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What an impactful and enriching (and no doubt challenging) role you have, Moma!
Tension often shows up when the brain is doing its job and looking out for us — if it thinks we are in danger or if it thinks something is happening (or going to happen) that’s going to be really important, difficult, or challenging, we’ll often feel tense.
Since feeling tense doesn’t feel good, we’ll often try to fight or avoid it. That in itself requires a lot of energy and attention and can often make us feel more tense — often it’s almost as if the “tenseness” becomes more powerful and influential the more we try to get rid of it, right?
In practical terms, we can end up feeling more tense the more we want to sleep or the closer we get to bedtime. This is a common symptom associated with the insomnia struggle — and you are definitely not alone!
You mentioned that you feel as though you are in a bit of a vicious cycle. That usually happens when we respond to a problem in the same way, over and over again, perhaps expecting a different result.
Sometimes, the best way to get out of a vicious cycle is to respond differently. Do you have any ideas on how you might be able to respond differently to all this difficult stuff to help you move out of that vicious cycle?
—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 what you’re going through, @kirstypsmith. That sounds really difficult.
Sleep doesn’t require relaxation to happen — it requires being awake for long enough and the absence of effort.
It sounds as though trying to make yourself relax isn’t proving to be effective — would you say that’s accurate? If so, what might happen if you were to move away from all the effort and attention that trying to relax requires?
—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, Lozelise. How do you currently respond to all that stuff when it shows up and how effective is that response proving to 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.
Hello @susieangela and welcome to the forum!
How do you currently respond to those nighttime awakenings and how workable is that approach proving to be?
A sleep window cannot make sleep happen or get rid of difficult thoughts and feelings (such and anxiety, panic, or exhaustion). Its goal is to help us move away from trying to make sleep happen because the more we try to make sleep happen (for example, by going to bed earlier and/or staying in bed later) the more difficult it usually becomes.
Similarly, the more we might try to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings, the more difficult they can become, too. The more we try, the more likely we are to get tangled up in a struggle with them since we are trying to control what cannot be controlled (I am yet to meet or hear of anyone who has managed to permanently delete difficult thoughts and feelings from their mind).
The struggle that comes from all our understandable efforts can be exhausting and make it so much more difficult to do things that matter. And so, many people find it helpful to practice a different approach — an approach that involves moving away from battling with all this difficult stuff, night after night and day after day. An approach that helps them move away from the struggle that makes all this difficult stuff even more difficult so they can free up energy and attention to do more of what matters.
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 really difficult — and you certainly are not alone.
Jeff talked about his experience with Temazepam (Restoril) in this podcast episode: How working with a sleep coach helped Jeff get rid of sleep-related worry and anxiety and sleep well without sleeping pills (#12).
In terms of coming off the medication, it’s important to discuss that with your doctor before making any changes. In my experience, people often find it helpful to create and commit to a specific tapering-off plan while also practicing and developing new skills that can help them respond to difficult nights and difficult thoughts and feelings in a different (and perhaps more helpful/workable) way.
I hope there’s something helpful here 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.
It sounds as though you aren’t finding it helpful to practice breathing exercises or meditation or going outside in the cold when you find yourself awake at night!
Instead of responding to wakefulness by trying to get rid of it and instead of responding to difficult thoughts and feelings such as anxiety by trying to get rid of them, perhaps it might be worth practicing and developing skill in experiencing all those things with less struggle?
If there’s less struggle, perhaps they will become less difficult and require less energy and attention?
To help you get started with a different approach, you might try doing something you enjoy or something that you find interesting when you are awake at night and find yourself struggling.
So, instead of trying to get rid of wakefulness, certain thoughts, certain feelings, you simply engage in an alternative activity whenever you find yourself getting pulled into a struggle. Your goal isn’t to make sleep happen or to control your thoughts and feelings. Your goal is to practice experiencing all that stuff with less struggle.
Do you think that might be worth a try?
—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 don’t think it would be appropriate to say that medication for insomnia is bad for everyone. It can be very helpful for some people!
Ultimately, whether or not someone chooses to take (or continue to take) medication comes down to what they (and their doctor) feel is best for them.
What I can say is that the human body doesn’t require medication to generate sleep and that no matter how long someone might have been taking medication for sleep, if they wish to move away from it, it’s always 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, Luke — insomnia can feel very lonely which is quite ironic since it’s something endured by millions and millions of people on any given night! Nobody with insomnia is alone, as all the posts here show!
—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 video might be helpful, too: How to stop the sleep roller coaster and make sleep more consistent and more predictable.
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.
Welcome to the forum!
Anxiety and panic attacks can be really difficult — no doubt about it. Since most of us don’t like experiencing anxiety or panic attacks, we often do all we can to fight or avoid those things.
