How Stephanie got her life back from insomnia by letting go of the fight she thought she had to win (#72)

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

Stephanie: Absolutely. I can’t believe I’m here.

Martin: It is like a journey that goes full circle. You start off by listening to the podcast and one day you get to be in it.

Stephanie: Yep.

Martin: I’m excited to get started. Can you tell us when your issues with sleep first began and what you feel may have caused those initial issues with sleep?

Stephanie: So my husband and I really like to travel and we had gone to Europe for the second time and we were in Switzerland and the second night we were there, neither of us slept, like at all.

Stephanie: Like we had our first experience with jet lag and I freaked out about it and absolutely panicked. And we had a huge travel day the following day. So we couldn’t just lay around. We had to like. Travel from one part of the country to another. And I like had panic attacks all day.

Stephanie: ’cause I have had anxiety my whole life. So like panic attacks were not new. But like I, I just had a really rough day. And that night I slept the rest of the trip. I slept for almost a year after that. I slept. It was just, that day always was in my mind when I had to do something scary, when I had to do something hard, when I had to do something that was like, oh man, I don’t wanna do that.

Stephanie: I’m like, do you remember that really bad day where you didn’t sleep and you got through it? But I think in my mind I was always thinking of the, you didn’t sleep and it was horrible. Even though I didn’t really have any problems with sleeping at the time. In my mind it was always playing back to me of not sleeping as bad.

Stephanie: You had a really bad time. That was in July of 2023. And then, end of September of 2023, I was diagnosed with something called idiopathic intercranial hypertension, which is just means that there’s too much pressure in your skull, around your brain.

Stephanie: It’s similar to like high blood pressure, but it’s in your head, not in your body. And I got on a treatment for that, but it caused like the exact opposite of insomnia where I slept 18 hours a day. And because of the diagnosis and the medication I was on, I actually stopped working in December of 2023.

Stephanie: I stayed on that medication until March, end of March of last year. And unfortunately it gave me a kidney stone, so I had to get off of it. And it was a very abrupt getting off of it. It was there was no tapering. It was just, I’m off of it. And I think that’s where the initial sleep disruption started because I went from, this medication makes me sleep 14 to 16 hours a day to now I’m not sleeping like at all.

Stephanie: And also around the same time that I got off the medication, I actually had like a test done for that condition to see if I needed brain surgery. And the initial thought was, yes, we’re gonna do surgery and they’re gonna put a stent kinda like a heart stent, but in my brain, but then two weeks later, I got another opinion and they were like, no, you don’t need to do that.

Stephanie: And it was a total, like 180. And this all goes with the sleep because my, because of my anxiety and all those underlying things, like my whole, I was just thrown like completely out of like my norm of what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to have brain surgery? Am I not supposed to have this?

Stephanie: And any normal person would have trouble sleeping in, in a situation like that. But because of my anxiety one and two, the way that I reacted and still thought about that one sleepless night I had in Switzerland, I freaked out. There’s no other way of saying it. I freaked out that I wasn’t sleeping and we started with sleep hygiene stuff.

Stephanie: So we turned off every single light we could possibly turn off. I stopped watching TV before I went to bed. I, all the things we everything I could think of. And obviously that didn’t do much. ‘Cause I slept with lights on before and I don’t think that was the problem. And eventually, I ended up going to the doctor.

Stephanie: ‘Cause of course, what else are you gonna do? My doctor, surprisingly, I know a lot of people don’t have this experience, but he started with heavier sleep medications. So we went right to Ambien and, which I, oh, I like, Ambien scared me so much. I stood in our kitchen and just cried over that bottle.

Stephanie: I don’t wanna take this. I don’t know what it’s gonna do to me. I don’t wanna feel this. And. I eventually did end up taking it. And obviously when I’m that worked up, when you’re that hyper aroused when you’re that, afraid of it, it’s gonna work for an hour and then you’re gonna wake up in a panic attack, which is exactly what I did.

Stephanie: So yeah, that did not, I did not stay on that. And then I think it was a couple of weeks. I tried to just stick with the sleep hygiene and go with that. And I spent a lot of nights out on our patio wrapped in a blanket at three in the morning, and my thought was, I’ll just go sit outside in the fresh air and kind of reset, of not being in the house trying to sleep.

Stephanie: But I pretty much just ended up doom scrolling, how do I fix this? How do I fix this? What do I do? I ended up seeing a psychiatrist at a walk-in mental health place that we have here. And they prescribed me Seroquel, which worked for a week. And I kept having to increase an increase in increase.

Stephanie: And then after, I don’t know, maybe two weeks of being on the Seroquel, they were like let’s add Mirtazepine to that. So we added another thing and occasionally I would take have a lorazepam prescription for anxiety. So I would occasionally take one of those two. And so I’d have all three of those in my system, and I’d still be sitting out on our patio at three in the morning and I’m like, what if, what even is this doesn’t make any sense.

