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First of all, congratulations on putting into practice what you’ve been learning in the course, @emandk! You are demonstrating commitment and persistence by continuing to practice the AWAKE exercise whenever you find yourself struggling at night and you are also building skill in being kinder to yourself when things are difficult.
It sounds as though things felt really good when you were taking a break from “real life” — and I think many people can identify with that! Routines can go out of the window, we have fewer commitments, and our focus becomes on all the good stuff rather than the typical life obligations.
Of course, the party cannot last forever — real life calls sooner or later! The return of schedules and obligations. More opportunities to experience stress, worry, and anxiety. All of the natural and normal human thoughts and feelings. And actions that might not always be enjoyable but reflect who we are and who we want to be. Actions that are important.
To answer your question, if you want to go back to bed after getting your family off to work and school, why not do just that? What would be the pros and cons associated with doing that?
—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 new passion with us, Chris! I’ve given disc golf a couple of tries but my lack of skill severely hampers my enjoyment. With that being said, I still appreciated the time spent outdoors and the company I was with on the occasions I did give it a try!
It sounds as though you are moving away from the struggle — and that’s really what makes things so difficult. Without the struggle, insomnia cannot really exist. It cannot really continue to hold any power or influence over us if we don’t consume so much energy trying to fight or avoid it and if we are able to refocus our attention and continue to do things that matter to us, regardless of its presence.
Perhaps, instead of (or in addition to) it being a waiting game, it’s a practice game? Moving away from struggle and doing what matters independently of sleep and even in the presence of difficult thoughts and feelings is a skill that often requires ongoing practice (and patience)!
—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.
Great stuff, Rosanne! Thank you so much for sharing your experience — your strengths of curiosity, reflection, and commitment are all shining through 🙂
—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 so much for sharing, Jeremy! I uploaded the file to the server here since the link you shared was proving to be unreliable and I couldn’t generate a reliable direct link.
Credit: The Fun Activities Catalogue was created by the Center for Clinical Interventions, a specialist clinical psychology service in Perth, Western Australia, administered through the North Metropolitan Health Service.
I think this resource might also prove to be particularly helpful as we explore meaningful action in more detail from Week 4 onward 🙂
—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 Jeremy and thank you for sharing you’ve found the success stories helpful! As you mentioned, it can be quite insightful just how similar the insomnia struggle is from person to person — you are definitely not alone!
I’ve asked guests a question along these lines in the last few podcasts — and, as you mentioned, it’s important to remember that everyone is different and that progress cannot be controlled (we can only control our actions).
Some responses to this question have included:
How Jessica broke free from insomnia by letting go and accepting it without judgement (#54)
Martin: Now you’re able to reflect back on this whole journey, this whole process. If we had to put like an approximate timeline on it, like, how long roughly would you say that it took for you to get to a point where sleep wasn’t something that you felt was like this ongoing struggle, to use your word, you felt free from it, more free. You were able to act independently of sleep. How long did it take you to get to that point, would you say?
Jessica: There was an intense, probably like six months and then another six months where it was kind of like, getting a little bit better. I would say, like eight months. Cause I remember you sending me a thing like, Oh, it’s a year. And I was like, Oh wow. I don’t even feel like it’s an issue anymore.
How Eric got his life back from insomnia by focusing on what he can control (#53)
Martin: Absolutely. It is a process. I’m keen to hear your thoughts on that. It was, if you are going to reflect back on when you were really tangled up in the struggle, and it felt really difficult to when you get to a point where it feels like, I can live my life independently of this stuff.
Martin: It’s not something that is always on my mind. I’m always trying to troubleshoot. If you had to put an approximate timeline on that process, on that part of the journey, how long would you say roughly that took?
Eric: When I really started challenging my thoughts and doing what I wanted to do and live the way I want to, I really saw slow progress over the course of maybe three or four months. And so I was constantly having to challenge things. And then it took about six months for me to start really feeling comfortable about those difficult thoughts. So it was not overnight. And I don’t think everyone’s timeline is the same.
