Insomnia Coach® Podcast

Abbie's journey through insomnia began unexpectedly after a brief illness, leading to anxiety and a struggle for sleep. As she tried various routines and supplements, her efforts backfired, intensifying her daytime worries. The turning point came when she realized her withdrawal from life only exacerbated her sleep issues. Embracing support and shifting her mindset, Abbie learned to let go of anxious thoughts and redefine progress beyond just sleep, ultimately re-engaging in joyful activities and gaining resilience.

Natasha shares her harrowing journey with insomnia, triggered during the pandemic's chaos. After exhausting all solutions from teas to medications, she realized her life couldn't revolve around avoiding sleepless nights. Embracing a new mindset, she learned that sleep doesn’t respond to effort, leading her to prioritize living fully. She adopted enjoyable activities during wakeful nights and gradually reclaimed her independence, transforming insomnia from a struggle into a manageable part of life.

Dan had never struggled with sleep — until a stressful period in late 2023 turned his nights upside down. After a panic attack and a couple of sleepless nights, he found himself pacing the house at 2:00 AM, clock-watching, and convinced he was broken. Even after medication gave him one long night of sleep, the struggle came roaring back the very next evening. As a highly-skilled problem solver, Dan threw himself into fixing insomnia. He followed strict routines, taped over every bit of light in his room, tried teas and supplements, and skipped work after difficult nights. Yet the harder he tried, the worse things got. Every attempt to control sleep just added more fear, more pressure, and more exhaustion. Things began to shift when Dan stopped trying to control sleep and fight every thought. He started making small, practical changes: limiting nighttime clock-checks, going to bed later at night when he felt sleepy rather than tired, and committing to one meaningful activity each day — even after rough nights. Those actions reminded him that life didn’t have to stop because of insomnia. Over time, Dan learned to respond differently to the thoughts and feelings that used to overwhelm him. He discovered he could notice them without needing to believe them, and he didn’t have to beat himself up when sleep didn’t go the way he wanted. With patience and practice, nights became less of a battle, and his confidence in his body’s natural ability to sleep began to return. Today, Dan isn’t just sleeping better — he feels stronger than before insomnia began. He knows he isn’t broken, he has skills he can always rely on, and he’s living more fully, no matter what his nights bring. His story is a powerful reminder that with time, self-kindness, and small daily steps, it’s possible to stop struggling and regain trust in your natural ability to sleep. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that by changing how we respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it, we can move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life we want to live. Martin: The content of this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. The statements and opinions expressed by guests are their own and are not necessarily endorsed by Insomnia Coach LLC. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied. Martin: Okay, Dan, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Dan: Oh, thanks Martin. Thanks for having me. Martin: Great to have you on. Let’s start right at the beginning as always. Can you tell us a little bit about when your sleep problems first began and what you think might have caused those initial issues with sleep? Dan: So I guess I’d go back to November, 2023 probably a month before the sleep problem started, and I’d never had any sleep problems in my whole life, so I never knew much about it actually. But I, there was a lot going on in my life. I was trying to change careers. There was some health issues with a very close relative of mine. Dan: Had a pet that was on its last legs ready to pass away. So all these things built up into what I’d say it was a panic attack. Which then led to some generalized anxiety, quite severe. And funny enough, I was still sleeping quite fine for a, for about a month or so. Which proves your point. Dan: I think that you say quite often that you can sleep with anxiety ’cause I was, no problem. And then probably about a month later, so I guess we’re talking December sometime 2023. I um, was sleeping and I just woke up at midnight and I I just couldn’t get back to sleep. This was strange. So I got to the morning and I was fairly tired and I got through the day and I thought, oh, it’ll be okay tonight. Dan: I’ll sleep just fine. Anyway, that night came around and I just could not get to sleep. It was just not gonna happen. And, the anxiety started to rise as it were from that. And I didn’t get a wink of sleep that, that second night at all. By the next day I was feeling even worse and worse. Dan: I thought tonight, surely I’m gonna get some sleep. So that next night, not a wink of sleep at all. Could just, could not get to sleep, pacing the house, checking the clocks, thinking, oh my God, it’s two o’clock in the morning. I haven’t slept for two nights now. I’ve gotta get to sleep. Dan: And I would lie in bed, nothing had happen. And by that third morning, I was just a a horrible mess. I ended up in hospital talked to the doctors there. They didn’t gimme too much information on the sleep. They did give me one pill, I’m not quite sure what it was. And they said go home and have a good sleep tonight. Dan: So I took the pill and I went home and I slept for maybe 12 hours that night. And I woke up the next morning. I thought, great, that’s all done. I’ve got that back on track. I’ve fixed that. And then of course, the next night off we go again. Couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe slept an hour or something here or there. Dan: And then from then on it just went on and on from that, just randomly I, some nights I couldn’t get to sleep. Some nights I fell asleep, but woke up, an hour and a half later and couldn’t get back to sleep. I I had nights where I would swear to my wife that I’d never slept a wink. But she said when I came in, you were snoring. Dan: Just so erratic, just all over the place. I just couldn’t get a handle on it. I didn’t know what was going on. And then that’s when the research started. Martin: At first, the issues with sleep were seen as a symptom or were more of a symptom of whatever else was going on in your life, but then the longer that sleep disruption continued, it became the main problem. Dan: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think as time went on the daytime stuff that was going on all settled down for me, but the anxiety even through the day, was all directed at the sleeping at night. Yeah, definitely. Martin: And I think that makes sense, right? Because whenever you identify a problem in life, you’re naturally gonna focus on it more. Martin: It’s gonna consume more of your attention. So as sleep disruption or difficulties with sleep continue, it’s gonna become more of a focus and more of something that you see as a problem that you want to solve. And so therefore, just like you alluded to earlier, that’s when the research got going as you did the human thing and tried to fix this problem. Martin: So can you tell us a little bit more about that? Dan: Oh yes. So obviously Dr. Google. First of all, I did go and to my GP and nothing against the gp, but he didn’t really gimme any advice on the sleeping. He just said, oh, read a book but make sure it’s not too exciting book and you’ll fall asleep. Dan: And I thought oh, that’s great. He did gimme some sleeping tablets. Which he also stated that. If they’re only temporary, and the more you have, the more you’ll need type of thing. So that got me more worried. And after that I thought I’m on my own here. I’m gonna have to research this myself. Dan: So the first thing I bumped into on the internet was sleep hygiene. And I thought, oh, great this is the thing for me. But that actually made things worse for me. I reckon. So the sleep hygiene was all about doing everything at a certain time, no blue light at night. So at that time I was trying to have a shower at seven 30 at night on the dot, and then I’d have to go out and not watch telly, sit and be quiet. Dan: And then at night, nine 30 on the dot, I had to go to bed. Then the room had to be dark and no lights. So I was doing all sorts of crazy things like even sticking sticky tape over the little red light on the television in the bedroom to try and make it dark. All this crazy type of stuff. And so that just seemed to make the anxiety so much worse, build me up even more. Dan: So there, so I was still doing that ’cause I had no other option, but I was also thought, if I’m not sleeping at night, I’ll try and sleep in the day and not being someone who usually sleeps in the day much. In the last 20 years, I’d probably count on one hand how many times I’ve had a daytime nap. Dan: When that wasn’t working either, that just added to more anxiety. And then I was getting more information, magnesium tablets, and ginger tablets and chamomile tea and just this whole array of things and anything anyone ever suggested. I tried it, I can tell you. But nothing seemed to help. Dan: It just seemed to make it so much worse. Martin: You’re clearly a problem solver, right? You are all in on trying to fix this problem. Which is a strength, it’s just you were caught out a little bit ’cause sleep is one of these things that, now, you know, from your experience. It’s like the more we try to control it or fix it or make it do a certain thing, the more difficult it becomes. Dan: Yeah, exactly. That is exactly my nature is if there’s a problem, I’m gonna solve it. Being an electrician, you get in, you fix things, that’s what you do. But in this case, the more I try to fix it, just the worse it became. Martin: One thing you mentioned was you tried the sleeping in the daytime, and that didn’t work. Martin: What did you mean by that? Do you mean that you just couldn’t sleep during the day or that it just didn’t seem to help with your sleep overall? Dan: I would lie down and close my eyes and in the daytime I would drift off and then that thing would happen where you would shock yourself to wake, and then I just couldn’t sleep and then I thought, oh, I must just be broken. Dan: I just can’t sleep, but not thinking back that I never really ever had a daytime sleep in the past, so why now would I start doing that? But obviously in the moment I thought that was the best thing to try and do. Martin: Problem solving requires action. And a lot of the things that we do when it comes to trying to fix sleep, involve actions that maybe don’t reflect like who we are or the life we want to live. So for example, we might start trying to sleep during the day, or like you said, we might force ourselves to have a shower at a very specific time at night and then deprive ourselves of TV in the evening. Martin: Even though that’s something that we enjoyed, we start to take all this stuff out of our lives that matters and we maybe start to replace it with things that we wouldn’t be doing that don’t really reflect who we are or the life we wanna live. So then we’ve got all the sleep issues, but then we’ve also got that impact that it’s having on our overall life as well. Dan: Absolutely Martin. If I had a bad night, I would not go to work. I would try and conserve the energy. And looking back, it just didn’t help because I’d be sitting at home tired as hell. I’ll be watching people drive off in their cars to work down the road, and here I’m home feeling guilty now that I’m not out going to work, I’m not contributing to society and it’s just making it worse for me. Dan: Absolutely. Martin: And on top of that, when you’re staying at home you, your focus is only ever gonna be on sleep or whatever other problems are going on. You’re not gonna have that distraction of living your daytime life and doing all that stuff that matters to you. Dan: Yeah, exactly. And that’s exactly how I felt back then. Obviously in the moment, it didn’t feel like that in the moment I thought I was doing the right thing, but now looking back on reflection that’s exactly what was going on. Yeah. Martin: You tried a lot, you did a lot of research. When you came across my work, what made you think there’s something different here or there’s an approach here that might be worth exploring or pursuing? Dan: Yeah, it’s