Stephanie: How can I be taking all this medication? And not be asleep, passed out to the world. Which just ramped up the anxiety and ramped up the fear and ramped up the, there’s something worse wrong with me. So that I stayed on that medication for a month even though it didn’t really work just ’cause I felt like I had to do something, you can’t just go to nothing.

Stephanie: That felt like giving up basically. So like through May, it was rough of last year. And then in June it was like the up and down where I’d sleep for a night and then I wouldn’t, and then I’d sleep for a night and then I wouldn’t, and about midway through June, I decided to go back to work because I have a lot of experience with anxiety treatment and that kind of thing.

Stephanie: And I knew like getting out of the, out of my house and having something to go do every day would be good for me and it maybe would help me sleep. So I went and got a job. And I got very lucky and I had a wonderful boss, but the very first week was terrible. I, my, all the sleep problems came back, tenfold.

Stephanie: I, went to my first day on two hours of sleep and my like then the rest of the week was pretty bad and. One night, this would be about mid July, I had not slept at all, like zero. And I called in and I told I didn’t actually call in, I emailed in, but I told my boss like, what was happening?

Stephanie: And I was like, listen, I know I just started and if this is too much, and we have to part ways, I understand completely. Like I get it. And he was the nicest person in the world and he’s no, I understand. Let’s, you get better. Go do what you gotta do and we’ll work with your schedule.

Stephanie: So they ended up changing my schedule for me and let me work later in the day. Which was nice, but also maybe wasn’t helpful, but it, at the time it was like, wow, this is, wonderful. And then about mid July my doctor suggested a different medication clonidine, which is a blood pressure medication.

Stephanie: And I was like, okay, I, I’m willing to try whatever. And so I would, I did that and we upped the dose of Seroquel and dropped the Mirtazapine. And from about the end of July, all the way through to November, I felt like I was cured. Like things were amazing. I’d have a couple of rough nights here and there, but I slept every night.

Stephanie: I actually started a different job that was closer to home. And I felt like I, if I could sleep the night before my first day, then I was absolutely cured. And I did. And I was like, amazing, so yeah, all the way through to November we did increase the dose of my clonidine every now and then, but it wasn’t, to me at the time, it didn’t feel like a crazy amount.

Stephanie: And then I don’t really know what happened in, in November but it just didn’t, it just didn’t work the way it was. And, in hindsight I know that wasn’t making me go to sleep. It was just reducing the anxiety and reducing the hyper arousal that I was feeling enough that I could go to sleep, but in November it just stopped working. And those sleepless nights came back and I also realized the Seroquel was causing me a lot of weight gain. I think I had gained like 30 pounds over those couple of months, which is crazy for me. So I wanted to get off of that. And around the end of November of last year, I did, but I don’t wanna blame my doctors ’cause they’re very nice people, but they told me that I could just stop. They didn’t tell me I had to taper, they didn’t tell me I had to do anything. They just said, yeah, you can just stop. You’ll be fine.

Stephanie: So I did and I just, I stopped sleeping then. And about the beginning of December, I I was off of that medication for a couple of days and I hadn’t slept in, I don’t know, three or four days.

Stephanie: And I was laying on the couch at five in the morning and my husband came downstairs and he’s you didn’t sleep? And I was just sobbing. And I was like, no I didn’t. And it’s not super cool to look like fun to look back on, but I actually told him I can’t live like this.

Stephanie: This sucks. If this is my life, I don’t want it. And obviously that freaked him out so he took me to the hospital and I was admitted to the psychiatric ward. While I was there, I explained I don’t actually wanna die. I just want to sleep. And they gave me I don’t know, I don’t remember specifically, but they gave me what felt like the heaviest medication you could give someone. And I slept. I slept, but it was like, I still woke up every hour and so I told them that after the first night, and they increased the dose the second night.

Stephanie: And again, still was awake, still anxious, still, just it wasn’t working. And I was like, forget it. I don’t wanna be here. This isn’t, I’d rather be at home on the couch with my cats than in this place. So I was only there for two nights and the psychiatrist I saw there actually told me that he thought the sleep problems weren’t anxiety related.

Stephanie: He thought they would be related to my idiopathic endocardial hypertension. And I was like, I don’t think so, but you’re a doctor maybe. So I left and that night that my husband came to pick me up, I, we were driving home and I remember I was just so like def defeated almost and just completely surrendered.

Stephanie: And I was like, listen, I’m not taking any more medication. I’m not doing any more crazy stuff. If I sleep by sleep, if I don’t, it might suck, but this is my, this is life. And that night I slept eight hours, like perfect. And I was like holy crap. Like that. Okay. So that was great. And then because of the, the psychiatrist mentioning that it could have been because of the hypertension, I was like okay, I’ll go ask the neurologist.

