Rupsa never had issues with sleep until a big change in her professional life led her to move to a new city. As sleep became difficult, she experienced a lot of anxiety. Her heart would race. She started to develop a fear of going to bed at night. She’d spend four or five hours awake in bed, hoping to fall asleep.

Working with a psychologist provided Rupsa with some clarity and her sleep got slightly better for a couple of months. However, when she started a new job, insomnia returned with a vengeance. The more she tried to make sleep happen, the more difficult and exhausting it became.

Everything was going well in Rupsa’s life apart from sleep. It felt as though her mind was working against her. The more she tried to silence her mind, the louder and more distracting it became. The more she tried to make sleep happen the more of a struggle it became.

Things started to change when Rupsa realized that trying to fight or avoid uncomfortable or difficult thoughts and feelings was consuming her energy and attention and pulling her away from the life she wanted to live. So, she started trying to be more open to whatever showed up.

As she did this, she found her thoughts and feelings often contained important information. Reminders of what mattered to her. With this, she discovered that her mind was never working against her. It was actually working for her.

Rupsa stopped trying to control sleep. She practiced bringing her focus and attention back to the present whenever it drifted away. She was kinder to herself. She became more accepting of whatever her mind might do and whatever each night might bring. With this, a burden was lifted — and, with going practice, things started to get better.

Rupsa now sleeps well and, when the occasional night of less sleep shows up, it no longer has any power or influence over her.

Click here for a full transcript of this episode.

Transcript

Martin: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that by changing how we respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it, we can move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life we want to live.

Martin: The content of this podcast 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. The statements and opinions expressed by guests are their own and are not necessarily endorsed by Insomnia Coach LLC. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

Martin: Okay. Rupsa. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast.

Rupsa: Thanks a lot for having me. I’m happy to share my experiences and I hope it helps someone else.

Martin: I have no doubt that it will help a lot of people. So let’s just dive right in, right at the start. Can you tell us when your issues with sleep first began and what you feel might have caused those issues?

Rupsa: Absolutely. So actually previously I never had. Such problems. I also thought back to whether it existed and I didn’t notice or something like this, but it wasn’t true. I did enough sports every day and I would sleep well and so on. except yeah, except this one phase shortly during my master’s when I realized that yeah, I’m not able to fall asleep and so on. But somehow it also went away quite quickly, maybe a couple of months during a stressful period. But my main issues really happened or started a year and a half ago. There was some big changes due to challenges that took place in my professional life. And this led me to move to a new city, to a completely new environment and so on, and with further persisting challenges in the. Professional life. and slowly the sleep problem got worse and worse actually. So it just started with oh, I’m just awake on an hour or two hours. And then I noticed that my heartbeat is really high. I don’t wear a smart watch or anything, but I just noticed that that was the case.

Rupsa: I feel anxious and so on. And then it led to the point where I think one starts getting afraid of going to bed at night, right? And that also happened and I think this was really the change point in the problem, in the sense that once I started fearing going to bed, I think it got really bad.

Rupsa: So sometimes I would stay up for four or five hours. just lying in bed, hoping to fall asleep and so on. maybe not even getting sleep until three 30 in the morning. So I am an early sleeper, so I’m normally in bed at 10, 10 30 to wake up early. So yeah, that’s really a few hours there.

Rupsa: And yeah. So it really got to that point. and then what was also interesting is that it remained the same or maybe slightly lesser. So the sleep problems did persist even after I solved the challenges that were taking place or that were ongoing in my work life. so even after everything was theoretically fine practically, somehow, clearly something was not fine. So yeah, so I, I tried everything. Of course, I went to a doctor, a gp who did not. Prescribe sleeping pills because they’re really bad, right? They’re really harmful. And she said, is not a good way to go down. Then I also went to a psychologist. I discussed the issues that had happened in the previous year and so on.