Martin: How long do you think it took for you to get to a point where sleep wasn’t something you were just kind of endlessly struggling with? It wasn’t kind of on your mind, crowding out all the other things that you wanted to think about or pay attention to, and you just felt better able to live your life independently of what happened at night when just your general relationship changed and you felt, “Yeah, I don’t feel like this is a struggle anymore. I might still have some difficult nights, but it’s not something that’s kind of consuming my attention, my life.”
Anne-Claire: I would say at least six months. It was probably at least six months. And my attitude about it really… And again, it wasn’t a sudden attitude change. It was really an evolution in my attitude change, in that, oh, this is just… And my perception of the insomnia part of me was, oh, that’s just that. And I don’t have to worry about it. It’ll come and go. And I would even… People if I was on vacation or visiting with people and they’d say, “How’d you sleep?” And I said, well, for me, I don’t sleep like everybody else, but that’s just me. And it’s just kind of normal.
Anne-Claire: And I didn’t attribute me being an insomniac anymore. It was really more of a, my sleep patterns are evolving over time. And what’s normal for me is not going to be normal for somebody else. And so my normality, if you will, my normal state has evolved as well as I think my body has now become accustomed to getting what it needs as opposed to me saying, here’s what I want. And me paying more attention to that.
Maria: To fully recover from insomnia, is that what you’re asking for?
Martin: I would say, maybe where you got to a point where you felt, I’m free of it, I’m independent. I can live my life independently of how I sleep. I’m not so much tangled up in the struggle. It’s not something that has a big influence over my life anymore.
Maria: I feel like that would be maybe a month or so when I got this confidence about, I’m actually able to recover from insomnia. But at this point, I was sure that it would at some point come back, but then I had the tools to defend myself and to approach it in a right way. I think the very, very big lesson for me was something that you’ve been talking about a lot in your podcast and in your content on YouTube, that the most important thing is actually your approach to the sleep and your approach to insomnia, and how you react to it will essentially influence how it will develop.
Maria: So, that was something that was super big lesson for me, the attitude. When I started having insomnia, when it happened in my life, my attitude was anxious fighting. I was super confused. I was freaked out. I was battling the thoughts all the time. I was trying to fight the fact that I’m not sleeping, forcing myself to fall asleep, which is impossible to do it. With pills, it’s possible, but there’s no way you can force yourself to sleep. So my initial approach to that, my reaction to insomnia was completely fighting with that. And then when I changed to accepting it and just acknowledging it, it was shrinking more and more, and eventually it disappeared.
How Leah freed herself from the insomnia struggle by abandoning her efforts to control sleep (#48)
Martin: I’m curious to hear, because you had such a long history with insomnia, once you started to make the changes that we’ve been talking about in this episode, how long that process took do you feel like from getting started making new changes, exploring your relationship with your thoughts, implementing new behaviors around sleep. How long was that process from “insomnia is still this major issue in my life” to getting to that point where you feel like it’s more in the rear-view mirror, it’s more behind you, it’s far less influential over your life now?
Leah: I’d say about three to four months. I mean, I started seeing improvements within that second week of doing sleep restriction, covering up the clocks, et cetera. But really feeling like kind of free from the shackles of it, so to speak, was about three to four months.
Martin: I’ve just started to recently ask this because I think sometimes when we’re only talking for about an hour, and it can become easy for people to listen and think, “Okay, if I just do this, this and this, within a couple of weeks, things will feel great again.” Or “That’s the kind of story I’m being told or sold on here.” But that’s definitely not the case. What it is is about learning new techniques, right? Learning new skills, new ways of developing our relationship with what goes on in our mind, and it does take time.