Stephanie: And I went to her and she’s absolutely not that it’s not a cause. And I was like, okay. And she tried to give me more medication and I was like, Nope, no, thank you. And then I was, I had surrendered to the idea, but not really yet, and in. Oh gosh, mid-December I had decided I was just gonna, I had to quit my job and I was going to focus on fixing my sleep.

Stephanie: And I actually did. I went in and I told my boss I gotta I gotta give my notice. And she knew what, what was happening. I, I was in the hospital, I had to take off of work. And, they were worried about me, but obviously they’re gonna, they accepted it or whatever.

Stephanie: And then that night I was at home and I was like, I’m just gonna look up and see if there’s recovery stories on YouTube, and I found you. And I watched so many episodes that night and I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t quit my job. I’m not gonna quit. I can’t do that. And thankfully I worked for another wonderful company and they let me take it back and I still work there. And that weekend I, I decided to go ahead and purchase the course through you.

Stephanie: And it’d be nice to say like everything was sunshine and rainbows after that, but, it’s not, but it was a starting point and things definitely turned around.

Martin: You clearly went through a lot. It was a very challenging and difficult time in your life, and at the same time, it sounds like you learned a lot from that experience. There were some insights you gained from it. And perhaps one of the biggest ones was that first night when you had that genuine surrender that you weren’t gonna battle, you weren’t gonna resist, you weren’t gonna try and control. And that was a big insightful moment when you got that eight hours of sleep.

Martin: And it’s important to emphasize that doesn’t mean that every night from then on was fantastic, but it just gave you that insight, that little light bulb moment that perhaps all the understandable problem solving and trying to make sleep happen was what was tangling you up and making things more difficult.

Stephanie: Absolutely. Yeah, it was huge.

Martin: What was it about the listening to those podcast stories that really resonated with you and made you think that this is something, there’s something here that’s maybe different or something that kind of resonates with me, that just feels like this might be the right way forward for me?

Stephanie: So because of my history with anxiety, I’ve gone through a lot of therapy and treatments and that sort of thing. In summer of 2023 I had done this whole like partial hospitalization, eight week intensive anxiety treatment thing. And I realized listening to the podcast and the way people were talking, it was a lot of things that I had learned there that I hadn’t actually put into practice, but they were being said in a different way into, in a different context that really just made sense.

Stephanie: I was like, oh my goodness. Like I know these things. I know I can do these things and. I just haven’t been using them, but the other thing about the podcasts in general was just knowing I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t the only person who was struggling with this. And that, as much as I like to think I’m special, it, I wasn’t, like it was not common, but it’s not like completely unheard of, and it’s something people go through and you can get over it.

Martin: There is a lot of power in that, right? Because when you are really struggling, it can feel that there is something uniquely wrong. You had that avenue of maybe it’s the approach to sleep. Maybe it’s the way I’m responding to insomnia, that is the source of it, or that’s the fuel that’s keeping it alive.

Martin: And because you had that wealth of experience and knowledge to look back on, it felt familiar when you heard people talking about how it’s actually implemented, putting it into practice.

Stephanie: I’d heard so much of it for, years and. Yeah, the whole idea of like acceptance and being there with the anxiety but not pushing it away, right? Like that idea sounded wonderful and it’s something that I tried to do prior to any sleep issues.

Stephanie: But it just never made sense to me and it wasn’t something that I could do. I was always pushing away the thoughts, pushing away the feelings, distracting myself with literally anything I could think of. And to not do that and to, lay there in the night when I wasn’t asleep and just feel all of the feelings instead of being like, instead of trying to talk myself out of them or explain them away or rationalize them to just experience them was something that I’ve had heard, but I could never practice.

Stephanie: And. So having insomnia, not something I, I want again, or want to, wish upon anyone, but I feel like it’s given me a lot of insight into how to just manage my general anxiety not only my sleep.

Martin: I think our default response as human beings is to resist or to try and fight or avoid difficult stuff that we don’t want to experience. And that works well in so many areas of life. But when it comes down to things that we can’t control, then it has the potential to set us up for struggle.

Martin: And like you said, it is one thing to hear this idea of letting go or accepting the presence of difficult things that are beyond our control. But it’s quite another to come to terms with putting that into practice, allowing it to happen, giving permission to something that we may have been fighting for years or decades even to then let that stuff show up.

Martin: It can be very scary and very intimidating. Was that something that you experienced when you started to consider this new way forward? And if so, how did you make that commitment to action, knowing that this was a kind of scary or difficult change to make?

Stephanie: It was so easy to say, yes, I accept being awake, but to actually lay there and do that, I, it didn’t like it took so long, probably a solid month before I was like, okay, maybe I can actually do that. The idea of not interacting with those feelings while I’m feeling them.

Stephanie: It was really difficult. And I have to credit my therapist something that we’ve done a lot in, in, in my sessions is like talking to the part of you that’s in fear, talking to the part of you that’s, hurting and just being like, I’m here with you.

