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Sleep restriction can be difficult, depending on how it’s implemented and depending on our intent when we implement it!
Can you tell us a bit more about how you are implementing sleep restriction and what your goals are with it? How long is your sleep window? What time does it start and end? How did you choose those times?
Finally, could you share why you are finding it so hard to observe a sleep window? What is it, specifically, about the sleep window you’ve chosen that’s proving to be so hard?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Sorry to hear about your mom’s stroke and I wish her all the best.
Difficult nights from time to time are all part of being a human being — just as difficult days from time to time are normal and to be expected, too.
Do you think it’s possible that all your attempts to shut your mind off might be making your mind work harder and, in turn, be making things more difficult?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum. You are not alone.
What you are going through is difficult and it is not unique or unusual. Those fears and thoughts are completely understandable, they are legitimate, and I think they are quite normal in the circumstances, too!
All those thoughts and stories are coming from a good place — your mind, doing its job and looking out for you (thanks, brain!).
As for how to stop thinking upon command, if you ever come up with the solution to that I think you’d become a billionaire! If your experience tells you that trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings doesn’t work — that they always come back anyway — perhaps that approach is making things more difficult.
What you are going through is hard so I would encourage you to be kind to yourself, and to consider whether an alternative approach might be helpful if your current approach to all this difficult stuff isn’t getting you any closer to where you want to be.
I hope there’s something useful here.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Great stuff here — thank you for sharing these fantastic insights with us!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
It sounds as though you’re on the right path!
It’s natural and normal to experience anxiety — that’s a human emotion. What matters is how you respond to anxiety. If you respond by trying to fight or avoid it, you might be more likely to end up tangled up in a struggle that makes things more difficult.
If you can respond by acknowledging it, making space for it to exist, being kind to yourself, and continuing to do things that matter, you might be able to move away from the struggle.
Sometimes when we try to fight or avoid things that are unpleasant, we can do things that we’d rather not do — things that don’t align with the person we want to be or the life we want to live. This can be a problem if we engage in those kinds of behaviors in an attempt to control what our experience tells us cannot be controlled — because then we get pulled away from the life we want to live and the difficult stuff still doesn’t go away.
So, if the action of taking a sleeping pill before an important event is something you don’t want to do, perhaps it might be worth not taking a sleeping pill — yes, you might experience more wakefulness, but you’ll still be able to do the important event AND you’ll be living a life that’s more aligned with your values.
Finally, it’s totally natural and normal to experience sleep disruption when unwell. As you’ve found, sleeping pills don’t make sleep happen — if they did, you’d be sleeping great every time you took them as you recover from the flu, right?
I hope there’s something useful here and I hope you feel better soon.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thank you so much for sharing! It sounds as though you’re getting a lot out of deliberately acting in ways that are aligned with your values.
As you’ve found, this can’t make a certain amount or type of sleep happen — but it can help reduce the power and influence difficult nights have over you and the life you want to live. And, as sleep loses its power and influence we tend to put less effort into it, pay less attention to it, and — as a bonus — conditions for sleep improve.
It’s good to hear you’re taking your time with the course — there’s a lot of material here and there are no prizes for racing through it in the quickest time possible 🙂
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for sharing that you’re practicing expanding the focus of your attention during the day!
As you’ve found, sometimes this can be more difficult at night when there’s less going on!
There’s no need to think (or not think) anything when you get into bed — sleep doesn’t care about what you’re thinking (but it can get a lot more difficult if you try to control what you’re thinking).
How did you approach this in the past, when sleep wasn’t an issue or a concern? Any helpful insights there?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
It can be helpful to bear in mind that a sleep window isn’t intended to control or modify sleep because, as your experience might tell you, sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled.
The sleep window is simply one tool that can help you move away from chasing after sleep — trying to make it happen by doing things like going to bed earlier or staying in bed later.
Often, the more we chase after sleep, the more we try to make it happen, the more we can end up struggling with it.
A sleep window can also help ensure we are allotting an appropriate amount of time for sleep, based on how we are sleeping at the current time, so we don’t set ourselves up for really long periods of nighttime wakefulness.
If you are averaging less than five hours of sleep a night, do you feel that allotting eight hours for sleep (10:30 PM to 6:30 AM) is helping you get closer to where you want to be or might it be setting you up for some ongoing struggle?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Congratulations on the newborn! It’s totally normal to experience sleep disruption at this time — there’s a lot of change going on! I’d encourage you to be kind to yourself and, instead of going to bed and “trying” to sleep, you might go to bed to give yourself the opportunity to rest instead.
Sleep will come if and when it’s ready. It tends not to happen too easily when we put effort into it!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Ups and downs are completely normal and, when the “downs” happen, it’s totally normal for your mind to come up with lots of difficult thoughts, feelings, and stories as it does its job of looking out for you.
What matters is how you respond to those thoughts, feelings, and stories. As you might know from experience, you can’t directly or permanently control them — but you can always control your actions.
Does your experience tell you that you can directly and permanently control sleep? If not, perhaps taking a leave from your studies risks pulling you further away from the life you want to live and creating more of a struggle?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Well, that’s a great question and the answer is completely up to you @Frazzled!
Would you be going to bed around 8:30 PM — 9:00 PM because that feels like the right time for you to go to bed and would fit your lifestyle?
Or, would you be going to bed at that time in an effort to make sleep happen or in an attempt to control sleep?
If it’s the latter, does your experience tell you that sleep responds well to effort? Does your experience tell you that sleep can be directly controlled?
Something else to consider is that if you go to bed around 8:30 PM and typically wake/get up at 5:30 AM, you’d be allotting 9 hours for sleep at night. Does that seem appropriate?
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.
That sounds difficult.
When sleep wasn’t an issue or a concern in the past, how did you approach it? Is your approach today different compared to back then? If so, are there any insights there?
As for sleep disruption caused by the pressure we might put on ourselves due to upcoming exams (or anything else that’s important), you might find my podcast episode with Wayne helpful: How Wayne improved his sleep by thinking of sleep as a friend that doesn’t need to be controlled (#36).
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.
Hello @mmaringer27 and welcome to the forum!
First, allow me to reassure you that there’s no evidence that chronic insomnia causes psychosis or any other health issue for that matter.
As for the self-monitoring, that’s something the brain usually does as it goes about its job of looking out for us. If we try to fight that, we’re likely to end up struggling — has that been your experience?
If so, an alternative approach that involves allowing the mind to self-monitor might help reduce your level of struggle. Self-monitoring doesn’t stop sleep from happening, but trying to control the mind sure can make things more difficult!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
You might want to start with my free sleep training for insomnia course, @Vicmango7.
If you want to go a step further, you may want to consider either my six-week online course or my phone coaching package.
I hope this helps and I wish you all the best.
—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 go to bed at 10:00 PM (are you always sleepy enough for sleep at 10:00 PM?) and you get out of bed at 6:30 AM that means you are allotting 8.5 hours for sleep.
Do you typically get close to 8.5 hours of sleep? If so, that sounds perfectly fine!
If not, perhaps you might be setting yourself up for some wakefulness during the night — and, if that tends to create a struggle, you might want to allot an amount of time for sleep that’s a bit closer to your average nightly sleep duration.
This will hopefully make a bit more sense once you finish working through the sleep window lessons in Week 1 — please let me know if there’s any ongoing confusion once you’ve done that or if you have any other questions!
—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.