Leah: It does take time, and it does take commitment, and I think it takes commitment to all of the puzzle pieces. It’s not going to be one singular thing necessarily that really helps people. It’s committing to all of it. It’s committing to all of it. I think because I was so committed to all of it is why in hindsight it seemed like it didn’t take that long. Three to four months really isn’t that long of a period of time, especially when I think about my whole history of struggling with insomnia since I was 12, and I’m 46 now. Three months is nothing. But it definitely does not happen overnight. It does require that commitment to…
Leah: Just try all the techniques, just go all in. There’s nothing to lose. If you’re already not sleeping, there’s nothing to lose in trying all the techniques, even if you’re fearful of trying them, even if you think they’re going to be a giant pain or they’re not going to be helpful, once again, that’s just a thought. We’re just letting it pass our mind’s eye. We’re not attaching doubt to it. We’re not going to attach our fear. We’re not going to do any of that. I think that’s really what it takes for these techniques to be successful for you. It’s tough. It’s tough, it’s hard being exhausted all the time. It really is hard, so I have a lot of empathy for people who are still in active struggle with it.
Martin: Using your experience from when we started to explore these changes to you getting to the point where you felt, “I don’t think that insomnia is this big influencer over my life anymore. It feels like it’s kind of in the rear view mirror now rather than a huge movie screen in front of my face, blocking out everything else in my life.” How long would you say that process took?
Amanda: Maybe six months, for me. It got better and better. I mean, I felt like I was on a good trajectory, with some disruptions here and there. But really in order for me to feel okay, I have given myself now all of the space during the day to do what I do, to care for myself, to care for my family. All that, do my work, and not have to constantly be figuring out how I’m going to be sleeping, or what’s going to happen. Because that took up so much of my thinking.
Amanda: I think that was about half a year. But it was such a clear progression of sleeping better and gaining more and more confidence. The more better nights I had, the more confidence I had. So I felt like I was becoming stronger and more trusting of myself.
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.
Thanks for getting back to me!
Remember that the sleep window isn’t intended to control sleep — it isn’t intended to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. It’s real goal is to help us move away from chasing after sleep by doing things like going to bed earlier or staying in bed later in an effort to make more sleep happen.
Adjusting your sleep window by 20 minutes or so might be useful if you find it hard to stay awake for the start — good problem solving there! Something else that might be worth experimenting with is to stop checking the time either 30 minutes or 1 hour before your sleep window begins and to allow yourself to go to bed whenever you feel sleepy enough 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.
Thank you for sharing and for being so open — it can often be difficult to talk about things we did that, on reflection, we realize were not useful or helpful.
As you experienced, sometimes sleep doesn’t go according to plan — just as sometimes our days don’t go according to plan! And, when that happens, we can so easily get pulled back into the old struggle — because those actions are so familiar and feel so much safer, even though our experience might tell us they weren’t all that helpful.
The good news is, we can always pause and change direction. We can acknowledge that we’ve been pulled back into the struggle, be kind to ourselves (because all this means is that we are human!), and refocus on and commit to a different, more workable approach.
It sounds as though the unworkable approach for you involves putting effort into sleep and engaging in sleep-related rules and rituals. How might you change direction? How might the weekly action plans shared in the course help?
—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.
Well done getting the practice in, Sriram! If you had succeeded, what would have been different?
—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!
What is the start and end time of your sleep window right now and how did you choose those times?
Around what time do you find yourself getting really sleepy and finding it hard to stay awake?
—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 appreciate the ongoing exploration here 🙂
From reading your post, it sounds as though at least some of your actions are intended to eliminate certain thoughts (“I tried to eliminate that thought”), to control how you feel (“thinking if I change the location, my arousal would diminish”), and to generate sleep through effort (“these things could help me get sleepy”).
How is trying to eliminate thoughts, trying to settle your mind, and trying to make sleep happen through effort working for you?
To get more of an idea of the bigger picture here, I’d also be curious to know your answer to this — if you were getting the exact amount and type of sleep you want to be getting, how would your life be different?
Revisiting Week 3 might be helpful since it focuses on exploring the arrival of difficult thoughts and feelings during the day. If you are finding those things difficult at night or finding yourself struggling a lot at night, it might be work revisiting Week 2 as well (as a reminder, there’s no need to get out of bed at night just because you are awake).
