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Sleepiness is a sign that sleep is coming. It’s not needed for sleep to happen, though.
Your Oura ring tells you that you average up to 6 hours of sleep.
You typically go to bed at 7:30 PM with a desired wake time of 6:00 AM, so you are allotting 10.5 hours for sleep.
That’s a difference of 4.5 hours.
What — if anything — might the insight (and opportunity) be there?
—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.
Anything by Russ Harris will come with my endorsement. His book “The Happiness Trap” is a good read for anyone interested in learning more about ACT. He also runs an online course by the same name.
—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 have clarity.
A powerful awareness that trying to control the thoughts and feelings your brain generates as it does its job of looking out for you and trying to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen through effort is futile.
Trying only creates more struggle.
Sleep wants to take care of itself. Thoughts and feelings (including all the difficult and distracting ones!) come with being a human being.
That awareness is a superpower. It will guide and support you as you continue to move forward.
Thank you for sharing, @BrianER.
PS: For anyone curious about Michael61’s post, it can be found here: The Paradox of Sleep: How Letting Go of Control Ended My 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.
Hello Molly and thanks for sharing your progress. A year after completing the course your sleep and your life have improved — and that’s all down to the actions you’ve taken.
You have learned that you can share a room with a stranger, sleep great during a friend’s party, sleep well after coming home late, and sleep well on holiday.
Not only has life opened up, you have also learned that sleep is not an obstacle to you living the kind of life you want to live. Your actions are what determine the kind of life you live.
Even with all this, there will be times when sleep doesn’t happen as you might want it to — and that’s when it is so easy to get drawn back into a struggle. Struggle is the default path. It takes ongoing practice to respond with less struggle!
You’ve been reminded that tracking sleep isn’t helpful. And, that makes sense when we consider that sleep often gets more difficult the more focus and attention we give it. And, tracking sleep to determine progress might not be useful if your experience tells you that sleep is out of your control.
Anxiety comes with being a human being. It’s a normal, natural, and valid human emotion. The only time anxiety disappears forever is when we are dead.
What matters when anxiety shows up is how you choose to respond. You know from experience what doesn’t work (resistance). I also get the impression that you know from experience what does work.
You are responding in a workable way by practicing being (and returning to the) present, and practicing acceptance, self-kindness, and being more of an observer rather than an opponent of all this stuff.
That doesn’t magically get rid of thoughts and feelings and make sleep happen. It can help reduce the power and influence all these things have over your life, though. And when they lose that power and influence they tend to become less problematic.
Pills aren’t what generated progress. Your actions are what generated progress. And no pill can make sleep happen (and sedation is not the same as sleep).
All the sleep you experienced and all ways your life opened back up are all down to the actions you took — not the pill(s) you took.
Nothing you’ve shared here is stupid. It’s human. You are far from sitting and doing nothing. You are taking action — and you are taking action that’s workable.
What are the “good times” you mentioned in your post, what degree of control do you have over them, and what do you need to do to bring them back?
—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 want to respond with more acceptance. What do you need to do to practice building that skill?
—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! With education comes the opportunity to act and make change happen.
You are both taking action and that leads to learning — and learning means progress!
—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 a great question and we’re digging into this in a lot more detail from this week onward.
It sounds like you find it useful to remind yourself of your experience and your natural ability to sleep. And that might be more helpful compared to trying to fight or avoid fear.
Fear is natural and normal and probably not something you can make go away through effort. In fact, trying might make it even more powerful and disruptive. Has that been your experience?
If resistance doesn’t seem to work and you wanted to practice making a bit of space for fear to exist (rather than trying to get rid of it), what might you do first?
—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 Jason and welcome aboard!
Your experience has taught you that drugs and alcohol are not the right long-term solution for you.
You also have a number of strengths that are going to help you move forward in a different way — commitment, determination, awareness, to name just a few that I see in your post.
You are ready to withdraw from the psychological battle in your head and it’s my hope that this course will help guide you in the direction you want to be heading!
I wish you all the best with it 🙂
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Beth and welcome to the course!
You have a lot of experience to draw from as you chart a workable path forward.
As you shared, it’s so easy to get pulled back into a struggle when sleep doesn’t happen as you want it to. And, sleep isn’t always going to happen as you want it to!