Rupsa: It gave me some clarity, some peace of mind, and it definitely yeah made the sleep problems slightly better. For a period of time, for a couple of months or so, then I went on holiday, everything was fine. Then I came back from holiday. I had a new job because of the problems in the previous job. And despite having a new job with excellent work environment, with excellent excellent yeah, boss and working conditions, yeah, somehow the sleep problems returned. Then after a period of two, three months, I was getting very tired. I tried everything. I do sports regularly, maybe four or five times a week and so on.

Rupsa: So I tried to really make myself physically exhausted so that I could fall asleep at night and so on, it simply did not work. Yeah, so it was quite bad at some point, I would say, one notices right the next day goes badly. I’m in research I’m in academia, so it means that I really need to be concentrated.

Rupsa: I really need to produce. and I really need to be able to, yeah, just do stuff. That involves a lot of thinking. And this is of course then not possible with two, three hours of sleep. I noticed I was sometimes losing my balance while walking and so on because of persisting sleep problems.

Rupsa: Yeah, so that is the beginning of the story. Maybe a summary of the whole story.

Martin: Yeah, I think a lot of people are gonna identify or share a similar experience to you in the. There’s, there can be quite a memorable start point, like a trigger. So to speak, if we’re gonna use that word where there’s a big change in our life, whatever that might be, it can be a really good happy change or it can be a really difficult, unhappy change.

Martin: Just a big change can lead to some sleep disruption. And I think most of us can recognize that there’s probably not anything really unusual about that. We can attribute it at the time of, I had a really difficult night. I’m having some difficult nights because of this. There’s this stressor present in my life.

Martin: And usually when we adapt to that stressor or it goes away our sleep can get back on track. Sometimes it doesn’t, just as you touched upon. And often that can be because of all of our completely understandable attempts to hurry that process along to get sleep back on track to make a certain amount or a certain type of sleep happen.

Martin: So we might start doing things, for example, like going to bed earlier than we did before, or napping during the day, or canceling plans with friends to conserve energy or doing more exercise to try and burn more energy. Staying in bed later in the mornings. Trying all different kind of rules or rituals, like avoiding blue screens, walking around in the dark at night, not watching tv not drinking tea or coffee anymore.

Martin: And it’s like the more we do. The more elusive sleep seems to become. It doesn’t seem to respond with much appreciation for all of our efforts and attempts to make it happen. And then we can just get caught into this cycle where it’s like we try, we’re struggling, so we try harder, then we find ourselves struggling some more, and then we try harder, and then we’re struggling some more.

Martin: And it just feels like there’s no way out from that. I’m curious to know from your experience, you mentioned that, things started to improve once you you saw a psychologist spoke to a doctor things seemed to improve. You adapted to your life balance situation.

Martin: All the stresses you adapted, then you went away on vacation, you came back, there was a new job, the sleep issues. On reflection, why do you feel that this, those sleep issues returned after they’d seemingly disappeared? They were behind you. Why do you feel they came back and showed up and created more struggle again?

Rupsa: I think so even though the new. Work conditions were good and everything was running great. They were still new at the end of the day. And somehow yeah, when we take on new roles in our professional lives, this is my perspective of course, that, there is. An adaptation that we have to make to to this new role, right? And I felt that I perceived the changes that I had to bring within myself to adapt to this new job, to this new role. Somehow I perceived it as a. Threatful situ threatening situation as and it somehow reminded me of how I maybe felt in my previous job and so on. So at least this is the explanation I have now that I somehow, in my mind, subconsciously, I don’t know somehow subconsciously I thought that all these new adaptations that I have to bring within myself were somehow evoking the same sort of emotional response one can say to the problematic situations that had happened in the previous role.

Rupsa: The problematic situations with the colleagues in the previous role and so on. Even though these situations were com two completely different situations on the extreme ends of the spectrum of situations, you can have somehow it, it was still evoking the same emotional response. So this acted definitely as a trigger. To yeah. For the onset of the sleep problems. Yeah,

Martin: So it sounds like it just brought back those memories of those experiences of difficult situations in the past related to sleep or taking on new roles at work.

