How trying too hard made things worse

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. Abbie, thank you so much for taking the time out for your day to come onto the podcast.

Abbie: Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Martin: Let’s start right at the very beginning. When did your issues with sleep first begin and what do you feel caused those issues with sleep?

Abbie: Yeah. It was fall 2021, so like almost four years ago, which is crazy because it feels so vivid in my memories.

Abbie: But I had gotten sick, I think it was like the cold or a flu or something, just like a normal sick, and I wasn’t able to sleep which was really jarring for me at the time because prior to this sort of period of insomnia, I had been a really great sleeper. Like I, had my whole life I had basically like.

Abbie: I never really thought much about sleep. I fell asleep immediately. I stayed asleep. Yeah I had gotten sick, I wasn’t able to sleep. And then I remember the next night I was like, okay, tonight’s the night like, I have to sleep. So I was already, like putting that pressure on sleep it has to be tonight.

Abbie: And so that kind of started, I would say like the feedback loop of okay, I am stressed about sleep. The more I stress about sleep, the less I’m gonna sleep. Yeah, I think I was also dealing with just like a period of more heightened anxiety in my life at the time too. I was applying to graduate school and taking, the admissions tests for that and so maybe it was just like, kinda like the perfect storm.

Abbie: I was like, okay, if I’m gonna get better, I need to sleep. I think it was also like, this was the first time in my life I had experienced a sleepless night. And so it was just like, that was really uncomfortable, like laying there awake all night. The longer you’re awake, the more stressed you’re getting, your heart’s kind of beating fast.

Abbie: Like the whole thing was just uncomfortable and new for me. So I was like I don’t want that to happen again. I better sleep tonight.

Abbie: I feel like each night I wasn’t sleeping, I was just getting more and more anxious about sleeping. I think I was like a week in at that point and I had probably slept two hours each night and I was like, what is going on?

Abbie: Am I ever gonna sleep again? And yeah, I mean it was, I would fall asleep around four or 5:00 AM and then be back up again at 6:00 AM for work. And yeah it was just super uncomfortable and yeah, anyone who’s. Insomnia knows how stressful it is.

Abbie: It was like, every hour that passes, I’m like, okay, I gotta get up in what, in three hours, two hours, one hour. And then, just this intense desire to stay in bed in the mornings. I think to see if you’re tired and you haven’t slept, and you’re like, all I wanna do is stay in bed.

Abbie: I do think, like looking back, I think having my work routine and schedule was like really hard at the time, but really beneficial in some ways because I couldn’t just sit in bed and all day and try to go back to bed and I had to get up and get out and go to work. And that was also ended up being, I think, a good distraction.

Abbie: At least for like the eight hours a day I was working. I wasn’t thinking about sleep. I think that was positive.

Martin: What about that day, those days when you didn’t have any work obligations? Were things different then?

Abbie: Yeah, I would definitely I think early on I would definitely, stay in bed all morning, like trying to quote unquote rest or see if maybe I could eventually fall asleep.

Abbie: And just like really dreading the day because I had slept it all and I was like, Ugh, another day I’m gonna be really tired all day. It’s gonna be so bad. Like kind of those typical anxious, catastrophic thoughts of I just, I don’t wanna do the day. Like I didn’t get any sleep. So if there was, if I didn’t have work and nothing was like forcing me outta bed, I think it was, it would’ve been hard.

Martin: So at this point. Things are really difficult as you’ve just described. And when we face difficulties in life or problems in life, we look to solve them.

Martin: So what was your next step? What other things were you trying to do to get your sleep back on track and get yourself back to where you used to be?

Abbie: Yeah, I think I was trying everything. One of the things I started doing early on was like, canceling all my plans and I would get off work and, as soon as I was done with work like the dread and the anxiety about sleeping that night would kick in.

Abbie: And so I would be like, okay, I gotta go home. I gotta make dinner and I gotta get in bed. So I was like, my bedtime was becoming earlier and earlier even though I just, I wasn’t tired. And I think I was also pretty much trying every sleep supplement out there that there is like about a month in, I think I’d seen my doctor and she had prescribed me I think it was like Ambien or something, and I never ended up taking it, but I did try every over the counter supplement, magnesium, melatonin, all the things.

Abbie: And I would get like really excited like, okay, this is gonna be the thing, like this is gonna work for me. And then every time it didn’t, it was like a letdown of okay, it was like more evidence in my mind that, my sleep is broken and there’s nothing out there that’s gonna fix it.

Martin: I think a lot of people are gonna identify with that.

