How Anxiety and 'Sleep When Baby Sleeps' Fueled the Problem

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

Kelly: It’s a pleasure to be here. Honestly.

Martin: When did your sleep problems first begin and what do you feel caused those initial issues with sleep?

Kelly: November 18th, 2023 to be exact was the first night that I just woke up and I just couldn’t go back to sleep.

Kelly: And my son would’ve been, he was a couple days away from turning three months. So I had just had a baby. I had a really traumatic pregnancy. Like I lived in the hospital for a month with him. He was early. I was a first time mom. There was just a lot of factors that I just had. I had a really difficult, like postpartum, first three months.

Kelly: And so yeah, one night, like I said, my husband had been, he we had been taking turns with the baby so that I could get some sleep, which we’ll get into later. But it was very important to me to get some sleep, like too important. And so it was my turn to get some sleep and after a couple hours I woke up and I just couldn’t get back to sleep.

Kelly: And I just spent the rest of the night like viciously trying to get myself back to sleep, which like, everything I know now, it’s so clear now how much that does not work. But at the time it was like, yeah, it was, I think it was midnight when I woke up, and then I just spent the rest of the night panicking.

Kelly: I remember it like as clear as day. It was awful. And yeah, the next night was the same. I spent the whole day panicking about sleep. Obviously very tired and. I right then and there, all of the sleep efforts started so hardcore. I did a million things that day leading up to like, when I was gonna go to bed that was gonna help me sleep.

Kelly: And I didn’t sleep at all that night. Not a wink. And yeah, that’s where my story begins.

Martin: So were you at home at this time? Is this after you were back home from the hospital?

Kelly: Yeah, we had just started getting into a pretty good routine. Like we would take turns, one of us would have the baby for a, a few hours and then we’d switch.

Kelly: And so I was home. He had the baby in our bedroom and I was in the nursery, like we just flip flopped. I was on like a little bed we had made up on the floor. And yeah, I was at home and it was a place that, you know, up until that point I really looked forward to going to bed, I couldn’t wait to get in there and get my like three, four hours of sleep.

Kelly: And oh yeah, I still remember it. So well, just like the feeling of waking up and seeing the clock and just, I’d never experienced something like that. Like May, and maybe I had, like maybe I had sleep issues in the past like that, but never like with the weight of having this like newborn to take care of when the sun comes up, so it was like, actually it was like I had a couple more hours left and then it was my turn. So it was like I had all this pressure on myself like, you gotta sleep, you gotta sleep. If you don’t get some sleep, like how are you gonna take care of your baby?

Martin: The stakes felt higher. There was more importance attached to sleep happening.

Kelly: Oh yeah. I was putting so much pressure on myself to sleep. Like people say. I think it’s the worst advice that you can give a new mom is to sleep when the baby sleeps. At least for me, it was the worst because I put so much pressure on myself too, and come to think of it that day before I had taken a nap like a probably an hour, two hour long nap, which was really not like me. I was never a napper. But then I had the baby and it’s like sleep when the baby sleeps. Sleep when the baby sleeps. So I remember my sister-in-law came over to watch my son and the first time I laid down for a nap, I couldn’t sleep.

Kelly: And I was like, what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? Maybe I’ll, I’ll nurse him again and, that’ll help my anxiety. I won’t worry about him. And then I’ll try again. I kept trying and trying, and finally I did. I took an hour, two hour long nap and, looking back at that, it’s no wonder I woke up and couldn’t sleep. My body had, I had slept for a couple more hours and then my body was like, we’re good to go. But at the time it didn’t make sense to me. I was like, I’m exhausted. I should be sleeping until, the alarm wakes me up.

Kelly: And I think that’s another thing, a contributing factor is I had a cesarean with him, and so my body was healing. And so I was sleeping, like lights out, and then I think after I had healed it was like a little different. Like maybe that’s just my theory, but it was something that I thought about a lot at the time was like, now that I’m healed, like my, my anxiety’s taking over.

Kelly: Like before it was like. And my body needed the rest and needed sleep. But now it was like the postpartum anxiety. It was maybe like overriding, I don’t know. I had all kinds of theories that went on for months and months as I got deeper and deeper into the pit of insomnia that I was in.

Martin: Sleep became really difficult. And no matter how hard you tried to make it happen, it didn’t happen as you wanted it to. So that was more trying, more effort. And then when your sleep didn’t respond the way you wanted it to, that’s when all the other stuff can show up, right?

Martin: Like the, all the anxiety the confusion, the difficult thoughts, the feelings, and then that just piles on top. So it’s not even only about the sleep anymore or the insomnia anymore, it’s all the stuff that comes with it. Oh yeah. And in turn. Yeah, because we quite rightly identify this as a problem that we want to fix.

Martin: It also seems to take control over so many of our actions too, right? Our actions start to become quite often less about things that really matter to us doing stuff that we care about that we enjoy this meaningful, and it becomes more about preparing for sleep protecting sleep trying to avoid anxiety or thoughts about sleep, trying to change what we are thinking.

Martin: And it just, anyone, even people that aren’t familiar with this process, just listening to that can get this sense of how it can just take over and it just becomes the number one thing, which makes it all so much more difficult.

Kelly: Absolutely. Any one of my, like friends and family can think back to that time in my life and would agree that I had.