Stephanie: I feel you. I see you. But not pushing it away. You’re fine. Let’s be done. It’s like feeling the feelings, and it’s something that, I’ve been seeing her for three years and she’s been telling me to do that for three years. And it took this before I could do it, I could, okay, I understand what she means now and what you’re saying and I’m going to lay here and just feel every sensation, I’m gonna feel every thought, but I’m not gonna grab onto one and try and follow it or rationalize it or all the things I was doing.

Stephanie: I’m going to say, yes, I see you, I acknowledge you, you’re here and see what comes next was my thought process.

Martin: So it’s not about pretending or trying to trick yourself that you actually like this stuff that’s showing up or that you are even okay with it showing up. But it’s more about just lowering your resistance to it. Acknowledging it when it is present allowing yourself to feel the feelings as you put it.

Martin: And perhaps that is a powerful initial step towards acceptance because we can’t accept the presence of anything without acknowledging its presence to begin with.

Stephanie: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. That was a huge change for me and it was hard. And it’s still hard. I think it’s always gonna be hard, it’s hard to not grasp onto your feelings and to just kinda let them float on by, but. It’s a work in progress.

Stephanie: Everybody’s a work in progress.

Martin: One of our big fears about fear or one of our big anxieties about anxiety can be if I drop that resistance, what if that anxiety becomes overwhelming? What if it becomes even worse? Which is completely understandable.

Martin: What was your experience with that as you adopted this approach of less struggle and less resistance? What did you learn about what anxiety does when there is less resistance when you practice building that skill in allowing it to exist?

Stephanie: Yeah. So I am a big reader and I, on that topic, read a book. It’s DARE. And it’s the concept I decided to go with. Where when you’re feeling those feelings, you’re feeling that anxiety, you’re feeling all the bad stuff, and you don’t wanna follow it, you don’t wanna engage with it.

Stephanie: But it’s just building and building. You basically just ask it like, okay, give me more, give it all to me. Let’s pile it on. Give me the worst. And anxiety naturally just goes down. It can’t go up forever. It’s gonna come down. And I definitely had that, I’m no stranger to a panic attack.

Stephanie: And those again, can’t last forever. It feels like they’re gonna last forever when you’re in the middle of one. But asking for more in, in the way that, that DARE book mentioned like. It almost took away the power of the anxiety and made it okay. I guess it’s not that bad.

Stephanie: Okay. My heart rate’s coming down. Okay. I can get up off the floor, and I really tried to practice that idea of letting it just come on as hard as it wanted and letting, I guess riding it out is a way of saying it, like just letting it peak and then it will come down.

Martin: Like a wave that you’re, that surfer riding the wave. The wave will grow and grow, but eventually it will come back down again.

Stephanie: Yes.

Martin: It can feel like without that resistance, it will just go on forever and maybe the logical side of our brain might tell us that it can’t keep on rising forever. That it’s gonna hit a peak at some point. But it can be very hard to give it that opportunity to learn that from experience because it’s so difficult to experience. One other point I feel that you are making was that the power of anxiety seems to come from our resistance to it. Was that your experience?

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. Not only with this situation, but my whole, anxiety life. The more I tried to avoid the thing that was bothering me, the more it just was there and in my face and I couldn’t escape it.

Stephanie: Which, that makes sense now, but at the time when you’re in the middle of those kinds of things like it, I understand completely. It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and gotten through and figured out, that the more you try and resist it, the more you try and avoid it, the more you try and distract yourself, it’s just gonna make itself more known.

Martin: Reflecting on your own experience, would you say that’s how insomnia works too? The more we resist it, the more power we unintentionally give it.

Stephanie: Absolutely yes. Like when you, when you’re in the thick of it, and you’re in, that second night and you’re just like, what in the world? And you’re trying everything and you’re going to bed early and you’re staying in bed. Like I got, I swear I was staying in bed for 14 hours a night, just trying to get any amount of sleep, just trying to force it.

Stephanie: And obviously that didn’t work, but like I was just like, no, I have to do something. I can’t do nothing. Yeah, absolutely. The more I focused on it, the worse it was.

Martin: We can’t be critical on ourselves for trying to fix a problem. Who wouldn’t wanna fix a problem? It’s just that we get tripped up. If someone is listening to this and maybe you’ve still got some kind of doubt that no, I do need to try in order to make sleep happen and I do need to do something whatever that something might be, perhaps you just ask someone that you know, who has no issues with sleep, what they need to do, or what they take or whatever rules they have to follow to make sleep happen.

Martin: And the chances are you’re just gonna get that dumb blank stare and they’re just oh, I don’t know. I just get in bed and sleep happens. And perhaps there’s a big insight there that sleep is, sleep happens best when it’s effortless. And to make something effortless, we don’t really need to do anything to make it happen.

