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It sounds as though you want to move away from using alcohol in an attempt to control sleep. As you’ve mentioned, it doesn’t seem to be helpful in any case — it doesn’t work every time and it makes things even worse the next day.
It often takes a lot of courage to recognize when our current approach might not be working and to consider a new approach. So, good on you for taking that big first step!
In terms of a new approach, you might want to start with my ACT for insomnia might be helpful to consider, too.
And, if you have any questions or concerns as you explore a new approach, please feel free to share them here. You are not alone.
—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.
What is your goal when you read at night or get out of bed to do other things, like walking your dog at 2-3 AM?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Looking at the time might not make things harder for everyone — it’s just one of those actions that can set us up for a struggle.
Ultimately, there’s nothing we can “do” with the information of knowing the time. And, often the best outcome is neutral — now you know the time. That’s it.
Checking the time during the night is something that can pull us back into a control agenda — we might start trying to make sleep happen, we might start to put pressure on ourselves to sleep, we might start trying to fight any thoughts, feelings, or stories that show up in response to knowing the time.
If nothing else, checking the time during the night requires some degree of mental activation — to interpret the time, what that means, and what we might then do with that information.
If checking the time is an action that is helping you get closer to where you want to be, there’s no need to change anything. If checking the time is an action that doesn’t seem to be helping you get closer to where you want to be, making a change might be worth considering.
You, as always, are the expert on 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.
Great question!
My thoughts:
Belief can be helpful but I don’t think it’s a requirement! We might not believe that something will happen, but it can still happen anyway, right?
What might matter more are our actions.
What we do determines whether we move toward the life we want to live or away from the life we want to live.
How we respond to the difficult stuff that comes with being a human being determines whether we are going to get pulled into a struggle or whether we are going to continue to do what matters even when difficult stuff is present.
Our actions can be workable (focused on things we can control) or they can be unworkable (focused on things we cannot control).
Fortunately, we can always control our actions — belief is not required for 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, Izzy — good on you for getting some practice in with the AWAKE exercise! It really doesn’t matter what you do when you are practicing experiencing wakefulness with less struggle because your only goal is to practice experiencing wakefulness with less struggle!
If reading helps you do that, great! If doing nothing and relaxing with your eyes closed helps you do that, great!
It’s easy to get pulled into the trap of trying to control your thoughts and feelings or trying to make sleep happen when you are practicing experiencing wakefulness with less struggle. If you notice that happening then you can gently acknowledge that with kindness and then change your approach.
It sounds as though that’s exactly what you did 🙂
—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 Chris and thanks for sharing your sleep window!
How long have you been implementing it for? I’d usually suggest reflecting on whether it might be worth modifying the sleep window every week or so.
Remember that the sleep window isn’t supposed to control sleep — it’s not supposed to make you fall asleep, generate a certain amount of sleep, or help you sleep until a certain time in the morning. It’s simply one tool that can help you move away from chasing after sleep — trying to make it happen by going to bed earlier or staying in bed later.
That tiredness can really suck, right?! Is it tiredness as in you feel worn out and fatigued or is it sleepiness as in you are finding it hard to stay awake?
Thanks for sharing your first song of the day — it sounds like that helps to inspire and motivate you! Great stuff!
—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.
Totally normal to experience some sleep disruption when crossing timezones or sleeping in a new environment!
I usually suggest sticking with your sleep window without making adjustments for timezones. So, for example, if your sleep window is midnight to 6:00 AM in your home timezone, it would also be midnight to 6:00 AM in your holiday timezone.
At the same time, I would also suggest focusing on where you are and what you’re doing while on vacation rather than focusing solely on implementing an exact sleep window. When you look back on this trip in 100 years from now, I suspect you’re more likely to remember all the things you saw and did rather than how you might have slept 🙂
Remember, too, that there’s no need to get out of bed just because you’re awake (unless you want to)!
—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.
No need to find it enjoyable — that’s a feeling we can’t always control!
What we’re looking to do is respond in a workable way — a way that doesn’t tangle you up in more of a struggle. A way that doesn’t involve trying to control what cannot be controlled.
So, it doesn’t matter what you do at night. The goal is to practice experiencing wakefulness with less struggle. That’s all. And, it’s rarely easy — especially in the short term.
This often takes a lot of practice since experiencing wakefulness with less struggle is a skill — and, like all skills, requires ongoing practice.
As you said, this is hard. So, please remember to be kind to yourself too. You aren’t alone.
