Insomnia Coach® Podcast

Courtney’s experience with insomnia didn’t start overnight — but when it hit, it hit hard. Looking back, she could see some early signs. As a child, she was sensitive to her environment. New places, travel, small changes — sleep didn’t always come easily. But it wasn’t something that took over her life. That changed in 2020. With a new baby, the stress of the pandemic, family tension, and untreated anxiety, everything began to build at once. Then the nights started to change. She began waking up in the early hours of the morning, wide awake. At first, it was confusing. Then it became frightening. The moment she noticed she wasn’t asleep, panic would take over. Her heart would race. Her body would react as if something was wrong. Nights became something to fear. Sleep became something she felt she had to make happen. She tried everything — supplements, routines, changes to her environment, and eventually medication. But nothing brought consistent relief. Her days started revolving around sleep. Avoiding things. Planning everything around the night ahead. Trying harder, doing more — all in the hope that sleep would finally come. But the harder she tried, the more difficult it became. What began to shift things for Courtney wasn’t another strategy — it was a different way of understanding what was happening. A realization that nothing was broken. That her body already knew how to sleep. And that the struggle itself might be what was keeping her stuck. From there, things didn’t change overnight. It took time. Practice. Setbacks. Learning how to respond differently to difficult nights and the thoughts and feelings that came with them. But slowly, something began to change. She started trusting her body again. Sleep became less of a battle. And instead of her life revolving around sleep, she was putting more of her energy into the things that mattered to her each day — and insomnia lost its power and its influence. 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, Courtney, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Courtney: Thank you very much for having me on. Martin: It’s great to have you on. Let’s start right at the beginning as always. When did your sleep problems first begin, and what do you feel caused those initial issues with sleep? Courtney: So I think what caused the insomnia battle that I dealt with was some background things that got, had, had gone on in my life. For example my mom has always struggled with sleep, so I have wondered if there’s a genetic component to that. Even as a kid, I’ve just always been more sensitive to my environment. Courtney: For example if I went to a friend’s house, I wouldn’t sleep very well. There was times I’d have my mom come and get me because I wasn’t sleeping. Probably get really anxious if the, if we’re traveling, I don’t sleep well, if the room is too hot, I don’t sleep well. Just things like that. Just very sensitive to shifts in my environment. Courtney: And then in 2020 is when I began my battle with insomnia. What also added into that was just some unhelpful beliefs about sleep that I just picked up from the media. Courtney: For example, like I feel like there’s a lot of times that they’ll do a study or they’ll release an article that doesn’t tell the full story, but is enough to cause fear in you about insomnia. So for example, if someone doesn’t get seven to nine hours a night, that could lead to whatever catastrophic thing or. Courtney: Insomniacs are, you know, shown to struggle with, you know, fill in the blank there. So I had that kind of fearful mindset already. And then yeah, you just add in. My husband and I had our first child in 2019. Around that time I was struggling with an un untreated anxiety disorder, and I was trying to muscle my way through that. Courtney: And then, as you know, the years progressed. We had some family and relational tension and my husband has some job changes due to the pandemic that happened, let alone the pandemic itself and the fear around that. So there was just a lot of lifestyle changes at that time that I think I had a hard time with, and I just never slowed down to kind of process that or make space for that. Courtney: And I think my body was trying to communicate that to me through anxiety, but I just didn’t slow down to listen. And then it, it. Overflowed into a, a sleep disorder or insomnia right around 2020. And I’ve struggled with that for quite a few years and finally I’m in a better place where I feel like I can talk about it having been on the other side of it. Martin: So it sounds like for you, concern or a focus or issues with sleep was always something that was kind of with you, maybe perhaps more in the background. It would show up every now and then, but then in 2020 around then there was lots of change going on. Lots of stresses, lots of different stuff happening and so the sleep issues resurfaced, but this time it felt different. Courtney: Yes. There was just a few nights that I started waking up at like 3:00 AM just wide awake. And I was like, huh, this is weird. And then it started getting more and more frequent, and there was a few nights that I did not sleep at all. And what shifted was my focus on it and my fear around it. So I started becoming very fearful, like, what is wrong with me that I can’t sleep? So as that fear grew, I started to become more fearful of nighttime. Courtney: And it was on the week of Halloween. There was a few nights that I, I didn’t sleep at all. Like, I would lay down at night