Stephanie: My husband, he has no trouble sleeping ever. But that’s not true. Not ever because he, when we were in Switzerland, he also had the bad jet leg and just, I think Monday night he woke up at two in the morning and just didn’t go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

Stephanie: And the difference between the two of us is the way we reacted. I would freak out and I’d be like, oh my God, I gotta do something. I gotta change something. I gotta add another pill, I gotta, whatever. And he was just like, yeah, I watch TV and yeah, I was a little tired during my workday and that’s it.

Stephanie: Like he has, everybody has sleep disruptions. It happens. We’re human beings. It’s just all in the way that you respond to it and the way that you don’t chase the outcome that you want.

Martin: That’s a really important point because even the best sleepers in the world will have nights of less sleep from time to time. It just comes with being a human being. Just like the happiest people on the planet will not be happy 24 hours a day. It’s impossible. Life comes with difficulties.

Martin: It comes with struggles. It comes with things not happening as we might want them to happen. The difference is the people that have no real concern or issues with sleep, they respond to those nights of less sleep in a completely different way. They’re more shrugged off and that their focus is elsewhere on just living their life.

Martin: But understandably, when we’ve really been struggling or if we are struggling every difficult night, we focus on it. It means something more than what it physically was. We read into it. We reflect on it, we label it, we judge it. It might be considered a setback, it might be considered a relapse.

Martin: It might be considered evidence that we are broken or that whatever we’re doing isn’t working. But the truth is, it was a night where we didn’t get the amount or the type of sleep that we wanted, and that’s all it was. Anything else on top of that is stuff that we are adding on top and sometimes that additional stuff is what can set us up or tangle us up in some more struggle.

Stephanie: Yeah. Absolutely. Yep.

Martin: Going onto this, putting all this into practice, so you enrolled in my course. What action based changes did you make as a way of pursuing this new approach of acceptance, less resistance, less battling, less trying to control.

Stephanie: I started with, generally I would go to bed when my husband went to bed at nine. And that’s, I’ve realized far too early for me. I, and before all of this, I would still go to bed with him at nine, but I would lay there and read my book for probably two or three hours and then go to sleep.

Stephanie: I can remember nights, trying to keep my eyes open so I could keep reading. So that’s, like I stopped doing that. I did try the sleep window. That kind of CBT-I idea, I wasn’t very good at it because I kept falling asleep before my window would start. I, it was good at getting up when I was supposed to, but I just, I don’t, I kept falling asleep on the couch.

Stephanie: So I tried that and it was okay. I did it for maybe a week. It was maybe two before I was just like, I’m just gonna go to sleep when I’m tired and get up at the same time every day. I tried the, don’t look at the time thing. That one was really hard for me. I think it actually made me a little bit more anxious, not knowing what time it was than knowing what time it was.

Stephanie: So again, I, because you said in the course like, try, it’s like an experiment, right? So I tried and it just. It wasn’t for me, so I don’t do that. I think doing the sleep window for those two weeks, it did build up my sleep drive so that by, 10, 11, 12, I was tired enough to go to bed and then, I would get up at six.

Stephanie: And that, that worked pretty well. Not going to bed too early. Like I said, I go to bed with my husband and I’m just not gonna go to sleep until probably 11 or 12. So I’m just laying there in bed trying to sleep when I know it’s not gonna happen. And then doing things that I had made off limits after he went to bed.

Stephanie: So I wouldn’t let myself watch tv. I wouldn’t read a book if it was too exciting, I wouldn’t I like to crochet. I wouldn’t crochet. I would just lay there with headphones and like a sleep story on or something, which was another thing I did when I was trying to sleep more in the summertime.

Stephanie: I would listen to sleep hypnosis and sleep stories and just all that stuff to try and like force sleep, which of course doesn’t work. So I gave up like all of that, all of the rules that I had created for myself, they’re gone. And I just, I watched shows that I wanted to watch. I read whatever book I happened to be reading at the time.

Stephanie: I play video games. Like I would just do whatever I felt like doing until it was time for a wind down time where I would turn down the lights and try and listen to something relaxing, but not really with the intention of this is gonna make me go to sleep just to like transition from daytime to bedtime yeah.

Martin: I like how, you tried a few different things. You made a few changes and you learned from them. You experimented and you. You changed what wasn’t helpful for you. And I think that’s really important because there’s no one best way forward for everyone.

Martin: Some people love implementing a sleep window or maybe not love it, but they find it really helpful or very useful. Other people, no. Some people find it really unhelpful to be checking the time during the night. For some people it’s the opposite. And what stands out as you were describing your initial implementation of these changes was you tried all these different things and instead of thinking, oh, this isn’t working, or this doesn’t work, you just thought, oh, okay.

Martin: I need to adapt this in a way that is more appropriate for me, which is great because you, you are the expert on you, and so it makes sense that you have the best insight to adjust something and to take an approach that works for you. You just were learning as you were making these changes and you got to a place where the changes you were making were helping you in that big picture goal of reducing the control agenda, the resistance, the battling, and the struggling.