a funny one. I think initially I might’ve bumped into the sleep education YouTube clip and something just slightly resonated with me about here’s someone that’s just telling me about sleep stuff that I’ve never had to think about in my whole life. But it made sense. It made sense between the tiredness and the sleepiness thing. Dan: That very first little thing was just a glimmer of something different that someone else hadn’t told me. And then I think I watched a couple more of your videos. And again, just things just made sense in my mind. I must admit at some point, Martin, I thought, oh, this is just another guy trying to sell me something. Dan: I’ve been down this, gone down all these different paths. What, why is this any different? But the more I listened to the YouTube clips, the more I started to go, there’s something simple. Someone telling me I don’t have to change my life. You can live your life. You can add value to your life. Dan: And, it just made sense. And I think after one particular bad night, I signed up for the free course initially. But then I had another bad night straight after that and I thought what have I got to lose? I’ve tried everything. Let’s give it a go with an open mind and see how it goes. Dan: And I think I, I signed up for the full course the next day and got into it within hours. Martin: Let’s talk about that a little bit more. So now you’ve you’ve gone all in, you are logged into the client area, you’re working through the course. As you reflect on that part of your journey what were the initial changes that you made that stand out to you as being something that you found particularly helpful? Dan: The sleep restriction. What it did do for me was reassure me that I could get sleep. And to feel the difference between tiredness and sleepiness. Especially in my own body. I was trying to go to bed, tired, but wired as you would probably say. And although when I did get sleepy, sometimes I’d get in bed and then I’d wake back up again. Dan: At least I had that. I do feel sleepy. We can work from there, if other things that really helped initially? Definitely not checking the clock at night. Like when I was really in the bad spot, I’d be up every half an hour checking the clock, 1:00 AM Oh my God, I’ve gotta go to sleep. Dan: Oh, one 30 now. I’ve really gotta go to sleep now. Oh, I’ll look at that. It’s two 30 in the morning. I’ve gotta be up in two hours. So not checking the clock but initially was a really good thing. And also making myself do at least one good thing a day, outside of having the nighttime, like even though I was feeling like crap, I didn’t want to go anywhere, just doing one thing could be or could have been as little as going for a walk with a wife or, going to the beach or going for a ride on my bike or anything. Dan: Just something small every day. And over, over time, I did find that even with a bad night’s sleep, I could get to the end of the day and say, gee I did have a good day today. Martin: By making that commitment to just do one thing that mattered to you each day independently of sleep, it gave you that opportunity to open up a little bit more to what’s present at the same time as the insomnia. Martin: So it’s not just the insomnia in your life. The insomnia could very well still be there. Sleep is still a concern, but whilst that’s present, there’s also something else. There’s also something else that’s more meaningful, more important, more enriching. Dan: Yeah. Correct. Correct. So they were all the shorter sort of term things that worked for me, but I’ve broken it up into two sort of stages and the longer term fix for me was the AWAKE exercise at night where you’re you’re observing your sort of thoughts and your feelings without judgment. Dan: So I found that longer term was more powerful than the initial tools for me personally. Knowing that you can observe your thoughts without judgment or without action was just so powerful. But that took a lot longer to develop. 6 to 12 months to develop that and train myself on that. Dan: And I think that is probably one of the most powerful things in the course that I learned. Martin: How was that different as an approach to what you might have been doing before when you were lying in bed and all these thoughts were showing up? Dan: I guess when a thought would show up before I would assume that was the truth. You’re not sleeping, you’re gonna get sick. Dan: You’re not gonna be able to work. And I believed myself, or I’m thinking it, it must be true. But with the AWAKE exercise, I started to notice I could go, ah, there’s that thought and that’ll probably generate this feeling in my body. Dan: And then, over time by doing that over and over again, it just seemed to diminish somehow the feelings and the thoughts. Almost like my brain would say everything must be all right. It’s just time to relax. And but I guess we’re talking the six month mark here, where we’re talking pretty far down the line not in the initial stages. Dan: So definitely something I had to work on and I still use today. Martin: Our default response to especially the difficult thoughts or the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that we can experience is to try and get rid of them. To avoid them, to fight them, to resist them or to see them as something more than what they are. Martin: Which are thoughts and feelings. They’re nothing less than that. They’re nothing more than that. They’re thoughts and their feelings and we get to decide what we do with them once they show up. Dan: Initially, they were just overwhelming the thoughts. And but over time, you’d, you almost can get to laugh at them a little bit, oh, there’s that thought that you’re not gonna sleep tonight. Okay, no worries, that’s all right. Dan: But we’re gonna go and do something else instead. I’ll go read a book or do anything else. And if the thought comes up again, just acknowledge it again and and continue with whatever you’re doing. Martin: Sometimes we can get a bit tangled up in the thoughts because we really don’t want to experience them. So we might practice this approach of accepting them, acknowledging them, but deep down we’re only doing that because we want to get rid of them. And when that’s our approach, which is understandable, it’s really hard to emerge from that ongoing struggle. Martin: The more practice you get in with, just allowing them to sit there, to be present, even though you might not want ’em to be there, you don’t have to pretend that you want ’em there, but it’s just about accepting that, trying to push ’em away, trying to fight them only makes things more difficult. The more space you give them, the more practice you get in with that, the less they jerk you around over time. Dan: Yeah, absolutely. They seem to lose their power. I, the way I felt it is my mind went I’m bringing it up a thousand times and he’s not reacting to it, so why bother bringing it up anymore? You know what I mean? Potentially that’s maybe what’s happening. Dan: It just really helped. Initially I wondered what, this is not doing anything. But just as the nights became less anxious, it was like, wow, this is really powerful. And yeah, I just can’t speak more highly of that sort of system, that feeling that it’s, it just diminishes the response of your mind and your body. Dan: People say I can’t control what I think. But no, you can observe your thoughts and your actions can not reflect your thoughts whatsoever if you choose to. The way I think about, it’s imagine if there was a car out the front of your house that was running with a set of keys in it, with the door open. Dan: Everyone would have that thought, geez, I could jump in that car and drive away, but we don’t do, we, 99% of us don’t do that. We have the thought and we go, that’s not the action I want to do. And then you move on. So I brought it back to that sort of simple level. Dan: It’s the same sort of thing. I think you observe your thoughts and you go no, don’t need to action that thought. And by doing that, somehow it just gets diminished over time. Martin: I think it can be really helpful to reflect on the controllability of our thoughts. Often I think when we’re honest with ourselves and we reflect on this, we can probably recognize that our thoughts are out of our direct control. Martin: And the more we try to control our thoughts, the more kind of powerful and influential they become. But on the other hand, we can always control our actions, how we respond to the thoughts. So our brain is generating this stuff as it’s doing its job of looking out for us. We get to decide then what we do with that. Martin: And like you said, the more we can respond in a way that doesn’t pull us into a battle and a struggle, the more we can acknowledge and make space for it. We’re also telling our brain that, okay, we’re listening. So you don’t have to keep yelling even louder and louder. And because these thoughts come from our brain doing its job of looking out for us, if we do try to resist them, it’s just gonna yell louder. Dan: Yeah. I think that’s exactly what was happening with me. Yes, exactly. But I guess just to move back to after starting your course, Martin, I probably didn’t see much difference in my sleep for about four weeks, I think. And then I remember having three, three good nights of sleep. And I thought again after that I thought that’s all done and dusted. I’m over with that, but of course then the bad nights returned. Dan: I just saw improvement as I was going along, which then boyed me more to continue to follow that path. And the more I did it, the more better nights I had. Certainly not a nice linear path. I can tell you. Martin: Yeah, it would be great if progress was always just this perfect straight line, just beautiful diagonal line, just constant night after night improvement after improvement. Martin: But, like you just described, it’s never like that. It’s not even up and down. It’s probably sideways, curly, squiggly, all different shapes, sizes it goes all over the place. And that’s a normal part of any journey. What matters is, again, bringing it down to our actions. How are we gonna respond to this? Martin: How are we gonna respond when things are going well? And it’s often a lot easier to respond how we want to, when things are going well, but maybe most importantly, how do we respond when things aren’t going how we might want them to go. Dan: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And many nights things didn’t go the way I wanted to go, but I found things to do. Dan: And the other thing is, I did find it hard to do things at night. It’s pretty lonely at three o’clock in the morning when everyone else is sleeping in the house and everything you like to do is noisy and, playing guitar and banging around in the garage and this and that. So I really found it difficult to find an alternative. Dan: So initially I was just stuck lying in bed thinking about it. But I’m not a big reader. But one night I picked up a book and actually thought, this is all right, this is quite calm and relaxing. So I ended up buying myself a little reading light and if the thoughts got too much and too much anxiety, I would just jump outta bed and pick up the book and read a page, read a chapter. Dan: Couple of chapters, whatever, until I, until that sleepiness came back, and then I’d go back to bed and have another go at sleeping. Martin: You gave yourself options by the sounds of it. So before when you were really struggling, it felt perhaps like there were no options. You just had to kinda stay in bed and kind of battle with the thoughts, battle with the feelings, battle with the insomnia, try really hard to make sleep happen. Martin: And as you were exploring this, you realized that there were other things that you could do. You could practice building skill in acknowledging and making space for whatever the thoughts and feelings are that are showing up. And on a more physical level perhaps you can also just read a book. Martin: You can get outta bed and read a book. You can stay in bed and read a book. You’re doing something other than struggling and battling away. You are not in a battleground in the middle of the night. You’re just doing something that helps you experience that moment with less struggle. Dan: Yeah, exactly. And I do remember as I was more comfortable in bed when I was awake, but I was still getting up in the night to read my book on the couch, and I think I might have posted something in the forum about that. I think you came back and said if you’re comfortable in bed why don’t you try and stay in bed and read? Dan: And I thought, am I allowed to do that? And yeah, of course you are, if you’re comfortable and stay in bed. So I did. Stayed in bed and I read my book and lo and behold went back to sleep. So it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing, it’s all about how you react to those thoughts and those feelings. Dan: Yeah, definitely. Martin: This idea of should I stay in bed? Should I get outta bed? It’s something that a lot of people ask me about. And it, my answer is, it really doesn’t matter whether you get in bed, whether you stay in bed, or get out of bed. It really doesn’t matter. What matters most is are you engaged in a struggle? Martin: And if so, what can you do to experience that moment with a little bit less struggle? And that could involve watching TV in bed and all the sleep hygiene people are going to probably start feeling faint hearing that. Or it could be getting out of bed and doing something else. It really doesn’t matter because your goal isn’t to permanently delete whatever thoughts and feelings are showing up ’cause from experience that doesn’t work, your goal isn’t to somehow magically make sleep happen because as you know from experience, you can’t make sleep happen through effort. Martin: Your goal is to just experience whatever’s happening in that moment with less struggle. And that can be done whether you’re in bed, on the floor, in the kitchen, out in the backyard, jumping on a trampoline. Martin: It doesn’t matter because what matters is experiencing that moment with less struggle. Dan: A hundred percent. Yep. Dan: I’d agree with that now. At the time it was difficult to see, very difficult to see, but now on reflection absolutely. Like I say, the thoughts still pop in even now when I’m sleeping. Dan: If I do wake up, sometimes I’ve gotta go to the toilet or for whatever reason I do wake up. There is that little thought pops in, are you gonna go back to sleep? It’s thank, thanks, mind. Thanks for that bit of information. So that’s where we’re at now. 18 months down the track. Martin: I think it’s important to emphasize too, that you are the expert on you and every client is the expert on themselves, and everyone listening to this is the expert on themselves. Martin: So if someone is listening and they find it more helpful to get out of bed during the night, then maybe that’s what’s right for them. If someone else is listening and they prefer to stay in bed, then maybe that’s what’s right for them. Really what could be most helpful is to just reflect on your own experience. Martin: Because our own experience is often our best guide as to what is most workable for us what kind of actions seem to draw us into more struggle. What actions seem to help us or could help us emerge from that struggle or make things a little bit better, even if only half a percentage point better, what action might help us nudge the needle a little bit. Martin: And that could be different for everyone. Dan: Those little percents add up over time. That’s what I found. Those just little 1% things they do add up. And eventually I got back on track in that way, slowly and steadily. So over time the sleep restriction, I back that off and just started to go to bed when I felt slept sleepy, so that sort of thing loosened it up, but I lent more into the observing the thoughts and feelings type thing. Dan: And that’s why I think I ended up enjoying the course ’cause while I got bits of information from YouTube clips and whatnot, the course followed a a good step by step progress. Like sleep restriction was early on in the course. And then we moved to the AWAKE exercises and feelings. So the order of it just seemed to work for me. Dan: And yeah it was just a natural progression in the end. But yeah, still, again, I go back to just how powerful that observing your thoughts and feelings can be. It just so powerful in the long term. So I certainly feel now if I ever had some sort of incident again, I’ve got these tools forever. Dan: I feel that I’ve got something I can use straight away before it all gets out of control and out of hand. And that is so very reassuring. Now I don’t have to go to the doctor to ask for sleeping tablets as my only resort. I can just bring, I could bring black sleep restriction if I needed to or lean more into the observing thoughts and feelings, that sort of thing. Dan: If it ever happening again. I think things would be a little bit different for me. Martin: You are armed with these new skills now. I think if anyone listening to this thinks what am I skilled at? What is one of my big skills? And then you reflect on how long did it take to develop that skill? Did it just happen overnight or was it a longer process that involved ups and downs that involved frustrations and setbacks and difficulties. Martin: Probably the latter, right? Skills don’t tend to just magically appear. They do require practice and commitment to action and ongoing practice, whether that feels easy or whether it feels difficult. But then once we’ve developed that skill, it’s with us for life. Martin: We can always draw up on it. Dan: Yeah, I totally agree. I actually thought all the things that I’ve learned in my life, this, there’s just another thing. I absolutely can learn this. It takes time, but I can do it. And now I have, you’re a hundred percent correct. It’s easier now that I’ve learned it and I can’t ever unlearn it. Dan: So it’s just so helpful. Not only at the night, during the day as well. I was using it during the day when I was obsessed with sleep. Here’s that thought again. If you only did this, you’ll sleep at night. You’d think about that all day and then you get to night and it wouldn’t work. Dan: So when those things pop up in the day, just accept them and go on, and it’s just led to a calmer mind all round really. Martin: And that’s a good point too, that these skills can be used during the daytime too. Because so much of the struggle is experienced during the daytime as well, right? People that aren’t really familiar with insomnia would probably consider it just to be a nighttime problem. Martin: But it’s much more than that. It really is a 24 hour a day problem. It’s always gonna be on our mind. We’re always feeling its presence. And a lot of that also comes down to the thoughts and the predictions and the kind of judgments that show up during the day and how that can just be so distracting and make it harder for us to do things that matter. Dan: Yes, definitely. And it certainly overtook me there for a while. But and that’s why that doing that one good thing a day was really helpful. I think there’s something in the course about that, one good thing in the day or something. But I made myself do that and I still do that to this day. Dan: It might be just 10 minutes, something for me. Maybe it’s a walk with my wife, maybe it’s a bike ride. Maybe it’s go and tinker with something. But that just every day now I can say I did something for me no matter how tired I was or or whatever. And I think that’s helped calm the mind as well. Dan: And one thing I have noticed since my sleep has returned is the amount of sleep I get at night doesn’t seem to marry up with how tired I am during the day. Some nights I can have eight hours sleep and feel absolutely washed out the next day. But other nights I can have five hours and feel energized and have a great day. Dan: So I think that myth of the eight hours a day, all these sleep myths that you’re taught over your life, I don’t think they’re quite accurate either. Martin: We have these beliefs, I guess it would be, about shoulds. I should get X amount of sleep. I should only wake once or twice, or I should not wake at all during the night. Martin: I should not experience anxiety. I should not feel frustration, anger or worry. And so then when that stuff happens that we believe that we shouldn’t experience, we have the difficulty of the experience itself, but then we have the difficulty of all the kind of judgment and self-talk that we add onto top of that. Dan: Yeah, definitely. And the further down the rabbit hole you go, you just, you, you just get overloaded. Your brain just goes into meltdown and you’re researching things and you’re coming up with your own hypotheses and you really trying to become a self doctor. And you just snowball down the hole. Dan: But I think you can snowball your way out of it as well, which is reassuring. The same things that get you down there can bring you back out, so just following the path that I went for me was the way to go. That observing the thoughts of feelings initially, the sleep restrictions and the not checking the clock and the finding something to do at night and to doing something in the day for myself just worked my way back to some sort of normal sleeping pattern. Martin: It also sounds as though as you’ve gone through this journey, it’s not so much that you are back to where you were before sleep was an issue or a concern. Like back to that starting point. It almost sounds like you are further ahead now. Martin: You’ve got all these new skills and you’re a lot more focused on values-based living. You are consciously choosing to do things each day that matter to you that reflect the life you want to live. Martin: You’re doing more of that stuff that matters. Dan: Oh, absolutely. Martin, I think I’m much better off than before. I just had no clue about sleep. No clue. If you had told me you can force yourself to go to sleep, I would say, yeah, sure, I can. I just jump in bed, close my eyes and I’ve got this. Dan: So initially the sleep education, that was great. That’s knowledge that I can hold for the rest of my life. Then all the tools that I’ve learned, that’s knowledge I hold for the rest of my life. Not saying every night’s perfect, it’s not, but the way I react to it is totally different. Martin: That can be really unusual for people that are still in the struggle to listen to episodes like this where people talk about maybe being stronger or having grown as a result of their experience. Because when we’re tangled up in the struggle, we’re like, we don’t see any possible upsides to it or any kind of learning opportunities from it or any sense of personal growth or development from it. Martin: It’s only when we’re able to emerge from that struggle and look back that we realize that there was stuff there that we’ve taken from that experience. It’s contributed overall to some kind of positive in our lives that we can then take forward. Dan: Absolutely. And I believe, and I and to be honest, I was one of those pers persons that would listen to the podcast and go, no way. No way. I’m stuck here now. This is my life. This is my, this is where I am. I’m broken. My brains must be mis wired. I’m different to everyone else. I was hearing the stories going this is almost unbelievable, but now looking back I can see my progression and the tools and everything I use to help me come back. You can absolutely be stronger after all this. Absolutely. I am a hundred percent agree with that now, but I can understand someone who’s in it not being able to see it ’cause I was there as well. Dan: I could not see a way out of it. But I had faith in the tools that you provided. I saw a little glimpses of things and I focused on those things like I do feel sleepy even though I might still not have a good night. I know I can feel sleepy and I know I can go to sleep. Dan: And then things just slowly improved. And then when things improved, I just built on it. That worked, well I’m gonna continue to go down this path and I feel stronger than before I had the sleeping issues for sure. Martin: So those little glimmers that you experience, like the sleepiness showing up maybe when you, for the first time, strung a couple of good nights together you kinda held onto them or maybe consciously brought them into your awareness when things weren’t going as well as you wanted. Martin: And that’s maybe what kept you moving forward, just bringing your awareness back to all those little glimmers of hope or those little successful moments or those little insights that you were picking up along the way. Dan: Yeah, exactly. You’d have a, even after a bad night, I’d still have a good day and go at least I had a good day. Dan: It was a horrible night, but it was a good day. Or yes, I fell asleep for three hours, that’s better than no hours, what I was getting a month before, so just the small things. They did add up over time and over time you put it in the bank and then you start to focus more on those things and start to feel stronger, and then that builds more sleep, then more stronger, more sleep, more