Martin: And all the things you shared are completely logical to try, right? If we want more sleep to happen it’s almost ground into us that we go to bed earlier, that it’s important to go to bed early get more sleep, give sleep that opportunity to show up. And there can be, it can be, it’s almost like we can become really enthusiastic or we can just try so hard that it backfires on us to the point where we do less with our lives and sleep then grows in importance.

Martin: It becomes more of a focus. So it’s almost like we’re up in the stakes. It becomes even more important for us to perform sleep and then when it doesn’t happen as we want it to. You did a great job of just describing what that’s like yourself. We can just, it feels, it can feel like a personal failure and it can reinforce perhaps this belief that there is something uniquely wrong, that maybe our sleep system is somehow broken.

Martin: But the truth of the matter is, it’s. Perhaps it’s all the ongoing efforts and the trying, which now exists when it never existed before, when we slept fine, that might be the true source of the problem.

Abbie: Yeah, definitely. And I think yeah, along the lines of just like trying everything to control sleep, I was like doing all the sleep hygiene, things like that were recommended.

Abbie: Like I was no screens before bed. Like I just, I had this whole routine of I got a no caffeine, no alcohol, blah, blah, blah. That was just like adding more and more things when, like you just said in the past I had no sleep routine. Like I was, I would pass out on the couch watching TV and go to bed.

Abbie: So yeah, I think that’s exactly right.

Martin: Often as we’re engaged in this pursuit of sleep, we end up removing things from our lives that, either give us meaning or are enjoyable. And that could be something like we, we might give up coffee altogether, for example, even though that’s something we really enjoy.

Martin: We remove that from our lives. We remove TV from our lives. We remove going out with friends late at night from our lives. And so our sleep generally stays the same because sleep doesn’t really care about any of that stuff. But at the same time, our situation has gotten worse because we’re taking all of that stuff away in order to serve sleep.

Martin: And it just makes us, it can make us just feel trapped in this just endless spiral of more difficulty and a less joy from life. More withdrawal and more struggle.

Abbie: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think that was my experience. The more I. I stopped my usual routine. The worse, I think the worse that it got, for sure.

Abbie: Which is counterintuitive at the time I was like, I can’t be out until 10 o’clock, like I gotta be in bed. And that ended up being one of the things that I, that down the road really helped me was actually staying out late and doing things late at night and doing all these things despite not being able to sleep.

Martin: I’m curious, you mentioned earlier that you went to the doctor and they gave you a prescription for the Ambien, but you didn’t end up taking end. Curious to know why that was?

Abbie: Yeah. I was really nervous about taking it, but I think what I was really nervous about is that I, that it would work and that I wouldn’t rely on it to sleep and.

Abbie: That was like my worst nightmare. It was like, okay, I can suffer and try to sleep and all these things, and if I took this medication and it worked is that gonna be the rest of my life? Am I never gonna be able to sleep again without this medication? So I definitely was like, I think I was really tempted and really close to probably taking it after a month of not sleeping, but I was like yeah, I just wa I didn’t wanna rip the bandaid off, I guess you could say and go down this like spiral of that I felt like I, I couldn’t get back from.

Martin: And I think that’s a good illustration of how any effort or anything that we do to try and make sleep happen can so easily backfire. Because if we try something and it feels like it works. We can feel that reinforces this belief or this idea that we need something to generate sleep, that we’re incapable of generating it by ourselves.

Martin: And on the other hand, if we try something and it doesn’t work, then we reinforce this belief that we need. We still need to keep looking, that we can’t generate sleep by ourselves, that we failed at that thing or that we failed at sleep. So we’ve got this potential that regardless of the outcome, every time we try, we might be reinforcing this idea or this belief that there’s something wrong with our sleep system, that there’s something wrong with our situation, that something is broken when that’s never the case, as we’ll explore a little bit later in our conversation.

Abbie: Yeah, definitely. I think the reliance, like you said on these external things was really big for me early on and that didn’t end up being the solution.

Martin: You also made a good point too, that if we do feel like we’re reliant on something, there might be a point in the future where we don’t wanna be reliant on that thing anymore.

Martin: So if we haven’t addressed what the real root cause of this issue might be then we are gonna be having to revisit that at some point in the future. So it never really goes away. It’s always gonna be with us.

Abbie: Yeah. Yeah. It definitely felt like a short term solution and I was like, I gotta try, I gotta try something else.

Martin: People that aren’t too familiar with insomnia will usually only think of insomnia as like a nighttime problem, but when we’ve been struggling with it or we’ve got that experience of struggling with it, we know that it really is a 24 hour problem, right? It affects our nights and it affects our days.