Martin: Specifically that you started to go to bed when you felt ready to go to bed, when you felt sleepy for sleep. You had that consistent out of bedtime in the morning. You gave yourself permission to check the time because not checking the time for you was not helpful. And you started to break down all those rules that you had around sleep, things that you could or you couldn’t do because of how it might influence sleep.

Martin: And before that even has any influence on sleep it means that you’re starting to take that power and influence away from insomnia, starting to get your life back from insomnia because you’re doing more of the things that matter to you regardless of what sleep might do or even what sleep might say in connection to those activities.

Stephanie: Yes, that the doing things that mattered to you was like another big thing I guess that I focused on. So like I said, we like to travel and we had not done any since Switzerland. Partly ’cause of my diagnosis, but also just I was too afraid after I was not sleeping, I was just like, I can’t go on a trip.

Stephanie: I’m gonna be miserable miles and miles away from my house. No thank you. But after about a month, I think in the course, I was like, you know what? We’re going on a trip. So I, we booked a trip to Punta Cana in March and we went and the night before I didn’t sleep very well, but I never sleep well before a trip.

Stephanie: That’s not surprising. But otherwise it was fine, the beds were not that great, but that’s a whole that’s just a thing. That’s nothing to do with insomnia. It was really almost reassuring for me to prove to myself that I can go and do these things and yeah, maybe I don’t sleep I hours like I want to every night, but I still had a great time.

Stephanie: Nothing happened to me and I was fine, and it was nice to see that I could do the things that I still like and I do martial arts and I was asked if I wanted to try instructing in January and I was like, oh man, like I don’t sleep some nights. How am I gonna come in here and do instructing and then also do my class?

Stephanie: And oh, I don’t know. But I was like, no, if we’re gonna try it and if it doesn’t work out, then we just won’t do it, and my, it was the night before my first class that I was like trialing out. I slept two hours maybe and but I still went. I was like you’re, you can do this.

Stephanie: We’ve done harder things. And it was fine. It was wonderful. I had a great time and I’ve been doing it ever since and I’m really glad that I didn’t let the insomnia and the struggle and the anxiety of it all take over and just push myself to keep on living. And, same with my job. I’m so glad I didn’t quit my job.

Stephanie: I love my job and I love my coworkers and, I wouldn’t have all of this if I had let those thoughts and feelings win.

Martin: I’m just gonna pick a random number, let’s say a hundred. There’s a hundred things you can experience when you go on vacation, when you teach a class, when you go to work. How you slept is one of those things. We’re not trying to pretend it’s not, it is, it’s one of those things.

Martin: But if we’re not doing those things, like going on vacation, not teaching a class, if that’s important to us, not going to work not doing the things that matter, then sleep is one of 50 or one of 30 or one of 20, or one of 10 or one of five things that we’re experiencing.

Martin: So you can just see it’s influence just grows if we’re doing less of the stuff that feels important to us.

Stephanie: I would a hundred percent agree. It’s important to just, I don’t wanna say live, like you don’t have insomnia because, that sucks and it’s, it does suck. There’s no lying about it, but like you just said, if you let it be your sole focus, you’re gonna feel like everything is, going wrong. Where if you let that, those feelings be there, but you do other things that still matter, you’re gonna feel better. It’s just gonna happen. That’s how I feel anyway.

Martin: When I just pulled those numbers out of the air, sleep is still that one thing or insomnia is that one thing. We’re not pretending it doesn’t exist or that it doesn’t influence our lives. ’cause of course it does. It’s just about does it exist by itself?

Martin: It’s like a hundred percent of our focus and our attention and our lives, or does it exist in the presence of all the other stuff that we also want to do. All the other stuff that’s also important to us because it can feel like it takes on a life of its own where it controls us, our actions, what we choose to do.

Martin: But really ultimately at the end of the day, we still have control over our actions and I say that delicately because my intention is really to see this from a position of empowerment because no matter what our insomnia says or does, no matter what our mind says or does, we are always in control of how we respond to all of that stuff.

Martin: And so much of the power and influence that it has over us comes from our response to it.

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. Like the response thing is just, I dunno if there’s like an epiphany I had when I looked at how my husband responds when he has, a night or two where he just doesn’t sleep as good versus how I responded. Like it’s night and day and he won’t ever have quote unquote insomnia because he’s not gonna freak out about it.

Martin: So you shared with us some of the action based things you did more to do at the start of the night. So if we fast forward a little bit, let’s say, okay, you’re practicing this new approach. Now you’re in bed, and either you are not falling asleep as quickly as you want to, or you wake during the night and you’re finding it hard to fall back to sleep.

Martin: All of these thoughts and the feelings are showing up again. What did your new response look like? What was the new acceptance based approach for you?

