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Thank you so much for sharing, Rosanne! What actions did you practice to help you stop the struggle and how did accepting the presence of anxiety and wakefulness help you?
As you pointed out, sometimes there will be some difficult nights (and definitely some wakefulness since that’s a normal part of sleep). What matters is how you respond — you can resist and get pulled back into a struggle or you can acknowledge and allow and move away from struggle.
It sounds as though you have freed up a lot of energy and attention and are better able to live the life you want to live, independently of sleep. That’s all down to your own commitment to meaningful and workable action — good 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.
That response of extreme anxiety, heart palpitations, tingling, panic, and a rush of adrenalin is really difficult to experience and it can feel very confusing.
What it actually is, is evidence that your brain is doing its job of looking out for you. It’s trying to protect you from what it has identified as the threat of being awake when you want to be asleep. So, it’s firing up that “fight or flight” response to protect you from being awake.
Sleep drive can overpower that response — eventually — since it’s impossible to remain awake forever. A quicker way to give sleep the opportunity to happen is to explore how, through your actions, you might be able to retrain your brain to recognize that being awake at night isn’t a threat. That, although you’d rather be asleep, being awake isn’t a danger.
This might be done during the night by moving away from trying to make sleep happen and/or putting pressure on yourself to make sleep happen — for example, by doing something else if you find yourself struggling.
This might be done during the day by being kind to yourself when things feel difficult and continuing to do things that matter to you, independently of sleep.
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.
Hello Vita and welcome to the forum! Have you asked your CBT-I therapist about this? It might be best to defer to them since different therapists might have different approaches here.
You might also consider your own experience. Have you tried going to bed when sleepy before the start of your sleep window? If so, how did that work out for you?
When I work with clients I typically suggest that if they are feeling really sleepy in the hour before the sleep window begins, they allow themselves to go to bed and see what happens.
When it comes to that sensation of feeling wide awake as soon as you get into bed, that’s a hallmark symptom of insomnia — and sleep restriction isn’t really intended to help with that. Within the framework of CBT-I you’d probably be looking to practice stimulus control.
Within the framework of ACT-I you’d probably be looking to explore how to experience wakefulness with less struggle (rather than doubling down on trying to make sleep happen and/or trying to control your thoughts and feelings).
I hope there’s something useful here and I wish you all the best! You are not alone.
—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 aboard, Sonya!
What you are going through is not unique or unusual — you definitely are not alone!
It sure can feel as though anxiety is the obstacle to sleep. More often than not, it’s our understandable attempts to fight or avoid anxiety that is the true obstacle to sleep.
You’ll be exploring this in more detail as you continue to work through the course! I wish you all the best with 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.
That sounds difficult, @izabelaD. I am yet to meet anyone who struggles with insomnia who doesn’t identify the presence of anxiety as something that is making things more difficult.
The thing about anxiety is, all human beings experience it. It’s a natural and normal human feeling — and it keeps us safe and it keeps us alive. And, we can still sleep even in the presence of anxiety.
What can make sleep more difficult and make anxiety even more difficult to experience is trying to fight or avoid it. When we (understandably!) take that approach, we can get tangled up in an exhausting — and endless — battle.
What do you do at the moment when you are awake and sleep doesn’t seem to be happening and how do you respond to anxiety when it shows up? How are those approaches and responses working 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.
Hello Zoki! It sounds like you got a lot out of the course — how have things changed for you, and what actions did you commit to in order to experience those changes?
If you let me know which specific studies you are interested in, I’ll see if I can dig out some links and post them here 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.
Thanks for sharing! You are implementing what you are learning from the course and you are noticing the benefits of that consistent action. Change and committed action is not easy and there are going to be ups and downs as you continue to move forward, just as you mentioned!
As you pointed out, the skills you are practicing can be helpful for so many difficult areas of life — not just insomnia, but anxiety and other stuff that comes with being a human being, too.
It also sounds as though, as the focus of your attention moves away from sleep and toward actions that matter to you, you are more aware of the presence of tiredness. Perhaps your brain is dialing down its attempts to “protect” you from nighttime wakefulness — and, as the alert system is ratcheting down from high alert and “fight or flight” mode, you might be more aware of tiredness and sleepiness?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
That sounds difficult, Bobby. What alternatives to medication has the course offered for times when you are awake when you’d rather be asleep and which of them are you practicing?
Many people find that when they take medication contingently — based on how each night goes — they are more likely to struggle since the brain will naturally be more active as it needs to constantly assess and decide when/if to take the medication.
And, if not taking medication is important to us we might be more likely to put effort into falling asleep and put pressure on ourselves to fall asleep — all things that make sleep more difficult.
Then, if we take the medication we feel a sense of relief and no longer need to try to make sleep happen. We delegate all the effort to make sleep happen to the medication. And, when sleep happens we attribute that to the medication — when, quite often, it might be the removal of ongoing effort that created better conditions for sleep to happen.
Remember, too, that the sleep window isn’t supposed to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. If that’s your goal, you might be setting yourself up for a struggle.