Martin: Maybe it affects our days even more than it affects our nights. I’m curious to hear from you. How was this affecting your days? Not only in terms of like you touched upon your, those kind of withdrawal from the activities and doing things that are important to you, but the way your mind was responding. What was that experience like for you?

Abbie: Yeah, I would say it was like really intense anxiety. Pretty much from the moment I got outta bed of just these thoughts of am I gonna sleep tonight? And like I had said going to work was a good distraction, but of course I was like exhausted at work and I was like, I don’t know how many more days and nights of this like I can do.

Abbie: And you’re just spiraling. Is this permanent? Is this forever? And I think I also developed a lot of health anxiety around it, like I had all these concerns is this gonna have long-term sort of negative consequences on my health? I think, rightfully there’s so much out there about the number one thing you could do for your health and your longevity is sleep.

Abbie: And you Google sleep and there’s 15 articles about the negative consequences of not sleeping. And not to say that the science isn’t true. I just think that was like really unhelpful for me at the time of okay, not only is the consequence, like I’m tired and anxious and I, I physically feel bad, but there’s, if this keeps going this is gonna be bad for my health in the long term.

Abbie: So I don’t know. All these thoughts were like spiraling all day long. And then as soon as it. I got dark out, like as soon as the sun started to go down I would get this like intense feeling of dread. And yeah. So it was definitely, like you said, an all day thing, not just like a nighttime thing.

Abbie: I think at night it was definitely more I’m sitting in bed and my heart is racing and my thoughts are racing and the more you’re trying to sleep, the more your heart is racing. And so it’s like a lot of physical symptoms. And then during the day it was just like a lot of my mind is consumed with, am I gonna sleep tonight?

Martin: The messaging around sleep out there is very focused on sleep is very important and I would agree with that. Sleep is very important, just like breathing is very important and we’re still waiting for a study to come out that shows that insomnia causes any health problem or increases risk of mortality. But boy, when you read some of that stuff that’s online, it really does sound like a life or death situation. And when you are already putting so much importance on sleep, it can just make things so much more difficult.

Martin: Because it, again, it ups the stakes, right? And you’re gonna put more pressure on yourself to perform sleep. So yeah, I just wanted to emphasize that yes, sleep is important, but the body can generate it by itself just like it generates breathing by itself. And I think a lot of people here listening to this will really identify with how you described what your mind was doing at the time, it was problem solving for you. It was trying to fix this problem. It was brainstorming, and as it was doing that, it was generating lots of difficult feelings, difficult thoughts. It was generating anxiety to ensure that you were giving it attention.

Martin: And there’s also that fatigue, right? That sense of exhaustion. And it can just be when you combine that with your mind is just being focused on sleep and generating all these predictions or these stories it can be really hard to focus and to concentrate on doing stuff that matters.

Abbie: Yeah. Yeah.

Abbie: That, that was definitely my experience. I think, the anxiety is like enough to deal with and then you’re exhausted, and so that’s only feeding it. And you, I just remember feeling okay, if I don’t like. Die from lack of sleep I’m gonna lose my mind. Yeah, it was just a big spiral.

Martin: How did you respond to what your mind was doing at the time?

Abbie: At the time I had family and friends and a partner who were really supportive and I could confide in and that was great. But I also think unless you’ve experienced insomnia, I still just felt like very alone, in the experience.

Abbie: And finding Insomnia Coach was like huge in realizing that I wasn’t alone and that these aren’t unique thoughts and experiences in, in a good way. So yeah, I was trying to cope I think, as best as I could. I was distracting myself. Trying to distract myself at work and yeah, as soon as I realized that the withdrawing from day-to-day activities was making it worse I think that was a really good kind of switch for me in okay, if I can’t sleep, I can’t control the sleep, but I can control my response and I can control what I’m doing.

Abbie: So instead of going to bed at 8:00 PM like I’m gonna go and go to the gym. And I, with no expectation that the gym was gonna make me tired, just like I like to go to the gym and I’m gonna, if I’m up anyway, like I’m gonna study for the GRE and do my grad school application.

Abbie: So I think, yeah, as soon as I had that mindset shift from withdrawing to. Going back to my normal routine. If anything it, it was a good distraction.

Martin: It sounds like you noticed this conflict between some of the thoughts or the stories that your mind was your problem solving brain was telling you as it was trying to fix this problem for you, like you need to withdraw, you can’t do those things.

Martin: You need to do less. You need to say, no, you need to go home. All of these things. And compared to your experience, your experience was telling you well, actually withdrawing isn’t making things any better. It’s not making me feel less fatigued or more rested. It’s certainly not making my life any better.