and I, I lay there for maybe about 15 minutes or so, and it’s like, as soon as I was aware, oh, I’m not sleeping yet, I would instantly have a panic attack. I mean, I was sweating, my heart was racing. Courtney: I was in full panic mode. I had my, I called my dad up ’cause he lives, you know, nearby. And my husband stayed with our son and I had him take me to the emergency room at about 3:00 AM just panic stricken. Courtney: And I didn’t even know, I just, I needed help and I didn’t know where to go. So he took me there and I mean, I went in and I was just like, I just can’t sleep. I, I can’t sleep. And I’m sure they thought. You know, I was on something ’cause they ran a full drug screen and of course that came back clean. I was just panic stricken, severe anxiety. Courtney: But it probably looked to them like I was taking a stimulant of some kind. ’cause how else, like, would I end up there? Not able to sleep. But unfortunately, like they didn’t really have any answers for me. I remember talking with the nurse and just telling her my story and she acknowledged, she’s like, you’ve been through a lot of life change and, you know, that can contribute to this. Courtney: But there was no real like, help. I think they gave me two Benadryl and I think that made me doze off for an hour in the ER while I was waiting to be discharged. And I think that only came from the fact that they were treating me for something like they were taking care of me. So I feel like I could like come down a little bit and then went home and I don’t think I slept the rest of the night after that. Courtney: The next morning I think I crashed on the couch for maybe an hour, and then the following Thursday, I ha ended up having my husband take me into the emergency room. ‘Cause we had stayed at my parents’ house that night and so they were with my son and my husband took me in and I was again just begging them to help me sleep. Courtney: Prior to that I was able to get in with the local psychiatrist’s office and I think I went to them that Thursday and, you know, they gave me medication and they gave me an anti-anxiety medic medication. And then also she called it a heavy hitter sleep medication. I think it was Restoril, which is an older generation drug. Courtney: And I was like, okay, this will do it for me. And she was pretty confident. She’s like, well, you know, put you on this for a very limited time, maybe two weeks. And we’ll see how that goes. So I went home that Thursday night and I took it and it didn’t help. And I, so I can’t even tell you the fear, the shame, the confusion of, they gave me a heavy hitter as she put it, sleep medication. Courtney: And that was not enough to help me sleep. So hence, I, I ended up back in the ER and all they could do was give me another dose of that, just because I think you were allowed to take two and that was the maximum. So I, from then on, I was taking the maximum dose of that much longer than the two weeks. And so I felt completely just weak, broken alone, confu, I mean, anything you can think of in a dark season like that, I felt it because I was like, this is not helping. Courtney: Like this is the strongest that they have and this is not enough to knock me out, like, what is wrong with me? Martin: Well that was a really difficult situation that you were going through. And so the way it sounds like it was different, apart from the obvious in terms of the visits to the emergency room, was when the sleep issue showed up. Martin: This time around, they, they felt different. Like you were waking up during the night and sleep just wasn’t getting back on track like it was in the past. So that led to some understandable concern ’cause you’re a human being. But then the more that concern raised. Perhaps there was like more pressure to make sleep happen, more effort to make sleep happen more trying. Martin: And then that in turn just made it more difficult until it reached this crescendo where you’re just kind of, you can’t try any harder. And then we’re told, well, this, this is the most powerful medication we have. This will make sleep happen. And when that isn’t working, especially after you’ve been told that, then you’re feeling really alone out of options. Martin: Confused, scared, as you said, you can feel broken and it just makes it just even so much more difficult and scary. Courtney: Yes. And so what even made it worse was I was back in the psychiatrist’s office a few days later and I think she was very concerned that I had to take the maximum dose. And that it wasn’t helping. Courtney: So on top of that, on top of the anxiety medication, on top of the heavy sleep medication, she prescribed a anti-psychotic, not because I was psychotic, but because it was also used off-label as a a sleep to induce sleep. So she’s like, maybe this com, you know, combined with the Restoril, will help you go back to the one pill, the one dose, and then you don’t have to take the two. Courtney: We can get you off of it faster. Well, I wish that was the case, but I still had to take the two, I had to take the anti-psychotic and I was on it longer than the two weeks. So then that snowballed into fear of dependency on the medication. And I will say I was dependent on it because it got to a point where if I even thought, okay, maybe I can try to not take it tonight, I would instantly have anxiety. Courtney: So. After, after, you know, the, the hospital trips and the trips to the, the psychiatrist, I, the medicine did help temporarily. There was a couple nights