Rupsa: Absolutely. Yeah. Even though these were completely different, right? So somehow emotionally, my perception was that, okay, this is again, a threat, and then the threat was somehow persisting. Or I took it with me to bet like I can maybe frame it that way.

Martin: And did it feel at the time, like your mind was kinda working against you?

Rupsa: Absolutely. Actually, to be honest on the surface everything was fine. On the surface, I didn’t even think anything was stressful. So all these new changes were nice. I welcomed them in theory in practice. I was completely confused why I was still awake many nights of the week.

Rupsa: And for me, first of all, I had to accept the fact that there was something going on because, on the surface. Yeah, I didn’t see a problem. There was no challenge. Everything was sorted, all the problems of the past had been solved. Everything was fine, but I was still awake at night. And so first I had to come to the acceptance that everything was not fine. Before I could maybe even think what was not fine or try to find out what was really setting off this trigger.

Martin: Yeah, it can create a lot of confusion when everything else in life might seem to be going really well. And then there’s just this one thing of sleep, like why is this still the sticking point? And I think it’s, it can feel like our mind is a bit like an adversary sometimes. It’s against us.

Martin: Why? Like, why is it doing this? Why can’t it just relax? Why can’t it just slow down? But really when the mind is doing all this stuff, I. It’s actually doing its job of looking out for us. As strange as that can sound, when we’re in the midst of the struggle, it’s a lot easier, I’m sure now for you to reflect back and understand this.

Martin: But it’s just the mind looking out for us. So it fires up to protect us for many different reasons. It might think that being awake is a threat, like a real physical threat. So it’s firing up to protect you from that. It might also just be reminding you of what’s important, so let’s say you’ve started a new job.

Martin: It’s reminding you of how important that is to you, how important it’s for you to succeed. It can be a reminder of your values, that you want to be committed, that you want to do your best. And as it does all this reminding of what’s important. To get our attention is gonna generate a lot of difficult thoughts and feelings.

Martin: It is going to maybe lead to a racing heart. It’s gonna lead to different temperature sensations some tenseness all of that stuff. Some stories, you are gonna lose your job if you don’t fall asleep. You are never gonna get through the next day all of this stuff, right?

Martin: And we can just be experiencing all this and just be, why is my mind just doing this to me? But it’s actually coming from a good place. And I think just being aware of that can help us start to move away from that endless battle and that endless struggle with our minds during the night, which, if nothing else, just adds more exhaustion and more difficulty on top of what we’re already going through.

Rupsa: Yes, absolutely. A hun, 100%. And really this led to me. So this whole situation of the mind being adversary and me finally accepting that there must be something that needs unraveling. It did lead me to, first of all, stop being hard on, on myself. So I was really the person who needs these eight hours of work in a day to be done in order to feel productive, in order to feel like I am really doing what I’m supposed to do. I, first of all. Stopped being hard on myself. And I said, if I get five, six hours of good work done productive work done, it’s fine. And let me just use this extra time to figure out why this is happening. So why is it that while in theory, everything is fine in practice, clearly there’s something that I’m not giving my attention to. And it led me to realize a lot of things that while solving the challenges of the past, in theory, again, in practice, I wasn’t, I had not acknowledged a lot of difficulties with different people, A lot of difficulties with reactions to different situations, my reactions, which maybe I, I did not to be coming from myself. So maybe because they, I don’t identify with these reactions that I made in the past myself and so on. Really complex complex things I would say that I had brushed under the carpet by just basically solving the problem at hand and not really realizing that there were all these things. and I think this situation, the struggle with the sleep, it, it really made me, yeah, stop being hard on myself and to really acknowledge that there is something I should give my attention to my time and my energy to in order to really, understand what is going on and maybe find a way to solve it.

Martin: Yeah. So how about you tell us a little bit more about that. What did you learn during these periods of introspection or self-exploration that proved to be really helpful for you?

Rupsa: I think the tendency that I often had, or maybe that we often have in general is to overlook uncomfortable situations, right? Or try to, I. Not think about it too much, try to distract ourselves, try to just go on with our lives and just pretend that everything is fine. I, I was really doing this. This is what I know now. And I feel like this has been an immense learning experience because all these long walks of introspection, whatever I may call it reflection this really has led me to now realize and consider like a challenging situation or a trigger as a red light where I stop and I think, Hey, what is it?

