How Farrukh went from trying to fix sleep and putting his life on hold to enjoying his days and letting sleep take care of itself (#79)

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

Farrukh: Thank you. Hi to you and hi to everybody i’m really excited to be here and I look forward to this conversation.

Martin: It’s great to have you on. Let’s just dive in and get started right at the beginning. When did your sleep problems first begin and what do you feel caused those initial issues with sleep?

Farrukh: The sleep issues, initially began with some other things happening in my life that I was a bit stressed about, that I was a bit worried about, and that worry creeping into sleep initially.

Farrukh: But after it creeped into sleep for one night, two nights, three nights, then the worry started attaching to sleep in itself. It almost felt like I’ve lost the ability to fall asleep and then it started to become a huge problem.

Martin: So at first there was some worries or some stresses going on in your life and when you noticed some sleep disruption, at first it felt, okay, this makes sense why I am struggling with sleep a little bit because I’ve got all these worries going on right now.

Martin: But then as the sleep disruption continued over multiple nights, the worries then became more about sleep than whatever might have first triggered the actual sleep disruption itself.

Farrukh: Exactly. I think after your brain sees multiple experiences of it happening, then it becomes a loop. And then you feel like there’s no way out. And I’ve lost the ability to fall asleep. And you ask the people, you ask your friends, you ask your father, you ask your mom, you ask your friends or whatever.

Farrukh: Because they have not experienced it. Because they have not faced it. For the most people, I would say. Like they would say things like, no, probably you were not that really tired. Or, and people say, try to fall asleep, right? So get into bed and try to fall asleep. Do your best to fall asleep and you will.

Farrukh: And then you try those things and they don’t work. And you feel like, why can they sleep well? And why can’t I sleep well? And it has been a month, it has been two months. And then you worry about your sleep and then you worry about that, oh, I’m not being able to fall asleep now I can’t do my work now I can’t exercise now I can’t earn money now I can’t study.

Farrukh: So then a loop starts over because now you’re worried about if I don’t sleep well, what would happen? And your mind started, starts attaching to that. And then the more you try to fall asleep so that you could fix those things, the more you can’t sleep.

Martin: You just encapsulated how this can all snowball so easily. There’s that trigger for the sleep disruption. And then you, as the sleep disruption continues, you find yourself trying to fix the sleep issues, which makes complete sense is completely understandable. You notice a problem, you wanna fix it, right?

Martin: And then the more you try to fix the sleep problems, the more difficult they seem to become, the more these thoughts and these feelings show up. And then it progresses, you had the worries about whatever the triggering event was, then you have the worries about the sleep, then you have the worries about the consequences of sleep.

Martin: And in amongst all that, there’s just more and more trying, more and more effort and you’re just caught in this big loop, just seems to grow and become its own kind of monster.

Farrukh: Yeah. It also does not feel good because you feel like you’re working hard, so hard for something that other people can do so easily.

Farrukh: And you feel like, why can’t I? Then you start to have that comparison. Then you start asking people and I remember every day I used to be like asking people like, how many hours do you sleep?

Farrukh: How many hours do you sleep? And then I would wake up in the middle of the night just checking my phone to see how many hours I have slept. I had to sleep eight hours.

Farrukh: I started dreading waking up at night. I hope I don’t wake up in the middle of the night because then it would be so hard to go back to sleep.

Martin: I think it’s human nature to compare ourselves to others, and there can be two sides to that, right? In some ways it may be it pushes us to be a stronger or a better person, and in other ways it can not really serve us very well.

Martin: And sleep is perhaps one of those things where that comparison often doesn’t prove to be very helpful, although it’s understandable. Because as we are gonna no doubt dig into a little bit more, sleep isn’t really within our direct control. So when we compare our sleep with others, we can then be inclined to put more effort into sleep and that tends to create more struggle and sleep just becomes.

Martin: I feel like what you touched upon there, it becomes almost like a judgment of who we are as a person. We attach it to our self-worth, there’s something wrong with me, there’s something broken. How comes these people are all getting a certain amount or type of sleep and I’m not. And that just then piles on all the pressure on all the harsh self-talk, which doesn’t usually make things any better.

Farrukh: Absolutely. And then like you said, you start to judge yourself on it and you start to look at it like somewhat of a test.

Farrukh: Okay, let me get into my bed, let me try to fall asleep and let me try my best if I’m able to fall asleep, okay, I was able to fall asleep one and a half hours, but I’m still not falling asleep for eight hours or seven hours.

Farrukh: I’m failing. So you start to feel like it’s like you have to perform and prove to yourself and it’s some kind of performance and you have to make it the best, the perfect it can be. And then that judgment comes in.

