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Hello Chris and thanks for sharing your sleep window!
How long have you been implementing it for? I’d usually suggest reflecting on whether it might be worth modifying the sleep window every week or so.
Remember that the sleep window isn’t supposed to control sleep — it’s not supposed to make you fall asleep, generate a certain amount of sleep, or help you sleep until a certain time in the morning. It’s simply one tool that can help you move away from chasing after sleep — trying to make it happen by going to bed earlier or staying in bed later.
That tiredness can really suck, right?! Is it tiredness as in you feel worn out and fatigued or is it sleepiness as in you are finding it hard to stay awake?
Thanks for sharing your first song of the day — it sounds like that helps to inspire and motivate you! Great stuff!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Totally normal to experience some sleep disruption when crossing timezones or sleeping in a new environment!
I usually suggest sticking with your sleep window without making adjustments for timezones. So, for example, if your sleep window is midnight to 6:00 AM in your home timezone, it would also be midnight to 6:00 AM in your holiday timezone.
At the same time, I would also suggest focusing on where you are and what you’re doing while on vacation rather than focusing solely on implementing an exact sleep window. When you look back on this trip in 100 years from now, I suspect you’re more likely to remember all the things you saw and did rather than how you might have slept 🙂
Remember, too, that there’s no need to get out of bed just because you’re awake (unless you want to)!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
No need to find it enjoyable — that’s a feeling we can’t always control!
What we’re looking to do is respond in a workable way — a way that doesn’t tangle you up in more of a struggle. A way that doesn’t involve trying to control what cannot be controlled.
So, it doesn’t matter what you do at night. The goal is to practice experiencing wakefulness with less struggle. That’s all. And, it’s rarely easy — especially in the short term.
This often takes a lot of practice since experiencing wakefulness with less struggle is a skill — and, like all skills, requires ongoing practice.
As you said, this is hard. So, please remember to be kind to yourself too. You aren’t alone.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Please call me Martin 🙂
I would suggest asking your wife what she thinks — are you so disruptive that she wants to be in the guest room? Perhaps sharing a bed with you is important to her (and perhaps to you, too) — even if you might spend time awake at night.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
That sounds really difficult, @Kacido.
If your doctor says everything is fine, it’s possible that all the difficult symptoms you described come from hyperarousal — your brain firing up into overdrive in an attempt to protect you from nighttime wakefulness.
Being awake at night can definitely be unpleasant — but it’s not a threat in the same way that a tiger stalking around your bedroom wanting to eat you is! And yet, when we’ve struggled with insomnia for a while, our brain can believe that it’s no different to a man-eating tiger. It thinks that it must be a real threat since we are trying so hard to fight or avoid it.
Where it’s so easy to get stuck is we can start to try even harder to make sleep happen. We can try even harder to fight or avoid the difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with insomnia. This pulls us even deeper into a struggle that makes everything more difficult — it consumes more of our energy and attention and makes it harder to do things that matter and to live the life we want to live.
This is where an alternative approach can sometimes be helpful. An approach that involves building skill in experiencing wakefulness and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with insomnia with less struggle. When there’s less struggle, we are better able to do things that matter — and, as a bonus, we also create better conditions for sleep.
You might want to read this page on ACT for insomnia to see if there’s anything useful there. I hope this helps and I wish you all the best! You are not alone.
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Welcome to the forum, @valenk — and thanks for sharing your experience!
Put simply, sleep doesn’t respond well to effort. The more we try to make it happen, the more elusive it can become. And, the more we try to make it happen the more we can end up struggling and that can make things even more difficult.
It sounds as though your experience confirms this. When you decided not to actively try to make sleep happen when you were awake at night, things felt better. There wasn’t the addition of struggle on top of the wakefulness.
As you found, this doesn’t mean that sleep will happen — because sleep cannot be directly or permanently controlled through effort. Yet, experiencing wakefulness with less struggle is usually more workable compared to an ongoing struggle with wakefulness. It can also help to retrain your mind that wakefulness isn’t a threat that it needs to be more alert to “protect” you from at night. It can also help you free up more energy to do things that matter each day.
And, as a bonus, less struggle also helps create better conditions for sleep to happen. That doesn’t mean sleep is guaranteed, though!
Does this help?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thank you so much for returning, one year later, to share how you’re doing @Kat87!
If someone reads your post and is thinking to themselves that they’d love to get rid of difficult thoughts and feelings (such as fear and anxiety) but it seems that the more they try to do that, the more they end up struggling, what would you suggest as an alternative approach?
If you were to share one or two changes you made that you feel were particularly helpful in getting you from where you were (struggling with insomnia and struggling with all the thoughts and feelings that come with insomnia) to where you are now, what would they be?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
I like that idea @GenieB — especially since you have more control over what you do during the day compared to how you sleep during the night!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello @northparts and thanks for sharing!