Rupsa: What is it that’s bothering me right now in my current situation? And somehow. I have a feeling that at the moment the challenges as I get them, when I get them, I am able to work better around them without taking along with me traces of stress or, something into the future.

Rupsa: So I feel like this has been a huge learning experience that now whenever I feel like something is making me uncomfortable, something is bothering me. I really take the time out from whatever I’m doing in the day to think it through why it’s making me really feel the way it is making me feel.

Martin: So you’re a bit more open to receiving these difficult or uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, emotions, and stories. Instead of it just being immediate resistance or distraction, you’re opening up a little bit more to them and just seeing is there anything useful that I can do with this. Is there some important information here?

Rupsa: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And there are plenty of ways can do that. It’s not necessary that another person hearing this has to take a long walk in nature. Maybe they’re not in a position to do I would just suggest finding a way that works for. The person. And maybe it could be journaling, it could be maybe listening to music.

Rupsa: It could be meditation, it can be anything. I personally also found journaling very helpful. Because sometimes while there are unfortunately challenges in life that we cannot solve immediately, or maybe even in the long term, right? But just putting it down on paper and writing it out in an organized manner, or at least letting it flow through the pen, can really help to reduce the burden that we carry around, by just letting it sit yeah on our shoulders.

Martin: Would you say that the goal with that practice is to get rid of whatever difficult thoughts and feelings are showing up? Or is the goal more to do with building skill in experiencing them with less struggle?

Martin: Or maybe the goal is something else? I’m just curious to hear from you on that.

Rupsa: Definitely the second one. So definitely just recognizing, accepting, understanding what we are feeling at the moment, putting it down in an organized way. If one is journaling or just. Trying to live comfortably with whatever you are feeling and just letting, for me, it’s, if it’s a problem I can solve immediately, I would rather solve it immediately.

Rupsa: But if not, then it’s just a way of recognizing that there is this thing that’s going on and I’m not the only one probably in the world that is having this problem, or this emotional response to the problem. Yeah, it exists and now I have to find a way to work around it or live around it. So this is the goal for me. Yes. And actually in this regard sometimes, so different things help in different situations. So for me, sometimes it’s sports that completely helps me clear my mind. When I had my sleep struggles, sports was not so helpful because I was so exhausted.

Rupsa: I was just making myself. Even more exhausted with the hope of falling asleep or something like this. And then I started doing yoga, I started doing just these kind of, yeah, relaxing sports, I can say maybe. And I saw that had so many benefits to my mind and my body. So one has to find what works in a given situation and definitely just find a way to live with the challenges.

Rupsa: So of course if we had a world without challenges, maybe that would be good, but then what would be the fun in that? Yeah, so the goal is always to just to coexist with what we have or what we are experiencing.

Martin: Yeah, I think you made a really interesting comment there where you said that something that was important to you like being involved in sports that didn’t always feel possible when sleep was difficult, when you were experiencing lots of difficult thoughts and feelings. When that’s the situation, it’s really easy to just completely withdraw.

Martin: So if you’re really into sports, then we just go from being really active and engaged in sports, and then we have no involvement in sport whatsoever. So we get pulled away from the life we wanna live, and yet all of the struggles still remain present. So things become more difficult. But what you did was you replaced a certain amount of sport with another activity that was still aligned with your values.

Martin: It still moved you toward the life you want to live. So you felt like you couldn’t always be engaged in sport, for example, at the same level as before, but you replaced it with something else that was still important to you, that was still relevant to your values, that still kept you moving in the direction that you want to be heading.

Martin: And I think that is so helpful and so important to emphasize.

Rupsa: Absolutely. When I finished my master’s and decided to do, to go for a PhD and for an academic life, did tell myself that this is a life that involves a lot of sitting, a very sedentary lifestyle. And one pledge I really made, or maybe two, is that to have a good work life balance.