that knocked me out for like 10 hours. So I was taking everything that they gave me and I, I got some sleep, but it was like, one night would be 10 hours and then the next night, you know, I might get four hours and then another night I would make that up, like my body would sleep longer. Courtney: So it was kind of like a rollercoaster of sleep. I just had the hardest time getting balanced again. Martin: So it sounds as though you felt just really dependent on all these different medications. But at the same time you felt that this was just unsustainable, like continuing to take this much medication, especially when it wasn’t even generating consistently good sleep for you. Martin: But as far as you are concerned, you had no other options. Courtney: Exactly, yes. And so it was hard because the, the other feelings, it wasn’t just about the sleep anymore. So there was nights that I would get up and just go for a walk around our neighborhood at like 3:00 AM And I, I remember thinking, this is like so weird how like, physically I am up walking in the dark when everybody else is asleep and I should be asleep, but I can’t. Courtney: And then emotionally I’m in the same place. Like I’m dealing with something that no one around me knows what to do with. I, you know, I remember talking to family and friends and even my husband just like, you know, they were telling me, oh, have you tried melatonin? Have you tried lavender? Have you tried CBD oil? Courtney: And I’m like, yes, I’ve done all of it. But they just, they don’t know. And I remember my husband saying maybe try not to think about it. And so then I’m like, okay, maybe he’s right. Courtney: Maybe I just need to not think so much about it. And that’s when I was, I lay down at night and I would try to control my thoughts and I would try to, I started changing my environment because I was of course researching everything, being a problem solver. And I’m like, okay, so I need to, you know, wear the blue light glasses. Courtney: I need to not drink coffee afternoon. I need to do all, all of the things that, you know, I’m sure many people have talked about with you that you’ve discussed on your channel that other people have done. Like I did all of them, but the intention behind them was to induce sleep. So every time I did those things, it backfired. Courtney: And I think those things are, can be helpful if you’re trying to relax your body. If you’re trying to. I was actually just talking to my dad about this. He asked me about like a, a sleep supplement. I’m like, well, if you’re trying to, you know, support your body, great, but I think it can backfire. If you’re trying to induce sleep, if the goal is to make yourself sleep, that can be very problematic. Courtney: And that was my case. So it was just a very lonely place of people suggesting things and telling me things, and I’m like, I’ve done all of it. None of it works. Something’s wrong with me. Like I, I remember thinking my, something in my brain must have just broke. And when you look online about insomnia outside of the community that you have created, there’s not, there’s nothing that’s helpful. Courtney: So it was just, it was a very lonely place of trying to navigate this until I came across your channel. Martin: You made an insightful point there that all the things that you did for as long as the intention was to make a certain amount or a certain type of sleep happen. It was going to backfire because sleep is out of your direct control. Martin: But when you were going through this struggle, was, was that insight present? Like did you realize at the time that the more your intention was focused on trying to make sleep happen the more you seemed to struggle? Or was it more of a case of I’ve just gotta keep trying, sooner or later I’ll find something that works. Courtney: Yes. So initially I think I was just so frazzled that I was trying anything and everything, and I mean, I, it took me quite a while to come across your channel. I was looking at different, I was researching things, I was looking at different videos and for me personally, my faith is very important to me. Courtney: So I was looking thing, looking for things through that lens. And the first thing that I came across that was even a little bit helpful was there’s, there was this guy who was talking about his struggle with insomnia, and he talked about the importance of surrender. Courtney: And just for him, you know, he talked about just surrendering everything to God and giving up and not trying so hard. And that was enough for him. And I’m like, okay, I can, you know, I can do that. I can surrender. And, you know, I did have a night where I was like, all right, you know, if I’m never gonna sleep again, I can’t help it. Courtney: Like, I, I give up and, you know, but for me, and that helped for a little bit. The surrender or the acceptance did help for a little bit. But for me, I just, I needed more information. I’m someone who, I, I love to know the why behind why I’m doing things. I love to, you know, learn as much as I can. And so when I finally stumbled across your channel, you explained everything with the why behind it, why in insomnia develops, why your body’s doing what it’s doing, why your efforts are failing. Courtney: And I’m like, okay, this is, this is filling in the gaps that I have needed in order to move forward. Martin: Mm. So perhaps it’s education, perhaps that educational component of it. A greater understanding of where insomnia comes from, what keeps it alive, what