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Sorry to hear that you’ve been struggling for so long — that sounds really hard.
It sounds as though you might be really close, but not quite there, when it comes to acceptance! Acceptance isn’t intended to be used as a strategy to control things that cannot be controlled (such as sleep, what we think, how we feel). It’s intended to be used as a strategy to help us respond to all that difficult stuff with less struggle.
Of course, when we struggle less we can find that insomnia or difficult thoughts and feelings can lose their power and influence over us or even temporarily disappear. However, those things will always come back from time to time since they’re part of the human experience.
What matters is how we respond — because our response is something we can control. We can start trying to fight/avoid (where does that get us and how much additional energy does that consume?) or we can practice acknowledging that stuff, making space for it to come and go as it chooses, being kind to ourselves when things feel difficult, and continuing to do things that matter even in the presence of it all.
It sounds as though you are doing things that matter when all this difficult stuff shows up, which is great! Often, it takes ongoing practice to ensure we aren’t getting pulled into a battle and a struggle with something that’s invisible and out of our control too (such as sleep, what we think, how we feel).
I hope there’s something useful here and I wish you all the 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.
That anxiety can be really difficult, right? And, because it doesn’t usually feel too good and because we might recognize it as an obstacle to sleep we might start trying to fight or avoid it — and, when we do that, we can get drawn into a battle.
Not only is that battle exhausting (and endless, if your experience tells you that anxiety cannot be permanently deleted through effort), sleep is probably less likely to happen if you are engaged in a war, night after night.
What might things be like without that struggle? If anxiety was allowed to show up and to come and go without any resistance?
Thoughts don’t stop sleep from happening — but going to war with our thoughts can often make sleep a lot 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.
Hello Christina (and Cranky) and welcome to the forum!
Waking during the night is a normal part of sleep — so nothing unusual there. When we wake, if we (perhaps quite understandably!) start putting effort into trying to fall back to sleep, things can often start to get a bit more difficult.
In other words, perhaps it might be all the trying to sleep that might be making sleep seem all the more elusive?
—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.
As you suggested, I know of no evidence to suggest that is true, Magnus!
—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!
Your experience sounds really difficult and it sounds very similar to the experience of everyone else who finds themselves struggling with insomnia.
If you’ve got any sleep since 2019 then we have evidence that your body is capable of generating sleep pressure.
Fortunately, our minds can override sleep pressure (but not forever!) in order to protect us from a threat. If it couldn’t, none of us would be alive today. Our ancestors would have fallen asleep while being attacked by sabertooth tigers.
If we’ve struggled with sleep (and the difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with insomnia) for a while, our minds can believe that wakefulness at night is a threat — that it’s no different to a sabertooth tiger prowling around wanting to eat us. And so, it fires up to keep us safe. When it does this we can experience lots of difficult thoughts and feelings.
Of course, that’s not too helpful, right? And so, most of us will try to address this — most often through effort. We start — completely understandably — trying to fight or avoid wakefulness. We start trying harder than ever before to make sleep happen. We start trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings that our mind is generating as it’s doing its job of looking out for us.
This is how we can end up stuck. The mind cannot be directly or permanently overruled through effort (again, because none of us would be alive today if we could switch it off at will).
The more we try, the harder it pushes back. The more energy we spend. The more exhausted we get. The more of a focus this becomes. The harder it gets. And the more the brain believes that being awake at night really is a serious threat — after all, if it wasn’t, why would we be trying so hard to fight or avoid it?
So the approach we explore in this course offers another direction. A direction that doesn’t involve so much fighting, battling, and struggling. Where we can start to move away from trying to control what our experience tells us cannot be directly or permanently controlled. Where we redirect our energy and attention away from battling with all this stuff and toward doing things that matter.
And, as a bonus, the less we try to control what we think, what we feel, and how we sleep, the less power and influence all this stuff might start to have over us and the more likely we might be to enjoy effortless sleep (after all, sleep is perhaps less likely to happen when we’re engaged in an intense battle at night).
I hope there’s something useful here and I wish you all the best with 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.
Hello Packer Fan 🙂
If you have a sleep window, can you share the start and end times with us and why you chose those times? Also, how long have you been following a sleep window and have you noticed any other changes since doing so?
When you say you have been getting up about the same time every day after a terrible night are you referring to your out of bed time in the morning — you are getting out of bed to start your day at the same time each day, independently of how you sleep? Or, are you referring to waking during the night and finding it hard to fall back to sleep?
As for the small naps — at what times of the day do you usually nap and for how long? If you aren’t finding those naps helpful, can you think of an alternative activity that might be more helpful?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
You probably feel a small degree of anxiety or being unsettled even after sleeping well for a few weeks because you have a human mind that is doing its job of looking out for you — as part of that job it generates all kinds of thoughts and feelings.
Fortunately, thoughts don’t stop sleep from happening (and confidence isn’t required for sleep to happen). What can make sleep more difficult is trying to control our thoughts and feelings or trying to make sleep happen.