Rupsa: And the second thing is to ensure to move. As little or as much as I want every single day. So it doesn’t have to be high intensity sports every day, and I don’t think that’s even healthy. but to move in some way can be taking a walk, it can be doing yoga, it can be dancing, which is also something I do from time to time. So this was a pledge and just sticking to that pledge under difficult and very difficult circumstances, whether it’s sleep related or other challenges from other people, helps one to stay on track, right? So if I had completely given up on. This basic pledge of just trying to move every day or just leaving the house and taking a 10 minute walk, if it’s really that bad I think it would, it can really spiral out of control.

Martin: I like your emphasis on movement. Intentional movement. even if we’re not someone who is really that interested in exercise or sport, I think intentional movement can be really helpful especially when we are dealing with really difficult thoughts and feelings and our brain is pulling us away from the present.

Martin: Just some kind of intentional movement, even if it’s just pushing our feet down on the ground or just stretching our arms up in the air can just be a helpful way of just. Bringing ourselves back into our bodies, bringing ourselves back to the present moment, reminding ourselves that even though there’s all this difficult stuff going on right now, we still have this physical body that we can control and move.

Martin: And there is still this whole world around us that is still here even when things feel really difficult. I just think that getting some practice in with intentional movement when things are difficult can just be so helpful.

Rupsa: Absolutely. And I have noticed in my own life experience so far that sometimes when things get stressful, they manifest itself in terms into things like shoulder pain or, I don’t know, stiff neck or I don’t know, pain somewhere else in some other part of the body.

Rupsa: I think there is a psychologist who’s called Bessel van der Kolk something like this is the name. And he wrote a book where he emphasizes how just intentional movement yoga, stretching, a minimal amount of it can release a lot of tension that we are holding onto in our muscles, in our joints, or. else, and this is something I have experienced personally, and this is something even now when I am in a little bit more stressful situation, I notice that my neck is slightly more stiffer than the previous week and I have a bit more of a shoulder pain and so on, and then I do yoga or I just do some neck exercises and suddenly I feel a lot lighter.

Rupsa: And somehow this also equips one to solve the challenges they have at hand, right? Yeah, a fit body and a fit mind are able to take care of challenges, maybe more productively. So absolutely.

Martin: Yeah, and I think just to emphasize what you. You mentioned as well earlier that our goal with, let’s say, intentional movement, for example, isn’t to magically and permanently delete all the thoughts and feelings that we’re experiencing. Whenever that’s our goal, it tends to add more difficulty and struggle on top because I’m still waiting to meet the person that has complete mastery over their mind and can permanently delete difficult thoughts and feelings can switch off their minds as easy as they can click their fingers.

Martin: The goal is really just to build skill in staying more present or coming back to the present when all this difficult stuff is sweeping us up and it feels like we’re losing control. We’re, we are no longer in the present moment. We are no longer aware of the world around us. We’re no longer even aware that we’re inside this human body anymore.

Martin: Just that intentional movement is just about being present. Being aware of where we are, the world around us, what we’re doing, even when this difficult stuff is present. And I just think that’s important to emphasize ’cause it’s so easy to end up practicing this stuff with an intention of changing how we’re thinking or feeling, which can happen as a bonus side effect.

Martin: But when that’s our intent, when that’s our goal, it can set us up for more ongoing struggle.

Rupsa: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It’s just to stay where we are and stay focused and not to yeah, be swept away by all the stress and the challenges.

Martin: So when you decided to take these long walks of introspection and self-reflection, does that mean that all of a sudden your sleep was transformed and you were getting the exact amount and type of sleep you wanted to get from that moment onwards?

Rupsa: No I don’t think anything works like that. It’s not a checklist. No, absolutely not. Of course after these long walks in nature, trying to get enough sun going out on yeah, longer walks, during weekends and so on, I noticed how much better and calmer I was feeling in my mind, and at peace with with everything as it currently stood. But that did not necessarily guarantee that night I would drop into bed and fall asleep. Of course this is not. This is not how it went, and I think this is also not how it will go in the future. But on the other hand, one notices that I think one just notices that somehow this burden of carrying something around goes away and slowly and steadily things get better.

