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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.
Many people have recommended that book — I have a copy on my book shelf but I haven’t found the time to read through it yet! Thanks for sharing, Larry!
—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, Noel!
When you say you need to smooth out the highs and lows, what are you referring to? It sounds as though you might still have some lingering goals related to controlling things that your experience tells you cannot be controlled — and that, in turn, might be setting you up for some ongoing struggle.
It makes complete sense that you have certain goals and desires — and that’s OK! Where we can get tripped up is when we act in ways that aren’t aligned with the person we want to be or the life we want to live as we attempt to control things that cannot be controlled. When our energy and attention becomes focused on all the difficult stuff we’re experiencing, making it harder to do things (or even notice things) that matter.
Predictions are no different to thoughts. Sometimes they are true. Sometimes they aren’t. And it’s not possible to permanently delete certain thoughts (or feelings) from your brain.
They’ll always be present and they’ll always come back when they choose to do so. Learning a second language doesn’t delete the first language you learned from your brain, right?
Thoughts will always pop up for as long as you have a human brain (yikes, imagine a life without any thoughts whatsoever — would that even be a life?). As you shared, what matters is how you respond to your thoughts.
You can respond by trying to fight or avoid certain thoughts — a response that creates more struggle, consumes your energy and attention, pulls you away from the life you want to live, and makes things more difficult.
Or you can practice acknowledging your thoughts, making space for them to exist, and then continuing to do things that matter — even in their presence.
I can’t think of any other alternatives to those two options. Can 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.
It sounds like you are on the right track, Genie!
—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.
Sleep inertia is the sensation of fatigue and grogginess that can often show up when we wake from sleep and it isn’t always a reflection of how well we slept.
Many people (including those who have no issues with sleep) feel groggy, grumpy, foggy, and not at their best first thing in the morning — and those symptoms can last for up to two hours or so after waking.
There was actually a study undertaken that involved only the best possible sleepers researchers could find — they were young and typically got eight hours of sleep each night. After they were recruited for the study, when they woke after their eight hours of sleep they were asked to report how sleepy/alert they felt and were then asked to do some basic arithmetic every 10 minutes for three hours.
The study found it took these great sleepers about one-and-a-half hours after waking to get to their average level of alertness and mental performance for the day! So, how we feel when we wake in the morning isn’t always a reflection of how we sleep — because it’s normal and expected to feel somewhat groggy and unrefreshed for the first couple of hours or so after waking.
In other words, we’re probably not supposed to feel great when we first wake from sleep!
If you continue to find this a challenge, doing something that requires a little movement (such as a short walk around the block or some stretching) can help improve alertness and promote wakefulness.
Something that might be confused with sleep inertia is the natural dip in our circadian rhythm that happens in the afternoon. There are a few hours in the afternoon when the body’s “wake” signal weakens and that can create a sensation of sleepiness and tiredness. Again, movement and activity can be a helpful way of responding to that.
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.
Hello @frosty and thanks for the great question!
It might be helpful to explore what your goals are — it sounds as though you might be trying to make a certain amount of deep sleep happen or trying to get rid of fatigue. Is that right?
If so, it’s completely understandable that you would like to get more deep sleep and experience less fatigue! And, from your own experience, is it possible to directly and permanently control those things? Is it possible, through effort, to make sleep happen or to eliminate fatigue?
If your experience tells you that you cannot directly or permanently make more deep sleep happen or permanently get rid of fatigue, where does all the ongoing effort that’s spent trying to achieve those things get you? Might that effort be making things more difficult?
Now, let’s say that one day you find a dusty lamp, give it a rub, and a genie appears and promises to grant you two wishes.
Your first wish is for the exact amount and type of sleep you’d love to get.
Your second wish is to permanently eliminate fatigue.
Once those wishes have been granted and you are no longer struggling with those things, what will you then be able to do that you are unable to do right now?
—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.
