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Difficult thoughts and feelings are normal and natural. When they show up you really have only two ways to respond:
1. Try to fight or avoid those difficult thoughts and feelings and perhaps end up doing things that move you away from the person you want to be and the life you want to live.
2. Practice acknowledging and making space for all those thoughts and feelings to exist, and continue to do things that keep you moving toward the life you want to live, even in their presence.
Which option feels most workable to you? What does your experience tell 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.
Hello @Kvidder and welcome to the forum. As you have seen from the replies to your post, what you are going through is not unique or unusual — it’s all part of the struggle associated with insomnia.
Many people find that the more they try to fight or avoid wakefulness and the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it, the more powerful, influential, and difficult nighttime wakefulness and all those thoughts and feelings become — and the more likely they are to get pulled away from doing things that matter, being the person they want to be, and living the kind of life they want to live.
The more willing we can be (which is a skill that requires a lot of practice!) to experience wakefulness and all those difficult thoughts and feelings, the less powerful and influential they might become. This, in turn, can allow us to refocus our attention and our energy to do things that matter, be the person we want to be, and live the kind of life we want to live.
You might find my podcast episode with Maria helpful: How Maria faced the fear of insomnia by allowing it to exist and discovered that all its power came from how she responded to it (#49).
I hope there’s something helpful 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.
Welcome! Glad to hear you’re giving the free sleep training for insomnia course a try — I wish you all the best with it! You’re definitely 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.
As you shared, it’s totally natural and normal to have difficult nights from time to time — just as it’s totally natural and normal to have difficult days from time to time. There’s nothing we can do to avoid them — they are a part of the human experience.
What matters is how we respond, because that determines whether we get tangled up in a struggle that makes things more difficult.
As you know from experience, the more you try to control sleep the more likely you are to struggle with sleep. And, it’s all too easy to fall back into that struggle when things feel difficult — the brain is hard-wired to identify a problem and then try to fix it.
Often, the way to fix problems is through effort, right? Not with sleep, though — and that’s why it’s so easy to fall back into the struggle because when effort doesn’t work the brain can get confused. It runs out of ideas and often tells us to continue with effort — to try harder and harder. Then we can get stuck!
Having a thought such as, “What would happen to my sleep confidence if I had a completely sleepless night again after all this time?” cannot stop sleep from happening. We can have any possible thought and sleep is still possible.
What can make sleep more difficult is “trying” to sleep, trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts and feelings associated with nighttime wakefulness, and putting pressure on ourselves to sleep. All of which might be best summarized by an unwillingness to experience wakefulness.
I hope there’s something useful here — you might also find the page on ACT for insomnia helpful.
—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 @donnalouise72 and welcome to the forum!
CBT-I has been proven effective and yet, as as shared by @Denim, it isn’t always helpful for everyone.
In my experience, that’s because CBT-I techniques can sometimes end up becoming a whole new set of rules and rituals that are implemented in an effort to control sleep or to otherwise fight or avoid nighttime wakefulness and the difficult thoughts and feelings that can come with it.
Ultimately, we cannot control sleep. There’s no magic sleep switch we can flick to make sleep happen. For as long as we try to control sleep, we are more likely to struggle with sleep. If you think back to a time when sleep was not a concern, how much effort did it require? How many rituals and rules were needed?
Similarly, we cannot control our thoughts and feelings. Sure, we can temporarily distract ourselves and we can try really hard to think only “good” thoughts and try really hard to feel a certain way and to block other feelings. And yet, ultimately, all those thoughts and feelings we try to fight or avoid end up coming back at some point anyway, right?
If you have tried CBT for insomnia and found it wasn’t helpful (or doesn’t seem to be helping) it might be worth exploring an ACT for insomnia (ACT-I) approach.
ACT-I can help you move away from trying to control sleep, what you think, and how you feel. Many people find that when they become more skilled in responding to all this difficult stuff in a way that helps them move away from an endless struggle, they are better able to expand the focus of their attention and live the kind of life they want to live.
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.
Insomnia typically gets “worse” for one of two reasons:
1. There is an obvious cause or trigger (we fall sick, we receive bad news, a life change happens, we are about to do something important).
When that cause or trigger is no longer present or relevant, things usually get better.
2. We try even harder to make sleep happen.
The more we try to make sleep happen, the more difficult it often becomes.
—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 didn’t find CBT-I helpful, you might find it helpful to explore an ACT for insomnia (ACT-I) approach. I hope this helps!
—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.
My guess is that your brain might be identifying nighttime wakefulness as a threat — so, ironically, as it’s trying harder to protect you from wakefulness it’s keeping you awake. And, perhaps you might be responding to that by trying to control your mind — for example, by trying to make yourself calm or relaxed, or by otherwise trying to control your thoughts and feelings.
So, what might be helpful is to explore how you might experience wakefulness with less struggle — less tossing and turning, less effort, less control. With more willingness to experience wakefulness, it might be less of a presence and less of an issue.
It might also be helpful to figure out why your brain might be identifying wakefulness as a threat. If you got the exact amount and type of sleep you would love to be getting, what would you be doing (or doing more of) that you are unable to do (or do less of) now?
If you did those things now (or did more of those things now) perhaps that could help you continue moving toward the life you want to live while also training your brain that wakefulness isn’t a threat that it needs to be quite so alert to protect you from at night.
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.
If you are finding it hard to stay awake (especially if you need to be awake — for example you need to drive or operate machinery) then a short nap of 20 minutes can definitely be beneficial! And, the earlier you take that nap, the less influence of an influence it should have on nighttime sleep.
I doubt that a cup of a caffeinated drink at 7:00 AM and at noon is going to have much of an influence on your sleep — so if that’s something you enjoy, feel free to continue consuming!
I think that people get though the day after four hours of sleep by doing — they might not feel at their best, but they work through it anyway.
I think there are two options when it comes to responding to a difficult night and figuring out how to get through the day.
Option 1: Do less of what matters.
Option 2: Continue to do what matters.Your own experience can be a good guide as to which approach might be most helpful.
It’s great to hear that you are continuing with plans, independently of sleep, since that can reduce the power and influence sleep might have over your life.
I am not sure how possible it is to stop thinking about sleep — I think that would require a lot of effort, energy, and attention (and suppressed thoughts tend to come back at some point anyway).
Perhaps all that effort, energy, and attention might be better spent elsewhere?
—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.
When do you usually drink caffeinated coffee? If you drink it mainly in the morning, it’s unlikely to have much of an influence on sleep at night. If you drink a gallon of it right before bed, that might cause some problems!
—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.
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.