Martin: And once you notice that conflict, maybe there was this kinda light bulb moment there that I can hear all these thoughts. I can listen to all these thoughts and stories. I don’t necessarily need to fight them. I just need to respond in a way that’s of my choosing. I get to decide how to respond to these thoughts.

Martin: I don’t have to battle with them, struggle with them. I don’t have to let them control me ultimately. I still have the power here.

Abbie: Yeah. I do think that was like the first sort of light bulb going off of okay, all of my thoughts and beliefs about anything but about sleep are not necessarily reality.

Abbie: I don’t have to believe that, I have this thought, I’m never gonna sleep again. That doesn’t make it true. Or you have this thought like, I need to go home and cancel all my plans and otherwise we’re gonna be exhausted. I was exhausted anyway yeah I do think the realization that I didn’t have to, I guess believe my.

Abbie: My thoughts was also like a really big switch for me.

Martin: What did it feel like to realize that what your brain might be telling you or what your brain might be saying might not actually be true?

Abbie: Yeah, honestly, it felt like a big relief. I and I also think I realize the worse I feel and the more negative the thoughts, the less true my thinking is and the less serious I need to take my thinking.

Abbie: So yeah, I think this big relief of there’s a whole reality that exists out in the world and I can always come back to that and whatever my thoughts, my brain are telling me, it doesn’t always match up with what the reality is. And so as soon as I gave myself like, permission to not believe my thoughts, and I still practice this today.

Abbie: Like it’s not easy, but you have an anxious thought or something and you’re like, okay, or here’s the alternative and this isn’t true. So yeah, as soon as I gave myself that permission to, to not one take my thinking so seriously and to two not trust it, especially like when I’m feeling down or bad I think yeah, that, that was a huge sort of flip for me and in my kind of journey with insomnia, but also just like my overall mental health journey.

Martin: I think it might be human nature to resist what’s difficult or uncomfortable. So for many of us. We will resist anxiety, for example, or try really hard to fight it when it shows up or avoid it from showing up in the first place. As you develop this insight or this light bulb moment that maybe the thoughts aren’t always true, did that change how you were able to respond to them?

Abbie: I think the big thing was just like not taking it so seriously like not taking every thought so seriously. And that in turn helped me take some of the pressure off of sleep because if, if I am, my brain is telling me that, if I don’t sleep tonight there’s gonna be all these consequences and blah, blah, blah, then, but if I don’t have to believe that, then it’s not so much pressure that I sleep tonight or the next night or whenever.

Abbie: I do think like getting some distance from my own thoughts was also good. Like I, you’re just, I was so in my own head and every thought that came up, I had to follow that train of thought and act on it. When I realized that I didn’t I think I had a lot more freedom to, to actually do the things that felt Right.

Martin: So when you found Insomnia Coach, at this point, you’d already been trying lots of different things. What made you think there might be something here rather than it just being yet another one of these things that you’ll probably try and not get much from? What made it feel different?

Abbie: Yeah, I think the main thing was there, this sort of like notion that there’s actually nothing to do, I think a lot of other content, like I had mentioned was like, do this, and this before better or don’t do this and this. And when I found Insomnia Coach, I just really, it was the first time I had seen the messaging like, the more we try, the less sleep will come.

Abbie: And so I think when I first found it, I was like, it’s like when some, when you’re stressed and someone tells you to calm down, you’re like, yeah, okay. Stop trying. Sure. That I think at the time seemed like pretty much impossible. But yeah, I think the, there was a lot of content in the emails that you sent that was like one, like I mentioned, making me feel like I’m not alone in this and this isn’t unique to me.

Abbie: And two. Maybe I can just let go a little bit, like maybe I can stop trying so hard. And there were some other like specific sort of techniques and things that, that you had mentioned that ended up being really helpful for me, which I am happy to talk about. But yeah, I think it was just the permission to stop trying so hard.

Martin: If we are able to remember a time when sleep wasn’t an issue or a concern, what were we doing to make sleep happen so well back then? And maybe our own experience can reveal the most valuable insight, which is that sleep was effortless. It required no effort, there were no rules, there were no rituals. It just happened by itself, and that’s really where we want to get back to.

Abbie: Yeah. Yeah. I think that sort of idea you’re mentioning about some of the most valuable information being like my own experience. I think that came up again and again it later in my journey with insomnia. Like when I would have like bumps along the road, I would go back to okay, I’ve had insomnia before.

Abbie: I pretty much didn’t sleep for like months on end. And I survived, and I. I went to work and I functioned and all these things like that is evidence for me in my mind that I can do it again. And I think what made this like first like intense bout so hard was that I, this was the first time it had happened.