Farrukh: The harder you are working, the more you’re involving your conscious mind. I like the saying, I read a saying some weeks ago, it says that in all mental workings, effort defeats itself. And it’s not only with sleep, I’ve seen it with other things as well. It’s just if right now I try to not focus on the image of a red car and I try my best to not focus on the image of a red car, don’t focus on it.

Farrukh: That’s exactly what I would be doing. And I think it’s something similar that happens during the sleep issues. You are in your bed, you’re trying to fall asleep. If you are looking out for every single noise out there that can disturb you and wake you up, I remember I used to say to my family that I’m just closing my door.

Farrukh: Please don’t knock. Please don’t make any noise. Even like something like this would wake me up outside. So I was so worried about that there should be no sound that should wake me up because then it would be so hard to go back to sleep. And some people said some things, which helped for a day or two, but then it used to get back.

Farrukh: Someone who has faced it himself or herself and has gone out. I feel like only they can help you. Someone who has not faced it, they can never relate to what you’re experiencing.

Farrukh: And someone who’s not on the other side already and someone who has not also helped various people get over it. People like that can help but I feel like based on my experiences, people who have faced it and have got on the other side make it the easiest for you to get there.

Martin: The advice that we often get from other people is well intentioned but it often just repeats a lot of the stuff that’s already out there, which can just create more confusion, more pressure around sleep.

Martin: Like all the sleep hygiene stuff, for example. It’s, it tends to revolve around adding more, doing more in an effort to make a certain amount or a certain type of sleep happen. It takes personal experience or a really deep level of understanding to get to this point where you acknowledge that it’s that effort that is the actual problem.

Martin: And that’s probably the difference between someone who’s gone through the struggle and someone who hasn’t. But what you really encapsulate there, just the way that we can ramp up that pressure, to perform a certain amount or a certain type of sleep through effort, through creating the ideal or the perfect conditions.

Martin: And as we ramp up that pressure, just as you said, it just creates this kind of performance anxiety. The stakes just become so much higher. And that in itself just makes sleep even more difficult.

Farrukh: That is so true. That is so true. And. Judgment point is a huge thing. You judging yourself on whether it was a success, whether it was a failure.

Farrukh: I think that over judgment, and it’s not that sleep is a problem, then the next day you are all your thoughts. It’s sleep. I can’t sleep well. What if I don’t sleep well? Again, even if you sleep well, and this is something that I noticed that working, even if you’re working hard towards getting good sleep and you’re trying to lean your bed for hours and hours, and even if you get an amount of sleep, which is okay, even after you wake up, your mind would again be like, okay, I slept, but what about now?

Farrukh: What about the next sleep? Would I be able to fall asleep again? And then these thoughts all over the day became a huge problem. I wasn’t able to work, I wasn’t able to study because I felt like. I need to solve this problem. And I think there is where the issue comes. I need to solve this problem first and then do the other things in my life.

Farrukh: Once this problem will be solved, then I will be happy. Once this problem will be solved, then I will start enjoying life. So you start to see it like I’m doing something and without fixing it, I can’t do something else.

Farrukh: I did not know how to solve it. I had not watched your videos. I had not gotten in contact with you. I did not know that there was a solution.

Martin: I think it makes sense that you are gonna notice your brain focusing on sleep because the human brain is always trying to problem solve, right?

Martin: And any time it identifies a problem or even just a potential problem, it’s gonna really focus on that. And part of that does involve a lot of mental time traveling. The brain just focuses on the future, what each next night or each next day is gonna be, or what previous nights were like, what previous days were like.

Martin: It very rarely sticks to the present moment. That’s often a skill that we have to cultivate through practice. And you really highlight something, which I hear a lot, is that you just, you feel like you’re never satisfied with whatever happens, so you can have a really good night, and instead of using that as a reminder that Oh, I am able to generate sleep. Your brain immediately time travels into the future and it’s yeah, but what about tonight?

Farrukh: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That just becomes a loop, I would say. Yeah.

Martin: If you had to describe what an average night was like for you when you were struggling, how would you describe it?

Farrukh: I think average night, I would start about it probably from the time, like two to three hours before I had to get into bed. The worry and anxiety started creeping in a lot, although that anxiety worry was there throughout the day. But when I know that, okay, two hours after this, three hours after this I have to go to bed, it was like I could feel something in my head.

Farrukh: It was something, it was like someone is trying to squeeze my brain, I’m worrying about it and stuff like that. And you feel so bad ’cause you see that the other people, they are working or doing something and then they come back home and they’re so excited to fall asleep and just rest and stuff like that.

Farrukh: And you feel like where people are finding enjoyment, you are finding like fear in that. So I think, and then when the time comes to get into bed, it’s like, it was like a constant moving around in my bed. Okay, let me try to fall asleep like this.

