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Yes, I definitely still have nights of less sleep from time to time — that’s natural and normal! Nights of very little sleep are quite rare for me and, when they happen, they don’t have a whole lot of influence over me since I feel that I am able to respond to wakefulness when it shows up in a workable way.
In short, I don’t try to get rid of wakefulness. I allow it to hang out for as long as it chooses. And I refocus my attention each day on doing things that matter, independently of sleep.
With that being said, it’s important to note I have had many years to practice an approach that doesn’t pull me into a struggle — and, I am a unique individual, as are you. So, comparing yourself to me (or others) might not always be helpful 🙂
You might find it useful to compare how you respond to difficult nights with how you respond to difficult days — when you have a difficult day (especially after a stretch of really good days), do you try to figure out what to do next?
Do you think about watching more/less TV or experimenting with your TV watching routine? Do you experiment with different activities that you might not really want to do or have that much interest in, but still experiment with them because you are trying so hard to stop difficult days from ever happening again? Do you end up focusing so much on trying to figure out how to fight or avoid difficult days?
If there is a difference between how you respond to difficult days and difficult nights, why do you think that might be? And, is there a possibility that a difference in your response might be making things more difficult?
I hope there’s something useful here.
—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.
Yes, the AWAKE exercise can be hard and require a lot of effort — especially at first, since it is a new skill.
You mentioned that practicing the AWAKE exercise makes the anxiety in your stomach unbearable — is there an alternative approach that permanently deletes that anxiety so it never comes back?
It’s entirely possible to sleep, even in the presence of fear and anxiety. If we engage in a battle with those things, sleep can become a lot more difficult — because, after all, how many people fall asleep when they’re engaged in a battle?
With all this in mind, what do you feel a workable approach to all this difficult stuff might be? What does your experience tell 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.
As difficult as it can be, it sounds as though you received a reminder that there’s no way to directly or permanently control what your mind does, or how you sleep.
Anxiety comes and goes, because it’s a natural and normal human emotion. It’s often when we try to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings that we end up getting tangled up in a struggle that makes them so much more difficult.
It makes sense that your problem-solving mind is now trying to figure out why this happened. The reason why it happened is because, as human beings, we sometimes have difficult thoughts and feelings and we sometimes have difficult nights (including nights of zero sleep). Just as we sometimes have difficult days. There’s no way to prevent these from happening.
What matters is how we respond. Do we engage in a struggle, trying to control what our experience tells us cannot be controlled? Do we direct all our attention, focus, and energy towards trying to figure out something that cannot be controlled through effort?
Or do we practice acknowledging what’s going on, being kind to ourselves in return, and continuing to do things that keep us moving toward the life we want to live — even when difficult nights happen and even when difficult thoughts and feelings show up?
—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 to hear you’re still going out and doing things that matter, even when things feel difficult!
Remember that a sleep window isn’t intended to control sleep or make a certain amount or type of sleep happen. It’s simply one tool that can help you move away from chasing after sleep — doing things like going to bed earlier or staying in bed later in an attempt to make more sleep happen.
So, with that in mind, going to bed 30 minutes earlier than normal might mean waking 30 minutes earlier than normal — but it might not.
Something else to consider here might be that after making a change, it can take time to adapt to the change. So, I’d encourage you to be kind to yourself and allow yourself to adapt 🙂
What might be more important is how you respond to waking. Do you engage in a struggle, trying to get rid of it? Or, do you practice allowing it — and any thoughts and feelings that might come with it — to exist? Do you toss and turn, trying to sleep, or do you allow yourself to rest instead?
It sounds as though you’re practicing experiencing wakefulness with less struggle by practicing the AWAKE exercise — which is probably more workable than any alternative option!
Of course, it would be great to feel rested each and every day and to get 7-7.5 hours of sleep every night, right? If I could tell you the secret to making that happen, I would!
As your experience tells you, that stuff can’t be controlled. Trying to control what cannot be controlled only creates a struggle that makes things more difficult. So, it can be helpful to refocus attention on what can be controlled — doing things that matter, even when you don’t feel rested and even when you don’t get 7-7.5 hours of sleep.
And, don’t forget to be kind to yourself when things feel difficult, too.
—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 sounds as though the word is getting out there! I was in a hotel a few months ago when someone recognized me from my YouTube channel and introduced themselves! I’ll have to start preprinting some autographed photos soon 😉
On a more serious note, welcome to the forum and thank you for sharing how you found Insomnia Coach. I also appreciate the recommendations. Thank 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.
Sleep restriction can be difficult, depending on how it’s implemented and depending on our intent when we implement it!
Can you tell us a bit more about how you are implementing sleep restriction and what your goals are with it? How long is your sleep window? What time does it start and end? How did you choose those times?