Stephanie: Yeah. I experienced this last night. I woke up and I just couldn’t get back to sleep. It just happened and I laid in bed for a half an hour just trying to, see if I’d fall back asleep, and I didn’t. So I was like, all right. And I got up and I came. I and I, other people don’t have to get outta bed.

Stephanie: I like to get outta bed. So I got outta bed and I came down to our living room and I turned on a YouTube channel that I like to watch. The guy’s got a really soothing voice and it just chills me out. And I watched a couple videos. I cuddled with my cat, and before I knew it, I was, back asleep.

Stephanie: It, and even if I hadn’t been back asleep. I was doing something that was comfortable. I was doing something that was relaxing, I was doing something that I wanted to do, which I think is another big part of it, because there’s all this advice about oh, do meditation, do deep breathing, do all this.

Stephanie: And like that just made me more anxious. And I think it’s because it’s another, to me, it feels like something you’re doing with the intention of it’s gonna make you go back to sleep. And for me, I’d rather do something that feels good in the moment. And if I fall back asleep, great. If not, at least I’m comfortable and safe and happy.

Stephanie: That’s, and I do have a little mantra in my head. If the thoughts are, not settling or they’re not, they just keep coming, which of course they do, it’s I’m safe, I’m comfortable. I’ve got a cat and I’m fine. That’s what I do. I, watch whatever I wanna watch.

Stephanie: If I felt like reading or crocheting, I don’t know that I’d play a video game in the middle of the night. I feel like I get too excited. But yeah, just, doing whatever whatever feels good in the moment instead of whatever I felt like I had to do to force myself to go back to sleep.

Martin: I like your reminder there as well that you chose to get out of bed. Other people prefer to stay in bed. And really, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. What matters is, are you in a war zone, wherever that might be. Are you engaged in a battle right now?

Martin: ’cause that’s what we want to move away from. We wanna move away from that fight and we can move away from that fight whilst we’re in bed, or we can move away from that fight while we’re out of bed. The location doesn’t really matter.

Martin: The theme or the ultimate goal is to practice building skill in experiencing being awake, experiencing all those thoughts and feelings without engaging in that struggle, in that battle, in that resistance, because that’s what gives it all the oxygen that it needs to survive.

Stephanie: Absolutely. And it’s hard. It’s so hard. But you have to be willing to go through the hard stuff and go through the bad feelings and the realization that you can’t do anything to make yourself sleep better.

Stephanie: It’s not nice, like it doesn’t feel good, but I think, that’s where progress happens.

Martin: It really is a case of ongoing practice. Nights of less sleep are always gonna show up from time to time. Anxiety is always gonna show up from time to time, but as we continue to practice it starts to lose its power and influence over us. It becomes more like water off of a duck’s back. It doesn’t have that huge amount of power and influence over us anymore. And as it loses its power and influence, perhaps sleep is able to just take care of itself and become effortless.

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what happened for me, and it’s been a process. And so I finished the course in February, I think and nights have been so much better. Obviously they’re not perfect. Nobody has perfect sleep, but I think just everything I have learned and the ability that I have to, I hate to keep repeating myself, but to feel the feelings without interacting with them and without freaking out about it is just, it’s something I never thought I would have.

Stephanie: Not even just with sleep, just in my, life in general. It’s amazing.

Martin: It’s amazing how much energy it frees up when we don’t feel that we are just engaged in a battle all of the time. So the thing that we are battling might still be there but because we are not swinging that sword all day long, pulling that tug of war rope all night long, it just frees up something.

Martin: Whether that’s your energy, your focus, your attention, it’s like a weight being lifted off your shoulders. Even before we might notice any changes in what our air quote opponent might be doing. It just gives more of that stuff back to us.

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely.

Martin: Insomnia is not just a nighttime issue, it comes with lots of difficulties during the day too. What kind of approaches did you take to the daytime stuff? Whatever that meant to you at the time, whether it was the fatigue, whether it was like that time traveling mind predicting what tonight might be, or going back in the past or the worries, the anxiety, whatever that looks like for you, the daytime symptoms of insomnia.

Martin: What did this new approach involve when it come to dealing with those?

Stephanie: So with the idea of being in the present more if I noticed I was starting to spiral about what’s tonight gonna be like, or feeling like I needed to go on Reddit for an hour and research ways to help me, even though I knew that there was nothing I needed to do or just all the things that I wanted to do, but I knew weren’t helpful, I would just take a breath and really focus on what I was feeling at that moment where I was feeling it in my body and acknowledging it, and then saying, it’s okay to feel these feelings, but there’s nothing we need to do. And letting the feelings just kinda simmer and continuing on with my work.

Stephanie: Or if I was, like dealing with the fatigue, I would on my lunch break, I would go and sit in my car and just close my eyes not to fall asleep ’cause that would not be comfortable, but just to take a little rest. And I, that really helped to like do something like that without the intention of sleeping, same like in the evenings I’d have an hour after work before I’d go to my martial arts classes and I’d lay down on the couch, not to fall asleep, but just to give my body a little break if I needed it before I went and did something. The fatigue, I didn’t have as much, I think ’cause I was like so anxious.

