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Unfortunately, this isn’t my area of expertise. Have you tried seeing a chiropractor or physical therapist?
—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, Dopey. As mentioned by Steve, it would be helpful if you shared a bit more about the type of pain you are experiencing. Do you find it makes it harder for you to fall asleep at the start of the night, or is your biggest challenge waking during the night and finding it hard to fall back to 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.
Welcome to the forum, Sleepless in SSB. I’m sorry to hear about your ongoing struggle with sleep. How are you getting on — any improvements yet?
Usually, the best thing to do when you wake during the night and find it hard to go back to sleep is to actually get out of bed until you feel sleepy again. This is known as stimulus control and helps address any “conditioned arousal” or learned association between the bed and wakefulness.
—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 kpreyes and welcome to the forum. How are you getting on?
It’s quite normal for sleep to be disrupted by a health issue such as allergic rhinitis. Usually, sleep recovers by itself — but sometimes it doesn’t.
When sleep doesn’t recover by itself, it’s usually because we try to compensate for the sleep disruption and we start to think or worry about sleep more than we ever did before.
Melatonin has no effect on insomnia, and Ambien is not a long-term solution. The best thing you can do to get your sleep back on track is to avoid compensatory behaviors such as going to bed early, napping during the day, or staying in bed late.
What time do you currently go to bed, when do you get out of bed, and how many hours of sleep do you get on a typical 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.
This is certainly very interesting and I can definitely see how this can be helpful for those who are able to let their mind drift/wander without forcing the process or starting to worry about sleep. How are you getting on, Jurian?
—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 are you getting on warrior?
It’s so important to follow a regular (and appropriate) sleep window. This means you don’t go to bed before the start of your sleep window but you ALWAYS get out of bed by the end of the sleep window. It’s so important to always be out of bed by the end of your sleep window, even if this means you might miss out on some additional sleep.
There is no evidence to support the use of diphenhydramine to treat chronic insomnia. Furthermore, after three nights of use the body builds up a resistance to this drug, meaning any benefit after three nights is purely from the placebo effect.
From what you’ve described, I don’t think it’s pain that is waking you during the night. When pain disrupts sleep, it usually prevents us from initially falling asleep. However, what can happen is that when you awake, you once again notice the pain (you didn’t feel pain when asleep) so it’s easy to attribute the sleep interruption to the pain when that’s probably not why you woke.
Waking during the night is actually quite normal, but when we have anxiety about it, it becomes harder to fall back to sleep. At times like this, it’s important to implement techniques that will break the learned association between the bed, wakefulness, and anxiety and to recreate (and strengthen) an association between the bed, sleep, and relaxation. This is best achieved through stimulus control (an alternative technique is countercontrol for 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 are you getting on, Arfoise?
If you find it hard to fall asleep even when implementing sleep restriction, you will need to add stimulus control to your “technique toolbox”. Over time, this will break the conditioned arousal you are experiencing, and — once again — make the bed a strong trigger for 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.
This is actually a very important observation — that the quality of our sleep has far less of an effect on our day than we often think. In other words, we can have an awful night of sleep but an OK day (or at least, we notice a few good moments during the day). Similarly, we can have a great night of sleep but a truly awful day.
So, the key takeaway here is this — our sleep has less of an effect on our day as we usually think and any negative experiences that occur during the day are far more likely to be caused by something other than our sleep (or lack of 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.
Welcome to the forum, Buzzy. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support the use of melatonin or CBD oil as effective treatments for chronic insomnia — and sleeping pills are not a long-term solution.
Have you looked into CBT-I? It has a success rate of over 80% and is recognized as the most effective long-term treatment for chronic 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.
Welcome to the forum, yawning! If you feel indifferent towards sleep, what is your concern about sleep? In other words, what prompted you to find this website and join the forum?
—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 Christine. Although it is completely understandable why you would want to cancel meetings and rearrange your life around sleep, this is one of the worst things you can do if you want your sleep to improve.
That’s because when we rearrange our lives around sleep, we put far more importance on sleep than sleep deserves, and this also implies that we can somehow control sleep or compensate for poor sleep when we can’t.
In fact, the body does a great job of compensating for lost sleep by itself (more on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rhcwXPWEgw) and sleep usually only becomes a problem when we try to intervene.
In addition, when we cancel plans and stay home after a bad night of sleep, we only ever give our insomnia a bad outcome. We don’t give ourselves the opportunity to have a good day and recognize that the quality of our day isn’t always entirely dependent on the quality of our sleep.
Finally, when we stay home we are more likely to think (and worry) about sleep, be inactive (which actually increases fatigue), and even nap or try going to bed earlier — all things that make sleep more difficult.
—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.
Any update, Steve? A CBT-I practitioner who doesn’t believe in sleep restriction, who wants to use hypnosis, and who recommends medical marijuana for chronic insomnia doesn’t sound like a CBT-I practitioner to me. Is this person a licensed therapist?
—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.
CBT-I is the best treatment for chronic insomnia but it won’t be helpful if you have delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) since that is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder. Your best course of action is likely to find a sleep specialist for assessment and go from there. Do keep us updated, and I wish you the very best.
—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 and I’m sorry to hear about your difficulties with sleep, Aeglaeca. I was very disappointed to hear that the first form of advice you received was sleep hygiene, melatonin, and valerian — because none of these are effective treatments for chronic insomnia.
You mentioned that you tried stimulus control and sleep restriction. Why do you feel these techniques didn’t work for you? Do you recall what kind of sleep window you were observing when you were implementing sleep restriction? When you implemented stimulus control, were you repeatedly getting in and out of bed throughout the night?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
It can be, but I don’t think it’s a very good sign of sleepiness — because we can yawn any time during the day as soon as we see someone else yawn!
If you’re reading, a common cue for sleepiness will be reading the same line over and over again, or reading an entire page and not remembering any of what you just read.
Other cues can be things like your head dropping down, heavy eyes, or struggling to keep your eyes open.
Have you seen this video from my YouTube channel? It might help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KwrOcyUBt0
—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.
