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Your friend’s approach has the same aim as “regular” sleep restriction — it helps build sleep drive. Sleep drive disruption is one of the factors behind chronic insomnia (the others being body clock disruption and arousal).
I don’t recommend your friend’s approach to clients I work with since it removes any opportunity for sleep after the initial awakening. I see no reason why it can’t help some people, though — since, like regular sleep restriction it helps to build sleep drive.
I would emphasize the potential for high levels of daytime sleepiness with this approach and encourage anyone who tries it to be vigilant for signs of excessive sleepiness during the day, especially when this could be a danger (for example, when driving or operating machinery).
—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.
A racing mind at night is very common among people with chronic insomnia!
Usually, the best course of action when your mind is racing and you can’t sleep is to get out of bed until your mind feels calm and relaxed and you feel sleepy again. Then, return to bed and see what happens.
This is part of a technique known as stimulus control and is intended to prevent you from associating the bed with wakefulness and a racing mind. Instead, it helps “retrain” you to see the bed as a place for relaxation and sleep. Over the long-term, this will make the bed a strong trigger for sleep.
You might find this video helpful: Why CBT-I is so effective when worry, anxiety, and a racing mind are fueling your chronic insomnia.
I hope this helps.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
How did you get on, SleeplessinHB?
—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.
This is quite common! Have you tried allocating time during the day to examine these worries and concerns, or to simply give yourself permission to worry at a certain time during the day?
Doing this during the day can help shift these worries away from the night — and, since we are better able to process thoughts and worries during the day compared to at night, we are better able to deal with them and perhaps recognize that they aren’t as accurate as we might have first thought (or feared).
Here’s a related video you might find helpful: If you have chronic insomnia, scheduling time for daytime worry can help calm the mind 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.
Welcome to the forum, JR. Are you implementing cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques with your psychologist? CBT-I techniques are not the same as “sleep hygiene” — sleep hygiene is not an effective treatment for chronic insomnia!
As pointed out by Trish, it can be very helpful to discuss and implement a tapering-off plan with your doctor to help you come off the sleeping pills. The fact of the matter is, sleeping pills don’t generate sleep — but the longer we take them, the more we can come to believe that they do, and that we can’t sleep without them.
Sleeping pills can help eliminate some obstacles to sleep (for example, sleep-related worry and anxiety) but they don’t generate sleep. Even when we take a sleeping pill, any sleep we get is still generated by our own body.
Most clients I work with choose to naturally taper-off any sleeping pills they are taking (with their doctor’s permission) as they start to regain confidence in their ability to sleep while implementing CBT-I techniques.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Sorry to hear about your recent struggle with sleep. How have you been doing the past couple of weeks?
If you are finding it hard to fall asleep at the start of the night, you will likely find it helpful to create and follow a regular and appropriate sleep window. Also, make sure you are always out of bed by the same time every day and try your best to avoid sleeping (napping) during the day.
This will help build sufficient sleep drive during the day and help ensure that, by the time you go to bed, you are sleepy enough for sleep.
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 doing great, Trish! Thank you so much for sharing your experience — coming off sleeping pills (especially if you’ve been taking them for a long time) is hard.
No doubt about it.
However, it is possible to get off the sleeping pills and to experience natural, restorative sleep — as you have discovered.
The thing with sleeping pills is they don’t generate sleep. The only thing that generates sleep is our own sleep drive. Sleeping pills can help us relax, or maybe take away some of the sleep-related worry or anxiety we might have — and this can certainly be an obstacle to sleep. However, even when we take a sleeping pill, sleep is still being generated by our own body. No pill can generate sleep.
I am sure many people will be inspired by your post. Thanks again 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.
Welcome to the forum — always good to hear that the Insomnia Coach YouTube channel is proving to be helpful.
When you wake during the night, what do you think is making it hard for you to fall back to sleep? Any change or improvement over the past few weeks?
—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.
Staying awake until your sleep window begins can be hard in the short-term — and that’s the exact intention, because we want to build up a high level of sleepiness to help make it easier for you to fall asleep when you go to bed.
If you are really struggling with this, you could try advancing your sleep window a bit. So, for example, instead of it running from 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM, it would run from 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM. This can be particularly helpful if you are a strong morning lark and have never been much of a night owl.
I talk about this a bit more in this video: How to make the sleep window more effective if you’re a strong night owl or a strong morning lark.
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 doing well, Ron. It’s important to bear in mind that waking during the night is completely normal — as long as you find it easy to fall back to sleep, then nothing is wrong or unusual.
—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. Sorry to hear you lost your job a few months ago — perhaps unsurprisingly, that is a common trigger for sleep problems.
Have you tried implementing CBT-I techniques to help get your sleep back on track?
If you haven’t already enrolled, I think you’ll find my free sleep training course very helpful.
—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 know, a lot of people are concerned that they’ll wake others up if they leave the bedroom at night. However, most people who are in the house are sleeping quite soundly at this point, so as long as you remain reasonably considerate it’s very unlikely that you’ll disturb them!
I talked about this in this short YouTube video: How to implement stimulus control when you share your bed or have a family at home.
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.
Thank you for sharing! I am glad to hear that you are implementing sleep restriction techniques consistently and getting positive results!
Microsleeps are quite common in the short-term when implementing sleep restriction since we actually want to generate high levels of sleepiness to help you sleep when it’s time to go to bed.
It’s also quite common in the short-term to find that once you get past this period of sleepiness, you no longer feel sleepy when you get into bed. This is usually because of conditioned arousal — because you have experienced wakefulness so many times when you are in bed, your mind has learned that the bed is a place to be awake rather than asleep.
So, you can feel very sleepy before going to bed but then feel awake when you get into bed. Stimulus control techniques help to address this conditioned arousal.
Here’s a short video about this: What to do when you feel sleepy early in the evening but don’t feel sleepy when it’s time for bed.
Thank you for sharing your strategy of going for a walk while waiting for your sleep window to begin — that is a great idea!
Relaxation techniques such as those offered by Dartmouth College are a great way to relax, too — just remember that the goal of relaxation is relaxation, not sleep (and that relaxation is actually a skill that requires a lot of practice!).
—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, Dave! Can you tell us a bit more about your sleep?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
How have you been getting on the past few weeks? It sounds as though you would benefit from implementing CBT-I techniques.
You mentioned that you have tried staying awake all night and all day but still cannot sleep at night. How long did you try this for? The fact of the matter is, if we stay awake for long enough, we will eventually fall asleep!
I think you would probably find it helpful to avoid sleeping during the day and to follow a regular (and appropriate) sleep window. This is part of a technique known as sleep restriction.
If you have high levels of sleep-related worry and anxiety then it’s likely you’ll need to implement additional CBT-I techniques — but sleep restriction would be a good first step.
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.