gives it power and influence just felt reassuring. Martin: Now things started to make sense for you. Maybe you didn’t feel broken anymore. You realized that you weren’t broken, you were just stuck. And I think you made a good point too, because when we hear people talk about surrender or acceptance. That, that can be a new option that’s available to us. And like you said, you experimented with it but without that kind of understanding on, you know, why is this helpful? Martin: How is this helpful? It can make it harder to commit to that kind of approach. Courtney: Exactly, exactly. And so it was frustrating because like, everything that I was looking into felt like just a bandaid. And it, it, it was hard because the things that I was doing was not helping, like, it wasn’t addressing the root cause. Courtney: And, you know, I, I did everything I could. I had, there were nights my husband would stay up with me to talk with me. I had people praying for me. I was praying about it, like trying all the supplements and nothing like, you feel just helpless. You’re like, I’m doing all the right things. And in my mind, or in the way we’ve learned in our culture is if you try harder. Courtney: You will get results. Well, I’ve learned with anxiety and I’ve learned with insomnia, the opposite is true. The harder you try, the more your body’s like this is not gonna work very well. So it took me a while to get to that point, but I feel like once I did there was so much more freedom and I was able to take that pressure off. Martin: One thing that you touched upon earlier was how this wasn’t just an issue at nighttime, it would also be present in the daytime as well. When you were still tangled up in this struggle, how was this affecting your days? Courtney: It consumed my thoughts. So in the morning, okay, so for example, nowadays, like if I’m having a rough day and maybe I didn’t sleep well, I will tell my husband, Hey, you know, I’m having a rough day. Courtney: I didn’t, I maybe slept, you know, four or five hours, just bear with me. But back then. I would get up in the morning and be like, telling everybody, oh my gosh, I only slept two hours tonight. Last night I only slept an hour. I didn’t sleep at all. I was telling anybody and everybody just desperate. And my entire day looked like cultivating the day to support the night. Courtney: So not drinking coffee after noon, as I mentioned. Not over exerting myself because I didn’t wanna overstimulate myself to keep myself awake at night. There were times I stayed at home more often and just kind of avoided the things that I normally enjoy. I started worrying about what I was eating. Courtney: I started worrying about like how much screen time I had. I started worrying about how much I was outside. You know, anything that you can think of. Like I was doing all of that in order to try to provide myself the best opportunity to sleep that night. And it never worked. Martin: It’s almost like sleep or insomnia was in charge of your decisions each day. Martin: And so all your actions were intended to serve sleep rather than serve you and the life you wanted to live. And so not only was this kind of maintaining that struggle because none of that stuff really had much influence on sleep anyway, but it was making things even more difficult because then you’re getting pulled away from doing the stuff that’s important. Martin: Doing the stuff that matters, like through no fault of your own because you’re a problem solver, you’re trying to fix this. But it’s just a, a really clear illustration of how easy it is to get pulled into this struggle. And to find it consuming your attention, consuming your life, and just becoming increasingly more difficult the more you try to deal with it. Courtney: Yes, exactly. And it’s, it is just, it’s crazy how you can’t, like, you can’t even help it. It’s not like you’re intentionally trying to do that. You’re just trying to survive in that moment, and that’s what happens. Unfortunately, that’s the opposite of what needed to happen. So it’s just, it’s, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Courtney: It is such a confusing and lonely and just disorienting space to be in when you’re struggling with insomnia to that level. And then on top of that, it took me a while to realize that like the, the brain fog or forgetfulness or irritability or whatever I was struggling with during the day wasn’t necessarily because of the sleep that I lost. Courtney: It was because of the anxiety that was consuming me as well. Martin: Yeah, it’s, it’s just so difficult, isn’t it? Um, You mentioned that you listened to a podcast episode where someone talked about moving away from the, trying, from trying to make sleep happen, and that kind of prompted you to explore a new approach. Martin: So as you dove into that, and now as you reflect on that journey, what were some of the changes that you made to your way of approaching sleep and responding to insomnia and other thoughts and the feelings that can come with it that helped you move away from the struggle and got you to where you are today? Courtney: So definitely the education behind your videos, like the, the early videos that you’ve posted. I found that so helpful because I remember it was like a big breath of fresh air when you said something like insomnia is not the same thing as sleep deprivation. Therefore it doesn’t have the same effects and. Courtney: The second thing was your body is wise in that it will make up the sleep that you need through