Stephanie: It was more like I am super energized the whole time. So that didn’t happen too often. But the feelings and the anxiety feelings of for me, like skin crawling and feeling like I gotta move as much as I possibly can. Like that I just tried to sit through and it’s really uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good.

Stephanie: But now that I’ve done it so much, I’m able to do it and it. Obviously it doesn’t get rid of the feeling, but it like it dissipates faster because I’m acknowledging it and I’m not letting it take over. I’m just, okay, you’re here and we’re gonna still be doing this other thing. Really just trying to be more present and again, feel my feelings.

Stephanie: I need a t-shirt that says, feel my feelings.

Martin: That would be a cool T-shirt. I like how you shared that the thoughts can dissipate, but it doesn’t mean that they’re gone forever. They’re still gonna show up.

Martin: Something else that’s important to emphasize is that when you are practicing being present, when you notice, your mind drifting or some unhelpful, distracting thoughts are showing up it doesn’t mean that you bring yourself back to the present and that’s where you’re gonna remain then.

Martin: Because the brain, just by the way the brain works, it’s always gonna be time traveling off into the future, into the past. It’s gonna be everywhere apart from the, now the very moment that we are living in right, this millisecond, but the practice of bringing yourself back to the present is an ongoing practice. It doesn’t mean that we are gonna be permanently present. It just means that when we notice that we’re drifting away from the present in an unhelpful way that’s not really serving us. We become more aware of when that’s happening, and we become more skilled at bringing our focus and our attention back to the present.

Martin: It’s a skill, right? I would argue that everything we’ve been talking about, because they’re action based, their skills and all skills require ongoing practice. They come with ups and downs, and they take time and patience and some kindness to develop as well.

Stephanie: Yes, absolutely. And seriously the kindness, like the way I talked to myself before I let all of that go was not kind. And the way that I think about it now is it’s just, my brain is just trying to protect me and there’s nothing to be protected from, I guess is what I try and remind myself but in a kind way and not in a beat myself up, oh, why do you keep doing the same stuff over and over again? Way.

Martin: Your brain is never working against you, it’s always working for you. It’s just that sometimes it tries so hard, it gets in the way a little bit. But it’s never against us. And that is an important part of being kinder to ourselves, I think, is recognizing that.

Martin: How long would you say it took you to notice that things were improving that you were on the right track here?

Stephanie: I would say little improvements were pretty quick, which then made me feel like, okay, I can sleep without medication.

Stephanie: And then I officially got off of all the medication that I was on for sleep, and I’d say probably another two months where it was an up and down where I’d sleep really good for four or five nights and then I’d have a bad night and then I’d sleep really good for a week and then have a bad night.

Stephanie: And now since about mid March, things have been going really well. I’ve had a rough night, here and there, but nothing like I was having, where I didn’t sleep for a day and a half, two days, three days at a time. It. It takes me a little longer to fall asleep, or I wake up and I gotta come downstairs for an hour before I’m tired enough to go back to sleep.

Stephanie: Like it’s completely different than what it was, but that amount of progress took about three months, I’d say.

Martin: What kind of markers do you feel are helpful measures of progress if sleep and the intensity or the appearance of certain thoughts and feelings might be something that’s beyond your control?

Stephanie: You can’t do anything about how you’re feeling, but just the way that you’re reacting to them has been a huge marker for me. Last night, for example, I woke up and I couldn’t fall back asleep, and I could have, and I would’ve a couple of months ago, been really scared and tried to do anything I could think of to fall back asleep and do everything I could and I didn’t.

Stephanie: I just got out of bed, I watched a couple videos and I fell back asleep. But even if you don’t fall back asleep, it’s all in the way that you react to it. And I think that’s a huge marker of you’ve moved on from the struggle.

Stephanie: You can’t use the amount of sleep you get as a marker because you could be excited about something that’s coming up. You could be anxious, you could be tired, you could just be so many things that are gonna disrupt your sleep. But it’s all to me, the way that you respond to that disruption.

Martin: So it’s no longer about when or if or how this stuff shows up, but it’s about how you are responding to it. That is maybe a more useful measure of progress or a more useful indicator that you’re on the right track heading in the direction you want to be heading.

Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely.

Martin: I do have one last question for you, if someone with chronic insomnia is listening and they feel as though they’ve tried everything that they are beyond help, that they just can’t stop their struggle with insomnia, what would you say to them?

Stephanie: You’re not alone. And I’m giving you a big hug and take a deep breath you’re gonna be okay. You will get through it and there’s some hard work in your future, but you can absolutely do it.

Martin: Thank you again, Stephanie. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your journey and your transformation. Thank you.

Stephanie: Thank you for having me.

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.