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Only you know if your actions are sustainable since you are the expert on you! What is your goal when you get out of bed during the night? In other words, when you choose to get out of bed, 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.
Congratulations on your commitment to meaningful action!
That trip to Punta Cana sounds fantastic and will no doubt be something that will enrich your life and provide you with lifelong memories. In 100 years from now, you might be more likely to remember experiences like that rather than how you slept at night!
You are clearly doing more of what matters to you, independently of sleep. Your actions are serving you and the life you want to live. This, in turn, reduces the power and influence that anxiety and insomnia has over your life.
As you shared, this doesn’t magically transform everything into sunshine and roses! Yet, you are continuing to move closer to the life you want to live. You are heading in the direction you want to be heading. You are also practicing a radically different approach and new skills — and they’ll take time and ongoing practice to develop.
That difficult night gave you the opportunity to practice responding in a way you want to respond — and to learn, too. It’s good to know you are feeling proud of yourself, because you should be feeling proud of yourself! What you are doing isn’t easy. It’s hard. It can be scary, too. You are taking action and you are learning from your actions. Good 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.
That panic attack was clearly a very scary experience and so it makes sense that you are on edge, afraid they’ll return or escalate into something even bigger.
What do you think is the best way forward? What does your own experience have to tell you about whether thoughts and feelings (including really intense ones) are within your control? What does your own experience have to tell you about whether your actions are within your control?
Finally, would you like me to share a book recommendation related to dealing with panic attacks that is closely aligned with the philosophy shared in this 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.
Thanks for sharing! Through your strengths of self-reflection and curiosity you realized your experience was telling you that sleep isn’t something you make happen. Rather, it’s something that happens to you! And, the more you try to control something that’s out of your control the more you struggle and the more difficult everything becomes.
To break out of that ongoing and endless loop, you changed your approach. You focused on action. You deliberately and consciously chose actions that would serve you (rather than choosing actions in an attempt to serve sleep).
As you did this, you learned more. You reinforced the insights you were gaining.
Acceptance cannot be forced — as you shared, acceptance must be genuine and it doesn’t happen overnight! To practice acceptance, we need to practice experiencing acceptance with no motive other than acceptance.
It sounds as though you have given sleep the opportunity to take care of itself and freed up energy and attention to refocus attention on living the kind of life you want to live independently of sleep. That’s all down to you. Congratulations
—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 pointed out, anything you do with the intention or goal of controlling something that your experience tells you is out of your control will only create struggle and more difficulty.
For that reason, my course frequently and repeatedly emphasizes that nothing shared is intended to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen or fight or avoid any kind of thought or feeling.
The tools shared in my course are intended to help you build skill in experiencing wakefulness, thoughts, and feelings with less resistance and attempts to control them so you are better able to experience them without struggle and better able to do things that matter even in their presence.
With that in mind, I am not sure that the approach shared in the Insomnia Coach course is much different from the philosophy Alina seems to have. And, anything and everything in my course is optional and isn’t going to be helpful or right for everyone. You are a unique individual and you are the expert on you. So, you can pick and choose and experiment with whatever tools or exercises you feel might be most appropriate for you.
What matters is the intent behind your actions — because, as you have discovered thanks to your strengths of self-reflection, curiosity, and self-advocacy, trying to control what is out of your control (like sleep, what thoughts your brain generates, what feelings it generates) only creates a struggle that makes all this stuff 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.
It sounds as though you have understood how to create a sleep window, Raju
You start with the time you want/need to be out of bed in the morning. For you, that’s 5:00 AM. Then, if you are usually getting less than six hours of sleep at night, you can start with a sleep window that’s six hours long. Counting six hours back from 5:00 AM gives you an earliest bedtime of 11:00 PM.
So, with a sleep window of 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM, you avoid going to bed (or falling asleep!) before 11:00 PM and you only go to bed after 11:00 PM once you feel sleepy enough for sleep. Then, regardless of how the night goes you are always out of bed by 5:00 AM.
As you practice a new sleep routine your brain is going to generate lots of thoughts and feelings such as anxiety and frustration — that just means it is doing its job of looking out for you (thanks, brain!).
You always get to choose how to respond. If your previous sleep schedule wasn’t working for you, perhaps it’s worth experimenting with a new approach? You get to decide because you 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.
If you find that watching TV on the couch leads to unintentional sleep, then an alternative activity might be worth playing around with. Often, any activity that requires some movement will make it harder to fall asleep unintentionally.
Those dozes sound light and short so they’re probably not having a huge effect on sleep drive. How long before your sleep window begins do you typically start finding it hard to stay awake?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for sharing that you are happy with how things are going so far — you deserve all the credit because you are the one who is learning and taking action. You are doing all the work and change is not easy!