Abbie: Like I didn’t have evidence that I could go back to my baseline, but as soon as I had that, like first night of like normal sleep, I think that was really powerful for me to be like, okay here’s your own experience and evidence that it’s possible to sleep. Again.

Martin: It really is a learning experience, I think.

Martin: And there’s that classic phrase that we don’t know what we don’t know but if we can approach things with some kindness that we aren’t these all encompassing, all seeing individual geniuses, that there are gonna be things that we don’t know. And we can be kind to it to ourselves about that and be curious and be willing to learn or experiment.

Martin: There is so much value there because I think that really is what gives us the opportunity to make change happen.

Abbie: Yeah, I definitely wish I had been easier on myself when things were at their peak. I think I, yeah, just like the self-talk and like the things you’re telling yourself why can’t I do this?

Abbie: My sleep must be broken. It’s all just negative reinforcement instead of positive sort of affirmations for yourself. I think that can be really hard in the moment. But yeah, looking back, I, I think that would’ve been really useful.

Martin: It’s amazing how hard we can be on ourselves when things, when we’re experiencing difficulty and struggle, because I like to believe that there’s good in all of us, and I think that most of us, if we were sitting down with a loved one and they were describing exactly what we were going through themselves, we would talk to them in a completely different way to how we talk to ourselves when we are experiencing that exact same thing.

Abbie: Yeah. That is so true. I think that’s something I, I’m still working on, like in every situation what would I tell my loved one, or my friend or my family like I would, if the roles were reversed and a friend had come to me with this insomnia problem, like I would’ve been really like concerned and worried for them.

Abbie: But of course I wouldn’t have been like. And I would be like, you’re gonna sleep again. Of course you’re gonna sleep again. And I couldn’t tell myself that at the time.

Martin: And if nothing else, again, if we pull on our own experience, we can ask ourselves, how does talking to myself in this way? Or how does acting toward myself in this way help?

Martin: Is it improving the situation? Is it making me feel better? Is it helping me emerge from the struggle? Or is it making things more difficult? And I’m a big, I’m a huge proponent of us using our own experience as our best guide, because every person is the expert on themselves. I’m not the expert of anyone other than myself.

Martin: But what I can do is encourage people to look within themselves and reflect on their own experience. When it comes to so many struggles in life maybe all of them, the answers that we need are already within us. It’s just a case of. Looking for them. And sometimes we need some kind of external influence or source to tease them out, but all the answers are already within us.

Abbie: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point.

Martin: Let’s get into the changes that you made, that you found most helpful. What ones would you like to share with us?

Abbie: Yeah, the most like tangible thing I did was give myself this sort of like wake window in which I couldn’t go to bed. I think I started with three or 4:00 AM or something, and I was like, I’m not even gonna attempt to sleep.

Abbie: I have to stay up until 3:00 AM and then I can get in bed and whatever happens, but like until 3:00 AM I am watching tv, I’m doing something, whatever. And I think this like definitely tricked my brain from I have to sleep, I have to sleep, I have to sleep to, I can’t sleep until this time.

Abbie: I think that was like really powerful for me. And, it wasn’t like a cure all, like all of a sudden I was sleeping, but it took probably a month when I was like slowly pushing back this sleep sort of window earlier and eventually I would, it would be like 2:00 AM and I would be like passing out to sleep on the couch.

Abbie: And I was like, okay, we’ll push it back to 1:00 AM and midnight. And that was really helpful for me. And something that I used, even once my sleep improved, if I had, a bad night or a bad week, I’d be like, okay we’re going back to this like wake window and tonight I’m up until three and we’ll see what happens.

Abbie: So yeah it was totally just a mental thing of telling yourself you need to sleep versus telling yourself you have to stay awake. Which is such a simple thing when you, when I look back, but that was like really transformative. Yeah. And the other thing, like I talked about, I think was just like really returning to my routine.

Abbie: So like I, I would hang out with friends after work. I would go to the gym, take, my roommate at the time was like a night shift nurse, so she was up anyway, so I’d be like, let’s go do something. And, I’d be out, it’d be like midnight and I’d be like, okay. That was all time in which I was distracted and not thinking about sleep.

Abbie: And then I come home and I found sleek to just be a lot easier as soon as I, yeah, sleep to be a lot easier. When I wasn’t laying in bed at 8:00 PM every night waiting for it to happen.

Martin: I think what you’ve shared is a great example of there’s no unique way of doing this that is gonna work or be appropriate for everyone.