positive and then just, yeah, just goes from there. Dan: But I do stress that was many months of work. I say work, but, learning the tools and whatnot. I think I didn’t truly feel like I was getting reasonable sleep most nights for about six months after, after initially starting the course. And then I can tell you I was walking on eggshells now for another six months after that. Dan: It was always, every now and again in that thought, are you gonna sleep tonight? There was a bit of disruption tonight. You’ve gone out to a concert, are you gonna sleep tonight? So definitely tentative for a long period of time. Martin: And that makes sense because you are so vividly able to recall the struggle, and so obviously you don’t want to get pulled back into that again. Martin: And it’s normal that from time to time you’re gonna be, because you’re a human being, not a robot. And it’s normal that your brain is gonna keep reminding you of how difficult that experience was and warning you about it. And what really matters is, again, going back to what we’ve been talking about is how we respond to it. Martin: How we choose to respond to this stuff is what determines our level of struggle. Dan: The knowledge that my brain was just trying to protect me . That’s a strange thing to say, but even the knowledge of that was really helpful. Dan: Right, my brain’s learnt this way to protect me, and that is to feel anxious. That’s what it’s learnt and that’s what it’s doing. After I could step aside of that and observe it, things became a lot easier. But yeah, knowing my brain’s not trying to hurt me, that it’s actually trying to help me. Dan: Maybe it’s a little bit skew if in the way it’s trying to help me, but it is trying to help me. That actually helped settle me down as well. Martin: It can feel as though the brain is like an adversary, right? A lot of clients tell me it’s like my mind is working against me. Martin: I can go to bed feeling really calm and relaxed and then my mind starts racing. Why is my brain doing this to me? Why is it not cooperating? And it can be a big mindset shift to be willing to explore this idea that our brain’s number one job is to look out for us. So it’s going to generate lots of thoughts and feelings about stuff, and it’s always going to focus on worst possible outcome every single time because that’s what keeps us alive. Martin: Our brain is not gonna focus on the most positive possible outcome, only ever the worst possible outcome. And it’s not doing that to make things difficult for us, it’s doing that to keep us safe, to keep us alive. And understanding that, or recognizing that can really help because that can shift the relationship we have with our minds, right? Martin: And so now, if we can recognize our mind isn’t an adversary, maybe we don’t have to battle with it, maybe we don’t have to see it as the enemy anymore, and that can move us on that path to making space for the mind to just do whatever it’s gonna do anyway. Dan: Yeah I think absolutely. And I can’t remember exactly what point I sort of understood that at some point in the process, but at that point I kind of said right, your brain’s job is to keep you alive. Dan: So it’s not trying to hurt you. You just need to work with it, and you and you hit a nail on the head. It did go to every absolute worst case every night when it was a bad night. It was, you are not gonna be able to get up in the morning, you’re not gonna be able to do your job. Dan: You are gonna lose your job, you’re gonna lose all your money. You’re gonna, how are you gonna be able to drive to work? You can barely keep your eyes open. Just constant. Any bad thing, it would just bring it up. But as I negotiated every one of those thoughts, Hey that’s just not true, that thought. Dan: And I think it’s important to note, not in a aggressive way would I attack my thoughts. I would just observe them and try not to judge myself. Just go, they’re just thoughts. And I think that was important too. ‘Cause attacking yourself is just not going to help the process at all. Dan: And certainly early on I was probably betting myself up much too much. I was you are useless. You are you are never gonna be able to do anything again sort of thing. But as I tackled it, I managed to go no. We’re still gonna go out and we’re still contributing. Dan: We’re still going out and doing our thing. We’re doing stuff for ourselves. Dan: And yeah, just worked my way through that. Martin: What kind of markers of progress did you have for yourself that kept you moving forward when sleep might not have been doing what you wanted it to do, when your thoughts and feelings might not have been doing what you wanted them to do? Dan: I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t really have markers, but I would’ve take each day just as it comes. Maybe it was a time in the evening, what late afternoon, where I would probably sit and just say how was the day? But last night was no good, but I actually had a pretty good day. I did this and I did that, and that was fun. Dan: And, or that was a great day at work or whatever. So for me it was really more day by day. I didn’t really set goals. In any way. It was really, yeah, just day by day for me. Martin: It sounds like you were focused more on what did I do each day and if you were able to reflect that you did some stuff that day that mattered, that was aligned with your values, that reflected who you are, who you want to be, the life you want to live, that was more of a marker of progress to you perhaps. Dan: Yeah, I think absolutely at the end of every day I would just, yeah, that was a good day. I didn’t really keep record of all that. Dan: It was just a real truly for me, it was day by day, just as time went by I just saw improvement in everything, to be honest. It was a lot of, it’s a bit of a blur now. I do definitely remember day by day, just, I think I said it once stage, we’re just gonna do this day by day. Every night’s a new night, as it were. Dan: What happened last night could be totally different tonight. So let’s not take last night as a sign of how tonight’s gonna be. It’s a brand new night and anything could happen. Martin: Would you say that you became more focused on being present? Martin: So for example, when we are really tied up in the struggle, so much of it, our brain is just time traveling, right? It’s predicting what’s gonna happen that night. During the night it’s predicting what’s gonna happen the next day. In the morning it’s predicting what’s gonna happen in the afternoon. Martin: And as your approach changes, perhaps you became more focused on the present moment, like noticing when your mind is time traveling, bringing it back, redirecting your focus and attention on where you are at that moment, what you want to be doing at that moment, what’s around you at that moment? Dan: Absolutely. That’s yes. The answer to that is yes. And I still get distracted today and I still can catch myself in those thoughts and go let’s just bring it back to what we’re doing right now. Obviously you need to plan what you’re doing for the day and this and that, but I think that’s a little different than getting wrapped up in a negative thought cycle. Dan: And I did absolutely could pick myself up and just go bring myself what’s happening right now. Middle of the night I’m reading this book. Just come back to this book. It’s fun. I’m gonna read that and then I might find that thought would come back. Same thought. And I just acknowledge it again. Dan: There it is. It’s come back. I’ve been distracted. It’s okay. Just bring it back to this book again. And eventually it, my mind just gave up trying to convince me of something. And then the sleep just happened. Martin: Dan I really appreciate you coming onto the podcast and sharing all these great insights with us. Martin: If someone with chronic insomnia is listening and they feel as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, that they’ll just never be able to stop struggling with insomnia, what would you say to them? Dan: First thing I’d say is, you are not broken. I thought I was broken, but I wasn’t. And you won’t be either. The second thing is learn. Learn about sleep. Sleep education. Learn the difference between sleepiness and tiredness. You want to get that sleepy feeling to come back or at least understand how it feels. Dan: Third thing is you can absolutely observe your thoughts and your feelings, and you can absolutely teach yourself to react in a different way to them. Absolutely. But it takes time. It, for me, six, six to eight months it took. But you can absolutely do it. And the very last thing, and most importantly I think is be kind to yourself. Dan: There’s no point beating yourself up. Many people are going through this and beating yourself up will not be helping in any manner at all. Martin: I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your journey with us, Dan. Thank you so much. Dan: Thanks 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. I want you to be the next insomnia success story I share! If you're ready to stop struggling with sleep and get your life back from insomnia, you can start my insomnia coaching course at insomniacoach.com. Please share this episode!

Kelly's journey with insomnia began post-childbirth, spiraling into panic and obsession with sleep. After trying various medications and routines, she learned to let go of the struggle and embraced acceptance. By shifting her focus from chasing sleep to living freely, she regained trust in herself. Discover how her new relationship with thoughts reduced their power, leading to improved daytime energy and overall life satisfaction. Her inspiring story encourages others still battling insomnia to practice patience and compassion.

During a trip to Switzerland, Stephanie had a night of no sleep and spent the next day battling panic attacks. Her sleep soon recovered, but that experience planted a seed of fear — a fear of going through another day like that if sleep didn’t show up. Months later, when a medical diagnosis and abrupt medication changes disrupted her sleep, that old fear returned — stronger, louder, and harder to ignore. She threw everything at the problem: strict sleep hygiene, medications, rigid rules, new routines. But the harder she fought for sleep, the more relentless the struggle became. Some nights she found herself outside at 3am, wrapped in a blanket, scrolling for answers — exhausted, anxious, and desperate for relief. The turning point didn’t come from a new trick or another pill. It came when she stopped fighting. When she stopped treating wakefulness as a threat and gave herself permission to feel what was already there — the fear, the frustration, the anxiety — without trying to push it away. In this episode, Stephanie shares how letting go of the fight helped her start showing up for her life again. She talks about responding to difficult nights with more presence, more compassion, and more trust in her ability to cope — and how she rebuilt her life one night, one breath, one value-based action at a time. Stephanie’s story is a powerful reminder that recovering from insomnia isn’t about winning the fight. It’s about realizing there was never a fight to win in the first place. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that by changing how we respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it, we can move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life we want to live. Martin: The content of this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. The statements and opinions expressed by guests are their own and are not necessarily endorsed by Insomnia Coach LLC. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied. Martin: Okay, 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. Mentioned in this episode: DARE by Barry McDonagh I want you to be the next insomnia success story I share! If you're ready to stop struggling with sleep and get your life back from insomnia, you can start my insomnia coaching course at insomniacoach.com. Please share this episode!

Laura shares her unexpected battle with insomnia during a joyful time in her life, highlighting how anxiety turned sleepless nights into a struggle. After trying various solutions without success, she discovered that acceptance of her thoughts about sleep transformed her journey. Emphasizing the importance of reframing progress and maintaining a resilient mindset, she learned to face insomnia without resistance. Today, while still experiencing tough nights, they've lost their power, allowing her to live a more fulfilling life.

