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Great question, Sergii — and @otilona has a great answer!
This is taken from the lesson “Sleep Window Questions“:
How do I track my sleep? Do I need to fill out a sleep diary or use a sleep tracking device?
You’ll notice that there are no sleep diaries or sleep tracker recommendations in this course. And, that’s intentional!
A 2018 study split people with insomnia into two groups. Sleep quality and duration was the same in both groups. One group was told they had a poor night’s sleep and the other group was told they had a good night of sleep.
Now remember that sleep quality and duration was the same for both groups. And yet, those in the group who were told they had a poor night of sleep showed lower mood, increased sleepiness, and had difficulty with daytime thinking processes.
Those who were told they had a good night of sleep showed the opposite!
Furthermore, we still don’t know how accurate sleep trackers are for people with chronic insomnia — they can underestimate deep sleep and overestimate light sleep, leading us to believe that our sleep is shallower that it might actually be.
So, if you’ve been using a sleep diary or a sleep tracking device, I’d encourage you to reflect on whether this has helped you shift attention away from sleep.
If it has not, it might be worth setting up an experiment — even if only for a week — to stop filling out a sleep diary or to stop using a sleep tracking device (unless recommended by your doctor or other licensed healthcare provider) and see what effect that has on your relationship with sleep.
I’d also add that there’s really nothing we can do with sleep tracking information since we cannot control sleep (if we could, you wouldn’t be here!) — so why bother, especially when it can have such a strong influence on how we evaluate our sleep and how we might go about our days.
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 struggling a bit less with anger and frustration when you are awake at night — thanks for sharing that!
Since relaxation is a feeling (along with feeling calm) and both are things that happen inside of us and are, therefore, out of our control, perhaps trying to make yourself feel calm or relaxed could set you up for a bit of a struggle since if you are unable to make calmness or relaxation happen you might be tempted to be a bit hard on yourself. That tends not to make us feel any better and it might also make it a bit harder for sleep to happen, too!
An alternative approach might involve allowing yourself to think and feel whatever you think and feel? To give those things permission to come and go. To hold your thoughts and feelings a little more lightly — to practice observing them rather than trying to control them. And, as always, to be kind to yourself when things feel 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.
You’ve got it, Kevin — you are the expert on you 🙂
Feel free to get out of bed if you like, but it’s not “required”. What matters is building skill in experiencing wakefulness with less struggle.
It’s good to have you 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 to hear you’re finding the course helpful, Sergii!
It makes sense that your mind is going to generate a lot of resistance in connection to implementing a sleep window — after all, it’s so familiar with chasing after sleep for 12 hours that feels like a far safer option to continue with!
And yet, even with that, you’ve still managed to reduce the amount of time you allot for sleep down to eight hours — that’s a big change to make! What have you learned from making that change?
It also makes sense that you experience some fear when you think about having a consistent out of bed time in the morning. Have you found that, by not having a consistent out of bed time, you never experience the human emotion of fear? It’s permanently deleted from your mind and never shows up, ever? If not, perhaps engaging in actions in an effort to avoid fear might not be a workable strategy.
You might also want to ask yourself how having an inconsistent out of bed time has helped you up to now — has it been moving you closer to where you want to be? Has it been helping you be the person you want to be or live the life you want to live?
If it has, no need to change anything! If not, perhaps it might be worth making this change (even if only for a trial period of a week or two) even though you might experience some fear (and maybe even a little less sleep at first)?
Finally, since you mentioned that you tend to struggle more with waking before you’d like to, I’m curious to know if you’ve been able to get any practice in with the AWAKE exercise and what that’s been like for you?
PS: If your body needs x hours of sleep, it will generate x hours of sleep — things often become more difficult when we put pressure on ourselves to make x hours of sleep happen, since our experience usually tells us that’s out of our 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.
That frustration can be really difficult to experience. When you say the frustrated part takes over, can you describe that in a bit more detail? When frustration takes over, what happens?
You’re right that it can be really hard to get through the day without any sleep — and yet, you have a 100% success rate of getting through the day. Your experience shows that you are resilient and that you are capable.
You mentioned that you know you’re supposed to tell your brain it’s OK to stay awake all night and perhaps that might be creating some struggle since that implies that you might be trying to control what you are thinking or feeling — something that often creates more struggle, not less.
What might be more helpful is acknowledging wakefulness when it shows up and acknowledging your thoughts and feelings when they show up — and being kind to yourself and continuing to do things that matter.
Finally, you mentioned that you already knew about (and were practicing) the steps outlined in the AWAKE exercise — can you tell us a bit more about how you’re practicing that (or your version of it)? What steps do you follow and what’s your goal — if/when it works, what happens?
—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.
Unfortunately, I cannot see into the future — if I could, I’d be a lottery winner by now!