Rupsa: So on a bigger perspective it’s more nights of sleep per week and whatever. And and it’s also okay to not get the full eight hours or seven hours of sleep, which whatever is your goal, but just try to stay in the present.

Martin: What other changes would you say you made either to your approach towards sleep or how you responded when wakefulness showed up during the night that you feel was really helpful for you?

Rupsa: I think the most helpful one was trying to influence it at all. Just just taking it as was coming every evening. And yeah, so the most helpful thing, and I came to this realization that I was trying to control it way too much because I came across one of your other podcasts and I realized that I’m not the only one that tries to do it.

Rupsa: And then I consciously tried to not. Give it so much importance, not make it the center of attention. So there’s a really nice Venn diagram where you draw a really big circle and then you say that the sleep problems should be really the small, it’s a small way, smaller circle and everything else socializing, going to parties, whatever reading books or doing sports. These should also be able to fall into this big circle of what you should be doing in life. And I think I came to this realization through your podcasts and also through your emails. And I stopped trying to influence. How my night would be. I think that was the biggest change. The second thing is, of course, even now, from time to time it happens that one doesn’t fall asleep and it’s 2:00 AM in the morning and just accepting that everything is fine and also not immediately jumping into a series of thoughts on how the next day is going to be.

Rupsa: How am I going to be able to keep up with all my appointments? How am I going to do all my projects? How will I talk to my students? And so on. It’s it’s not necessary to immediately micromanage everything that is going to happen the next day because one is not able to fall asleep. So just accepting that while I’m not able to fall asleep, but that’s it.

Rupsa: And that’s where one needs to draw a full stop and say, and that’s it. I will do tomorrow as. It comes. that’s really the second thing. A third thing is that sometimes I find it helpful to listen to music very relaxing music when one is awake or just draw or journal or anything you feel like doing at the moment. Maybe get out of bed. Maybe go into another room. Try to take your attention away from the fact that you’re awake and it’s 2:00 AM and do something that one really enjoys doing.

Rupsa: Then suddenly one also feels sometimes drowsy because you just took away all the attention that you were giving it in the first place. these are some of the changes that I made.

Martin: I like this idea of seeing each night as a fresh start, having that beginner’s mind, not having any baggage with what might happen tonight based on what’s happened in the past or what might happen in the future. It’s just, okay, I’m not bringing anything to this night. This night is this night.

Martin: And that’s it. I’m not adding anything on top of it. One thing you mentioned was that you found helpful with, I’m just going to stop trying to influence how each night is gonna go in a practical sense. How do we do that? So when you found yourself trying to influence how sleep would go from night to night, what kind of things were you doing?

Martin: And so then when you were moving away from that, you stopped trying, what things were you doing or not doing at that point?

Rupsa: When I tried to really influence how my sleep would go, I did all kinds of crazy stuff. It is all kinds of rituals, all kinds of, I don’t know, really crazy routines and maybe intentionally doing some kind of meditation, some kind of progressive relaxation because I would like to sleep. And I don’t think you can force it because the moment one starts doing these things in me it fueled the anxiety of not falling asleep, right?

Rupsa: So again, a threat that, and the body always responds to threats in a certain way, which is by making you more agitated. So it it is then a cycle of being agitated and being afraid of being agitated in a way. yes. So this is basically what kept me in this vicious cycle of, and that this is and now when I look back, I realize that the worst nights really came at the time point when I really tried to control my sleep by being at home at six in the evening so that I had enough time to calm down with the goal of going to sleep. On time seriously reducing my social life, seriously, changing my personal character of just meeting new people, doing all the things I like doing I’m quite extroverted in nature. I like to be in new situations conferences, whatever. And I stopped doing all of that by really controlling that no, every evening I’ll be back early so that I am calm enough to go to sleep.