Martin: It’s about finding what’s helpful for you with the intent, as long as the intention is workable, as long as you’re not trying to control what can’t be controlled. So for you, your intent was to move away from trying to make sleep happen. And as a way of helping you reach that goal, you decided I’m gonna make myself stay awake till 3:00 AM instead of trying to fall asleep, I’m gonna try to stay awake.

Martin: And that could be such a powerful mindset shift, right? Because then when we’re trying to stay awake. What might happen differently? What was your experience? How did things change when you went from trying to sleep to trying to stay awake?

Abbie: Yeah, I just felt like the, I had a new goal, like my brain had a new problem to solve, and the problem was like, we gotta stay up till 3:00 AM and I gotta find stuff to do until 3:00 AM.

Abbie: So that was helpful. And just yeah, taking the pressure off from and getting outta my own thoughts of okay, it’s another hour and I’m outta sleep. It’s another hour and I’m not asleep. And into just a more calm and peaceful state of mind. And then of course once that happens, like I would just, I would fall asleep.

Abbie: And even on those nights, like when I. I was trying to make to 3:00 AM and I would like doze off at two or something. I would, the next day I would be like, okay, like what did I do? Like how did I do it? And every night it was like I didn’t do anything, like my body just fell asleep and there was enough sleep drive to, to put me to sleep.

Abbie: And then, yeah, as soon as I had, like even I, like I mentioned I was really sleeping like very little. So even when I had three or four hours of sleep a night, that was again, more evidence in my mind that my sleep is not broken and it is possible. So it was that positive feedback cycle, whereas before it had been this negative feedback cycle.

Martin: When you weren’t trying to make sleep happen, you were now all of a sudden trying to stay awake. That urge to sleep just became stronger because you’re no longer putting that pressure on or putting the effort in. And that came too with the bonus of, it’s a powerful reminder that your sleep system is still there, it’s still intact, it’s not broken.

Martin: You are feeling that sense of sleepiness and a sense of sleepiness isn’t always required for sleep to happen, but it can be a nice reassuring reminder when you feel that sleepiness and the difficulty staying awake. And even if someone is listening to this and they don’t really wanna stay awake until 3:00 AM again, that’s not a requirement.

Martin: A lot of people just look to stay awake later than they have been. If they feel like they go into bed earlier and it’s not really doing much for them, then how about we just move it a little bit later?

Martin: It’s just a tool that’s there for you to practice if and when you as the expert on yourself, feel is gonna be useful.

Abbie: Yeah, definitely. We’re trying to get away from here’s the one thing that’s gonna fix everything and that’s not the case. But I do think anything that can flipped the script in your brain from sleep whether it’s distraction or whether it’s staying up later or whatever, I think can be really useful.

Martin: Yeah. And sometimes staying up later can be more appealing than going to bed earlier. If we find that when we go to bed earlier is a lot of tossing and turning and struggling and battling, it can be somewhat of a relief to give ourselves permission to stay out of bed and not go to bed until later.

Martin: Whereas on the other hand, someone else listening to this might find that time in bed quite pleasant. In which case, why not go to bed at the time you’ve been going? It really does, again, come down to the individual, but there is that potential opportunity, bonus opportunity there of being able to do something else earlier in the night rather than struggling.

Martin: The other helpful change that you’ve said that you made was reengaging in life and doing stuff for example, going to the gym which maybe you were doing less of in response to the difficulties with sleep. And I think maybe a lot of people listening to this can recognize that. Yeah I would love to do all these things that matter to me.

Martin: But it just feels so difficult to do that. It maybe, it even feels impossible to do that. I’m curious to know if you had those kind of thoughts, and if so, how did you stay committed or how were you willing to experiment with this idea of still doing some of this stuff, re-engaging in this stuff that matters?

Abbie: Yeah, I, I think early on, like fighting the urge to just go home and do nothing was so hard. Like the last thing it did, it felt impossible to think I’m gonna go do something with friends after work, or I’m gonna go to the gym or whatever. And I did kind of shy away from everything for a long time because it was so hard. But I think even like that first time that I made plans after work or went to the gym and realized like, okay, nothing bad happened I’m still just as tired as I was before. It wasn’t, I think also at this point, like my body was in such like fight or flight mode that like nothing, like I just was exhausted and nothing was making it better or worse honestly.

Abbie: And so when I realized okay, I can either. Go home and toss and turn in bed all night and feel horrible. Or I can go to the movies after work and then come home and feel horrible. I’m gonna pick the thing that at least gives me a little bit of joy for the time that I’m doing it. And yeah not to say doing any of that, like somehow cured my sleep or anything.