Farrukh: Maybe this will help. Let me try to do this. Let me try to do that. And then even you become so much conscious about it that there were times, and I’m sure you would’ve heard this a lot, that you’re trying to fall asleep and then you just notice that you’re about to fall asleep and then you wake up.

Farrukh: So you just notice that, oh, I’m going to sleep. And then you see your brain shutting down and the moment you start to see that you’re shutting down, you wake up because you once again pull out that monitoring thing on it. So I had to remember some nights where I did not sleep at all being in my bed, like all night long.

Farrukh: Some nights, like 15 minutes of sleep, half an hour of sleep, and then waking up. And then constant worry about I did not sleep well yesterday, how the next night is going to look like if I don’t sleep well, I’m not going to be. And your mind always shows you the worst case.

Farrukh: Worst case scenarios, okay, I’m not going to be able to fall asleep again at all. And when that happens, probably I’m going to even die. If I don’t fall asleep for 3, 4, 5 days, I’m going to die. And yep. A constant worry, a constant swinging around in the bed, trying to fall asleep.

Farrukh: Like a constant headache, I would say. And yep. Struggling to fall asleep. Even when you notice your mind shutting down a bit, being very conscious about it, and then it wakes you up. It’s like almost you’re looking for, just your mind is super, super alert. Like someone is going to come and probably kill you or something.

Farrukh: So you have to be very much alert what’s happening, what’s going around? Am I falling asleep?

Martin: I get this impression that at that time it just felt like your brain was working against you. At a time when you wanted to be winding down and relaxing and inviting sleep.

Martin: Instead, you found the opposite was happening. Your brain was generating more worries, more anxiety. You, it was like running through all these worst case scenarios and because you identified that as being something that’s not helpful. It can be human nature to then try to resist those thoughts or to try and fight those thoughts, get rid of those thoughts.

Martin: And then that pulls you into even more of a battle with them. And then they become even stronger and more intense just in the same way that the more you try to make sleep happen, you’re tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep, trying to make it happen. Find the perfect body position, the most comfortable body position.

Martin: And it’s like the more you’re trying, the more you find yourself struggling.

Farrukh: Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, it even the thoughts then you start to try hard to not have those thoughts. The more you try to avoid those thoughts, the more they come, the more strength they have.

Farrukh: I even remember like sometimes not going to work, sometimes not going to my place where I had to study ’cause my brain making the excuse that I have not slept well. So it means that I cannot work, I cannot do this.

Farrukh: So you decide not to go to work. Then the anxiety starts creeping in about your work as well. Oh, I’m not just now not sleeping, but now I’m not working. How will I work in the future? How would my earnings look like? How will I take care of my family and then instead of going to work or instead of going to your university or college or whatever it is, staying in at your home, being in your bed, and trying to like toss and turn, not only at night, but also during the day.

Farrukh: And I think there’s the concept of you feel like you have to make up your sleep. Okay. Yesterday I slept for four hours. Let me make up for the rest of the 2, 3, 4 hours or whatever in the afternoon or in the morning. And this is something that I’ve heard all my life, like eight hours sleep. And before I experienced insomnia, I never thought about it.

Farrukh: But it started impacting me after I started facing it because I was not only judgmental on how I’m sleeping, whether it’s deep sleep or whether it’s not deep sleep, I was so much judging myself on how many hours am I sleeping? Is it five hours, is it six hours? Is it seven hours? Okay. Yesterday I slept six hours, so I should sleep two more hours to make up for the last two hours yesterday.

Farrukh: And then you start to make up things like there is something that you like, there is an ideal sleep that you have to follow and you are always trying to catch up.

Martin: It just becomes more of a focus and your actions start to be more aligned with this idea that you need to serve sleep rather than your actions serving you and the life you wanna live. They’re now serving sleep, you’re chasing after it. You’re trying to create the perfect conditions for sleep. You’re trying to problem solve and troubleshoot. And that just gives it even more power and influence over your life just as you shared there.

Martin: It’s like sleep becomes a battleground. It makes sense that you notice this anxiety growing as the night gets closer, as your bedtime’s approaching because your brain is preparing for battle because it knows that there’s gonna be a struggle about to show up. Because that’s what it’s learned through no fault of your own. It is just doing its job of looking out for you. But that’s just what it’s learned. And then so you’ve got that struggle at night and then during the day, when your actions start to reflect the struggle rather than the life you wanna live.

Martin: For example, you might not go to work, and that’s completely understandable. And then at the same time, that can have the knock on effect of more time worrying about sleep. It increases the stakes. Now it’s really affecting your life. You’re not working. How are you gonna provide for yourself, for your future, for your family?

Martin: There’s more consequences, there’s more pressure. And it just perfectly encapsulates how this can so easily just take over your entire life. It’s not just a nighttime issue. It’s like a 24 7 issue.