Rupsa: So just giving up that control and up that influence that the lack of sleep has on you. Just, removing it from being so much of a center of attention.

Martin: That intention or attachment to a certain amount or a certain type of sleep is completely understandable, especially when we’re struggling. We all wanna fall asleep quickly, sleep through the night, get a certain number of hours of sleep. But like you shared. That tends to make things more difficult.

Martin: It’s the more we try or the more attached we are, the more focused on this we are the more difficult it becomes. The more pressure we put on ourselves, the more fuel it gives, all this difficult stuff. And the more we’re training our brain that this must be a threat.

Martin: Why are we trying so hard to avoid this wakefulness or to make sleep happen? Being awake and night must be a danger. So we’re gonna have to stay really alert to protect you from this invisible enemy of being awake at night.

Martin: It becomes so easy for our actions to then almost be controlled. It’s like we are like a string puppet being controlled by insomnia, right? We start to do less of the things that matter to us or we start acting in ways that don’t really reflect who we are or who we want to be. And it sounds as though for you this whole idea of just stopping, trying to make a certain amount or a certain type of sleep happen to stop putting pressure on yourself, to perform a certain amount of sleep and to really come down to your actions, started to once again serve you.

Martin: And the life you want to live and what’s important to you, rather than serving the puppet master of insomnia up above you who’s trying to control your body with those strings and tell you, you should do this, you should do that. You snip those strings off with the scissors and you started to act in ways that mattered to you independently of sleep, independently of being awake independently of the thoughts and the feelings and the stories were showing up.

Rupsa: Yes, absolutely. So I would say that just being stressed about. Whether you will survive the next day because of being awake? I think this is something that we have to really, just give up because one has survived days of not sleeping. Sometimes you just take a flight across the world and maybe you haven’t slept for 48 hours and then you survived it, right?

Rupsa: So just reminding yourself that, whatever happens tomorrow will be okay. And one will go through it. Maybe not at a hundred percent productivity, maybe even 20% productivity, but that’s just about it. Every day cannot be the same. And just accepting that fact and not letting that fact trigger another series of anxious reactions.

Rupsa: I think that’s very important. And then therefore, simply just giving up control on what is happening at present.

Martin: Another thing that you said that proved to be helpful was accepting the fact that you were awake at night. When you were awake at night. On a practical level how do we do that? How do we practice accepting the presence of wakefulness, accepting the presence of insomnia when we really want to get rid of it and we really wanna sleep?

Rupsa: In the beginning when it’s really one really has to start off with accepting it. I think doing something else. Something you enjoy, something calm.

Rupsa: I, it can be listening to music, it can be painting, it can be meditation, deep breathing, whatever. Just doing something else. Taking the focus away from what. Is going on right now shifting your attention away. Yeah, sometimes when I’m awake I just maybe read a book, which is always there on my bedside table or journal, which is also something that is on my bedside table or listen to music, don’t have to leave my bedroom and go to another room to remove myself from this situation.

Martin: Yeah, I think this is really comes down to giving ourselves options. Giving ourselves alternatives to being awake and struggling, tossing and turning, trying to go to war with our mind trying to make sleep happen. What else can we do instead? And I think really what it comes down to is how about.

Martin: We’re awake anyway. We know from experience that the more we try to get rid of being awake, the more difficult it can become, the more exhausting that struggle becomes. What can we do instead? What alternatives are there available to us that might help us experience this wakefulness with less struggle?

Martin: Not with the intent of somehow magically falling asleep or getting rid of the wakefulness, getting rid of the thoughts, the feelings, but just a way of experiencing that wakefulness with less struggle. Like you said, it could be reading a book, could be listening to music, it could be getting out of bed, could be staying in bed.

Martin: Really doesn’t matter what we do, because again, the intention here isn’t to make sleep happen because we know from experience, the more we try, the more we struggle. The intention or the goal is to just. Build some skill, I think, in being awake when we’d rather be asleep with less struggle. Really, there’s no rules or rituals are needed. It’s just if we are finding things difficult.