A sleep window can help build sleep drive and it can help you move away from chasing after sleep since it gives you an earlier possible bedtime and a consistent out of bed time in the morning. It cannot make sleep happen though — because the only thing that makes sleep happen is being awake for long enough (and what makes sleep the easiest is the complete absence of effort to make it happen).
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.
Hello Cranky!
Waking during the night is a normal part of sleep so there’s nothing unusual with waking about three hours into your sleep window. Many people find that the more they try to fight or avoid those awakenings, the more they end up struggling with them.
As your experience seems to be telling you, you cannot control when you wake — and that makes sense since sleep is beyond our direct control. The more we try to control it, the more likely we are to struggle with it.
If you were to make your sleep window 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM what would you be trying to achieve? Would your goal to be to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen? If so, how does that help to move you away from an ongoing struggle if your experience tells you that sleep cannot be controlled through effort?
If adjusting your sleep window doesn’t feel like an appropriate way to deal with waking during your sleep window, what do you feel a more appropriate or workable way to respond to those awakenings might be? Has Week 2 of the course given you any ideas?
—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.
Experiencing extreme brain fog and fatigue after an average of 5-6 hours of sleep might be worth discussing with your doctor to rule out any issues other than chronic insomnia.
As for adjusting your sleep window, what is the start and end time of your current sleep window and how did you choose those times?
Waking during the night is a normal part of sleep — if we find it hard to fall back to sleep that’s usually because:
1. We aren’t sleepy enough for more sleep
AND/OR
2. We are putting effort into falling back to sleep
AND/OR
3. We are putting pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep
AND/OR
4. We are trying to control what we are thinking or feelingDo any of those sound applicable or relevant 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.
That pounding heart and the fear is difficult to experience — and it sounds as though your experience is telling you that you cannot control your thoughts. There’s no delete button for your mind. The more you try to get rid of thoughts and feelings, the more difficult they can become.
How do you currently respond when this high level of alertness shows up and how is that working for you? Has Week 2 given you any ideas on different ways you might respond?
—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 aboard, Angela!
It sounds as though you have a sleep window of 8.5 hours (10:30 PM to 7:00 AM). With that kind of sleep window, I would expect someone to be averaging around 8 hours of sleep each night — is that the case for you? If not, how did you choose the length and start/end times of that sleep window and what are you trying to achieve with that sleep window?
It might be worth a reminder that the sleep window isn’t intended to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. As your experience seems to be telling you, sleep cannot be controlled through effort — the more we try to make it happen, the more elusive and the more difficult it can seem to become.
The sleep window is really a tool that can help us move away from chasing after sleep by doing things like allotting an excessive amount of time for sleep, going to bed earlier and/or staying in bed later in an attempt to make sleep happen.
The tossing and turning and body jolts and sense of panic during the night are difficult to experience. There can be no doubt about that. And, you’ll be exploring those challenges in a lot more detail as the course progresses. Typically, the more we try to (understandably) fight or avoid those difficult things, the more difficult they can become.
When it comes to taking the sleep aids, that is ultimately down to you and any changes to medication should be discussed with your doctor. In my experience it doesn’t seem to matter what approach people take when it comes to medication — what seems to matter most is having a clear plan in place and then sticking to it, regardless of how each night goes.
What you are going through is difficult but it is not unique or unusual. It is all part of the insomnia struggle and is shared by many people in your situation. A sleep window of 8.5 hours can’t be taking sleep away from you unless you typically sleep for longer than 8.5 hours — so, as for throwing in the towel on the sleep window experiment, what is the alternative option you have in mind that will make more 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.
Hey, @Dan! Have you thought about staying in bed to read rather than getting out of bed? Frustration is natural and normal and sleep can still happen in the presence of frustration — things sure can get a lot more difficult if we try to fight that frustration, though.
If you are using the AWAKE exercise to control your emotions, you might be setting yourself up for a struggle since we don’t usually have direct or permanent control over our emotions.
The AWAKE exercise is intended to help you build skill in experiencing being awake and experiencing all the thoughts and feelings that can show up with that wakefulness with less struggle — in other words, experiencing it all without battling it. Being more of a curious observer rather than an opponent. Accepting the difficult stuff as well as the good stuff.
If we are engaged in a war during the night, how likely is sleep to happen? How likely are we to get out of bed feeling rested and refreshed?
—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!
Our diet can influence sleep, but it doesn’t usually supply insomnia with the oxygen it needs to survive and take over our lives — it’s all our attempts to fight or avoid insomnia that is more likely to do that.
As always, you are the expert on you, so if you are doing well then that is great and I am happy to hear 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.
That’s not dumb at all — that fear is natural and normal and is a sign that your problem-solving brain is doing its job of looking out for you (thanks, brain)!
You have a choice here:
1. Not go on vacation (an action you can control) because of how you might sleep (something you cannot control).
2. Go on vacation (an action you can control), regardless of how you might sleep (something you cannot control).
Which choice moves you toward the life you want to live?
Worry will always show up for as long as you are a living and breathing human being. So, regardless of your choice, worry is going to show up.
Do you want it to show up as you do things that move you toward the life you want to live or do you want it to show up as you withdraw and get pulled away from living the life you want to live?
—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.
