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Hello Kelvin and welcome to the forum. I am sorry to hear about your struggles with sleep. Do you still find it hard to fall asleep, or is your primary issue non-restorative sleep? Do you wake frequently during the night?
Trust — Thank you for your contribution, however, I would have to disagree with many of your suggestions. Nobody should stop taking a prescription medication without talking to their doctor first. In addition, such a long list of rituals and processes (ie your suggested ‘sleep stack’) are rarely helpful. That’s because sleep cannot be controlled so going through such a lengthy routine in an attempt to control sleep is unproductive and can actually exacerbate any sleep issue.
—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, Pickles. Health issues and worries are a common trigger for insomnia — however, these sleep problems are usually made worse by the additional attention we pay to sleep once it becomes disrupted and the thoughts and behaviors that occur when we make efforts to improve our sleep.
Can you tell us a bit more about how a typical night goes for you? When do you get out of bed, when do you get out of bed, and roughly how many hours of sleep would you say you get each 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.
I am so sorry for your loss. It’s little wonder that your sleep has been suffering as a result of you losing your husband. Fortunately, there are many steps you can take to improve your sleep and prevent your insomnia from becoming more entrenched.
Can you tell me a bit more about your sleep so I may offer a few suggestions? When do you normally go to bed, when do you normally get out of bed, and roughly how many hours of sleep do you get each night at the current time?
—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 thank you for taking the time to introduce yourself. Can you tell us a bit more about your sleep? What is a typical night like?
—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 that racing mind keeping you up during the night, Vicky. Can you tell me a bit more about your sleep? What is a typical night like? When do you normally go to bed, when do you get out of bed, and roughly how many hours of sleep would you say 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.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Angela.
So it sounds like you typically switch out the lights at around 10:30 pm to fall asleep. Do you normally feel drowsy and ready for sleep at around that time?
If you are switching out the lights at 10:30 pm and you typically get out of bed at 6:30 am, you are allotting eight hours for sleep — yet you report that you are typically getting much less than eight hours of sleep. It’s quite likely, therefore, that you would benefit from reducing the amount of time you allot 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.
Welcome to the forum and I am sorry to hear about your struggles with sleep. Herbal pills are unlikely to be the solution you are looking for — and sleeping pills will likely only provide short-term relief.
Can you tell us a bit more about your sleep? What is a typical night like? When do you go to bed, when do you get out of bed, and roughly how many hours of sleep do you get?
—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 Vicky and welcome to the forum. First, let me reassure you that you are not alone! Everyone here knows what it’s like to only manage a couple of hours of sleep. When you go to bed at night, what do you think is stopping you from being able to fall asleep?
—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 clarification on how your diary works, Dale. I have to say, that diary is quite overwhelming with all the data points you are collecting and I suspect that this may be leading you to pay more attention to your sleep than is ideal. I would suggest collecting more basic data and only calculating averages each week.
Here’s an abbreviated sleep diary that I think you will find helpful:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/insomnia-coach/Short+Sleep+Diary.pdf
Anyway, my suggestions would be:
Give yourself a sleep window based on the amount of time you allot for sleep. So, if you are trying to allot six hours for sleep, create a sleep window such as:
- Sleep window begins at 11:00 PM and ends at 5:00 AM
- Sleep window begins at 11:30 PM and ends at 5:30 AM
- Sleep window begins at midnight and ends at 6:00 AM
When you have your sleep window, the start of the sleep window is the absolute earliest time you should go to bed. So, if your sleep window starts but you don’t feel sleepy, don’t go to bed until you do feel sleepy.
However, regardless of when you go to bed and regardless of how well or how poorly you sleep, you should always get out of bed by the end of your sleep window every day.
I wouldn’t suggest lengthening your sleep window until your weekly sleep efficiency is at least 85%. When it is, lengthen the sleep window by 15 minutes and reassess after a week.
I hope this is helpful, Dale!
—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 was great to talk about CBT-I with Daniel — a sleep physician based in Eugene, OR who really gets just how effective CBT-I is and wants to help spread awareness and advocate for better availability. I highly recommend anyone struggling with sleep to follow his YouTube channel.
—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.
Looking at your sleep diary, I don’t think your progress has been negligible — perhaps not as dramatic as you’d like, but I see progress.
For example at the start of your sleep diary, your average weekly sleep efficiency was 49%. Just one month later, your average weekly sleep efficiency was 66%.
Can you clarify what all the 0s, 1s, and 2s represent on your sleep diary? I also have another couple of questions:
- How do you decide when to go to bed?
- How do you decide when to get out of bed in the morning?
- When you wake during the night and can’t fall back to sleep, what do you do?
Don’t give up! You are capable of sleep! I suspect you are putting a bit too much pressure on yourself to make dramatic improvements in a very short period of time.
—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, BishBosh. I am really sorry to hear about your struggles with sleep. I can tell that insomnia is a very real problem for you.
You mentioned that you went to a CBT-I clinic. Can you tell us a bit more about that? How long was your course of CBT-I? What techniques did you implement, and for how long?
—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 thank you for sharing your positivity! Meditation and other relaxation techniques can be a great way to calm a racing mind and help you prepare you for sleep.
It is worth mentioning that relaxation is a skill and does require practice, so it can take time for those new to relaxation techniques such as meditation to notice any improvement in their stress levels. It’s also worth being reminded that the ultimate goal of relaxation is relaxation — so it’s important to avoid approaching relaxation with the end-goal of better sleep.
Do you have any particular meditation techniques you’d recommend?
—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.
I am sorry to hear about your struggles with insomnia, Deepak. Although alcohol can help us fall asleep, it will typically lead to poorer sleep quality in the form of lighter sleep and more nighttime awakenings. It can also be more difficult to fall back to sleep after waking during the night if you have drunk a relatively high amount of alcohol late at night.
Have you given CBT-I a try, or attempted to implement any CBT-I techniques as a more healthy long-term solution for your sleep issues?
—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 am sorry to hear about your difficulties with sleep. The good news is that you recognize that the thoughts that run through your head are not constructive and that they can’t harm you — because they are about situations that occurred a long time ago.
When these thoughts crop up, try not to fight them. Instead, recognize them, let your mind process them, and trust that your mind will move on when it is done. I like to think of these crazy thoughts as clouds floating through the sky — simply lie back and observe. Eventually, they will pass. These thoughts only become a problem when we try to fight them or start to think that thoughts can harm us. Thoughts are just thoughts. They cannot harm us!
As you know, sleeping pills do not work and they are certainly not a long-term solution for insomnia. The best treatment for insomnia is CBT for insomnia. Have you talked to your doctor about CBT-I?
—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.
