observer of it, and be kind to yourself when it shows up.
Battling is usually our default response and it can make things more difficult. The alternative (which can be practiced with the AWAKE exercise) might be a more workable way to respond if your experience tells you that battling doesn’t seem to work.
To answer your question, I don’t think there’s any need to change your sleep window unless you want to. Remember the sleep window isn’t intended to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. The goal is to help you move away from chasing after sleep — because that immediately makes it more difficult!
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 sharing! You are noticing change because you are continuing to practice what you are learning. Action is what matters!
As you shared, patience can be really helpful, too — especially since progress cannot be controlled. You are also recognizing that you are a unique individual, on your own journey.
You might not be able to forget about sleep, but perhaps it will start to lose its power and influence over your actions the more you practice removing yourself from a struggle with it and the more you practice doing things that matter, independently of sleep!
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.
Hello Jasmine!
Many people find there’s a degree of liberation when they begin to accept the presence of insomnia. It can be helpful to be clear on what is meant by acceptance, though. What does acceptance mean to you?
Typically, insomnia is kept alive by all our (understandable!) attempts to fight or avoid it. Sleep happens best when there is no effort to make sleep happen.
For as long as your only measure of success is getting a certain amount or type of sleep you might find things difficult — because then you are more likely to put pressure on yourself to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen, you are more likely to put effort into sleep, you are more likely to attempt to fight or avoid the difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with insomnia, and you are more likely to find your actions pulling you away from the life you want to live (rather than moving you toward the life you want to live).
Remember that waking during the night is a normal part of sleep. When you wake during the night (especially after four hours or so of sleep) sleep drive is going to be lower because of the sleep you experienced. And so, any attempts to make sleep happen — to control what you know from experience is out of your control — is going to make sleep less likely to happen, and is likely to create a struggle that only makes things more difficult.
It is totally understandable that you feel frustrated, and even angry about your situation. Those are natural and normal feelings. Perhaps exploring how you might be kinder to yourself when things are difficult might be helpful since being hard on ourselves when things are difficult rarely makes things any easier.
As for your fiancé, have you asked them how they seem to make such great sleep happen? Are there any insights from their response?
You aren’t alone, Jasmine. What matters are your actions because your actions determine your level of struggle, how much power and influence this difficult stuff has over you, and the kind of life you live. Change is hard. Ongoing practice of what you are learning, and an ongoing commitment to meaningful and workable action is what matters.
—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.