The superpower at your disposal (in addition to your experience!) is awareness. You are able to notice when you are struggling and that means you have the opportunity to respond differently.
You know that feelings of panic and anxiety come and go. That doesn’t necessarily make them any easier to experience, though. And, as you pointed out, those thoughts and feelings aren’t always connected to sleep happening (or not happening). They seem to just show up when they choose. And that’s normal.
Your problem-solving brain is always working away to look out for you. And it’s always going to focus on worst possible outcomes and all the doom and gloom scenarios because the good stuff isn’t a potential threat.
It is far more important for your brain to prepare and protect you from a bad experience and be wrong, than filter out unlikely scenarios and be wrong!
As you reflect on your experience, what feels like a workable way to respond when your brain starts firing up to protect you? (This is also something we’ll be exploring in a lot more detail from Week 2 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.
Thanks for letting me know my last post wasn’t helpful. What specific guidance can I offer that would be of more help?
The sleep window is a minor part of everything covered in the course. Success isn’t determined by your ability to implement a certain kind of sleep window.
The sleep window is nothing more than a tool intended to help you move away from chasing after sleep. It’s not something that can make a certain amount or type of sleep happen.
Pacing around the room or sitting on the floor when awake sounds really unpleasant. What is your intention with that? What are you trying to achieve?
—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.
Starting a sleep window at 4:00 AM sounds challenging. I wouldn’t usually suggest a sleep window of much less than six hours — but you are the expert on you!
Normally, I suggest anchoring the out-of-bed time because that’s a strong cue for the body clock — we can get used to a consistent out-of-bed time and find ourselves naturally waking at that time after a while.
So, changing the time of the end of the sleep window over time can be a bit more difficult compared to shifting the start of the sleep window over time.
It’s not impossible — it’s just a bit more difficult. Your body might get used to waking up at 6:30 AM and then you want to change it to 8:00 AM.
So, you might want to just go for 8:00 AM now and combine that with a start time that feels a bit more realistic (ie not 4:00 AM)!
I’ll also add that gradually reducing the amount of time you allot for sleep rather than making a massive cut all at once can be more helpful compared to having a sleep window that seems totally unrealistic!
Does this 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.
And sleep can still happen even when we think about it 😜
It can become a lot more elusive when we try to “not” think, though! And that’s why observing thoughts rather than resisting them can often be a strategy worth experimenting with — just as you shared, @hiker!
We’ll be exploring that (and a lot more) as the course progresses 🙂
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome aboard!
A sleep window is usually handled the same because all insomnia is the same — it comes from trying to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. This can show itself as difficulty falling asleep and it can show itself as difficulty falling back to sleep.
One way we can try making a certain amount or type of sleep happen is allotting an excessive amount of time for sleep — way more than we usually spend asleep.
If you aren’t doing that, a sleep window might not be too important or relevant. If feel you might be doing that, keeping a sleep window — at least for a week or two — might offer a learning opportunity.
Is there anything useful here, @Cata?
—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 questions!
I would typically suggest coming up with a sleep window duration first (based on how much sleep you typically get on an average night) and then by choosing an out-of-bed time in the morning that feels right to you and works for the life you want to live.
Then, you’d use the duration to count back from your out-of-bed time to get the start of your sleep window.
The sleep window is a tool intended to help you move away from chasing after sleep. It cannot make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. It’s also a learning tool, so I would suggest sticking with a sleep window for at least a week or so before reflecting on what you learned and deciding whether or not you’d like to make any changes.
Feeling sleepy before the sleep window and then alert when you go to bed is extremely common. Before the sleep window begins there’s no pressure or effort to make sleep happen. So you notice it showing up.
Once the sleep window begins, the pressure and effort can kick in — and your brain can ramp up the alertness levels to protect you from what it predicts to be the battle that is about to begin.
If you decide not to commit to the sleep window (you are the expert on you, after all), what would you be doing instead — and, according to your experience, how useful is 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.
Doing anything other than battling sounds like a more workable way of experiencing nighttime wakefulness!
As for whether activities are restful enough — if your experience tells you that you cannot make sleep or sleepiness happen through effort, perhaps that’s less relevant compared to simply giving yourself the opportunity to experience being awake without it drawing you into a battle.
And you can do something other than battle when you’re in bed and when you’re out of bed. The choice of location is yours!
—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.