Unfortunately, we cannot control what goes on inside our minds and so all our attempts to fight or avoid difficult thoughts and feelings can end up making them even more difficult.
To answer your question, the presence of this difficult stuff doesn’t mean that what is shared on this website won’t “work” — no matter how intense it might be.
Responding to all this difficult stuff in a different (and perhaps more workable) way will likely be very helpful if you feel that the way you are currently responding isn’t getting you any closer to where you want to be.
I hope there’s something useful here 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.
Some great stuff in this thread!
It can sometimes be helpful to remind ourselves that our brain never works against us — it’s job is to look out for us and sometimes it can try so hard and take that job so seriously, that it kind of gets in the way a bit!
As you shared, @langleys18, people who sleep well don’t tend to have any sleep rules and rituals. So, with that in mind, perhaps it’s the rules and rituals and the effort to control sleep that might be making things more difficult, rather than whatever your brain might be doing as it does its job of looking out 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.
If you are implementing a sleep window it can be helpful to think of the start time of the sleep window as an earliest possible bedtime — and to only go to bed when you feel sleepy enough for sleep, once the sleep window has begun.
So, for example, if your sleep window starts at 11:30 PM, you would go to bed any time after 11:30 PM, once you feel sleepy enough for sleep.
Does this answer your question?
—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 — what can make those awakenings more noticeable (and more difficult) is trying to fight or avoid them, putting pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep, putting effort into falling back to sleep, or battling with whatever thoughts and feelings might be showing up with that wakefulness.
So, what matters most (and what is within your control) is how you respond to waking during the night — whether you engage in a struggle with it or whether you practice and develop skill in allowing that wakefulness to exist (even when you wish it didn’t).
When we are more comfortable with the presence of wakefulness it can lose its power and influence over us — and, as a bonus, with the absence of struggle, conditions become significantly better for more sleep to occur.
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.
Your situation sounds difficult and not unique or unusual — it bears all the common hallmarks associated with the insomnia struggle.
Feeling more awake as the night progresses is something many people with insomnia experience.
This is an important survival mechanism to prevent things like getting eaten by a sabertooth tiger that we might have seen but still fell asleep because it was bedtime. The brain can respond to a threat by keeping us awake and alert.
The brain is very cautious because its number one job is to keep us safe. So, if there is ever a doubt and if there is even only a slight threat (even if that threat is imagined rather than real) then we can end up staying awake and feeling alert at a time when we might otherwise be feeling sleepy or falling asleep.
When we put a lot of effort into trying to make sleep happen, put pressure on ourselves to sleep, spend a lot of time and energy trying to fight or avoid any difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with insomnia, we can train the brain that nighttime wakefulness itself is a threat — that it’s no different to a sabertooth tiger sniffing around, waiting for us to fall asleep so it can eat us!
So, we might feel sleepy when we know it’s not time to go to bed. And, as bedtime approaches the brain can then kick into gear to protect us and keep us awake. And this can, in turn, make things more difficult (especially since we are probably inclined to fight that survival mechanism when we want to sleep and that struggle then consumes more energy and attention and makes things more difficult).
We cannot control what our brain does but we can control our actions. So, we can work on training the brain that wakefulness isn’t a threat. This can involve doing things that help us move away from *trying* to make sleep happen, from trying to get rid of wakefulness, from trying to fight or avoid difficult thoughts and feelings, from modifying our days in response to whatever happens at night. All these issues are explored in a lot of detail in my six-week online course.
As for the sleep trackers, they aren’t usually helpful if the goal is to move away from focusing on sleep — and there’s not much we can do with the information, anyway! Studies also suggest that sleep trackers can struggle when it comes to measuring sleep in people with insomnia.
I hope there’s something helpful here, Don!
—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 awakenings can be very frustrating, right?!
And, waking during the night — whether that’s at 2:00 AM, 2:13 AM, 3:12 AM, or 4:43 AM — is a natural and normal part of sleep.
What can make falling back to sleep more difficult is when we try to fight or avoid those normal awakenings, when we actively try to fall back to sleep, when we put pressure on ourselves to fall back to sleep, and/or when we try to fight or avoid any difficult thoughts and feelings that might show up with that wakefulness.
When you wake during the night, how do you currently respond? Have you tried not checking the time when you wake during the night?
It’s perfectly fine to watch TV if you find yourself struggling with nighttime wakefulness — anything that can help you build skill in experiencing wakefulness with less struggle is probably going to be more helpful compared to engaging in a struggle, trying to control things that cannot be controlled.
Perhaps the AWAKE exercise might also be a useful skill to develop and practice?
—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.