Abbie: But I started slowly to like care a little bit less and less that I wasn’t sleeping because it, one of the things I had been telling myself is okay, why is it so bad that I can’t sleep? It’s so bad because I’m not gonna be able to live my life.

Abbie: I’m not gonna be able to go to work. I’m gonna get fired. All these things. And when you realize that, okay, these things are not conditional on sleep, like I can still do these things. Despite whether or not I sleep, I think there was a lot of freedom in that.

Martin: What did progress for you look like? How did you measure progress?

Abbie: I definitely think early on it was still all about sleep and the quality of my sleep. And every night was like either a success or a failure. Like I either slept or I didn’t, and things were very black and white. And I think slowly over time I was able to realize, okay, maybe there’s a little bit less anxiety and a little bit less dread before bedtime because I’m excited to go out with my roommate or to go to yoga or whatever.

Abbie: Like eventually I got to the point where success, I think I, I always was gonna like care about sleep, but I definitely got to the point where success was a lot more like. What is my mental state about sleep? Am I wrapped up in this like anxious bald spiral or am I thinking and doing other things with my day?

Abbie: So yeah, I think measuring progress definitely changed. Does as time went on. And I do think measuring progress in did I sleep or did I not sleep is, was not useful for me personally.

Martin: It makes sense why we would want to measure progress based on how we’re sleeping from night to night because that’s the main problem that we are looking to solve.

Martin: And yet it can set us up for struggle ’cause our own experience probably tells us that sleep is out of our control. So I think it can be useful to dig a little bit deeper and ask ourselves. What makes sleep important to me? Why do I want to get rid of insomnia?

Martin: And on the surface it can sound obvious, but if you do a little bit of digging, we can often find that it reveals bigger insights that are often more related to, we see this as an obstacle to us living the kind of life we want to live. We don’t have freedom over our lives or power over our lives anymore, and we want that back.

Martin: And so when you uncover something along those lines, if that’s something that you do uncover. It can help you redirect your attention towards action. And maybe then your markers of progress become more related to action. And that can be so helpful because action is within your control. So if insomnia is an obstacle to you doing things that matter, or if you’ve started to do some things that matter, maybe then that’s the true progress.

Martin: ’cause it’s actually moving you closer to where you want to be, rather than trying to eliminate something which you might not be able to direct your control.

Abbie: Definitely true for me that one of the worries with insomnia was like, like I said I’m not gonna be able to go to work, I’m not gonna be able to be successful in a career or maintain my relationships, giving myself evidence that’s not true in the form of well, I’m gonna do these things anyway, was so powerful.

Martin: It’s connected to that power and influence all these thoughts and these feelings that show up alongside insomnia have over your life. So you are able to reflect on the fact that they were almost certainly still showing up maybe less over time as you’re less tangled up in them.

Martin: But I’m sure they would still show up because they’re natural, normal human feelings and thoughts, but they’re not consuming all of your energy and all of your attention. They’re more like water off of a duck’s back rather than some, rather than this huge pair of stadium speakers right in front of your face just blaring heavy metal music.

Martin: They’re just starting to lose some of that power and influence.

Abbie: Yeah, definitely. And it’s so interesting to reflect now when I have a period of sleeplessness or something like. Just how now it’s like an annoyance. I’m like that was annoying. I might be tired today. When before it was like, the world is ending, so I think the seriousness at which I view not sleeping has, is definitely definitely lessened, which is good

Martin: When it shows up it’s more like a mosquito rather than a huge black bear frothing at the mouth.

Abbie: Yeah.

Martin: As you were making these changes, was it just a case that things just got progressively better?

Martin: Or did you find there were periods when things went well and then there were like these road bumps or setbacks? Was there any kind of patterns you were noticing, or was it all over the place? What did that look like for you? What did that journey look like for you?

Abbie: Yeah, definitely was not linear.

Abbie: I think about maybe after about six months, I felt like I was sleeping okay, maybe six hours a night in my own bed. But I think sleeping elsewhere or having my partner stay over, traveling, all that stuff was like still really hard for me. And like on one pattern I noticed was like on Sunday nights I really had trouble sleeping because I was like, again, putting pressure, like this is my last night before I have an entire work week to get through. If I don’t sleep tonight, I’m gonna be tired all week. And then by the time like Thursday came, I think sleep was like a lot easier ’cause it just was like, okay, I’m at the end of the week. I’m tired.

Abbie: But yeah, I would say it was probably about like a year until I felt like I could really sleep elsewhere, like travel or stay at my parents’ house or anything, and sleep.

Abbie: There were definitely bumps along the road and about a year in I ended up going to grad school and that was just like a big change in my life and a period of kind of stress and some of the sleep issues came back and I just went right back to the things that I had worked last time.