deep sleep. And even if you’re not getting the full eight hours that you would like to get, your body’s going to get the sleep then it needs. So it allowed me to kind of take a step back and be like, whoa, if I just, if I just let my body do what it is designed to do, maybe I can get back on track. Courtney: And so, yeah, just the, the, the initial moments of just surrendering to that and letting go and trusting the physiologic, the physiology of my body is what helped me to kind of loosen my grip a little bit. But I will say unfortunately for, well, in my mind, unfortunately it took a lot longer than I would’ve liked it to. Courtney: I would call that week of no sleep traumatic for me. I, I don’t use that term lightly, but I say that because I’ve come to learn that our bodies keep the score of things like they remember. And there are nights even now, you know, five years later where if I, I’ll be okay for a night or two, but if I go a little bit, you know, maybe three days more of just struggling, those, those fears start to creep back in. Courtney: And my body, it’s almost like I’m back in 2020 and I’m like, oh, okay, are we going back here? And that’s where, you know, for me, it helps to get out of bed to kind of separate myself from that environment and then go back downstairs. And I found coloring before bed during those times to be really helpful. Courtney: So I’ll get like an adult coloring book with like, you know, the intricate designs and I will sit there and color and that calms my body down. But allow, it also allows those thoughts to just be there, but I don’t have to pay attention to them. Something else that has been helpful is if I’m really struggling with like thoughts, I would just get my phone out real quick and I will just journal ’em. Courtney: I will just type ’em all out and there’s been nights I can’t even finish, finish journaling before I fall asleep. So there’s different, you know, tools and things I can do now to support myself to not go back to that place. But it took me a very, very long time. And a lot of, you know, I’ve heard the term relapses or setbacks or however you look at it, you can look at it as like, okay, this isn’t just another opportunity to take care of myself. Courtney: This is another opportunity to try to implement what I’ve learned and grow and teach my brain through behavior that I can move past this point. You know, I don’t have to go back to 2020, but it, it takes a long time. At least it did for me. Martin: Yeah, absolutely. I always like to think of this different approach as being skills-based. Martin: And so like with any skill, it’s gonna take time to get better at that skill, and it’s gonna require a lot of practice, a lot of ongoing practice. And there are gonna be times where it feels that that practice is useful and helpful. And there’s gonna be times when it feels like that practice isn’t doing anything. Martin: But what matters is just continuing to get the practice in if developing this new skill. Is important to you. And I like how you shared the, the educational component of it was just so reassuring that you learned that you don’t need to intervene with sleep. Like you don’t need to do anything to make it happen. Martin: Your body wants to take care of that by itself. So that just immediately takes so much of the pressure off, right? You don’t have to do anything anymore. With that, once you’ve got that understanding, I mean, is that, is that what that felt like for you? Courtney: Oh, yes. And it’s interesting how like. And the health circle of things like, you know, sleep gets grouped in with like, if you want to eat healthier, do all these things. Courtney: If you want to exercise, do all these things. If you wanna be healthier, do all these things. And then sleep gets thrown in there, like, make sure you’re getting your seven to nine hours. Make sure you’re practicing sleep hygiene and it gets grouped in there. But that’s the only thing that doesn’t work with effort. Courtney: So it took me a long time to unlearn that, that okay, sleep’s the one thing I can just, you know, take, take my hands off of it. And I found that to be true with other people that I’ve known. It seems like the best sleepers I knew were the people that like could sleep by the, like my husband could sleep by a campfire outside, like, no, doesn’t need anything. Courtney: And so it’s those people that don’t even try that seem to sleep the best. Martin: Yeah. And that’s another great insight, isn’t it? Is just looking to what other people are doing. Especially those people that seem to have no issue or concern around sleep. They get great nights almost every night. What are you doing to make that happen? Martin: You ask that question, you kind of get this dumbfounded look right as they try and figure out what they’re doing, because the answer is they’re not doing anything. They’re just setting time aside for sleep to happen, and that’s it. So perhaps all this messaging around sleep, you know, get seven to nine hours of sleep. Martin: Maybe it should be make time for sleep, you know, make sufficient time for sleep. The issue is the people who are reading that kind of advice are the people who are struggling with sleep and then, and people with insomnia are often allotting even more time than necessary for sleep. And then setting themselves up for more wakefulness at night. Martin: So it’s, it again, it’s just so easy through no fault of our own, to just get pulled into this struggle with the kind of messaging around sleep