Ultimately we cannot control what happens in the future, or what happened in the past. We can only control what we do right now. This very moment. This specific second. That’s it.
If you feel more comfortable sleeping on the recliner sofa and that isn’t an action that you’d rather not be doing then there’s no need to feel guilty or bad about doing that — you are the expert on you, after all!
All I would say is that the body can sleep anywhere — it just needs to be awake for long enough and sleep is always more likely to happen when there’s no effort to make it happen.
Remember, too, that waking during the night is a normal part of 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.
The body can sleep regardless of the temperature — this is one of those things that we tend to see included in “sleep hygiene” lists of additional rules and rituals that are known not help people with chronic insomnia 🙂
Of course, it helps to feel comfortable — and I suspect that’s as far as we need to take it. No need to monitor or adjust temperatures to specific degrees!
—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.
Those “speed bumps” can be really difficult to experience — and, as others have shared here, are totally natural and normal. Have you been able to practice any form of self-kindness when they show up?
Ultimately, they are out of your control — they aren’t your fault and you cannot fight or avoid them through effort. So, please be kind to yourself and perhaps see them as an opportunity to practice what you are learning 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, it’s possible to overcome a sickness like the flu or covid while dealing with insomnia.
Insomnia isn’t really a sleep problem since people with insomnia still sleep and haven’t lost their biological ability to sleep.
Really, insomnia is a struggle problem — the more we struggle with sleep (and the thoughts and feelings that often show up when we are struggling with sleep), the more difficult everything can become.
Even if someone is living with the worst insomnia imaginable, their body will still generate — at the very least — the minimum amount of sleep it needs.
—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.
Glad to hear the podcast is proving helpful!
The human brain is a thought generating machine — it pumps out thought after thought after thought. Some are helpful. Some aren’t. Some are important. Some aren’t. Some feel good. Some don’t.
Thoughts are snippets of information that your mind is generating as it does its job of looking out for you. Your experience probably tells you that you cannot control those thoughts (not permanently, at least) — but you always get to choose how you respond.
Typically there are two ways to respond:
1. You can try to fight or avoid those thoughts. How workable is that, according to your own experience?
2. You can practice acknowledging those thoughts and allow them to come and go as they choose. Perhaps, with ongoing practice, that might reduce their power and influence since they might end up creating less 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.
Hello Dijimena and welcome to the forum.
It sounds as though you’ve found that taking ever-stronger doses of medication isn’t a strategy that’s proving to be effective for you. Have you discussed ways you might be able to move away from medication with your doctor?
There are plenty of success stories on the Insomnia Coach podcast of people who moved away from medication.
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.
I am yet to meet anyone who has been able to directly and permanently make themselves wake at a certain time through effort — perhaps it’s that goal that might be creating a bit of a struggle, jts?
—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 difficult, Vonny.
First, it can be helpful to know that waking during the night is a normal part of sleep. What can often make falling back to sleep more difficult is… trying to fall back to sleep — because sleep doesn’t usually respond well to effort.
If we try to make sleep happen, we can start to worry (which is normal) when it doesn’t happen. So then, we can start trying even harder to make sleep happen and we can also start trying to fight or avoid worry — or any other of the natural and normal human thoughts and feelings that can show up when things are difficult.
Before long, we can end up feeling well and truly stuck. And, because the brain’s main job is to look out for us, it’s going to generate even more thoughts and feelings about this — which can make things more difficult and create a distraction during the day, too.
So, now we can see how we might have got to this place of “stuckness” — perhaps the way out of it is to backtrack a little?
* To move away from putting effort into sleep, to move away from trying to fall back to sleep when we wake at night. An alternative might be to do something more appealing at night whenever you find yourself struggling. Not with the goal of making sleep happen, but with the goal of building skill in experiencing wakefulness with a bit less struggle.
* To move away from trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings. An alternative might be to acknowledge them, make space for them, allow them to come and go. To be kind to yourself when things feel difficult. To refocus your attention on where you are, what you’re doing (and also perhaps what you could be doing).
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.
There’s always hope and tapering is always possible! You might want to check out the Insomnia Coach podcast since many people there were once taking medication (often for many years). As always, it’s important to discuss any potential changes to medication with your doctor first.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
You probably feel unsure how to repeat the result you described because, ultimately, you cannot — not through effort, at least! That’s because sleep doesn’t respond well to effort — it cannot be directly or permanently controlled.
For the best conditions for sleep, there needs to be enough sleep drive (we need to have been awake for long enough) and there needs to be an absence of effort to make sleep happen.
If there’s insufficient sleep drive or there’s too much effort being put into sleep, conditions are good for a struggle to happen.
As for the supplements — the human body doesn’t require any supplements to generate sleep. Perhaps supplements might be one of those “efforts” that can end up 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.