Kelly: Quickly become obsessed with sleep. Yeah, it was it was extremely difficult. It was all I thought about, and I, and here I was and I had this new baby and to love on, but I, day in and day out was just, I, yeah, I was like riddled with fear about going to bed, getting sleep, how much sleep I would get, and it just evolved.

Kelly: It started like that and then it just evolved in so many different ways of seeking solutions and, but yeah, the obsession never let up until I found you. It didn’t.

Martin: It makes complete sense why we would obsess, for example, about this or why we would really go to a lot of effort to fix it, right?

Martin: Because we quite rightly identify it as an obstacle, as a problem. So we want to fix it. It would be really unusual for someone to be sitting here talking with me being, especially as a new mother telling me that, yeah, sleep wasn’t showing up, I was like, Hey, yeah, whatever. I don’t care. I don’t need sleep.

Martin: I can still be the mother I want to be, live the life I want to live without sleep. Nobody’s like that. So it makes sense. The reason why in response to sleep not showing up as it always has done for you in the past, and the fact that it just became so much more of a focus for you. I think that’s human and it makes complete sense that was.

Martin: How things turned out for you. And it’s easy, it’s a lot easier for us now looking back on that. And for you to look back on that and identify that. Yeah. Maybe it was the extra effort, the extra focus that kind of fed into it. But at the time, it makes sense that you were giving it that effort and that focus because it was a problem that you wanted to solve. Absolutely. One thing you touched upon was, you said it evolved, like this kind of new relationship that you had with sleep or being awake and all the stuff that comes with it. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Kelly: I’m in recovery from alcoholism.

Kelly: I’m sober. When I first found out I was pregnant, I really wanted like a all natural pregnancy and birth and had that sort of plan. And once fast forward to the sleeping issues, like I quickly went to medication. I had a. Like a cesarean with my son and I didn’t even take painkillers.

Kelly: Like I took some Tylenol, like I was that strict about it. And so I think that really that really is very telling for like how desperate I was because I, within days I went to the doctor and was seeking any kind of medication they could give me. And so that was like the first evolution of, me trying to solve my sleep problems.

Kelly: And gosh, I like, it was like medication and they tried to give me antidepressants and I was. Really on the fence about doing that. I started like with some antihistamine, like anti-anxiety meds and like that briefly worked for a little, but then of course they stopped. And so then I went down like a holistic path and I don’t know if maybe evolution of it is not is the right word, but it was just so many different avenues that I found myself going down.

Kelly: And those are, all again additional things that I would obsess about, as opposed to being present in my life. Like with my new baby, it was, first it was medication, then it was like the holistic path. Like I had my yoga teacher come over and she played sound bowls for me and did, we had all these oils and you name it, I tried it. And so that was my thing for a while and I was doing weekly therapy and all kinds of I had natural tinctures and stuff and then, and then I’d have another bad night and it was like maybe that’s where the evolution part comes in, because it was like each time I found a little bit of a solution and then I had yet another bad night, it was like I would get deeper and deeper into this like place of like darkness because I just felt so doomed.

Kelly: Like I just felt so hopeless. ‘Cause it would be like this glimmer of hope oh, the medication is working. But I knew deep down like I really didn’t want that. And so I’m like, oh, okay. It was always the holistic path for me. It was, it’s my, postpartum and all these things that I’m having issues with yeah, that’s really where the answers lie. And then, I’d have another bad night and it was just like, like I said, just deeper and so it started November, December, January, February. By the time February, a couple months of this went by. Like I was so like bad off, I would say like I was so depressed and just so I mean I found myself just feeling like unable to enjoy my life really.

Kelly: And my son was almost six months old at that point. And of course there were good days here and there, like there were good days here and there where I would have a good night of sleep. But I have a, a journal that I can look back on that even on those good days, I. I would journal obsessively about okay, I had a good night.

Kelly: There’s hope. It was just all consuming. It was all consuming. And then again, another really bad couple of nights in February and I just like completely threw my hands up and I went and saw like a regular doctor and I asked for like hard, like some hardcore medication for me.

Kelly: And that’s when that started. And so that was like my next level of, and I started taking Ativan, which for me is somebody like in the sober community is you don’t do that, but I was like, I was desperate. And yeah, I, that started in February and it was just a rollercoaster ride the rest of the way.

Martin: I get the impression that one of your superpowers is problem solving. You’re, you are an excellent problem solver. You were trying a lot, you were fully committed to fixing this problem. And it’s unfortunate that insomnia is probably the one thing that doesn’t respond well to that superpower.

Martin: It’s like the more attention we give it, it’s like turning on a valve of oxygen for it. It just gives it more life. It gives it more power, more influence, and it becomes more difficult. And like you touched upon, not only does it become a bigger focus, it gets more power and influence.

Martin: It’s almost like. How we might sleep from night to night absolutely predetermines the quality of our day each day. So like you said, we might notice there are some good moments, but then we’re still going back to yeah but it would be different if I’d have got a certain amount or a certain type of sleep or that good moment only happened because sleep happened in a certain way.

Martin: Sleep doesn’t just become one part out of a million different aspects of our life. It becomes the predominant part of our lives.