that is predominant. Courtney: Yes. Yep. And then you add in the, the, like the fear behind it. Like the fear-based, if you don’t do this, this will happen. So then you feel even worse. Courtney: Like if I don’t, if I don’t get sleep soon, something bad’s gonna happen to me. So that’s why like during that week, I remember at one point I told my husband, I’m like, I just want them to admit me to the hospital. Check me in, send me up to, you know, the mental health floor wherever I need to go, and just, can they just knock me out? Courtney: Can I just sleep? Just to get, you know, get back into sleeping again. Because I thought if I don’t do that, I’m, my health is gonna self-destruct. Like this is harmful to my body, which puts you into fight or flight even more. And then, yeah, just the shame of, like I said, like walking out at night and looking around at the world and it’s dark and everybody’s sleeping and you’re like, what’s wrong with me? Courtney: Like, something’s wrong with me, that I’m not like everybody else, that I can’t sleep. And so that’s a whole nother component to this is those thoughts that creep in when you do lay down at night. And for the longest time I was just trying to control them. Like, don’t think about that. Think about something else. Courtney: Like try to be calmed down. I was trying to breathe, you know, do all the things and I learned, you know, through, you know, your resources that just letting those thoughts be there and let ’em float away, you know, just don’t get too over involved with them. That can relax your body. So you can go to. And then, yeah, another thing that was kind of counterintuitive was the sleep restriction, but that I think had the biggest impact for me is because I was trying to allot aot of time for sleep, but I was going to bed at like nine o’clock and I’d lay there for an hour and a half and that would just increase the anxiety to where I’m like, okay, what’s the minimum sleep I can get? Courtney: And so I would go to sleep at like, or I’d go up at like 10 or 10 30 when I noticed my eyes were actually drowsy and I would lay there and some nights I would fall right asleep. If I didn’t, I got back up and came downstairs. But that is what helped me to actually be tired enough to go to bed. But again, the message is, well, you have to, you know, you have to make sure you’re getting enough sleep, so you have to go to bed early. Courtney: And it just, it creates such a mess for people. I, ugh, I just feel bad for anyone going through it right now because I know I, I’m not too far removed to forget what that feels like. Martin: Absolutely. And it comes down against that theme of the more we chase after sleep, the more elusive it becomes. Martin: You mentioned that one thing that was really helpful for you was to open up a little bit more to whatever thoughts and feelings were showing up compared to trying to fight them, avoid them, resist them, control them, reason with them or anything else with them. And I think the, for a lot of us, this idea of opening up to what can be really scary, difficult, and uncomfortable thoughts and feelings can itself feel really scary, difficult, and uncomfortable. Martin: What was your experience like with that? What showed up for you when you first heard of this approach of opening up to this, these really difficult thoughts and feelings? Courtney: Oh my goodness. I just, I instantly flashed back to just laying there in bed with all these crazy thoughts in my head, but making time to allow that. Courtney: And I just remember thinking like, oh my goodness, if I do this, like, I’m gonna end up even worse. Like, I’m gonna end up even further into insomnia if I allow all this, all these feelings, and I don’t do something to try to calm them down. And it, it makes so much sense because as I’ve learned with anxiety slash insomnia, it’s that the more you try to control things, the worse it gets. Courtney: Because your anxious response is to get you to do something like it. Your body thinks it’s in danger. So the more you respond with trying to grab a hold of it and like do something, it’s gonna get worse. Where if you just kind of say, all right, I’m okay. I’m gonna lay here as uncomfortable as I am. Courtney: This is terrible, but I’m just gonna lay here and let them be. I’m gonna let these feelings be here over time they do pass. So it took, again, it takes time. I still have to practice that, but I’m much better at it than I was. But it does take time. Martin: it is definitely an ongoing practice. I think to get better skilled in experiencing the full range of human thoughts and feelings with less resistance making space for them to exist. I’m curious to hear from you what that first night or what the first few nights were like when you tried to practice this new approach of making space for that stuff to show up compared to that default response of resistance. Courtney: So it was. It was very, again, I would say a rollercoaster in those hours of like, you know, 10 30 to seven or whatever, I was in bed. Like initially I would be like, okay, this is uncomfortable, but I’m gonna try this. And I would try it and I would fit, I, I would feel myself relaxed and I would calm down. And then a new thought that would really jar me would come in or a new feeling. Courtney: And I’d be like, and then I’d have to do it again. So it was constantly, constantly grabbing a hold of those thoughts and being like, okay, you know, I’m just gonna let this be here. I don’t have to believe this, you