Farrukh: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You’re so right about it. And the point that you mentioned about sleep hygiene.

Farrukh: Now those sort of videos are good for people who are able to sleep well but are compromising their sleep. But someone who is struggling with sleep, when they start to watch those videos, that’s where the anxiety grows.

Martin: Sleep hygiene is really for those who are neglecting their sleep, who aren’t giving adequate opportunity for sleep to happen, or is for those who are sleeping really well, might just be looking to get those final opportunities to optimize the good conditions for sleep.

Martin: The thing is, people that struggling with insomnia, they are not neglecting their sleep. They are giving it a lot of opportunity to happen. They’re already clearing the stage as much as they can, putting a lot of effort in, a lot of trying. So the answer there is not usually more trying. By that point, something different is needed.

Martin: Sleep hygiene is like dental hygiene. It’s a preventative measure but once you’ve got that cavity, no amount of brushing is gonna fix that. You need something different.

Martin: Before we talk about what that different way looked like for you, what you had tried in an attempt to fix this problem?

Farrukh: The first thing, the foremost thing, I thought that the more time I spend in bed, the faster I can solve this.

Farrukh: So before I used to spend like seven or eight hours in bed. Now I started spending probably 12 hours, sometimes 14 hours, 15 hours, like compromising other things just for me to be able to fall asleep.

Farrukh: And you don’t realize that the thing that you’re doing to solve the problem is actually the cause of the problem.

Farrukh: Then I thought that the solution to this is make up to sleep, right? I have to make my sleep up. So I would avoid other things. I would not work. I would not do the things that are required of me. I stopped doing the things that I used to like, like my hobbies or things that I enjoy, thinking that I need to fix this first and only then I can reen enjoy the things that I was doing.

Farrukh: And only then, for example, at that time I was also working out. And I said that, okay, until I fix this, I can’t work out. So because I have not slept well, it means that I can’t work out.

Farrukh: Now it’s not just one problem, it’s impacting a hundred other things. And your mind is I have to solve this one problem before I look into the other things. So I think this is the stuff that I was trying to do, and then during the day, working hard to get rid of the thoughts. I should not think about this.

Farrukh: I should not focus on this trying my best, that these thoughts should not come into my mind. And just like we discussed, the more you try, the stronger it becomes as a whole.

Martin: There was a powerful statement in there that when you were describing all of these attempts to problem solve and to fix and it was something along the lines of it wasn’t just one problem anymore. As you tried to do more it upon reflection just created more problems. Now, it wasn’t about just sleep anymore, it was about the thoughts that come with it, the feelings that come with it.

Martin: The missing work because of it. Not working out, even though working out was important to you. Not doing things that you enjoy that matter to you. So it’s like there’s it, not only are you upping the stakes, but it just creates more problems. It’s not just about sleep anymore, it’s about all this other stuff on top of that.

Martin: So as you were deep into this problem solving mode. When you found my work, what was it about this approach that I share that made it feel like this could be a more useful way forward or worth experimenting with?

Farrukh: I would say that the first time I saw you, I watched two videos, three videos, and it’s like, you can relate to the things, right? And I started realizing how all the efforts that I’m doing so far are basically just feeding into the problem.

Farrukh: And then you, it’s like you hear someone talking about a more relaxed approach to sleep and someone basically talking about not giving sleep that much importance and realizing that you can be good without giving your sleep so much importance.

Farrukh: And you start to realize by doing these things or by watching and then trying that, Hey, even if I don’t sleep well, let me try to enjoy my day.

Farrukh: Let me still try to go. Let me still try to do the things that I’m supposed to do. Let me still try to work out. Let me still try to enjoy my day. Let me still work. Let me still hang out with friends despite the fact that I’m not getting much sleep. And after you keep doing this for a long time, just like sleep becomes a loop and sleep problems become a loop.

Farrukh: After you start to form this new loop and you start to realize that, hey, your brain starts to see, okay, I wasn’t able to sleep, or I wasn’t able to sleep that well. But see still I enjoyed a little more than the last week. I still worked more than the last week. I still had a hangout with my friends. I still did the things that I was supposed to do.

Farrukh: Then you start to dismantle this association of good sleep means a good next day. I was watching one of your videos with one of your clients and she mentioned a very good point about your mind attaches to a good sleep means a good next day, and a bad sleep means a bad next day. Whereas it can be the way around as well.

Farrukh: You can have a bad sleep and an awesome next day and a very good sleep and a very bad next day. And then the second thing, heavily reducing the time that I was spending in my bed.

Farrukh: And then you start feeling more sleepy. And I started to love that feeling that, hey, look, I’m starting to feel sleepy once again because my mind, my brain is now wanting sleep.