Kelly: Absolutely. 100%. It’s exhausting even thinking about it. It’s so exhausting. It’s not a fun way to live at all.

Martin: You’d obviously tried so much to address this problem. When you came across my work after you’d already tried so much, what kind of resonated with you? What made you think this is something different that I haven’t tried? Or this is something that I might get value from or might be useful for me?

Kelly: Believe it or not, like leading up to finding your podcast, I was actually afraid to admit that I was struggling with insomnia. I was always labeling it as something else. Like it was my postpartum anxiety. It was this, it was that. So I had never had the courage to like even search. Solution for insomnia. Like even the doctor I saw suggested cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

Kelly: And I was no, I just need, I just need my baby to get older and sleep through the night and then I’ll sleep. So that particular day I had a series of difficult nights and I remember I just went out in the morning and it was like, rip, like I just threw my hands up and I like searched insomnia podcast.

Kelly: And the first one I found was you talking to Emily and she, it was just like I was listening to someone talk about my life. Like she, her. And Sonia started after she had a baby, and like she tried medication. It worked for a while and it stopped and it was just like, I got goosebumps like listening to it.

Kelly: And it just felt like somebody was like shaking me and was like, and I can remember her talking about the letting go and the like living her life in spite of how, her night went. And I I always knew deep down that one day I’m gonna have to learn to live, like my son’s never gonna stop waking me up, or at least not for years, and so I was like, I just knew I was gonna have to find a way to deal with the fear of waking up. Because by that point, like I had a really big fear of waking up in the middle of the night at all. Which is inevitable. And I knew I was gonna have to learn to overcome that. And yeah, for me when I heard that, it just was like a light switch went off and I was like, this is it.

Kelly: Like this is the avenue. ‘ cause it’s like I was always addressing symptoms before and I knew that it was like, I knew it was this fear I had. I don’t know if that’s the best way to word it, but I knew I needed to get to the root of the issue. And yeah, it just felt like that was the answer for me.

Kelly: And that opened, that just opened the floodgates. I like, I think I spent a couple days after that in contemplation and then like maybe two days later I signed up for your course.

Martin: You just encapsulated why I’m really so grateful for people like yourself coming on to the podcast because the podcast wouldn’t exist without guests being willing to come on.

Martin: And it can be so reassuring, I think, to hear that when you’re struggling, you’re not alone. The, what you’re experiencing is really difficult and other people are experiencing it too. And like you shared, it can be remarkable how similar everyone’s experience with the insomnia struggle is from person to person.

Martin: And when you are trapped in that struggle and you really think that you know you’re alone, that something is uniquely wrong, that your sleep system must be broken, that there’s no way out, and then you hear someone describing all the same concerns that they had all the things they tried. That tended not to work or didn’t get ’em the results they wanted, that in itself can just be so powerful.

Martin: And then to hear how these individuals moved forward and away from the struggle is just so powerful. And like you said, it doesn’t create a magical transformation. But it gives you that sense that you are not alone, you’re not unique, you’re not broken, and that there is a way out, there is a way forward no matter how difficult your current circumstances are.

Martin: And often they are very difficult, but there is always a way out.

Kelly: I completely felt like I was alone up until that point. I had researched people struggling with like temporary postpartum insomnia, but I think I realized at that point, my son was a year. He was a year old and I was still struggling.

Kelly: And I think I finally accepted okay, this is probably a little bit more than postpartum insomnia. And so hearing her, yeah, I think I remember I sat down on the sand and I just like sobbed listening to her tell her story because I just, yeah. I didn’t know up until that point that there were other people and like you said, like how similar our stories were.

Kelly: Like I was blown away. I couldn’t believe it. And of course I went on to listen to almost every single podcast you’ve done. And in doing so, you find that it’s unbelievably similar, the qualities and the things we go through. Like most of them are onset, like by different things or triggered by different things.

Kelly: But we all seem to respond the same way, which is just. Fascinating. It’s fascinating.

Martin: And it’s that response, right? Like we touched upon earlier, because it’s human nature. When we identify a problem, we try and fix it. We look for a solution, and it’s just that everything else pretty much in life responds well to effort and problem solving and sleep is just that outlier.

Martin: So it’s so easy for us to get tripped up by that. And then when effort and problem solving doesn’t work, then we completely, understandably get really concerned by that. One, one thing you mentioned, when you listened to that initial podcast with Emily, was you come to this realization that it was, time to face the fear was the phrase you used.

Martin: And you said that you’re not sure if fear is the right word, but what the impression that I got from when you were talking about that was, it was about, this idea of trying to reduce the power and influence that sleep has over your life, for example, by still doing things that are important to you.

Martin: And by, by consequence of that, I think it also comes down to lowering your resistance to insomnia. Lowering your effort to get rid of insomnia, to make sleep happen. That can often be quite a scary thought because then we can become worried. What if things get worse? Because my sleep is like this now when I’m trying so hard to make it happen and it’s just not happening for me.

Martin: If I now try less, then what if things get worse? And perhaps that is often the source of the fear. Did you identify with any of that?

Kelly: Yes and I, I do think that at that point I was so ready for sleep to be less important to me that I almost like with ease, I would say started giving up some of my sleep efforts.