know, this is what my body’s feeling, but my brain. And it helped for me to separate myself a little bit or create some distance between my, my identity and my brain. Courtney: Like my brain is the one, you know, churning out all these crazy thoughts. ’cause my body doesn’t feel safe right now. And that’s okay. That’s okay. But I am safe. I’m just gonna lay here. That would work and then I’d have to do it again. So it was a lot of rep repetition over and over. It wasn’t like a one and done, like tonight’s the night, I’m gonna challenge my thoughts or allow them to be there, or you know, breathe and calm down and I’m good. Courtney: It was repetition over and over again. Martin: That’s where I think a lot of us can give up because we can still have that, whether it’s, maybe it’s a little bit hidden away in the background or more of a covert goal of I’m practicing this in order to get rid of these thoughts and these feelings. So every time they kind of pop back you’re like, ah, this isn’t working. Martin: So I’m curious to hear from you with that very common experience of, I opened up to the thoughts, they felt like they were starting to lose their power. I got a little taste of how this could be helpful, but then again, another one would come in and I’ll be back to square one again. What prompted or motivated you to keep up with that practice to feel as though this was an approach that you wanted to commit to and develop skill in? Courtney: I would see incremental progress. Like I would see little glimmers of hope that I was working my way out of this. So, for example, like I said, with the emails, like I did see through the, the email practices I was putting into place, I would see incremental progress there. And I would do that with the thoughts as well. Courtney: And then there was a point where I, I just kept going back to, well, I can’t go back to the way it was because that got me nowhere. So there were weak moments where I’m like, I just needed, you know, I need to go back to trying harder, trying all the things, or maybe I should try different sleep medication. Courtney: And I would be like, well that didn’t get you anywhere. That’s not getting to the. So I think I would love to say it was this big, profound moment of like, breakthrough, but it really was just incremental progress that I saw in myself. Like I’ll never forget the one night I was sitting on the couch and I was drowsy because I had implemented sleep restriction and I was color, I was doing something calming before bed. Courtney: My husband and I had the TV on. I was just coloring and my eyes got drowsy. And I was like, normally at this time I’m getting hypervigilant. Like I’ll be tired during the day, but then nighttime comes and I’m wide awake. So when I got drowsy, that gave me hope. And so there were more things like that that happened along the way. Courtney: And then I remember nights where the thoughts weren’t as bad and I was like, okay, here’s my next step. So I, I saw little bits of progress along the way that kept me going. Martin: Yeah, you got like little hints that this was an approach that held some promise. You started to feel more sleepy as the night approached or as bedtime approached compared to more alert. Martin: And with those thoughts and those feelings, they were still showing up. But every now and then, perhaps they felt a little bit less powerful or a little bit less influential. Martin: We have to fight, we have to put effort into sleep. What medication can we explore? But you harnessed your experience. You drew on your superpower of self-reflection and your experience told you that that stuff doesn’t work. So. Your brain is suggesting that’s a route we should carry on pursuing. But you recognize it’s doing that ’cause it’s doing this job. Martin: It’s doing its job of looking out for you. But you knew from experience that that approach wasn’t getting you closer to where you wanted to be, so you wanted to stay committed to this approach of less resistance and building that skill and experiencing all this stuff with less of a struggle. Courtney: Exactly. Courtney: Yes. And I think when you mentioned the struggle, like my laying, laying in bed at night had become a place of struggle and just it felt like I was battling all night with my mind. And so I tried to make a point of not making my bed that place anymore. Courtney: So when I’m having those nights, I get outta bed and I come downstairs and I’ll journal or color or what have you, and try to do all that there, and then go back to bed when it’s calmer. Martin: So you withdrew from the battleground when you found yourself getting pulled into that fight. And this is another thing that some people can struggle with because they’re like, should I get out of bed? Martin: Should I stay in bed? And my answer is always, well, it’s really up to you. It doesn’t matter if you stay in bed or get out of bed. What matters is, are you engaged in a battle? And if you are, how might you withdraw from that battle? So you might want to color or read or watch TV in the living room, or you might want to do that in bed. Martin: It really doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re awake and you’re not fighting. You’re doing something other than battling away, struggling more, making things more difficult. Courtney: Yes. And that, you know, there’s that. I’ve read that somewhere. There’s a rule, you know, you don’t use your bed for anything but sleep because you don’t wanna create an association. Courtney: Well, on