Martin: Giving ourselves alternatives, giving ourselves options of experiencing this difficulty with a little bit less struggle. However, that looks for you because you are the expert on you.

Rupsa: Absolutely it can be. Really anything. It it it depends on the person. It’s a personal choice, what it can be. But the goal is to shift your focus.

Rupsa: It’s the goal is to use the time differently in order to remove attention to something that will not serve you anyway at the end of the day.

Martin: Was there anything else that you wanted to share that you feel was really helpful at moving you away from this struggle with insomnia that we haven’t touched upon or mentioned yet?

Rupsa: Knowing that there are a lot of other people going through the same thing and just knowing that there is a lot of people experiencing the same or related things and there are resources out there, especially your work.

Rupsa: I think I have to attribute yeah, that I, that the fact that it really led me to change my approach. Thank you very much for that actually. and just realizing that, you’re not alone in this and there are other people who have had exactly similar experiences.

Martin: What’s an average night like for you these days, Rupsa?

Rupsa: It’s seven, eight hours of sleep. Eight is quite hard. I’m normally awake by seven, seven and a half hours. Of course. Even recently, a couple of weeks ago, I had a very important event the next morning. And I found it a bit hard because I was just genuinely excited and curious about how the event would go. I got just five hours of sleep and the event went just fine. I think the body gets the amount of sleep it needs and Yeah. And you function just fine at the end of it.

Martin: Difficult nights are still always gonna show up from time to time for as long as we’re a human being. Just as difficult days are gonna show up from time to time for as long as we’re a human being. Let’s say you bought a lottery ticket and your numbers come in and you’ve won the jackpot and you’re a billionaire overnight.

Martin: You might not get much sleep that night. But yet we are probably not gonna worry too much about the fact we haven’t got that much sleep because we know we’re off to pick up a billion dollars the next day. I think the difference is how we’re responding to the difficult nights when they show up, how much power and influence they have.

Rupsa: Absolutely. Actually, I would just remove the word difficult altogether. I would just call it a shorter night, which is something I constant I consciously do now. I never call it a bad night or a difficult night that let’s not attribute the negative connotation to it. I just call it a shorter night. A night that my body didn’t need more sleep, maybe. So this is how I try to look at it now.

Martin: I love that. It’s amazing how our use of language can powerfully impact how we feel and how we interpret things, right? Because the words, we call it a difficult night, or we call it. An awful night. It doesn’t change the night itself that’s happened. It was a night that we experienced, but what we, what words we use in relation to it really has an influence on our own interpretation of what it was, what it meant to us.

Martin: If someone is listening, they feel like they just can’t get past, struggling with insomnia. They’ve tried everything. They’re beyond help. What would you say to them?

Rupsa: I would first say that nobody is beyond help. If so many people have gone through the same things, there is help. just have to find it because help for person A is not help for person B. There will always be challenges and all of us respond differently to having issues related to sleep. And one just has to find a way to live around it and not give, let this one thing have so much control on everything.

Rupsa: You do have so much control on whether you meet friends in the evening, whether you go out for that one event that’s going a little bit late at night, whether you do or do not do your sports and other activities that you enjoy doing. So just removing the focus, trying to continue life as is, and not thinking too far ahead about whether you’ll be productive tomorrow or not.

Rupsa: And just realizing that help is there. One just has to find it.

Martin: Thank you so much, Rupsa, for taking the time out your day to come onto the podcast. I think this has been a really useful discussion that’s gonna help a lot of people. So thank you again.

Rupsa: Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. And I hope that someone finds it as useful as I found previous podcasts from you.

Martin: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to get your life back from insomnia, I would love to help. You can learn more about the sleep coaching programs I offer at Insomnia Coach — and, if you have any questions, you can email me.

Martin: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Insomnia Coach Podcast. I’m Martin Reed, and as always, I’d like to leave you with this important reminder — you are not alone and you can sleep.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk.

I want you to be the next insomnia success story I share! If you're ready to stop struggling with sleep and get your life back from insomnia, you can start my insomnia coaching course at insomniacoach.com.

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