Farrukh: My mind is wanting my brain, my mind, my body is wanting to, like, sometimes it was dying to go and lay in bed, but I wasn’t doing that because I knew that only this is the time that I have to spend in my bed and that’s it. So during the time when I would go into bed, because now this is something that my mind is now dying to go to bed, whereas before it was dreading that when I go to bed, all these thoughts and stuff like this.

Farrukh: Now when I’m not giving myself that much time to rest time on my bed, my mind was like, I want rest, right? I want to lay down. Let’s just lay down for five minutes. Let’s just lay down for 10 minutes. But I won’t. I would save that for the sleep window.

Farrukh: You start to trust your natural ability to fall asleep. Your mind starts to realize that, hey, when I feel when the body needs sleep, I will fall asleep. When my body is feeling very, very tired, like when the body is very, very tired, I would go to sleep.

Farrukh: And then you would sleep for a few weeks in that sleep window and then you would realize, Hey, I’m sleeping even more so I can increase it even more. I can increase it even more.

Farrukh: I started to enjoy my day. So my brain started to get some sample size of, hey, even a bad sleep can have a good next day, can have an enjoyable next day.

Farrukh: I can still work. I can still do this. Even if I feel sleepy. I would, let’s say, have a coffee. I would have some tea, and I would still be able to work. I would still be able to enjoy it. And I realized after starting to work out, after starting to work, that, hey, my, I was wrong in letting myself know that I have not had these eight hours of sleep so I can’t work out, I can’t work. I can’t go out and hang out with friends.

Farrukh: I started realizing that I can do these things even when I sleep less. And I think that’s the breakthrough point where your brain starts attaching less importance to sleep ’cause now it’s not the most important thing in life, although it’s important, but it’s not the most important.

Farrukh: Even if it’s less you can still do what you want to do.

Martin: When you found the YouTube channel, you felt heard, it felt like your experience was understood, that it made a little bit more sense, the struggle that you were in. And that offered some reassurance and it also gave you opportunity. It revealed opportunity for a different way forward, a way to break that loop that you found yourself in.

Martin: And thanks to your own willingness to experiment, to be curious, to play around with a different approach. You started to bring things back to your life that mattered, things that you’d been withdrawing from. Because of concern about how you might feel or how they might affect sleep, or this belief that I can’t do anything that I enjoy until sleep is fixed.

Martin: You flipped out on its head. You were like, okay, sleep isn’t fixed, but I’m gonna do the things that I enjoy anyway. I’m gonna start bringing them back into my life. And as you did that, it meant that even if sleep was still the same, it was starting to lose its power and its influence over your life.

Martin: Like you got that sense of power back a little. Even if it was just a tiny bit, you got some more agency over your life again, and you noticed that the quality of your day wasn’t always a hundred percent dependent on the quality of your sleep. Like you could still have some good days or some good moments, or even just some okay moments.

Martin: Especially if you gave yourself that opportunity for those things to show up by doing the things that mattered to you by doing the things that reflected who you are, who you want to be, and the life you wanna live. And you also reduced the amount of time you allotted for sleep, which in another way we could just say you stopped chasing after sleep quite so much.

Martin: So instead of spending, say 12 hours in bed, you allotted an amount of time for sleep that more accurately reflected however you were sleeping at that time.

Martin: Something that people often share as well when they first start to reduce the amount of time they allot for sleep, it can often then become the struggle is staying awake.

Martin: Which is quite ironic because someone with insomnia will probably say they struggle with trying to sleep and now it becomes completely the opposite and I’m struggling to stay awake. And what does that mean about your natural ability to sleep? It tells you that it’s still there. We just need to maybe remove ourselves from the process. Maybe it’s all the trying that becomes the obstacle.

Martin: I think you really touched on a key point there about how this can influence your identity. When insomnia becomes part of your identity, how that can just make things so much more difficult. And one way you reclaimed your identity was doing more of the stuff that mattered to you.

Martin: And that meant that as a natural byproduct of that sleep and insomnia, although it was still part of life, it started to lose its importance. It started to lose its influence over who you are as a person.

Martin: Also with all those thoughts and those feelings that might show up during the day, there was less resistance to them, less judgment about what they meant.

Martin: You were better able to make some distance between the thoughts and who you are. I’m curious to hear a little bit more about that specifically, like how you actually put that into practice. Because these thoughts and these feelings can be really difficult to experience. They can be really distracting.

Martin: I’m yet to meet a human being who genuinely says they like experiencing anxiety and worry and frustration and fear. So how do you put this into practice? How do you stop fighting those thoughts and feelings that you do not want to experience?

Farrukh: So the first thing is out of experience. I started to realize that even if I don’t sleep well, I can still work, I can still do all of those things.

Farrukh: And then out of experiences, you realize that your mind saying, oh, what if I’m not able to sleep? Well, again, you just go back and let your brain know that yesterday I was able to sleep. And then even on days where I did not sleep well, you start to accumulate those experiences of enjoyment during the next day.