The course contains a lot of information and many (if not most) people find it helpful to revisit previous sections of the course more than once to help things “sink in”!
It’s great that you are putting so much of what you are learning from the course into action and your ongoing engagement and curiosity is going to help you on your ongoing journey!
—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 panic and the racing thoughts can be really difficult — especially in the middle of the night when it’s often harder to refocus our attention and to respond to them in a more workable way (if our current response doesn’t seem to be working for us).
What does “overcoming” racing thoughts mean to you? If you were to overcome them, what would be different?
Have you picked up any ideas from the course so far on how to respond to the panic and racing thoughts in a way that might help move you away from an ongoing struggle with those things?
—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 so much for sharing your experience, Rosanne! Many people experience sleep disruption when they have something planned the next day — so you aren’t alone there! What matters is that you still went ahead and did something important and meaningful. You went skiing, independently of how you slept.
What was it like to practice accepting, welcoming, and making space for difficult thoughts and feelings to show up at night? How is that different to what your approach might have been in the past and which approach feels more workable/useful (the approach you described or the approach you took in the past)?
—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’m sorry to hear about your struggles, Packer Fan. It’s clear that you are committed to what you are learning and your approach of absorbing each lesson slowly shows a thoughtful and dedicated mindset.
It’s quite normal for sleep patterns to fluctuate, especially with changes in environment like traveling. Remember, progress isn’t always linear, and it’s okay to have ups and downs. Difficult nights are a part of life, just like difficult days are a part of life. It’s how we respond that matters.
Your perseverance and willingness to explore a different approach to all this difficult stuff are key strengths that will help support you as you continue to move forward 🙂
Since struggle and additional difficulty can often come from our attempts to control things that our experience tells us cannot be controlled, I would invite you to answer the following questions:
1. When you switched to another bedroom, what was your goal?
2. When you try to think of good things and praise yourself as a good person, what is your goal?
3. When you get out of bed after tossing and turning in order to listen to a podcast or read, what is your goal?
4. Before sleep felt like a struggle or an issue, did you need to be on the other end of the bed and have a ceiling fan blow on you to make sleep happen? If not, what might that mean?Finally, what does your current “Action Plan” look like? As a reminder, the suggested Action Plan from the end of Week 3 was:
1. Practice the NOW exercise whenever you find your daytime thoughts and feelings pulling you away from the present moment in an unhelpful way.
2. Commit to doing one or two kind or enjoyable things whenever you are finding things difficult during the day.
3. Every evening, continue to reflect on three good things that happened that day and why they happened, if you’ve been finding that useful.
4. Consider implementing a buffer zone before your sleep window begins and use that time for activities you enjoy.
5. Continue with a sleep window if you feel that’s useful — give yourself an earliest possible bedtime, stop checking the time when it begins, only go to bed when sleepy enough for sleep, and get out of bed by the end of your sleep window each day.
6. Continue to practice the AWAKE exercise whenever you find yourself struggling with nighttime wakefulness.
Are you practicing any of those?
—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.
Glad to hear you are mostly recovered from COVID and that you’ve found it helpful to allot less time for sleep, Sheena!
Catching up on sleep is one of those things that can trip us up — because then we can start putting pressure on ourselves to sleep and put more effort into sleep. And, when we do that, sleep can start to become more difficult, more elusive, and create more struggle.
Thanks to your own curiosity and willingness to experiment with a new approach, it sounds as though you have started to move away from chasing after sleep and putting effort into sleep and you have started to reduce the power and influence sleep has over your life by committing to meaningful actions (such as going to work) independently of how you sleep.
You are off to a flying start and I wish you all the best as you continue to work through 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.
That sounds a lot more appealing compared to tossing and turning, battling with wakefulness! Why do you leave the bedroom to read? Is that more appealing compared to reading in bed?
—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.