Kelly: So in a way, like I, I understand what you’re saying and it makes perfect sense and I think I was doing that all along in the past, but then like once I heard her and heard her success. Like I was like I was just so ready for sleep to be less important to me. It was of course, yes, very scary.

Kelly: The idea of like perhaps getting less sleep and in my case, like giving up the medication, like there were lots of things that were very scary for me, but I was so ready. I just, I felt like a prisoner and I just wanted my life back. I looked at other people around me who didn’t go about their days talking about sleep and thinking about sleep, and I just wanted so badly to have that.

Kelly: So yes and no. It was a bit of both.

Martin: That makes sense. So you knew that changing your approach would be hard, but at the same time you knew that what you are experiencing now. Was hard as well. But by making a change, by making changes to your approach, you were given the opportunity for things to change.

Kelly: Absolutely. And like I mentioned before, like it’s a part of being in recovery. Like quitting drinking is not easy. It’s the scariest thing in the world. But I wanted my life back, so it was like, it fell into that category for me too. It was like I just, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I was so done with living the way I was living that, yeah, it was almost freeing.

Kelly: I think I, I almost immediately started having little bits of success, like just by letting go of the many restrictions I had placed on myself up until that point. I spent that, I spent so long doing all these little things that, like you hear other people mention on their podcast, like I.

Kelly: I couldn’t have any like light in my room. I like had to be in bed by seven 30. There were all these things. I never watched TV after I put the baby to bed. Like I never ate past like a certain time. And so it was very freeing for me to let go of those things and just trust, like I had the, I started having some trust.

Kelly: It was all fear. Before that. Everything was just fear, like fear driven, fear motivated. What I did and didn’t do was driven and motivated by fear and in addition to the medication I was taking, I was also like, I ritually or every night I took a very specific amount of these like supplements too.

Kelly: So like it was a loaded, like bedtime routine I had and like I immediately stopped taking those. I knew they didn’t work, but I was afraid, like I didn’t wanna stop because what if it was helping me sleep that night? But I just knew it was like, I finally was like, oh my gosh, Kelly, what are you doing?

Kelly: Like, enough!

Martin: Even before the sleep changes, or even before you might notice you’re getting more sleep, or sleep is changing in any way. As soon as you start to break down those rules and those rituals it just, it is just freeing, right? You’re just, you’re having to do less.

Martin: And by consequence, you’re also feeding the insomnia less. You’re not giving it all those supplements. You’re not giving it that action of turning off the tv. Your actions are now serving you again, or they’re at least more likely to be serving you and you’re reducing the power and the influence that it has over your life.

Kelly: And those things, like I say that it was so freeing and I did it immediately, but it was scary. I remember one of the first nights laying on the couch and like watching a movie and I was very anxious the whole time, like watching the clock get later and later. But I just I just reminded myself like, this is just part of it.

Kelly: And, it’s not like that now. It was then, but it’s not now.

Martin: So you’d mentioned that one of the first things you did was just to start identifying those rules and rituals and just breaking them down. Giving yourself permission to do stuff that you wanted to do without letting sleep be the kind of main concern or the main priority in your decisions and your actions as you were working through the course.

Martin: Now you’re able to look back. What were the other changes that you made that you feel were particularly helpful?

Kelly: I think I mentioned before, like I had some pretty quick success in the beginning. So by the time I got to like week two and the sleep window, very brief success, like a week of success.

Kelly: But for me that was pretty, pretty monumental. But by the time I got to week two and the sleep window was suggested, I was like, huh, maybe I don’t even need that. But but of course, like in time it proved that I did. And once I started implementing that, it was scary and it was difficult at first, but that became really helpful in the beginning for me.

Kelly: I think like especially the getting out of bed in the morning at the same time became helpful.

Kelly: Gosh so many aspects of the course were helpful for me, but I also remember not checking the clock, that was huge too. Gosh I used to like I was crazy about how long the stretches of sleep I was getting were, and then to just remove that. It was such a weight off my shoulders.

Kelly: And I think, and that lasted for months, like wanting to look at the clock. Like even on my difficult nights now, I still go back and forth with should I look? Should I not like? But it’s one of those things that I remember it got easier. Like I had all the clocks blocked out for a while but again, like I don’t do that anymore. But those two things were really helpful for me. So many of the like just talks about our thoughts and like how we can’t control them are still like mantras for me in all aspects of my life. Like not just sleep even on just like regular bad days.

Kelly: And we have, as humans we experience like disruptive, unpleasant like thoughts and it’s so helpful for me now to be able to just be like, I find myself doing it often. I’m like, that was an interesting thought, but I don’t like, like I identified with my thoughts before, like I was my thoughts, like I.

Kelly: I was this living, breathing, walking, thought about sleep, and that’s all I was like, and so like the process of going through the course and there’s so many reminders in the course about just thoughts, they’re out of our control. They’re not, they don’t define us. And yeah. So that kind of goes in line with to be awake exercise, like just identifying like thoughts.

Kelly: And I still, I do it almost every time. I find myself like awake and not falling back asleep. And it’s just it’s more of just a natural practice for me now. At the time it was like, I wish I could find the right words.

Kelly: It was like, I think you even mentioned it, it’s just like anything else, like with practice, it just becomes so much easier. But. Then I really felt like I was, like, it was doing, it was still like effort for me and now it’s become more of just like part of who I am, if that makes sense.