A midwife's life takes a turn as her commitment to her patients leads to a struggle with insomnia. Despite trying every solution, including strict programs and medications, sleep eludes her. The breakthrough comes when she shifts her perspective, embracing life’s joys and accepting uncertainty. By letting go of the constant need to control her sleep, she finds a natural rhythm returning. The conversation highlights the power of mindset, self-acceptance, and the journey of finding hope in sleep recovery.

Rupsa shares her struggle with insomnia sparked by a major life change. She experienced racing thoughts and anxiety, leading to a fear of sleep. Instead of fighting her insomnia, she learned to embrace her uncomfortable feelings. This shift in mindset allowed her to understand that her thoughts contained valuable insights. By accepting wakefulness and using mindfulness techniques, Rupsa found a healthier relationship with sleep, transforming her nights into a more peaceful experience.

Tim shares his journey of overcoming insomnia, which was fueled by anxiety and a constant struggle for control. He discovered that relinquishing the fight against sleeplessness allowed him to embrace self-kindness and acceptance. By focusing on living fully instead of chasing sleep, he transformed his relationship with insomnia. The discussion offers insights into managing intrusive thoughts and highlights how accepting wakefulness can lead to improved sleep quality and emotional resilience.

Although Sophie never considered herself to be a good sleeper, things got really difficult after the birth of her son. As a new mom, she knew there would be some short-term sleep disruption — but when she was no longer able to compensate for lost sleep after her parents left and her partner returned to work, things got really difficult. Sophie’s doctor prescribed her medication and she found herself increasing the dosage to make sleep happen but it wasn’t working for her. Benadryl didn’t work. Turning off all screens two hours before bedtime didn’t work. Wearing blue light blocking glasses didn’t work. Having a relaxation routine didn’t work. At this point, Sophie felt desperate. She wanted to have a bigger family but thought that would be impossible if her sleep didn’t improve. She was no longer sharing a bed with her partner even though that was something that was important to her. She felt like a failure. She felt trapped. When she found the Insomnia Coach podcast, Sophie realized that she wasn’t alone and that there was a way out of the struggle. She started implementing a sleep window and she used the time she spent awake at night to do meaningful projects such as creating a baby photo book, rather than tossing and turning and battling away trying to make sleep happen. Things improved for a few months until insomnia returned and seemed to take over her life. At this point, Sophie decided to work with me. She wanted a clear plan. A new way forward. She wanted to arm herself with skills that would help her get her life back from insomnia. Sophie shifted the focus of her attention away from trying to make a certain amount or type of sleep happen and toward actions that reflected her values and that kept her moving toward the life she wanted to live, independently of sleep. As she did this, she realized just how capable she was. She could get stuff done — stuff that mattered to her — regardless of how she slept. This left her feeling empowered and reduced the power and influence sleep had over her life. She no longer put as much pressure on herself to make sleep happen. This, in turn, helped sleep become increasingly effortless. The difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with insomnia also started to lose their power and influence as Sophie became more aware of the power she had in choosing how to respond to them. Sophie experienced ups and downs on her journey. And yet, she remained committed to the new way forward she had chosen for herself. Sleep no longer predetermines how she will feel the next day or what she will do the next day. She knows she always has options and is always in control of the choices she makes. She’s back to sharing a bed with her partner. She is ready to grow her family. She is free from the insomnia struggle. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that by changing how we respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it, we can move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life we want to live. Martin: The content of this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. The statements and opinions expressed by guests are their own and are not necessarily endorsed by Insomnia Coach LLC. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied. Martin: Okay, Sophie, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come on to the podcast. Sophie: of course. Martin: Let’s start right at the very beginning. Can you tell us a little bit more about when your sleep problems first began and what you think caused those initial issues with sleep? Sophie: Yes. So for me, it really started after the birth of my son two years ago. And looking back, I don’t think I had ever been what we call a good sleeper. Like I have some friends who can sleep in airports or fall asleep very quick anywhere they go. And it had never been me. I always had nightmares. Sophie: Needed my blackout blinds and my sometimes I mask or my earplugs to make it perfect but I think the difference was that before having my son, I think I was not putting as much pressure on sleeping because I was like whatever if I have a bad night’s sleep, it’s fine. I can nap tomorrow or like I don’t think I had as much pressure to perform as a mother who wants to parent well, and so Yeah, of course, I was expecting that after having a baby, my sleep would take a toll. Sophie: Everybody tells you, oh, you’ll see, right? It’s hard to sleep deprivation. And I was expecting that would be my biggest challenge, because I had always been someone who needed the eight or nine hours sleep and or I thought so. And yeah, like coming into it, we decided that we, I would strictly breastfeed. So that meant that all the, what I call the night shifts, because that’s really how it felt like I was going to work at night to feed my baby. Sophie: So all the night shifts were on me because we’re not bottle feeding. And so I think that’s how my sleep really got dysregulated at that point. Because Yeah, you wake up multiple times a night and then you’re trying to catch up in the day, trying to nap and having those long naps in the afternoon. Sophie: And my circadian rhythm was just all out of whack. And so in the first few months, I was like this is just the reality of being a new mother, you’re not sleeping well. And I had support during the day from my parents and my partner to you. Compensate for the bad nights because I could pass on the baby and try to go to sleep But once that support was gone and I was suddenly, alone at home all day I think it even put more pressure At night to sleep because I was like, okay tomorrow I gotta be on, you know No one else will take care of my baby And that’s when I started having trouble falling asleep in between feeds, like my baby would feed and normally he’d like sleep for three hours in between feeds, but I was still there awake, like fully awake. Sophie: And it’s as if my brain was like you’re going to wake up in three hours anyway. So why would you fall asleep now? And so that was really hard. And to the point where my mental health just started really going down. And I, at some point, I remember begging my partner to Take more time off from work because I was like I can’t do this Like I just feel like i’m not a good mother, you know I was crying all the time and I felt like I was going straight to postpartum depression if I kept not sleeping So anyways for other reasons we stopped breastfeeding at around the four months mark and this is where I realized that this was not just parenting, like the typical parenting sleep problem because my partner was like now I can bottle feed at night. Sophie: So you go downstairs in what we call the sleep den because it’s away from the baby. We can go there and know that we’ll have a good night’s sleep. And I was still not sleeping. I was like going to bed. Fully awake unable to fall asleep, and sometimes three, four hours before falling asleep. I was also waking up a lot during the night, I think maybe expecting that I was needed. Sophie: So I was like maybe it’s gonna take a while before my brain understands that, I don’t have a baby to attend to anymore. But still, it was weeks of that, of really struggling. And then my partner actually went part time like work part time because I was still struggling so much that I needed to catch up during the day, even though I had the possibility of sleeping through the full night. Sophie: And I remember coming upstairs and both my baby and my partner are fast asleep. And I’m like, Just running in circle in the living room thinking. Oh my god. I’m so broken like what is wrong with me I can’t sleep and so Around I think a month of that of trying to get my sleep back in order just sleeping downstairs My partner was doing all the nights And I was still not sleeping. Sophie: I went to the doctor like that’s the first thing you do when you have a health issue oh I’m gonna go to the doctor. So we prescribed some medication and as a lot of people have said on your podcast, you could try that for a while and like sometimes, for me, it worked for maybe two weeks. Sophie: And I kept increasing the dosage to see if I would fall asleep more quickly. But it was not working. And also I didn’t like the side effects of the medication. I felt really groggy. And, there were some nights where my partner needed also a full night’s sleep. So sometimes I was taking on like a night once in a while. Sophie: And I was like how can I attend to my baby if I’m feeling dizzy and nauseated from that medication? So I didn’t like being on it so I went for like Benadryl which the pharmacist had recommended as like possible sleep aids So I was taking like two Before night and again, like nothing was working. Sophie: So I was like, okay, I need to go towards something else clearly so I went on And you see all the recommendations about no screen time, two hours prior to bed and what else they say oh, having a relaxing routine, make sure you address stress. I had these blue light glasses that I was wearing all evening. Sophie: But still no results. And I just felt so desperate by that point because I was like it seems like there’s no way out. Like I’m never gonna sleep again. And when you reach that point, I think It’s very distressing because at least when I had not tried the medication, I still thought, I could always take the medication. Sophie: But once I had tried and it was not working, I was like, okay, that means that’s my reality for the rest of my life. And the saddest part, Martin, was that. I wanted a bigger family, and I was like, there’s no way I can have another child if I can’t sleep, right? And that was the biggest grief, like when I dig deeper into what that meant to me, that’s really like, deepest grief that I had to go through was like, maybe we’re not, we’re only gonna have one child. Sophie: because of that. And it’s so sad to think about that. So anyways, one night I was again and like turning around in bed and I was like I need to hear other people’s stories or like research Maybe a podcast or something. I just felt so alone you know when you in the middle of the night and you look at all the Houses around and the lights are down and everybody’s sleeping and you’re awake You feel like such a like failure, right? Sophie: And so I’ve just typed postpartum insomnia on Spotify, and I found an interview you did with another woman who had postpartum insomnia. And that’s the first time I felt hope in so much, in so long. Listening to her story, and I think there was a moment where she said that she was even able to fall asleep like the light was on in the bedroom or something. Sophie: And Like on a randomly, and I was like, wow, I can only dream of sleeping well like this, And so that’s where I started to look into your content and your youtube channel and I tried basically just from Listening to your tips on your channel. I tried the sleep restriction idea because that’s what that was so novel to me I was like no one has ever told me That by trying to go to bed later, I could get more sleep. Sophie: This is so counterintuitive and Everybody like I remember there was one guy on your channel I think he had dealt with insomnia for 20 years or something like cases like this. You’re like, oh my god This is so I’m such a newbie in insomnia, like versus these