Farrukh: See how I was still able to enjoy my next day? And then these thoughts start to lose their power.

Farrukh: Sometimes I did feel like I made a mistake of always looking at where I want to be at, how exactly I want my sleep to look like, because that can always make you feel like a failure because you will always feel like, I want that, but I’m still not there. But if you realize, but if you start to look back and realize how much you have been improving over time, that will give you a lot of enjoyment.

Farrukh: So yes, look forward towards what sort of sleep you want to have in the future, but also look back at how much you have been improving. How was your sleep like one month ago, and how it has improved.

Martin: In terms of dealing with these difficult thoughts and the feelings. It’s almost like there was a direct way in an indirect way, so to speak. So the indirect way just came from the fact that your bed and sleep became less of a battleground.

Martin: There was less struggle at night. There was less pressure to make sleep happen. Being awake became less of a threat, so there was less problem solving around it. You were doing more of the stuff that mattered to you each day, so that had the indirect effect that your brain’s not identifying being awake as much of a threat anymore.

Martin: So it’s naturally gonna produce maybe fewer or less powerful of those difficult thoughts and those feelings. And then you’ve got the, perhaps the more direct way, which is. Reminding yourself that these thoughts and these feelings are okay to experience that it’s okay to have them. That they’re natural and they’re normal.

Martin: They’re not a reflection of who you are. They’re not necessarily facts. You shared that when you draw on your experience, there could often be a discrepancy between what your thoughts were telling you and what your experience was telling you. And by responding with less resistance and having some more confidence or a plan of action in place in how you’re gonna respond to these thoughts in a way that’s not just resistance, they started to again, lose some of their power and influence.

Martin: They maybe showed up less frequently. Because your strategy shifted from not trying to get rid of them, fight them, avoid them, resist them. It just became about, I’m gonna maybe acknowledge them, tell myself it’s okay, and I’m gonna respond in a workable way. I’m gonna respond by doing something that matters to me.

Martin: I’m gonna respond by bringing my focus back to the present moment, bringing my attention back to wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, or whatever I want to be doing. And the more you focused on your actions, the stuff that was in within your control, the more you notice that you were taking all that power and influence over your life back.

Martin: And so that also snowballs and means that, this is less of a problem. Your brain’s not gonna be quite so active trying to fix this for you, generating all those thoughts and those feelings, you realize that there was just less effort required. It wasn’t about doing more apart from like doing more of the stuff that matters to you, but for sleep, it wasn’t about doing more, it was about doing less and just giving sleep the opportunity to do what it wants.

Martin: Same with all those thoughts and feelings. It’s not about what can I do about them? It’s about doing less with them, just maybe acknowledging them and then just refocusing on what’s a workable way to respond.

Farrukh: Yeah that’s so true. And you don’t even realize when a time comes, when thoughts about sleep just completely go away.

Farrukh: Like you don’t realize when it happens, you start feeling like the thoughts start getting less and less and less, and there comes a time and you look back and you’re like, Hey, I’m not, they have been a few days and I’ve not thought about sleep at all. How much I’m sleeping or how my next sleep is going to look like, or any thoughts about sleep in that regard.

Farrukh: When you, when there’s that moment of realization, that moment of realization is also quite enjoyable in a sense. And I know many people worry about, I’ve seen some people on the web that have gone onto the other side, but that I have seen some people worrying about relapse. That what if it happens again?

Farrukh: What if it comes up again? For me, that was not the case because now it was like, you gave me something, now I know how to solve it. Even if it happens, I know what to do about it. So I did not experience those thoughts of what if it comes back? It’s just you never worry about what if you’re not able to, let’s say, tie your shoelaces because you know that even if you mess up, you can once again change the way you’re tying it and it’ll be fine.

Farrukh: So that started happening with me during sleep, like the thoughts related to sleep as well. I realized that now I’m having great sleep. I’m back to where I wanted. Now I’m probably enjoying my sleep even more than the other people. Even if this is something that comes back later in life because of something, it’s a very easy thing to solve based on the things like even if it comes back, I’ll still keep enjoying the things that I’m doing.

Farrukh: If I feel like I’m not being able to sleep well, I will just reduce my time a bit in my bed. So you stop fearing about what if it comes back again? Because now you know there’s a way to address it.

Farrukh: Sleep starts becoming less of a big deal. So I realize that, I noticed that I’m on the other side of it when sleep was no longer a big deal to me, so it wasn’t like I have to achieve something.

Farrukh: I moved like my country and I had some things to do. There have been nights where I’ve just gotten two hours of sleep, three hours of sleep, and I did feel sleepy the next day, but it was no longer that, Hey, it’s insomnia. I cannot sleep well again, and stuff like that.