Finally, could you share why you are finding it so hard to observe a sleep window? What is it, specifically, about the sleep window you’ve chosen that’s proving to be so hard?
—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 your mom’s stroke and I wish her all the best.
Difficult nights from time to time are all part of being a human being — just as difficult days from time to time are normal and to be expected, too.
Do you think it’s possible that all your attempts to shut your mind off might be making your mind work harder and, in turn, be making things 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.
Welcome to the forum. You are not alone.
What you are going through is difficult and it is not unique or unusual. Those fears and thoughts are completely understandable, they are legitimate, and I think they are quite normal in the circumstances, too!
All those thoughts and stories are coming from a good place — your mind, doing its job and looking out for you (thanks, brain!).
As for how to stop thinking upon command, if you ever come up with the solution to that I think you’d become a billionaire! If your experience tells you that trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings doesn’t work — that they always come back anyway — perhaps that approach is making things more difficult.
What you are going through is hard so I would encourage you to be kind to yourself, and to consider whether an alternative approach might be helpful if your current approach to all this difficult stuff isn’t getting you any closer to where you want to be.
I hope there’s something useful here.
—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 here — thank you for sharing these fantastic insights with us!
—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 sounds as though you’re on the right path!
It’s natural and normal to experience anxiety — that’s a human emotion. What matters is how you respond to anxiety. If you respond by trying to fight or avoid it, you might be more likely to end up tangled up in a struggle that makes things more difficult.
If you can respond by acknowledging it, making space for it to exist, being kind to yourself, and continuing to do things that matter, you might be able to move away from the struggle.
Sometimes when we try to fight or avoid things that are unpleasant, we can do things that we’d rather not do — things that don’t align with the person we want to be or the life we want to live. This can be a problem if we engage in those kinds of behaviors in an attempt to control what our experience tells us cannot be controlled — because then we get pulled away from the life we want to live and the difficult stuff still doesn’t go away.
So, if the action of taking a sleeping pill before an important event is something you don’t want to do, perhaps it might be worth not taking a sleeping pill — yes, you might experience more wakefulness, but you’ll still be able to do the important event AND you’ll be living a life that’s more aligned with your values.
Finally, it’s totally natural and normal to experience sleep disruption when unwell. As you’ve found, sleeping pills don’t make sleep happen — if they did, you’d be sleeping great every time you took them as you recover from the flu, right?
I hope there’s something useful here and I hope you feel better soon.
—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! It sounds as though you’re getting a lot out of deliberately acting in ways that are aligned with your values.
As you’ve found, this can’t make a certain amount or type of sleep happen — but it can help reduce the power and influence difficult nights have over you and the life you want to live. And, as sleep loses its power and influence we tend to put less effort into it, pay less attention to it, and — as a bonus — conditions for sleep improve.
It’s good to hear you’re taking your time with the course — there’s a lot of material here and there are no prizes for racing through it in the quickest time possible 🙂
—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 that you’re practicing expanding the focus of your attention during the day!
As you’ve found, sometimes this can be more difficult at night when there’s less going on!
There’s no need to think (or not think) anything when you get into bed — sleep doesn’t care about what you’re thinking (but it can get a lot more difficult if you try to control what you’re thinking).
How did you approach this in the past, when sleep wasn’t an issue or a concern? Any helpful insights 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.
It can be helpful to bear in mind that a sleep window isn’t intended to control or modify sleep because, as your experience might tell you, sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled.
The sleep window is simply one tool that can help you move away from chasing after sleep — trying to make it happen by doing things like going to bed earlier or staying in bed later.
Often, the more we chase after sleep, the more we try to make it happen, the more we can end up struggling with it.
A sleep window can also help ensure we are allotting an appropriate amount of time for sleep, based on how we are sleeping at the current time, so we don’t set ourselves up for really long periods of nighttime wakefulness.
If you are averaging less than five hours of sleep a night, do you feel that allotting eight hours for sleep (10:30 PM to 6:30 AM) is helping you get closer to where you want to be or might it be setting you up for some ongoing struggle?
—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.
Congratulations on the newborn! It’s totally normal to experience sleep disruption at this time — there’s a lot of change going on! I’d encourage you to be kind to yourself and, instead of going to bed and “trying” to sleep, you might go to bed to give yourself the opportunity to rest instead.
Sleep will come if and when it’s ready. It tends not to happen too easily when we put effort into 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.
Ups and downs are completely normal and, when the “downs” happen, it’s totally normal for your mind to come up with lots of difficult thoughts, feelings, and stories as it does its job of looking out for you.
What matters is how you respond to those thoughts, feelings, and stories. As you might know from experience, you can’t directly or permanently control them — but you can always control your actions.
Does your experience tell you that you can directly and permanently control sleep? If not, perhaps taking a leave from your studies risks pulling you further away from the life you want to live and creating more of a struggle?
—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.