people who have dealt with it for so long. Sophie: And he had said the sleep restriction was really what had helped him. I was like, what is that? So I looked at your content. And I was like, maybe I could try that. And honestly, like in a few days, and I did that plus, Also, when I wake up at night doing things that were pleasant, that were, those were the two interventions that I tried. Sophie: So I had a baby photo book that I wanted to work on for my son. And I had printed some like actual pictures not like very old school. And I had that project and I was like, Oh, I’m actually looking forward to getting up at night to do this because I’d never have time in the day. And When I had that thought that’s funny enough, like I, I didn’t wake up in the night because Of course it took the pressure off almost of sleeping because I was looking forward to being up and so That was so transformative like just these two things. Sophie: Really helped me to a point where I was able to function again And I was just so thankful to you and so that lasted a few months of like my sleep being good You And then I had a relapse that was my son was a year and a bit in October, or last year, and I can’t remember, I was trying to track what happened. Sophie: I don’t even know what happened, but I just had a huge relapse of insomnia. And I remember it had been a few days where I didn’t have much sleep, like maybe four hours. And I know for some people on your, who you talk to later, they’re like four hours is great. But for me, four hours was like, Oh my God. Sophie: Like I, that’s my limit. And that night I had only three hours. I was up until four, I think. And I remember writing a note to my partner in the kitchen table Can you drop David off at daycare today because I’m not going to be able to and I need to sleep in. And I just felt again like such a failure. Sophie: I was like, you know what, like you’re putting all that load on your partner. Like my partner for him to do that like it’s much more like I have much more flexibility on in my schedule because I’m working online. I have an online program like you and like my schedule is way more flexible. So for me to drop my son off at daycare, it’s no problem. Sophie: But for him, like it’s, it really impacts his day because he needs to get work at a certain time. And I woke up that day and I was just so done with it. I was like, all right, you got to do something. It’s clearly impacting everybody here. Not only you, but like thinking of how it impacted my son. And my partner, I was like, this is not only about you. Sophie: This is also about all the people around you. And I wrote a text to my partner, I was like, I’m taking action today. And this is going to be fixed. I promise. And he said, I’m glad that you found something and I went directly to your website. I didn’t go to your channel because I was like, okay, clearly, Martin has a program that’s all laid out, I felt like I needed more than the odd tip and like fishing around on the internet, I wanted a structured program I needed that structured support when your thoughts are just so all over the place. It’s really hard to think straight. So I was like, I need someone to take me by the hand. Basically, and then I like looked at your program and the investment and I was like do I want to do that? Sophie: And then there’s this little voice in my head that was like, Are you ridiculous right now? Do you feel like you’re worth this investment? And do you feel like your family is worth this investment? And the answer was so clear. It was like, there’s no, other way for me to get where I want to be. Sophie: And if I’m not worth that it’s ridiculous, right? So I like, signed up for the program. And that day, I went through first week in a few hours, like that morning, I was like, Okay, that’s what I’m doing. And you’re smart, you’d put it as drip content In your course, so like you can’t go to week two before you actually did the homework because that I would be the kind of person I’m doing it all, I’m gonna go through it all right now, because I’m desperate, but no, like I had to go through week one and do my homework. Sophie: And it was so helpful to me just the few the first few videos on your course where you’re just de dramatizing the lack of sleep, just really taking the pressure off of sleeping and how I feel like there’s not even a week that goes by where you don’t have a radio show where it talks about the impact of lack of sleep and how it’s linked to cancer and all of these disease and every time I’d hear something about sleep and I’d turn it off because I was like okay now it’s just gonna put more pressure on me to sleep and I knew I didn’t get enough sleep or that’s what I thought. And I remember your lesson about. Like the people who didn’t sleep for, I don’t know how many days and like never die or didn’t die, and just putting those like different perspectives of okay, people can do great things on lack of sleep too. Sophie: And that was such a shift for me to understand, I can still do things without sleep. That was the biggest realization of that first week. And when you say, don’t cancel your plans when you don’t sleep, because then that gives reason to your brain. The next night you’re not sleeping, you’re like, Ah, yeah, like the other day I didn’t have enough sleep, and I wasn’t able to work, I wasn’t able to drop my son off at daycare, and your brain, Kind of just grabs onto these thoughts to be justifying the fact that sleep is important. Sophie: And so remember there was one night where I didn’t sleep at all. That was the first time ever that I had no, no sleep at all. And I had a gig the following day because I’m a singer songwriter. I had a gig in the school with children. And I also had two clients to see in my clinic. I’m a physiotherapist and I did it all. Sophie: I like. I did not cancel the gig because I was like, there’s all these teachers who, and it’s probably why I was not sleeping, because I knew everybody was waiting for me, and there was so much pressure for me to perform. But all these people have arranged their schedule around that gig, and, my clients, we’ve booked these appointments weeks ago. Sophie: I’m still gonna do it. And that was the most powerful thing because, and I made it all the way until 9 or 10 that night. I think I had a half hour sleep like nap after my gig just because I just needed it, but I really put an alarm on half an hour, and I didn’t want to go like longer than that. Sophie: And ever since, when I feel like I have trouble falling asleep, I think of that day. And I was like, look what you were able to do with no sleep at all. You sang ten songs in front of kids. No, I’m not gonna lie, I was still looking at my lyrics sheet that day. But I was able to do that and see clients and It just unlocked such an empowerment in my brain of okay, even if you don’t sleep, you can still do great things. And so that was a huge shift for me. And honestly, I didn’t even go through your whole program because I, after four weeks, I did the first four weeks and my sleep was like back to normal. And I felt like the tools that I got from the, I think your program is over six weeks but the tools I got from the first four weeks were just enough. Sophie: And, I, and you became part of our family. Like I mentioned you all the time. It’s just it’s really funny you’re really part of our conversations. Sophie: And, yeah, it was just so incredible to have that structure. And also, your voice is just so reassuring and soothing. Like sometimes, And I would not sleep and I’ll just listen to there was like something about it was a meditation For anxiety or anxious thoughts, I think or something like that. I was like, oh, I’ll just listen to that I’ll calm me down or so Yeah, it was like so transformative and like ever since going through your program, I’ve been recommending it to so many people. Sophie: And even doc, I told my doctor about you I was like, I’d like if you have clients who are going through insomnia issues and they’re not responding to, even if they’re responding to medication, maybe they want to go off medication. And so he took your name and, I think. Sophie: People need to be more informed about behavioral approach and your, yeah, just other things than just reducing screen time and things like that, obviously those things, if they were working, people were, would, would not go to their doctor and ask for medication. Yeah, I just want to thank you so much for your work and because that really changed my life and the most beautiful thing is that now I’m okay with having a second child, because I know I have the tools so I feel like, that’s huge for me to go from so desperate of I don’t want to grow my family anymore because of my sleep to now having all these possibilities ahead of us. Martin: Wow. You just did an amazing summary or an encapsulation of what the insomnia struggle is like and what the journey away from that struggle can be like. You identified a trigger for that initial sleep disruption, your natural response to that sleep disruption just as you shared, It can then get even more difficult because it’s like everything that we’re trying to do doesn’t seem to be working or is making things more difficult. Martin: So then we start to feel like we’re broken, that there’s something uniquely wrong, so we might try even harder. And then we can get tangled up, because all the things that we start to do then to fix things, or to protect our sleep, or to compensate for lost sleep, can be actions that aren’t aligned with who we are. Martin: Or who we want to be or the life we want to live. And your actions just become less about serving you more about serving the insomnia or the sleep. And so we’re getting pulled away from the life we want to live, which makes things more difficult. Our sleep is still struggling, which makes things more difficult. And then on top of that, we’ve got our problem solving brain, right? It’s in there trying to fix things, trying to look out for us. Martin: And as it does that to get our attention, it’s generating really difficult thoughts, feelings, stories, like you’re broken. You can’t be a good mom. You can’t have another child. This is never going to get better. All that stuff. And then we can get tangled up in a struggle with our minds. Martin: So it’s not just about the sleep anymore, it’s about everything that’s going on in our heads as well. I’m curious when you experienced all those normal and natural thoughts and feelings before we started working together. How did you typically respond to them? Sophie: I think for me, it was just build, it was a building up spiral that, Just got worse and to a point where I was so frustrated and angry and you know almost wanting to hit something like that’s really how I felt and sometimes Before we started working together. I would get up and just be like, like just Wanting to do something but I was not doing anything like not productive but I was just circling around like walking around in the living room and just like even holding my head like Clearly, if you had asked a bad actor to act like what angry and frustrated looks like, they would do all these gestures. Sophie: It feels ridiculous, but I was doing all of that. And yeah, so I was really letting these thoughts grab onto me and I was, giving them more and more importance. Sophie: And of course, these thoughts were right in the way because I was, the following day, if I was not sleeping, I was not a good mom. I was canceling plans, so I was not a good friend either. I was justifying these thoughts because I was taking the actions that were justifying them. So it was just like a loop that was that kept feeding itself. Sophie: But when you break that by saying, no, I’m just gonna do what the things that I’m intending to do, then the thoughts are suddenly losing their power because you know that it’s not true what they’re trying to tell you. Martin: Even if our mind tells us things like, you can’t do this, you’re not going to be good at doing this, we’re doing them anyway. Compared to, oh yeah. You’re right, I can’t do that, so we do less of the stuff that matters, and then it just feeds into itself . Sophie: Totally. And yeah, it was interesting because I gradually like first I was like, I’m just gonna try and get good sleep in the sleep den, downstairs, and once I have achieved that, I saw it as levels, almost, in a video game, it’s okay, once you can sleep there, but then I was communicating with you because I got your program where I could get one to one support through email. Sophie: And one of my goals actually I didn’t mention that but was to sleep with my partner because I was like, we’re a couple, we’re not going to be one of these old people like sleeping in