Abbie: Like I went back to my wake windows and I think it was just so much easier when it did come back because instead of thinking like I, I mean there were some thoughts of oh no, like it’s happening again. But more so there were thoughts of I did this before, I can do it again. And I have better tools now.

Abbie: So I think looking back, it was like each bump along the road made things better in a way. ’cause it was like, again, more evidence that these things are gonna ebb and flow, but I’m always gonna return to baseline.

Martin: You can’t have those bumps in the road unless you’re moving forward on your journey.

Martin: And that’s something we can easily lose sight of. We focus on what hasn’t gone right or we focus on the setback but that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t within that context of some kind of progress.

Abbie: Yeah, I definitely had a lot more gratitude, like going from sleeping one or two hours a night, like every next hour that I was able to sleep.

Abbie: Like I was just grateful for. And even now if I consistently will get eight hours of sleep and every once in a while I’ll be like, I need to remember to be thankful for that because there was a period in which like four hours of sleep was like the ultimate goal. So yeah, definitely a good exercise in practicing gratitude too.

Martin: I think when the difficult nights show up or when the nights when we get less sleep than usual or what we were hoping for, it’s a reminder that as human beings there are gonna be nights when we have less sleep than we want. Just there will be thoughts that show up and some of those thoughts will feel good, some won’t, some will be helpful, some won’t.

Martin: And it really is just a case, like you said, of the ongoing practice. You’ve got that experience at that point of what has helped you. It’s just a case of going back to them or refocusing on them. Because every time you practice, you also get better at them. You gain more skill In all these things that we talked about, you develop more resiliency, you become better at it.

Martin: But that doesn’t mean you can reach this ultimate peak of enlightenment when none of this stuff affects you and never shows up ever again. Life doesn’t work that way. There’s like this magnet force trying to draw us back into a struggle. But it’s a case of you’ve got that awareness now of when that’s happening, you know an alternative way to respond.

Martin: And you can focus on those action based responses to continue moving forward. As you reflect on the journey that you’ve been on, how has it changed your life? What have you learned from this whole experience?

Abbie: When it was happening I remember, like I said, just having these really negative thoughts of this is gonna change my life for the worst.

Abbie: I’m gonna have long-term, health or otherwise consequences from this. And not only has that not been the case but also I feel like it, it really has had a positive impact in that. I just feel like a lot more equipped to handle. The ebbs and the flows. There was a point in my life where, you know, thinking about having kids and traveling and all these things that were gonna disrupt my sleep, like really stressed me out.

Abbie: And those things are a little bit quieter now that I have this like trust that, that I can handle these things. And I think that extends not just to like insomnia, but other areas in my life like these thought patterns and this mentality like can be applied to any sort of like area of anxiety or just any sort of thoughts that I’m having.

Abbie: Yeah, I’ve definitely found it just like mentality shift to be useful in other areas of my life as well.

Martin: You’re not the first person to say that, and I completely agree with you. A lot of this stuff that we talk about can really powerfully impact our lives in a positive way. It’s not just a way to respond to insomnia.

Martin: The experience can be a real growth opportunity, which sounds crazy when you’re still in the struggle with it, but once you’re able to reflect back on it, what you learn from the experience can be a huge asset.

Abbie: Yeah, definitely. I think it, like you said, at the time I would’ve just like totally rolled my eyes that this is gonna be a positive thing in the long run. Okay, sure. But yeah it really has been. Given me a lot of coping skills I think that I can take into the future and into other areas of my life.

Martin: Abbie, I’m really grateful for the time you’ve taken out your day to come on. If someone with chronic insomnia is listening they feel as though they’ve tried everything. They’re beyond help. They’ll never be able to stop struggling with insomnia. What would you say to them?

Abbie: I think first I would say you are not alone. And in the nicest way possible, like your anxiety and your insomnia is not special. I remember feeling like that’s great that all these people have found these solutions, but somehow my insomnia is worse and mine is different.

Abbie: And these things like peace and returning to this baseline is not possible for me. And the funny thing is that’s what we’re all thinking. That our insomnia, our anxiety is somehow different and special. And yeah, just to say that, me overcoming this also isn’t special.

Abbie: That is possible for everybody. And yeah the path might not be linear, but I think it’s possible for everybody and we can’t control sleep, like we’ve been saying. But you can control how you respond and I think that’s the best way forward.

Martin: Thanks again for taking the time to come onto the podcast and to share your journey, your experience, all the insights you’ve picked up on the way.

Abbie: Yeah. Thanks so much. It was great to talk.

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.