Martin: It does make sense. And one thing I remember when you were working through the course was a lot of the concerns that you raised with me were related to the intention behind your actions. Am I just knocking down a whole bunch of sleep rituals and rules and now I’m just replacing them with something else, with all this other stuff which is a completely understandable concern. And it’s helpful that you raise that because then we could explore that further.

Martin: And we could really focus on what your intention was when you were making these changes, when you were making, taking this new approach. For example, the sleep window of having an earliest possible bedtime and a consistent out of bedtime in the morning, regardless of how you might sleep from night to night.

Martin: If our intention behind that is to somehow make a certain amount of sleep happen or a certain type of sleep happen, then it’s probably not gonna be helpful because the true intention there. Is really, it’s a tool that is intended to help us move away from chasing after sleep. Because when we are chasing after sleep, we’re more likely to do things like going to bed earlier, staying in bed later.

Martin: And it comes with some bonuses too. Like the consistent out of bedtime means that we have that opportunity to be out of bed and live our lives, do stuff. It ensures that we’re gonna be out of bed and building up some sleep pressure during the day and that we’re not necessarily gonna be going to bed when at night, when there’s not enough sleep drive to happen.

Martin: But none of that stuff’s gonna make sleep happen. It’s just things to help us move away from chasing after it. And the same, for example, with the awake exercise, which is just about acknowledging the presence of being awake, of wakefulness, acknowledging the presence of the thoughts and the feelings that can come with that.

Martin: And practicing building skill in allowing that stuff to exist with a little bit less struggle. Because if our intent behind that is to get rid of certain thoughts and feelings, or to make ourselves fall back to sleep again, it’s not gonna do anything for us. But if our intention is the right intention, which is to build skill in experiencing this stuff with less struggle, less resistance, then we are more likely to get something out of it.

Kelly: I’m so glad you said that, ’cause that like intention part was so tricky for me. It’s like my problem solving insomnia. Brain was so sneaky and like I did find. I found that to be like really challenging, that the, it reminds me the three good things exercise was something I did every night.

Kelly: And I, that’s when I started rediscovering the, like getting sleepy feeling. And I remember like there would be nights when I would do the three good things and I wouldn’t get sleepy and I’d be like, oh no. And so I felt myself treating that as a sleep effort. And it happened with so many things, like the awake exercise, the sleep window.

Kelly: Like I found myself like you said, like almost treating all of these new tools you gave me as a sleep effort at one point or another. And like it just took a lot of time and practice to eventually move away from that. But yeah, for a while there was, it was definitely. And it’s like you said it’s like I was calling myself out on it, but still doing it because you’re just you just wanna sleep so bad.

Kelly: It’s hard to not sleep. It’s hard. I have so much empathy for anyone experiencing it and I’ve obviously gone through it myself. So I have comp, I have compassion for myself. Looking back at that time, like I was,

Kelly: it’s just like I, you wanna give yourself a hug. It’s of course you wanna sleep, of course you want these things to make you feel sleepy. Like you’re just a human. Like of course you want sleep. But yeah, it is so much about the intention and I think it’s just. It just takes time. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, which ended up being another obstacle for me later down the road.

Kelly: ’cause I had all these expectations of, when I should be better and yeah. That was a whole other part of it.

Martin: I’m glad that you mentioned that you are able to look back on this, with some compassion for yourself. And as you know from working through the course, compassion and self-kindness is an important aspect of the course as well.

Martin: We explore that in quite a lot of detail because we can be really hard on ourselves when we’re going through this difficult stuff. And all of our efforts don’t seem to be getting us closer to where we want to be. And when we are harder on ourselves, it rarely makes things any easier. So I think it’s important to be able to reflect back on our.

Martin: Our history with compassion, but also to be kinder to ourselves in the moment as well when things are difficult. And I think I might have already touched upon this, but the fact that you shared the confusion or that kind of conflict between these new actions. Are these efforts? Am I gonna just be getting more tangled up here?

Martin: It’s a real strength because it gave us that opportunity to dig a bit deeper and to kinda reestablish what the actual intention is. Because when it comes to sleep, really, what do we need to do? Nothing. It’s nothing. But when we are struggling with sleep, we can’t understand this concept of doing nothing, right?

Martin: We need to do something because sleep isn’t happening. What we are looking to do here, and this is where it can get confusing, is we are looking to do something that’s more workable to the struggle that we’re currently tangled up in. So when we are really struggling, we want to do nothing, but we’re not really sure how to do nothing.

Martin: So what we are doing as you work through the course is we are looking to replace the actions that just create more struggle with actions that can. Help us build some skill in doing nothing, I guess is the best way to do it in terms of not having to fight with the wakefulness when it shows up. Not having to fight the thoughts, resist the thoughts, try and change the thoughts, get tangled up with the thoughts, and that requires some action because we’re so entrenched in the struggle with them.

Martin: But all of this stuff is really the ultimate goal is to get us to that place of where we feel like we don’t have to always intervene when sleep doesn’t happen as we want it to when certain thoughts and feelings show up. Do you know, am I’m on the right track here, based on what your experience was at the time and now you’re able to look back on what your journey has been.