different rooms like this is not how I envision my relationship to be and I know it can be normal for a few months after baby is born just so at least one person gets good sleep but Now it’s had been going for a year, and I was like, this is, I feel like this is how people’s relationships eventually break. Sophie: It’s like they just don’t connect anymore, and in, in intimacy as well, when you think of that. And so I was back and forth emailing with you and I was like, how can I get there to sleep with my partner? And you were like, I encourage you to just live the life you want to live. And if there’s enough sleep pressure, sleep’s going to happen. Sophie: We are able to sleep together again and we got like a few props like getting a king bed for example to help like Having more space and we now have our separate blankets too because if we like the warmth and everything anyways So it’s different than it was before but we are definitely now able to sleep together and have that connection, which is so nice. Martin: The more that we can engage in actions that matter to us, for example, sharing a bed with our partner, which is something we can control, whereas we can’t control how the sleep might go, the more we can do that, the less power and influence all of this difficult stuff can have over our lives. Martin: And the less influence it has, the less of a problem it is. And the less of a problem it is, the less attention we pay to it, the less energy it consumes. And when we get to that stage, It really can just take care of itself. And if we can ever think back on a time when we didn’t have insomnia, we can probably recognize that I didn’t do anything to make sleep happen. Martin: And that’s really what we want to get back to, right? Sophie: Exactly. And there was like, another good example of that on your podcast was this man who said that he was anxious because he had to go travel for his daughter’s wedding, I think, and he was worried because it wouldn’t be in the same environment. And he was like, what if I don’t sleep? And I think He ended up not sleeping at all before the wedding, but like still attended and walk her down the alley or something like that. Sophie: And and I can relate to that because traveling, like my family is not here where I live. I live in the Northern Canada in Yukon and they live in Quebec. And I, when David was four months old, we wanted to go travel for Christmas and that was at the peak of my insomnia, and I was so anxious about that because I was like, okay, now we’re going to go into hotel rooms where the baby was going to be in the same room. Sophie: And my partner too, like there’s just going to be so many factors that will impact my sleep. And, I didn’t have great sleep during that trip, but we still went, and I was like, that would have been so unfortunate for me to be like, Oh no, I need to stay home for Christmas because, You know of my insomnia that would have been so ridiculous and like Now I can think of traveling and not even think about sleep. Sophie: I’m like of course i’m gonna sleep, And i’m just thinking of these people out there if you’re listening to this and you’re still struggling with insomnia and you haven’t worked with martinez I would highly recommend that you do because if you’re you’re If you’re restricting yourself from doing things that you love or like the life that you want to live as you mentioned this is so sad. Sophie: This is such a no brainer to me that you should sign up for this program because it’s gonna change your life forever And, yeah, yeah, for me it was an easy decision, I’m like, I’m, what, I was 37 at the time and I was like, there’s no way that this is going to be the rest of my life Like sleeping apart from my partner Not having other children like this is not me Like i’m a go getter like when I have a goal in life, I go for it and in this whole thing was just really Taking my power away, you know from the life I wanted to live. It was so transformative. I kept hearing your voice saying you can do hard things. And it’s still my mantra to this date, even for other things in my life, and I’m like, you can do hard things. And yeah. Yes, it’s, is it gonna be easy to fix your insomnia? No. Like you said, change is hard, but. Does that justify staying in, in this life? No, I think you should do the hard work so you can get the results. Martin: I think if we reflect on our own lives, we can probably draw out a few things that were really hard, that were really difficult. Any education that we’ve achieved or any career that we’ve achieved. Martin: Now, most of us found that wasn’t all plain sailing. So being at school is rarely easy all of the time. Gaining the skill to get to that point in our career that we now find ourselves in wasn’t easy. There were times where it felt easy, but there were other times when it felt really hard and then the brain fires up and it’s like you need to just quit, give in, this isn’t going to work. You’re not able to do this job, but the fact is, we can do hard things. And once we can reflect on our own experience of doing that. We can maybe identify some of the strengths that we have because when things are difficult, our brain kind of blocks all of this from us. Martin: It builds this wall and we don’t even realize how strong we are and What strength of character we have because that’s all gone because our focus is just on the struggle that we’re in. Sophie: Totally. I think like in every challenge, there’s a growth opportunity. Martin: I think we all have that moment somewhere in our past where We can reflect on that and notice that too where we came out of a really difficult situation and it was upon reflection an opportunity that helped us. It was like an experience that helped us grow, that helped us develop. And like you touched upon, I really just want to emphasize too is that when we give ourselves that opportunity to do hard things or to commit to meaningful actions, even when things are difficult, then we have that experience, right? We have that in our refreshed memory bank so that when our mind starts to tell us again, if you don’t get X amount of sleep tonight and you’ll have to cancel everything tomorrow. Martin: You won’t be able to do this. You can be like actually yesterday or day before yesterday I did all the things I wanted to do. Now that might not have been as easy. It might not have been as enjoyable, but I did them. I carried on doing things that mattered to me even when all this stuff was present. Martin: And you can always then draw upon that. Sophie: And I think like something you taught me as well is the perception of sleep is more important than the actual sleep you get. Because I take my partner as an example. He has a watch, like a smart watch, and the watch can tell him how much he slept. Sophie: And somehow when the watch tells him that he didn’t get as much sleep as he thought he feels more tired. And When, I don’t look at the clock anymore. I just sleep and then I decided that the amount of sleep I’m getting is not dictating how I’m going to feel the next day and what I’m going to do. Sophie: So It’s a data that I don’t really care about anymore, and I feel like I can, like on a less amount of sleep, say I sleep six hours, and he slept seven or eight, I still feel better than he does. And I know everybody has different sleep patterns. sleep needs and such. But yeah, I just find it so interesting that if I knew how much I would get, then I think I might be more likely to be, Oh, I’m so tired today, but because I don’t attribute any importance to that anymore. Sophie: I’m just so detached and I’m like, no, this is fine. Whatever. I couldn’t get eight hours. I’m going to still do this interview this morning. I get five hours. I’m still doing it. No, it doesn’t impact anything. And that’s such a. If you can detach yourself from that outcome, like in my mind you’ve succeeded, right? Sophie: Because as an insomniac, and I don’t even say I’m an insomniac anymore. I used to say that. And I attach an identity to myself Oh, I’m an insomniac, I don’t say that anymore. But yeah, when I was like, Yeah, I’m an insomniac. Sometimes I get three hours of sleep. Sometimes I get four. Sophie: Like I was all always focused on the data. And also another thing that just pops to mind, it’s random, but like someone on your podcast had said that they were afraid of how they would look when they’re tired or when they haven’t sleep, slept and. I was like, you know what, this is something I’m concerned about as well the bags under my eyes, and they’ll be like, oh, look at this mom, she’s not sleeping, and that person said that they had, I think they had taken pictures of when they had slept versus when they didn’t, and objectively, they couldn’t tell the difference. Sophie: And that was also such a realization to me. Sometimes I’d look at me and myself in the mirror after eight hours sleep. And I was like, you know what, if I didn’t know that I got eight hours, I would still think that I was tired. I still look like a parent who’s tired. So yeah, again, like all these things, like when you’re not sleeping, your brain is just trying to pick up on all the little things that tells that you’re not sleeping and yeah, I’m going to go to the grocery store and they all know that I haven’t slept and what, why does it matter, and and then I was also focusing on if I look at someone on TV, I’d be like, Oh, this person doesn’t look like they’re sleeping much either. Sophie: And I was just so focused on the look of yeah, like bags under the eyes and stuff. And now I don’t even care about that anymore. I’m like whatever people look like they look and, no one sometimes I tell people like haven’t slept at all last night, like for that gig, for example, I was like, I don’t know how it’s gonna go. Sophie: I haven’t slept at all. And they’d be like, Oh, it didn’t really show. I was like, Wow, this is crazy. Martin: I wonder if it just comes down to this idea of independent action. So just this realization or just this ongoing practice of building experience in acting independently of the number of hours of sleep we got the number of hours we were awake, what that quality of sleep felt like what sleep might be like if we do things like travel And because really it always comes back to we’re at this point in time where we have a choice. Should I do that gig because I had really difficult nights of sleep in the build up. Should I go into work? Should I travel? Should I go camping? We got a choice to make, right? We can do that stuff and accept that it might be more difficult, there might be difficult nights, it might be less enjoyable perhaps we might not sleep as well, none of that stuff we can really control, but we can control that action, we can do things that matter. Martin: The only other alternative I’ve still not managed to figure out another alternative. As far as I know, the only other alternative is to, we’ve got that choice, and then we start to say no to things that matter to us. We decide that we’re not going to go camping. We’re not going to go traveling. We’re not going to take on big projects at work. All of these things, which are actions we can control, we’re now withdrawing from and we’re doing less. So we’re not really living the kind of life we want to live. And all of this difficult stuff that we’re trying to appease through those actions, like our sleep and our thoughts and our feelings, they don’t really tend to respond that favorably anyway, to all of that stuff. Martin: So we’ve still got the sleep disruption, the sleep difficulties, and all the thoughts and feelings that come with that. But on top of that, now we’re just getting pulled away more and more from the life we want to live. And it’s almost like we lose control over our actions, and that just very rarely makes things any easier or any better. Martin: What would you say was the most difficult change that you made. That, upon reflection, you feel like, that was one of the most helpful things that I did to start moving away from this endless struggle with sleep? Sophie: it’s so relative, right? Because you’re like the most difficult thing that comes to mind is where you go to sleep a little later. But like, when I compare that to how difficult it was to not have tools and not sleep. It was not difficult at all, Sophie: for me, the most difficult part was to not know and be disempowered and not have options that, because I’m always like, there must be a way, I had we had a situation like this. We went through IVF for to conceive and that was the same idea of like we’re trying and nothing is working, and that’s for me for my type of personality when I can’t be. Sophie: Doing something to solve a problem. That’s the worst case scenario for me because i’ve