Farrukh: Because now it was like, okay, I wasn’t able to sleep well. I will be able to sleep well the next night. And now even if a thoughts like, oh, what if I’m not able to sleep? Okay, I’ll just have some tea. I’ll just have some coffee the next morning. I’ll still do the things that I need to do. It becomes like not a big thing at all.

Martin: You feel stronger and more resilient because of this experience and because of the skills that you’ve been practicing and developing.

Martin: So even if and when nights of less sleep happen again in the future, you know a way of responding that isn’t gonna create more difficulty and more struggle, that’s just gonna keep you heading in the direction that you want to be heading.

Martin: When nights of less sleep happen, they are nights of less sleep. They’re not, insomnia has returned. You’re not adding anything more onto the actual experience. You’re just acknowledging whatever the reality was. And that’s it. I think that’s important because insomnia isn’t a night or a few nights of sleep not happening as you want it to. Insomnia is struggling with sleep.

Martin: That’s really what it comes down to. So for as long as you’re able to respond to sleep not happening as you might want it to, and all the thoughts and the feelings that can come with that, with less struggle, really insomnia can never regain that foothold in your life because you’re not struggling, you’re not engaged in that battle again with it.

Farrukh: Yeah, if I don’t sleep well it was just less hours of sleep.

Farrukh: I don’t even call it a bad night, like just less hours of sleep. Some days have more hours of sleep, some days have less hours of sleep, some days have average hours of sleep.

Farrukh: And I realized that I’m no longer worried about what if a noise wakes me up, because now even if a noise wakes me up, I’ll just rest once again. And I know my body trusts itself now that it’ll fall asleep once again.

Farrukh: And then there’s a thought that came, I’m not sure if it was an unconscious thought, I started to enjoy my rest more than my sleep. So my mind started to feel like even if I don’t fall deep asleep, at least I’m like resting in my bed.

Martin: Resting is an action, so it’s something you can control versus trying to make sleep happen, which is something that’s not in your control.

Martin: And so when your goal is, I’m just gonna rest, not only is that beneficial because rest can be quite restorative, especially versus struggling, but it can also, when you’re resting and not putting all this effort into trying to make sleep happen, it can also just naturally make conditions for sleep a little bit better too.

Martin: How long would you say it took for you to get to this point where it felt like you were free of this ongoing struggle with sleep, that you could just live your life independently of whatever kind of sleep showed up and whatever kind of thoughts or feelings might show up.

Farrukh: Sleep was something that I started to really dread during my journey with insomnia, I would say. But after I started doing the things that we just talked about, I started to feel like my emotions towards sleep, it started to improve. Like I started to feel good emotions.

Farrukh: Another mistake that I was trying to do is I was trying to fix insomnia so that when I wake up the next day, insomnia is completely gone.

Farrukh: But when you realize that it’s a process, i’m gradually improving. I’m slowly moving forward. My thoughts started to change around it I think by three months time I was at a point where sleep was no longer a big thing.

Farrukh: But you still realize that after you start to have enough sleep, you have some thoughts regarding sleep.

Farrukh: It’s good that it takes time, because see, if you could solve it in one day, it means that it can also get back in one day, right?

Farrukh: So the point that it takes time is because it takes time, because it’s long lasting, it’s going to end the rest of your life. That’s why it’s taking time.

Farrukh: You enjoy the process when you see how far you have come and you don’t just keep looking at where you want to go.

Martin: Was progress constant improvement night after night, week after week, or were there lots of ups and downs, what did it look like for you?

Farrukh: Definitely like any other thing in life, ups and downs. There are days even after you start the process where you feel like. See, I tried another thing and it also did not work right? There are some thoughts that it’s not working. Probably like Martin helps the other people out there, but it’s not for me.

Farrukh: I’m unique. My case is different, right? You still have those thoughts, but visualizing the progress. It was more like this. It was up and down. But if you see the next high was always higher than the previous high, so it was like down and then back up again. The overall movement was going upwards.

Farrukh: I would define it like that. So yeah, if you have some downs, if you have some really bad nights of sleep, you have some thoughts. There could be some days where you feel like, oh, those thoughts are back in the game and I’m still struggling with it, and all of that. That’s very normal. That’s very usual.

Farrukh: Still keep doing what you are doing and don’t just keep switching things. Okay, that’s not working. Let me try this. Okay, now that’s not working. Let me try this. Because people often just try something for one night, for one, two nights and then switch on to something else.

Farrukh: There would be days where you feel a bit discouraged, but just realize that it’s normal, it’s usual. Still keep doing the things. And you still keep moving forward.

Martin: Yeah. Those downs or those dips are really just opportunities to reflect on how you wanna respond. They can be disappointing and frustrating.