Feeling really sleepy and then wide awake when you go to bed (or when you wake during the night) is a common symptom of insomnia. It’s often related to the brain firing up to “protect” you from being awake — it has learned that wakefulness is a threat.
Unfortunately, we cannot control what our minds do. But we can control our actions. And, through our actions, we can help train the mind that wakefulness isn’t a threat that it needs to be quite so alert to protect us from.
We can do that by practicing experiencing wakefulness with less struggle — by moving away from trying to fight or avoid it. By giving it permission to be present. And to give it less of an influence over our lives by continuing to do things that matter and continuing to move toward the life we want to live after difficult nights and even when the difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with insomnia might be present.
Of course, this is easier said than done and often requires ongoing practice!
I appreciated you sharing that you’ve found that you’re thinking about sleep less since you enrolled in the course. That can sometimes be a bonus side-effect of less struggle, but it’s not the intent of the course since when we try to control our thoughts and feelings we are often more likely to end up struggling with them.
I’d invite you to consider these questions (and to answer them here, if you’d like to do so):
1. How do you currently respond to feeling awake and alert at night and how is that helping you?
2. How do you currently respond the day after difficult nights and how is that helping you?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for sharing that things are much better compared to four weeks ago!
When things are difficult, it does suck and it can be really frustrating — absolutely! I 100% agree!
And, since you can’t control this difficult stuff, perhaps the best way to respond is to acknowledge what’s going on, to be kind to yourself in return, and to continue to act in ways that are important to you and continue to do things that matter.
Otherwise, what’s the alternative?
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Hello Jim — I appreciate the ongoing engagement and discussion! It sounds as though getting off clonazepam after four years was very challenging — and you successfully did it!
My apologies if my question about what you’d be doing if 7 out of 7 nights of sleep were good was not clear. I wasn’t looking for you to describe how to achieve that goal (especially since your experience seems to tell you that sleep cannot be accomplished through effort). I was asking you what you would be doing differently if that goal was achieved.
In other words, I am curious to know what obstacle your current issues with sleep seem to present. What they seem to be stopping you from doing. Not thinking or feeling, but doing.
When sleep doesn’t happen it can definitely become a struggle if we respond as most of us are hard-wired to respond— by trying to get rid of wakefulness and trying to make sleep happen.
It doesn’t have to be a struggle though.It is possible to build skill in responding to wakefulness with less struggle. It’s not about telling yourself not to struggle. It’s about practicing — through committed action — a way of responding that helps you build skill in experiencing wakefulness with less struggle.
It sounds as though your goal is for every night to be good — and that’s totally understandable! Could such a goal have the potential to set you up for a struggle? If your goal was for every day to be good, how realistic would such a goal be?
To answer your final question — I cannot tell you what to do to experience good nights 100% of the time, just as I cannot tell you what to do to experience good days 100% of the time.
That’s because — as your experience seems to be telling you — sleep cannot be controlled. The more you try, the more you struggle. And, the more you struggle the more difficult everything becomes.
That’s why the focus of this course is about exploring ways of moving away from that endless, exhausting, and distracting struggle. It’s the struggle that comes with insomnia that sustains insomnia. It’s the struggle with all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with insomnia that makes all those thoughts and feelings more powerful and more influential.
It’s the struggle that makes it harder for us to live the kind of life we want to live.
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.
If your experience tells you that you cannot directly or permanently reduce arousal, how do ongoing attempts to do that help 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.
Not blaming yourself for the difficult stuff that’s out of your control sounds like a good example of being kind to yourself, Luke!
I like how you have been inspired by someone you identify as being particularly kind and loving — and have thought about using that person as inspiration to help you show yourself a similar level of love and kindness. Great stuff!
—If you are ready to stop struggling with insomnia you can enroll in the online insomnia coaching course right now! If you would prefer ongoing phone or video coaching calls as part of a powerful three month program that will help you reclaim your life from insomnia, consider applying for the Insomnia Mastery program.
The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.
Thanks for sharing, Czor. If you’re concerned about the buzzing sensation, that would be best discussed with a doctor. It could be a physical symptom of hyperarousal but I am not a doctor!
If you find yourself struggling with being awake or any of the thoughts and feelings you’re doing so well identifying then that can be a good opportunity to practice the AWAKE exercise.
If you went to bed and fell asleep pretty quickly that suggests you were sleepy enough for sleep when you went to bed. Have you tried not even checking the time when you go to bed?
—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.
Just to add — you might also find Cindy’s story helpful.
We also did a podcast episode together which can be found here: How Cindy tackled the insomnia that appeared after her baby was born by accepting nighttime wakefulness and eliminating safety behaviors (#31)
—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.