Kelly: Oh, absolutely. It was such a hard concept for me to wrap my brain around. Finally, I just, like you said, more workable approach. I had my I, I got, I was doing better for months and then, I had my relapse, if you will.

Kelly: I found out I was pregnant again. And it just re-triggered all those feelings. And it wasn’t until that second time that I I picked up this new mantra, which sounds almost negative at first. But for me it’s been really powerful. And it’s just that there’s nothing I can do about it.

Kelly: There’s nothing I can do. I repeat that to myself so much. Not in a harsh way, but just in a totally, just like hands up. There’s nothing I can do about it. If I can’t sleep, there’s nothing I can do. I cannot force myself back to sleep. So I started watching reruns of The Office.

Kelly: It’s one of my favorite shows. I’ve watched it from beginning to end so many times, and I just was like, all right we’ll just watch it again. And I would just watch episodes of The Office and I just, it was just a letting go that took, it just took a long time. And yeah, one of the lovely side effects of pregnancy is insomnia.

Kelly: So there’s, I have nights often where I can’t sleep and I’m just like there’s nothing I can do and I don’t like it. But I just, I’ll watch the office, I’ll watch some friends, and I just remind myself like, and some nights are harder than others. Some nights I’m full of feelings and I’m really not happy about the fact that I can’t sleep and, just acknowledge those feelings and it’s just, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Martin: And with that approach of less resistance, more acceptance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that because you’re accepting wakefulness, you’re happy that you’re awake. It’s not about that. It’s not about pretending that you wouldn’t much rather be asleep.

Martin: It’s more about just accepting that you can’t control this. There’s nothing you can do to make yourself fall asleep.

Martin: When sleep still doesn’t show up, you’re outta bed in the morning going about your day. How was the way you responded to that night affect things the next day or affect the power and influence that the night had over your daytime life, for example?

Kelly: I just, I don’t even think about it anymore, it’s like I have a bad night and I’m, say I’m up for a couple hours in the middle of the night doing whatever I feel like doing other than fighting. I just, yeah, I don’t even think about it the next day. It doesn’t occur to me. And I remind myself of that at night.

Kelly: I’m like, this isn’t gonna bother you tomorrow. It’s not something you’re gonna think about. Whereas before I was like, tortured by those hours I spent awake. I don’t know if that answers the question. It’s just, i’s freeing, it’s, I just, you can’t force like acceptance. It’s just something like, in my case, like I, I couldn’t force it.

Kelly: It’s just something that had to come with time and as. It’s as a result of letting myself go and do whatever else I feel like in the middle of the night or at the beginning of the night, or early in the morning, whatever time it is that I’m not sleeping, then it’s just, it just frees up like energy.

Kelly: I’m not, I am not as exhausted either. Like I used to be so exhausted, and I know that there’s been times in the last few months where I’ve gotten, a handful of hours of sleep, like maybe four hours of sleep, whereas like a year ago, that would’ve just wrecked me.

Martin: Would you say that the difference in energy levels can be partly explained by the fact that there is less of a struggle, less of a battle going on during the night?

Martin: So the very little sleep might still be the same, but because you are not swinging the sword all night and riding on horseback through that battlefield, maybe there’s a little bit more energy left over, left in the tank the next day, so you’re not feeling quite so exhausted.

Kelly: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly: It’s emotional, like it’s stress, it’s energy. Like whenever we’re, I know for me, like those nights of just battling and being so upset, like it’s, that’s an exhausting way to use your energy like. And that’s part of your 24 hour day, right? So you’re in bed, you’re not sleeping, and you’re, I was a wreck during those nights.

Kelly: Like I’d wake my partner up cry, get angry, like you name it. I went through the motions of the struggle of that for so long. And so yeah, it’s absolutely just reminding myself on these nights that I’m at least resting, it’s, yeah, you can serve way more energy. You’re not nearly as wreck of the next day.

Kelly: And we are we’re amazing. Like humans are amazing. I do believe sleep is important and of course like it’s important. It’s our time to restore. But my. Like understanding and my beliefs like, about what we really need and like how well we can function are completely different now than they were.

Kelly: Like when I first had my son, like I was, like I said, I was just so stressed about how much sleep I was gonna get. And now I’ve witnessed myself like live and do incredible things, like on very little sleep and be fine. On Christmas Eve, I maybe slept three hours the night before and I got up the next day, like I took care of my son.

Kelly: I made appetizers, desserts, I wrapped a bunch of presents. Like I went over to, my in-laws house. Like I did all of the things. I went to the grocery store twice, like you name it, I did it. That day just stands out to me and I was fine. Like I didn’t, I felt a little I didn’t feel my best of course but I did it and I wouldn’t have like emotionally been able to do all of those things had I not gone through this process and just rediscovered like how resilient and like capable we really are.

Kelly: And I will mention that was Christmas Eve. It was very soon after that I started doing a lot better again. So that was like about a month after I found out I was pregnant I really was struggling again with sleep. And that was right around the time that I like really started leaning into letting go and just, I was finding my way of doing other things.

Kelly: And like that particular night I woke up at 2:00 AM and I couldn’t fall back asleep. And I was just like I’m just gonna get up, and I’m just gonna live my life. And it was, yeah, like I said, it wasn’t long after that I really started noticing myself really improving and have been ever since.