Martin: Your brain can fire up and tell you, oh, this isn’t working. You are this unique person that this is not gonna be helpful for. But really what they are just opportunities to reflect on how you wanna respond, because it’s your response that matters. Your experience already tells you that sleep itself is out of your control, but how you choose to respond is always within your control.

Martin: And just acknowledging that can be really powerful and empowering. What does an average night look for you these days Farrukh, if there is such a thing?

Farrukh: I look forward to sleep now. I look forward to having a good rest now. I look forward to having an enjoyable night regardless of whether I sleep or not.

Farrukh: It’s no longer deciding my days it’s no longer a big deal. Sleep is no longer a big deal at all.

Martin: How is your daytime life different now compared to when you were tangled up in that struggle with sleep?

Farrukh: No longer seeing yourself as a successful person or a failure based on how much you’re sleeping. Not looking back at your previous night. And looking at how many hours you slept or what happened or what did not happen.

Farrukh: During my struggle, I used to ask some people like, how many hours do you sleep? And oftentimes people don’t know because people don’t look back and that’s what you start to notice with yourself once you start to move forward, that during the daytime, oftentimes you won’t even know how much you slept because you would just wake up and you would start to do whatever is required of you instead of like looking back and having to check your phone, okay, I have slept for these many hours, or I should make up, or I should do this, or I should do that.

Farrukh: I do every other thing that I enjoy in my life. Like I’m doing my masters, I’m walking, and then I sit with my friends, like joke around, play around sometimes doing the hobbies, doing the things that I like and. Yeah, and sleep is no longer a decider into what I do the next day. If sleep happens, I do this if sleep does not happen, I do this whether sleep happens or whether sleep does not happen, I still do the same things the next day.

Farrukh: So sleep is no longer like the deciding factor of what’s going to happen the next day or what I’m going to do or what I’m not going to do.

Martin: You’ve got your life back from insomnia.

Farrukh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That’s the sentence that summarizes everything that we’ve talked about.

Martin: Farrukh, I’m really grateful for the time you’ve taken out your day to come on and to share your whole experience from the start of the struggle to the depths of the struggle to your emergence and your transformation.

Martin: I know it’s gonna be really helpful for a lot of people. I do just have one last question for you. And it’s this one. If someone is listening and they feel as though they, they’ve tried everything that they are beyond help, maybe they’re that unique case, that they’ll never be able to stop struggling with insomnia, what would you say to them?

Farrukh: I would say that everybody feels like they’re unique and somehow their problem is unfixable until you start to do things and stick with things for a while. So if things have not been working for you, the things that we have been talking about so far, either you might not be doing it the right way.

Farrukh: Or you have not done that enough in order to judge whether it’s working or not. Sometimes we don’t do that enough and we constantly keep switching between things. Okay, this is not working. Let me try this. Trial and error is a very good strategy, but once you try something, you need to give it time to see its effects.

Farrukh: You need to give it time to see how it’s working and once you start doing it for some time, and notice once again, whenever you judge yourself on how much you’re improving, judge yourself on how much you are improving actually, and not only on where you want to get. Because even if you’re improving slightly, even slightly, and that slightly could mean having even a very small bit good emotion towards sleep than before.

Farrukh: Or having a little bit more sleep than before or enjoying sleep or rest or whatever, a little bit more than before, or being able to enjoy your day a little bit more than before. Even that should show you that it’s working. It’s just a process that you need to follow for some time. ’cause if you keep looking for where you want to get, then you might look like then always everything will feel like it’s not working because you will always be like, okay, but I’m still not there, but I’m still not there, but I’m still not, yes, you’re still not there, but perhaps you are further from where you were when you got started.

Farrukh: And this gives you confidence. This gives you motivation, so stay on it, stick with it. This is something that’s going to make you learn a lot about your mind. This is something that once you’re on the other side, you’ll enjoy sleep even more than you used to do before.

Farrukh: And I know it’s hard to say or it’s weird for someone to sound to hear this, that it. For me, it often feels like a gift that I got and I got to learn so many things about it. Now I can sleep well as well. Now the things that I learned, I can apply to other things in my life as well. I know it feels weird to hear this once you are struggling with it, but once you’re on the other side, you start to really see what Martin means when he talks about these things.

Farrukh: So stick with it. It just takes some time, but you will get there.

Martin: Great. Well, thank you again, Farrukh, for the time you’ve taken to come onto the podcast. It’s really appreciated.

Farrukh: Thank you, man. And just before we go, I would say that I’m very, very grateful for you, for all the work that you’re doing, and I just wish you the best of luck. Just keep doing whatever you are doing.

Farrukh: I just wish your work goes out to more and more people and I hope that you keep doing this work and you keep impacting more and more lives, as many as you can moving forward.

Martin: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Farrukh: Thank 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.