If your goal is to “not think” about something, you might want consider your own experience as to how realistic that kind of a goal is. Does your experience tell you that you can permanently delete certain thoughts from your mind so they never come back? If not, perhaps trying to do so is what’s making things more difficult?
What might things be like if you didn’t try to fight or avoid certain thoughts? If you gave them permission to exist and gave them space to come and go as they chose, how might things be different? At the very least, might that free up some energy and attention to do more of the things that matter to you?
—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.
Two nights of no sleep can be really difficult — no doubt about it. Two really difficult days in a row can be really difficult, too. Difficult days and difficult nights and difficult thoughts and difficult feelings come with being a human being, unfortunately. That’s just how it is.
Sometimes there’s an obvious cause to difficult nights/days/thoughts/feelings and sometimes there’s not. When there’s not, perhaps we might be more likely to get a bit tangled up in a struggle as we divert our energy and attention toward trying to figure it out — and this, in turn, might pull us away from where we are and what we want to do.
As you’ve experienced, just because we are calm is no guarantee of sleep — so perhaps this suggests that trying to make calmness happen might be a bit unnecessary?
It makes sense that you feel really down about experiencing difficult nights — and it’s good that you are able to acknowledge that. Are you also able to practice being kind to yourself in response?
As you mentioned, it’s hard to accept that all of this difficult stuff is out of your control — and yet, your experience tells you that all this difficult stuff is out of your control, right? What you can control is how you respond — and how you respond will often determine how much power and influence this difficult stuff has over your life.
One more thing I would add is that even though our problem-solving minds can suggest otherwise, sleep becomes more likely after difficult nights because sleep drive builds with every minute of wakefulness.
It sounds as though your mind is making a claim that is not too different from suggesting that after two days of not eating, you might never feel hungry again — yet that’s probably not too accurate, right? The longer we go without eating, the hungrier we get!
That story is coming from a place of good intentions, though. Your brain, looking out for you.
—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 elaborating, Chris!
It sounds as though you are describing “not caring” more as a way of expanding your focus. So, caring is still there but it’s not your sole focus — there’s more present than that alone. It’s perhaps a bit more diluted than it would be if that was your sole focus. Am I closer?
I hear you on the sleep window — if it’s being used in an attempt to control sleep then it can set us up for a struggle! As I mentioned before, its intent is to help us do the opposite — to move away from trying to chase after sleep by doing things like going to bed earlier or staying in bed later. If you’re not doing those things, the sleep window might have less value!
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and experience 🙂
—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 @sahoosibu — and thank you, @rswan15 for offering your support and sharing your experience!
It sounds as though you want to implement a sleep window @sagoosibu — have you managed to get that started yet? If so, what time does it start and what time does it end and how did you choose those times?
As you’ve shared, struggling with sleep can be very painful. The more we try, the more difficult it seems to become, right? What might be things like if that struggle didn’t exist? If wakefulness felt more comfortable and didn’t pull you into an exhausting battle?
—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 love the empathy and support here — thank you to everyone who has contributed (and who might still contribute)!
To answer your question, Elkie — for me, there were a couple of nights where it felt as though absolutely no sleep happened but they were quite rare. Usually, some kind of sleep happened (even if it only felt like an hour or so).
Your trip to Luxembourg sounds fabulous. I feel quite confident that, 100 years from now, you’ll be remembering everything you experienced on that trip rather than recalling how you slept the night before (or during) the trip 🙂
—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 feel like a bit of an intruder amongst so much wisdom here!
My contribution for something I’ve personally found to be important and helpful is noticing whenever I find myself doing something in an attempt to control what my experience tells me cannot be controlled.
When I notice this happening (which, in itself, often takes a lot of practice) I can then change course and act in a different, more workable way (while also being kind to myself).
—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, Chris!
You’ll probably always care about things you consider important! So, trying to “not care” might set you up for a bit of a struggle.
It’s probably not going to be too helpful to really focus a lot of attention on your sleep window — at the end of the day it is merely a single tool that is intended to help you move away from chasing after sleep. Nothing more, nothing less.
What is it about the sleep window, specifically, that you are finding difficult? Can you think of anything you might be able to do to make it a bit easier or more realistic to implement (if you think a sleep window might be helpful)?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for your contribution, Chris. If the duration of your nighttime awakenings was to diminish, what would you be doing differently with your life?
—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 Alex and welcome aboard. You are not alone.
What you are going through is really difficult and it is not unique or unusual. It sounds as though you’ve followed the well-trodden path of experiencing sleep disruption for some clear reasons and, as you have understandably tried to fix things you have accidentally ended up providing insomnia with the fuel it needs to stick around.
The thing about sleep is, the more effort we put into it, the more difficult and elusive it can become. The more we try to make sleep happen, the more pressure we put on ourselves to sleep, the more we try to get rid of wakefulness, the more we try to fight or avoid all the difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with insomnia, the more we can end up struggling.
And, when we add struggle on top of all this stuff, it can all get even more difficult.
This will all be explored in a lot more detail as you work through the course — and there’s plenty of support available here in the client forum as you work through it (as demonstrated by Bea)!
—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.