—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.
Please call me Martin 🙂
I would suggest asking your wife what she thinks — are you so disruptive that she wants to be in the guest room? Perhaps sharing a bed with you is important to her (and perhaps to you, too) — even if you might spend time awake at night.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
That sounds really difficult, @Kacido.
If your doctor says everything is fine, it’s possible that all the difficult symptoms you described come from hyperarousal — your brain firing up into overdrive in an attempt to protect you from nighttime wakefulness.
Being awake at night can definitely be unpleasant — but it’s not a threat in the same way that a tiger stalking around your bedroom wanting to eat you is! And yet, when we’ve struggled with insomnia for a while, our brain can believe that it’s no different to a man-eating tiger. It thinks that it must be a real threat since we are trying so hard to fight or avoid it.
Where it’s so easy to get stuck is we can start to try even harder to make sleep happen. We can try even harder to fight or avoid the difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with insomnia. This pulls us even deeper into a struggle that makes everything more difficult — it consumes more of our energy and attention and makes it harder to do things that matter and to live the life we want to live.
This is where an alternative approach can sometimes be helpful. An approach that involves building skill in experiencing wakefulness and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with insomnia with less struggle. When there’s less struggle, we are better able to do things that matter — and, as a bonus, we also create better conditions for sleep.
You might want to read this page on ACT for insomnia to see if there’s anything useful there. I hope this helps and I wish you all the best! You are not alone.
—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, @valenk — and thanks for sharing your experience!
Put simply, sleep doesn’t respond well to effort. The more we try to make it happen, the more elusive it can become. And, the more we try to make it happen the more we can end up struggling and that can make things even more difficult.
It sounds as though your experience confirms this. When you decided not to actively try to make sleep happen when you were awake at night, things felt better. There wasn’t the addition of struggle on top of the wakefulness.
As you found, this doesn’t mean that sleep will happen — because sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled through effort. Yet, experiencing wakefulness with less struggle is usually more workable compared to an ongoing struggle with wakefulness. It can also help to retrain your mind that wakefulness isn’t a threat that it needs to be more alert to “protect” you from at night. It can also help you free up more energy to do things that matter each day.
And, as a bonus, less struggle also helps create better conditions for sleep to happen. That doesn’t mean sleep is guaranteed, though!
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.
Thank you so much for returning, one year later, to share how you’re doing @Kat87!
If someone reads your post and is thinking to themselves that they’d love to get rid of difficult thoughts and feelings (such as fear and anxiety) but it seems that the more they try to do that, the more they end up struggling, what would you suggest as an alternative approach?
If you were to share one or two changes you made that you feel were particularly helpful in getting you from where you were (struggling with insomnia and struggling with all the thoughts and feelings that come with insomnia) to where you are now, what would they be?
—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 like that idea @GenieB — especially since you have more control over what you do during the day compared to how you sleep during the night!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello @northparts and thanks for sharing!
Feeling really sleepy and then wide awake when you go to bed (or when you wake during the night) is a common symptom of insomnia. It’s often related to the brain firing up to “protect” you from being awake — it has learned that wakefulness is a threat.
Unfortunately, we cannot control what our minds do. But we can control our actions. And, through our actions, we can help train the mind that wakefulness isn’t a threat that it needs to be quite so alert to protect us from.
We can do that by practicing experiencing wakefulness with less struggle — by moving away from trying to fight or avoid it. By giving it permission to be present. And to give it less of an influence over our lives by continuing to do things that matter and continuing to move toward the life we want to live after difficult nights and even when the difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with insomnia might be present.
Of course, this is easier said than done and often requires ongoing practice!
I appreciated you sharing that you’ve found that you’re thinking about sleep less since you enrolled in the course. That can sometimes be a bonus side-effect of less struggle, but it’s not the intent of the course since when we try to control our thoughts and feelings we are often more likely to end up struggling with them.
I’d invite you to consider these questions (and to answer them here, if you’d like to do so):
1. How do you currently respond to feeling awake and alert at night and how is that helping you?
2. How do you currently respond the day after difficult nights and how is that helping 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 sharing that things are much better compared to four weeks ago!
When things are difficult, it does suck and it can be really frustrating — absolutely! I 100% agree!
And, since you can’t control this difficult stuff, perhaps the best way to respond is to acknowledge what’s going on, to be kind to yourself in return, and to continue to act in ways that are important to you and continue to do things that matter.
Otherwise, what’s the alternative?
—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.
