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If you were to clean that up a little, what would be different, Mark?
—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.
Good on you for diving in on the values work, Kevin — and thanks for sharing that you are finding that you identify with many different values, to varying degrees.
I’d suggest starting with (or prioritizing) values that really resonate with you — those might be more important to you compared to those you identify with but don’t get too excited about 😉
With that being said, as long as you are acting in ways that are aligned with your values (to any degree) you are likely to be moving toward the life you want to live compared to if you acted in ways that aren’t aligned with any of your values!
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.
Some great stuff there, @hiker — thank you for sharing!
@BorgC: Perhaps that fear or that internal voice is nothing more than a reminder that the work you are doing here is important to you? Perhaps it’s also a reminder that your brain is still there, doing its job and looking out for you — so maybe an appropriate response might involve simply thanking your brain for looking out for you?As you shared, you can’t directly or permanently control your thoughts and feelings — but you can always choose how to respond to them. So, if you want to laugh when your brain comes up with certain thoughts, feelings, or stories — go for 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.
You’re definitely not alone in that experience, Sriram — and it’s great to hear that even when you have difficult nights you are continuing to get up around the same time and to go about your day as planned. That is not always easy to do and the fact you are doing that shows you have determination, resilience, and grit!
As you’ve found, difficult thoughts always come back — there’s no delete button for the brain. Did you pick up anything useful from Week 2 for how to practice moving away from the struggle with nighttime wakefulness (and the thoughts and feelings that can come with it)?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
This is great to hear — thank you so much for sharing! It makes sense that you have the wish and desire to get a certain amount or type of sleep — just as it makes sense that you’d probably like to have access to a magic delete button that could remove difficult thoughts and feelings from your mind whenever they show up! (I’ll have one of those too, please!)
As your experience tells you, sleep cannot be controlled through effort and thoughts and feelings cannot be controlled through effort. So, moving away from the ongoing struggle that comes from endless trying can sometimes feel quite liberating and free up so much energy and attention — and that, in turn, might help you do more of the stuff that truly matters 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.
If your goal is to get out of bed, then getting out of bed means you meet your goal, right?! 😉
Is that truly your intent, though — simply to get out of bed (and, if so, why)? Or is there something else at play here?
Are you getting out of bed in an attempt to fight or avoid certain thoughts or feelings? If so, how is that working for you?
If getting out of bed worked, what would happen?
—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.
Waking during the night is a normal part of sleep — so not much you can do about that. And, a sleep window cannot make a certain amount or type of sleep happen since, as you know from experience, sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled.
What you can do is figure out whether your approach or your response to all this stuff is workable, or not — based on your own experience.
To help with that, you might want to consider these questions:
1. Is allotting eight hours for sleep appropriate, based on the amount of sleep you are currently getting? If you aren’t sure, you might consider this instead — how is allotting eight hours for sleep working for you?
2. How is your current response to waking during the night working for you? Did you pick up any ideas on this in the course content for Week 2?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for the great question! It can be helpful to use your own experience as a guide here — how do you currently respond to that tossing and turning and how is that working 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 are the expert on you, Hyhan — so if you don’t feel a sleep window is helpful or appropriate, then it’s not something you should feel obligated to implement! Thanks for sharing that you like the AWAKE exercise in Week 2 🙂
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome aboard, Rosanne and Hyhan! Thank you for sharing those insights with us, Rosanne — and thanks for sticking around and offering others your support and the benefits of your experience, GenieB!
—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 Hyhan! Your mind will always generate thoughts and stories like, “insomnia can cause high blood pressure” as it does its job of looking out for you. Instead of trying to argue with your mind or trying to correct it, have you tried simply thanking it for looking out for you?
Of course, they’ll still show up — and you can still respond in the same way; “Thanks, brain!”.
—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 going to bed from the start of your sleep window!
When you woke (which is a normal part of sleep) and when you felt angry and agitated (which are normal human emotions) how did you respond?
Does your experience tell you that, through effort, you can directly and permanently get rid of emotions such as anger and agitation?
If not, what might be a more workable way of responding to those difficult feelings?
—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.
First of all, way to go sticking with the sleep window for four nights — even though you found it so difficult. And, even after difficult nights, you continued to go on with your full schedule — you continued to do things that matter and continued to move toward the life you want to live. All those actions are measures of your grit, determination, and personal fortitude.
Feeling sleeping before the sleep window begins and then apparently losing that sense of sleepiness when it begins is very common and comes from your brain looking out for you, trying to protect you.
Before 12:00 AM you know you aren’t about to go to bed. There’s no performance anxiety. There’s no pressure. Your brain isn’t trying to protect you from being awake at night. So, you feel really sleepy.
Then, the sleep window begins. Now your mind fires up and braces you for the struggle that is about to happen (because so many nights have created a struggle up to this point). You perhaps start trying really hard to sleep. You put pressure on yourself to sleep. You might even start trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings. And, *poof* — there goes that sleepiness (which perhaps makes sense in this context).
So, what we’re looking to do here is not make a certain amount or type of sleep happen with the sleep window. We’re simply getting started on the journey away from chasing after sleep — from doing things like going to bed earlier than we’d normally go to bed or staying in bed later than we’d normally stay in bed in an attempt to make sleep happen. Because, as your experience might be telling you, the more you chase after sleep — the more you try to make it happen — the more you can end up struggling with it, and the more your brain learns that being awake is a threat that it needs to be more alert to protect you from at night.
Is there anything helpful here? If you’d like to explore your chosen sleep window some more, feel free to share how you chose the original start and end times of 12:00 AM and 7:00 AM and what you are hoping to achieve by modifying them to 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM instead. Are you trying to chase after sleep?
—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, @BorgC! It’s good to hear you are enjoying the approach shared so far — plenty more to come!
@Hyhan — there’s no way to fail here, especially when it comes to things that cannot be controlled (such as sleep itself). We simply learn and gain information. And, many people find that sleep becomes more disrupted in the early days as they adjust to a new sleep schedule.Creating a sleep window is probably the closest we’ll get on this course to exploring a behavior change that’s closely aligned with CBT-I. I’ll post more in the topic you created in the week 1 forum.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for the great question and well done with implementing a sleep window!
Is getting out of bed in the middle of the night to sit on a chair in the dark something that helps you experience being awake with less struggle? What’s your goal when you get out of bed and sit in the chair in the dark?
—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.