It probably doesn’t matter too much what you decide to do with the sleep window. Remember that it’s nothing more than a tool to help you move away from chasing after sleep. It’s not something that can make a certain amount or type of sleep happen.
So, if you feel you are chasing after sleep and/or the time you spend awake at night is creating a lot of struggle, then extending the sleep window might not be helpful.
If those periods of wakefulness are pretty comfortable and you are feeling sleepy enough for sleep before your sleep window begins or feel your sleep window is reducing the amount of sleep you are getting, then extending it a bit might be useful.
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.
It sounds as though you are learning from your experience, and that means progress is happening
If your experience tells you that sleep is out of your control, perhaps measuring progress based on how you sleep from night to night might have the potential to create some ongoing struggle?
An alternative might be to measure progress based on what you can control — action! And, with that being said, thanks for sharing that you are playing around with the AWAKE exercise (and you are also learning from what you are doing there, too).
It’s OK to think (you probably can’t stop that from happening for as long as you are alive) and you always have control over your actions and you are the expert on you! There can definitely be a fine line between consuming information and putting it into action versus endlessly consuming information and missing out on 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 Molly
Yes, people with problem-solving brains are likely to experience difficult thoughts and feelings in the days before (and during) things that matter. That’s your brain reminding you of what’s important (thanks, brain!).
When that stuff shows up you always get to choose how to respond. And it sounds as though you’ve learned that canceling plans that are important and that come with some difficult thoughts and feelings isn’t a workable strategy because you get pulled away from the life you want to live and all those difficult thoughts and feelings show up at some other time anyway.
I suspect you might be finding it hard to stop your brain time traveling or generating difficult thoughts and feelings because you cannot control what your brain chooses to do. And, if that’s the case, where does continuing to try get you? Perhaps that might be the source of some ongoing struggle? What might an alternative way of dealing with this look like?
—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 that idea — thanks for sharing
Good on you for taking your time with the course. Action and practice is what matters — not racing through the materials as quickly as possible!
As for checking the time, sleep doesn’t care whether you check the time or not. What matters is how productive or helpful the action of intentionally checking the time happens to be 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.
You mentioned that your amygdala gives you “too much” anxiety. I might be wrong here but to me, this implies there might be some (understandable!) resistance to anxiety. If I am off-base here, I apologize!
If I might be on the right track, I would say this: Quite often, the more we try to fight or avoid natural and normal (and difficult) human feelings like anxiety, the more powerful and influential they can become and the more difficult they can become, too.
You mentioned that you understand acceptance. How are you practicing 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.
Sorry to hear of that all-day panic. I can only imagine how difficult that must be and I am glad to hear that your superpower of self-advocacy led you to be in close contact with your therapist about it.
It sounds as though you have been finding it helpful to give yourself the goal of rest (something you can control) rather than making sleep happen (something you cannot) when you go to bed.
That, of course, doesn’t guarantee that sleep will happen but it does help create better conditions for sleep to happen and helps remove any pressure you might be putting on yourself to control what is out of your control.
Something that stood out to me was you saying that you were “trying to manage your brain”. That might imply that you are trying to control your brain — and that can have a similar outcome to attempts to control sleep. It sets us up for an ongoing struggle.
You don’t need to think about anything when you go to bed because sleep doesn’t care what you are thinking about! What can often make sleep so much more difficult is engaging in a battle with all these things at night, trying to fight or avoid them. After all, how likely is sleep to happen while we are waging war with insomnia and our minds?
As for whether or not it’s OK to cry at night. Why would it not be OK? Crying often comes from natural, normal, and valid human feelings and emotions. You are a human being, not a robot. Things feel difficult because they are difficult. Please be kind to yourself. 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.
The brain is always actively engaged. It never switches off or goes silent for as long as we are alive. If we try to control what our brain is doing, I think we might be more likely to struggle with what our brain is doing.
A sleep window can be helpful for anyone who finds they are spending a significant amount of time in bed awake and struggling — regardless of whether that struggle and difficulty happens at the start of the night or later in the night.
I believe a sleep window is best used as a tool to help us move away from chasing after sleep (and it does that by giving us an earliest bedtime and a consistent out of bed time).
If we use it in an attempt to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen we might set ourselves up for a struggle since, quite often, our own experience tells us that sleep is beyond our direct control.
—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.
Going to bed when conditions are good for sleep to happen (we are sleepy enough for sleep) can be helpful if you typically go to bed before you feel sleepy and find yourself struggling.
Getting out of bed or doing something more pleasant in bed can often be more appealing (and more helpful) compared to struggling and battling away in bed.
As for what’s “best” for you, only you would know (or be able to discover) that since you 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.