always believed that there’s a way to solve things. That’s been my philosophy. So so when I found myself with insomnia, I’d felt a bit like that coming back to that journey of not being able to conceive because I felt like there’s no tools. Sophie: They’re like everything i’m trying is not working And that was the difficult part. The difficult part was not to sign up for your amazing program, and do the work that I knew had worked for so many people. That was the easy part, was like, Okay, I’m hopeful again, I know that if I’m doing this, even if it’s hard for a week, What is it a week over like the few months that I was not feeling like a good mother and I was like, not, I was super moody with my partner and not feeling like myself like This is nothing. Martin: You made a really good point there about, yeah, change is difficult. But when you’re able to compare it to what you’re doing right now, how difficult is that on balance? We’ve got two options. We’ve got the difficult situation we’re in now, or we’ve got the change, which is also difficult. Martin: So we’ve got a choice of two difficult things. If we know that one of the difficult things isn’t really working for us, how about we try the other difficult thing? Sophie: If you’re changing, like the change will be difficult, but it’s going to be difficult over a shorter amount of time than if you’re just, you just keep yourself in this current situation that’s difficult and it’s endless, right? Martin: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Yeah. If we. find that we’re in a situation where the things that we’re doing aren’t proving to be helpful, then we’re in a difficult position, and really there’s no, no end in sight. What if we try an alternative approach that’s also difficult, but it’s something that might have an end in sight that might give us a different result? Martin: Then , Even if nothing else, maybe we just see it as an experiment and we just say to ourselves, you know what, I’m just going to go all in and I’m going to try this new thing for say two weeks. I’ll give it a couple of weeks where I’ll really commit to it and I’ll just see it as an experiment. Sophie: What the worst that could happen, right? The worst that could happen is that it doesn’t work for you, but I don’t know. For me, just listening to all the people on your podcast, it was just like, why wouldn’t it work for me, right? I’m someone who can follow a plan. I’m as intelligent as all these people. Sophie: There’s no reason why this wouldn’t work other than if I don’t do the work. It was how I approached it. Martin: We’ve got that logical mind that tells us, other people have found this helpful, so why wouldn’t I find it helpful, but then we’ve also got that kind of problem solving mind that’s going to be like you’ve tried all these different things, they’ve not worked, what if this doesn’t work, what if you’re the only person, what if you try this and it doesn’t work, then what? Martin: Then that means that you really are broken, that you really are a failure, that you really, there is really is something uniquely wrong. So sometimes we just have to take that leap of faith and just give change a chance give a different approach a chance. Sophie: And I would add, give change a chance for long enough, right? So sometimes if someone maybe tried it for a few days and they’re like it’s not working. Maybe you haven’t tried long enough, and for me, that’s why also I wanted to do your program was to have really okay, how long should I do this, be doing this for have like more of a clear parameters of like, When can I say that this is not working for me? Sophie: Cause like you can hear different advice, but like when you don’t have a specific plan, like I don’t think you can really tell if something is working or not if you don’t have like clear guidance on what it is that you should be doing. Martin: Another thing as well that I think, maybe this is a reflective exercise in some self kindness perhaps, but , just because it feels like we have no options or no alternative or no way out, that doesn’t mean that’s true. It just means we haven’t found that way out yet. And I think that can just be so powerful because it is really easy to just feel completely trapped that there’s no way forward. Martin: But really, all that means is we just haven’t found the approach that’s right for us yet. The approach is out there. I might not know where it is, but we have to practice, we have to experiment, we have to try different things. And that’s really what matters. I’m yet to find someone with insomnia whose experience with sleep or their struggle with sleep is completely unique. Martin: Every client I work with is a unique individual. But when they share their struggle with me, it’s almost identical from person to person, and it’s about that struggle that happens when we completely understandably get tangled up into trying to control, trying to fix, putting pressure on ourselves, putting effort into things that we can’t really directly or permanently control. Martin: When you enrolled in my course and the kind of goals that you had for yourself I think that you touched upon one, which was sharing your bed with your partner. That was important for you to do. Another couple of things that you share was you just wanted to feel more energized during the day, have that zest for life back. Martin: And you wanted to just feel like you had to. Control over your own life again. Your actions weren’t there to serve insomnia. They were there to serve you. Sophie: And hopeful for a growing family as well. That was a big goal. Martin: How do you feel you’re doing with those goals now? Sophie: I would say my goals have been achieved. And, at first I was feeling anxious about the limited access to your course. I think it was like a few months access and I was like, what if my sleep is not fixed by then? And, I was just your brain is always constantly busy. you threats and stuff like that. And when the expiry came like a few, I think it was last month. I was like cool. I was like, I don’t need this anymore. I’m, I feel like I’m fixed or I don’t know, or I’m healed. It might be a better word. But and I know the tools and I know I can go back to them. Sophie: And they’ve worked for me once, they will work for me again. And I would not hesitate if I was in a really bad relapse and I was like, okay, I’m trying to tools are not working. I would not hesitate to sign up again to get the support again. But right now I just don’t feel like sleep is a thing anymore for me. Sophie: And it doesn’t impact the way I live my life. Doesn’t impact my travel plans, like I never think, Oh, what if I’m not sleeping? I’m not going to do this trip. Like it’s never a thing anymore. So I feel freed up from my insomnia and it’s not an identity that I carry anymore. Martin: How long would you say that it took for you to get to that point that you just described? Where it feels like you’re not just tangled up in this ongoing struggle. That sleep, the thoughts and feelings that can come based on how we sleep didn’t really have much power and influence over your life anymore? Sophie: It took me about three weeks to feel like I was in control again and that I was getting the sleep that I needed, so that was pretty immediate for me. But to get to the point where I don’t identify anymore with insomniac would say a few months. Martin: No doubt there were some ups and downs along the way. Sophie: Yeah, and what I was with the gig it was a one off night where I didn’t sleep at all and then it was good again, And the thing that they is I trusted that the next day I’d have a good night’s sleep Because I always hear you saying like a bad night You can always comfort yourself that a bad night’s sleep means that you’ll have a good one coming up And so I was like, okay, it’s fine. Sophie: I haven’t slept today. But like I was not like, oh no, I’m in a relapse of insomnia, I just considered that a one off bad night’s sleep that like you say, everybody has once in a while. So it’s not like my mind went to Oh no, I’m going back to insomnia. Yeah so I do still have bad night’s sleep, but like I said, I’m not associating the same meaning with them. Sophie: And I think that’s what that’s why I’m not going back into a longer relapse is because I don’t say oh no this is a bad night’s sleep, I’m going back to insomnia and then the thoughts are kicking in and keeping you away from sleeping because you’re worried, right? Martin: Yeah, that, that power and influence of sleep has just gone down markedly. Well, Sophie I’m really grateful for the time you’ve taken out your day to come on. I got one last question for you. It’s a question that I ask everyone, so I don’t want you to feel left out. And it’s this, if someone with chronic insomnia is listening and they feel as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, that they’ll just never be able to stop struggling with insomnia, what would you say to them? Sophie: Signing up for Martin’s program. Honestly, like this is the only advice I have like what’s the worst that could happen if you were to try? And, yeah, it’s worked so well for me that it’s easy for me to recommend that, but listen to all the other people’s interviews and see how they did and maybe find a story that resonates with yours too for me the interview of the woman with postpartum insomnia. Sophie: Was the one that resonated more with me because it was more similar to what I had experienced But find that story and that hope again and like just go for it like honestly, you’re worth it and your life is worth it and Yeah, go for it! Martin: I really appreciate those kind words. The result and the change happened because of the changes that you made, your openness, your curiosity, your willingness to try a new approach, even though you tried so many things up to that point that hadn’t been helpful. You were still open enough and willing enough to explore the possibility that there was something still out there that could help, and you committed to making changes. Martin: And change, as we talked about, is rarely easy. It’s often difficult. It comes with ups and downs. Really that all the benefits that you’re getting, 99. 9 percent of your transformation was down to you your own strengths, your own natural ability to sleep, your own character and your own commitment to change. Martin: I was really just your guide. It does take work and effort. But without change, nothing changes. Sophie: Totally. But I think like we all have a tipping point too. And for me, that was that morning where I couldn’t go drop my son off in daycare. And for someone else, it might be something else, right? Maybe not being able to attend their daughter’s wedding. Or, I think there’s things that matters to us and it all vary depending what’s going on. Sophie: And, but when you reach that tipping point and that rock bottom, I think, yeah, I think your willingness to change is the greatest. And when you find a resource that, that gives you hope, I think that’s the combination of that tipping point and defining the resource that makes you take action and follow through. Martin: Thank you again, Sophie, for coming on to the podcast. It’s been really good just hearing you share your experience. I’ve got no doubt that many people listening, everyone listening, I think, is going to find this helpful. So thank you. Sophie: Maybe listening to it in the middle of the night as I did and finding hope again. So yeah, no problem. It was a pleasure to speak with you. Martin: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to get your life back from insomnia, I would love to help. You can learn more about the sleep coaching programs I offer at Insomnia Coach — and, if you have any questions, you can email me. Martin: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Insomnia Coach Podcast. I’m Martin Reed, and as always, I’d like to leave you with this important reminder — you are not alone and you can sleep. Sophie’s Journey Sophie documented more of her journey on her YouTube channel. She posted this video on the day she enrolled in my online course. Later, she posted a follow-up to share her progress. And, a short time after this episode was recorded, she posted this update with the most fantastic news 🎉 👶 🎉 ! Mentioned in this episode: How Cindy tackled the insomnia that appeared after her baby was born by accepting nighttime wakefulness and eliminating safety behaviors (#31) How Eric got his life back from insomnia by focusing on what he could control (#53) I want you to be the next insomnia success story I share! If you're ready to stop struggling with sleep and get your life back from insomnia, you can start my insomnia coaching course at insomniacoach.com. Please share this episode!