Martin: So before you found out you were pregnant again you were noticing progress. You noticed that things were improving, you were sleeping a lot better. You were perhaps measuring your progress at that point based on how you were sleeping, and then when you found out you were pregnant again and sleep became difficult the difficult thoughts and the feelings all started to show up.

Martin: Then it felt like, oh, there was no progress after all because now sleep isn’t happening as I want it to happen. And that in turn creates a lot of confusion or now what? Am I back to square one? What do I do next?

Martin: When you reflect on progress now it’s less to do with sleep itself, which can be helpful because as you know from experience, sleep is out of your control. So using that as a determinant of progress can be a little bit tricky, but you’re measuring progress based on something else now.

Martin: It’s more to do with am I doing the stuff that matters to me? Am I preparing the appetizers on Christmas, for example? Would you say that’s accurate? What would you say were helpful markers or measures of progress?

Kelly: It’s so accurate.

Kelly: I’m so grateful that you understand what I’m trying to say. It’s so accurate. I was, one thing that really stands out to me like when my initial success and I was doing pretty well for, several months is that in the back of my mind, every time I had a difficult night, I was always I had a, like a timeframe on things.

Kelly: ’cause if you listen to your podcast, like at the end people say oh, about six months after the program I stopped thinking about sleep, something like that. Or three months. Or some people it was less, some people it was a year. So I was always like, I was counting the months. So let’s say I started your program in August, and here it is, it’s October.

Kelly: I’m like, okay, I still have a couple more months I need to go, and then I’ll be good, if that makes sense. And so I was really like I just had this like timeframe on myself that I was almost unaware of until I had that opportunity to reevaluate how I was, processing and like handling, sleep issues when they would arise.

Kelly: And so after that second experience of like really struggling with sleep, which lasted, it was a, it was really difficult for probably five or six weeks. I’ve noticed that I don’t do that anymore. I don’t gauge whether or not I’m at the end of this. Because what’s true for me is that I have difficult nights, maybe more than your average person.

Kelly: I don’t know. I assume, I think genetically I’ve always been a little predispositioned to sleep issues. But there’s just not that, that like gauge and that like marker for me anymore. It’s just it’s yeah. It’s so much less about doing and just like living.

Martin: Now it’s less likely or it’s not as able to pull you into a struggle when sleep doesn’t happen as you might want it to happen. Before if that happened, it would really throw you around. It would create a lot of confusion. Draw a lot of your focus, your attention and your energy towards it. Yeah. Whereas now if a night goes. Not according to plan.

Martin: It’s still something that you acknowledge, you’re not pretending otherwise, but it’s just, it’s lost so much of its power and influence over you. It’s not drawing you into a struggle. Like your bedroom isn’t a battleground anymore and you’re better able to just live the kind of life you wanna live. Do things that matter to you independently of whatever might happen from night to night.

Kelly: Absolutely. It’s interesting to me that the two can exist together. Like I can have these really difficult nights and I still have this life that I enjoy, like independently of however I slept that night and that’s all I ever wanted.

Kelly: And I, yeah, before, before this, like second like relapse again, if you will, I think I was way more still wrapped up in how I was sleeping and like you said, like measuring my progress like that way than I realized it took, like going through it again to realize like how much I was still judging my sleep.

Kelly: It’s not, it’s just not really about that anymore.

Martin: I think that’s evidence of just more of your own character strengths as well, because it would’ve been so easy for you to, just throw in the towel, when you found out that you were pregnant again and you experienced that sleep disruption to just be like, no, that this whole new approach that I did actually get good results from wasn’t helpful for me because otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now.

Martin: But instead you, you paused and you reflected and you were willing to explore some more. You reached out to me and we did some digging and I think it came down to exactly what you mentioned, the intention behind your actions from night to night from day to day and holding yourself to some kind of arbitrary timeline of where you should be or where you shouldn’t be, or what you should be doing or not doing. Or experiencing or not experiencing. And that was when we had that discussion about how helpful is it to pin all your markers of progress based on something you can’t control, like how you might sleep from night to night.

Martin: And perhaps it’s more to do with the amount of power and influence this has over you. How the level of control it might feel it has over your actions like. Is it insomnia, controlling your actions? Are they, are your actions serving sleep and insomnia? Are your actions serving you? And I think like you’ve shared, that’s really what helped you get back on track was not holding yourself to specific timelines, not using sleep itself as the kind of marker of your progress.

Martin: And all of that came from that real breakthrough came from your own willingness to explore this, not to just throw in the towel because sleep didn’t follow this beautiful upward chart of just ongoing constant improvement. Which we all want to happen.

Kelly: Wouldn’t that be nice?

Martin: Exactly. But is very unusual. It’s something that I’ve never seen, at least.

Kelly: I think still, I look at my partner, he is like one of those people that he just. When he wants to, he rolls over, goes to sleep, like wakes up, doesn’t matter how late he sleeps. And for so long I like compared myself, but like we can’t do that.

Kelly: We can’t compare. Like we’re all unique and we’re all just different and sleep. We all sleep so different. That’s another thing I really realized when going through your course and reading the forums, some people wake up six times a night. Like I’m one of those people. Some people don’t like I’m, I just, it just, it is what it is and it’s not that big of a deal.

Kelly: It’s like we’re just all unique.

Martin: Yeah, and that is a great point that it’s that comparison factor again, right? I mean we always compare ourselves to other people and other people to other people. I think that’s human nature. And again, when it comes to sleep, it’s probably not that helpful to compare how we might sleep to how someone else sleeps.

Martin: But there’s a little insight there. So you’ve, for example, you talked about how well your husband sleeps. What does he do to make that happen?

Kelly: I’ve, I’ve asked him! Finally, one day I did ask if he is like, I don’t know, I breathe. He does nothing. And it’s possible to get back there.

Kelly: It is. It’s been amazing for me to even witness my own transformation. I’ll still get like, tripped up every now and then, like thinking I don’t, I used to spend so much time laying there, like trying to fall asleep, and I don’t do that anymore. But every now and then, if I lay down and I’m not too sleepy, I’m like, huh. Maybe I’ll get back up until I am sleepier, but every night it never fails to amaze me. I just fall asleep and what a wonderful thing it is.

Martin: I think that’s important to mention too, that this can be a really good bonus side effect.

Martin: When we reduce that resistance, when we dial back that control agenda, trying to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen, of course it doesn’t guarantee that sleep is gonna show up as you want, but it quite often creates better conditions for sleep to happen.

Martin: So overall, as a bonus side effect, the more we practice this approach of doing less resisting less, we do usually notice that sleep does improve because we are creating better conditions for sleep to happen because we’re not in a war zone at night. We’re in a place where there’s less resistance, there’s less effort. There’s just more openness and more flexibility to what shows up.

Martin: One last question for you about timelines, because I know it’s something that everyone is eager to make progress in a certain amount of time. And I always get questions. If we’re not supposed to make progress within a certain amount of time, why is your course six weeks long?

Martin: Why do I get six months of access? That must mean that things are gonna be better in six weeks. Problem solved at six months. I try and emphasize that, the real practice just begins when someone finishes the course. Because it’s about ongoing commitment to workable action. And that doesn’t mean there’s never gonna be struggle.

Martin: It doesn’t mean that sleep is gonna be perfect. There’s always gonna be ups and downs. There’s always gonna be learning opportunities and opportunities to practice what you learn.

Martin: How long would you say it took you to feel as though you’d left the struggle behind? So that regardless of what happened from night to night, it wasn’t like your bedroom was no longer a battleground, it wasn’t a place you feared going, you could live your life independently of what might happen from night to night?

Kelly: Six months, I’d say. I feel like I just one day realized that, daily I wasn’t thinking about sleep. I still accessed your course for months when I could.

Kelly: And yeah, like I have mentioned already, like I still utilize so many of the tools and I still have difficult thoughts come up. Like I said, like insomnia is a part of pregnancy. Like it’s not something like that i’m just like cured. But yeah, six months and I don’t feel like a prisoner to sleep anymore at all.

Kelly: I feel yeah, like sleep is just one of those things that I do. However much I get each night is just a minor detail.

Martin: And because insomnia isn’t just about what happens at night, it’s also about, how it affects our days. How would you say, sitting where you are now based on everything that you’ve learned and experienced how would you say that your life has changed now that you’ve got this different relationship with sleep and the thoughts and the feelings that can show up when it’s not happening as you might want it to?

Kelly: This whole process has helped me so much. To circle back to that word, like evolution. Like I really view this as something like I had to go through to like level up. It has helped me become a better mother, partner, friend just. I don’t think I realized before how much of a control freak I was until I went through this process.

Kelly: And it has helped me so much with just letting go of things that I can’t control. It’s a constant daily reminder for me. Like with my son too, like just becoming a new mom. Like I stressed so much when he was young about like when he would get sick or not sleep through the night.

Kelly: There’s so many things that fall into this category of things we just can’t control that I like, I just see so much clearer now before I feel like I was always trying to control these so many things that were out of my control. And yeah, this process has really helped me just realize how much I was doing that before.

Kelly: And it’s like gentle reminders like all around me all the time that like there’s nothing I can do about that. So we just let it go and live our life the best we can. My life, my quality of life, I would say has improved immensely. I don’t even think I ever mentioned before, but like I, I got off all of those, the medication and like to think that I ever needed it is again one of those things I have so much compassion for myself for because this like process has been, it has been anxiety medication for me.

Kelly: Learning like tools and ways to just be so much more kind and gentler to myself when things are difficult.

Martin: If someone is listening to this, they’re still really caught up in that struggle with insomnia and they’re in a place where they just think, there’s something uniquely wrong, they’re beyond help.

Martin: They just can’t move away from that struggle. What would you say to them?

Kelly: I mean, I just wanna give them the biggest hug. Tell them I’m so sorry. Like, I know how bad that hurts. But my gosh, if I can do it and I can get where I am, so can you, I promise, like 100%. I promise. You just have to trust the process.

Kelly: If you’re listening, you’ve found Martin so you’re, you’re there. Do the program and have so much patience for yourself. So much patience, so much compassion, and you’re not alone. And it does get better. It really does. It just takes time and it’s not gonna be like this forever.

Kelly: I promise. I promise.

Martin: Thank you so much, Kelly, for taking the time out your day to come onto the podcast. Your experience is gonna help so many people.

Kelly: Thank you so much, Martin.

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.