good nights, I can color in my bed, I can watch a show. I can read and I, there’s nights I can’t even get through a paragraph and I set it down, I’m out so I can, I can do activities in my bed and not associate it with anything. Courtney: But the night that, like you said, it is a struggle, I gotta get out of bed. I gotta go do that somewhere else. Because that is part of, I, how I think that that habit became created with insomnia is I would lay down at night in instant panic because my body was like, well this is, this is associated with the panic place. Courtney: You know what I mean? So that was a learning curve too. Martin: Yeah, absolutely. It, listening to you share that experience, really, you kind of just played around with some of this, this stuff, right? You gave it a try with an open and a curious mind. And with this understanding. You’re thinking, I’m just gonna see what I take from this. Martin: What am I gonna learn from this? Because we’re always gonna learn something from what we do. And so you’ve really learned what was a helpful way forward for you, and that kind of gave you that motivation or that impetus to keep you moving in that direction. So to, to bring this together, what you, what you’ve shared as the most helpful things was the educational component. Martin: You know, really understanding where insomnia comes from, what keeps it alive. And in short, it’s really all of our attempts to get rid of it. Ironically what keeps it alive. And you also learned how easy it is to get drawn into the struggle. And so when you are struggling, it’s not because you’re broken. Martin: It’s just because what you are understandably doing is you’re just kind of pumping insomnia full of oxygen in effect. You know, it is just kind of feeding the beast through no fault of your own. You found it really helpful to go to bed when you were sleepy, like finding it hard to stay awake rather than going to bed based on what time it was at night. Martin: And that led to less time awake or less time awake for potential struggle. You found it helpful to be aware or to cultivate an awareness of when you were struggling at night, when you were getting pulled into that battleground and with that awareness, you then chose to respond in a different way. So instead of putting effort into sleep fighting or avoiding thoughts and feelings, you’d do some coloring or you’d do some reading and you found it helpful most of the time to get outta bed to do that. Martin: And you found it helpful to practice opening up to whatever thoughts, whatever feelings are showing up, even though you might not want them to show up, there they are. You’re acknowledging them and you’re just allowing them to come and go to flow, to be an observer of them. And one way you did that, that you shared was you would just journal them, you would write them down, not as a way to kind of reason with them or change them, unless I’m wrong, in which case please correct me. Martin: But just as a way to acknowledge them. And it was almost a way that you were putting into practice this idea of opening up to the thoughts and feelings, just writing them down. Courtney: Yes. Yep. And I will say, yeah, it was both like there were nights I would journal just to get the thoughts outta my head. ’cause then they’re not spiraling while I’m laying there. Courtney: And there were nights that I would have old fears come back, like the old thoughts that I would write them down and then challenge them. Like for example. I feel like if I don’t sleep, I won’t be able to function tomorrow. And then I would be like, well, actually that’s not true because you have had many good days on, two hours, no hours of sleep. Courtney: And so for example, like a month ago, I had the first all night, or I’ll call it, you know, I was all night. I haven’t had one of those nights in years, but my husband and I were leaving for the airport that morning, I think at three 30. And so I was wired from packing and tra we were getting ready to travel. Courtney: I knew I, we had our flight we had to catch. So I gave myself a lot of compassion, like, this makes sense for you. Like, you know, this is, you’re about to travel. It’s the first time we left our boys at home. So there was a lot there. Like it made sense why my body would react that way. And yeah, you know, I, I think maybe I napped on the plane. Courtney: I don’t remember, but I tried not to pay too much attention to it and. Again, it was the first all nighter in years that I’ve had where I didn’t sleep all night long, but it was okay. Like I, we got there, we had our full day. I think I, we came back and I did take like an hour and a half nap or something, and then we went on with our evening and that night my body made up the sleep. Courtney: So I can have really good days, like if you’re struggling with insomnia, you can have normal days, you can function fine even if you don’t get sleep. So back to the thoughts, there was a lot of thoughts that I was able to challenge with the educational component that I found through your videos, which was very helpful. Martin: Yeah, I’m, I’m glad you mentioned that there are still times when sleep isn’t perfect or exactly as you want it to happen, because when we’re struggling, we might have that as our goal. You know, we just have a great night of sleep every single night. But the truth is that no human being has a great night of sleep every single night. Martin: The difference now is when sleep doesn’t go as you might want it to. It’s not this huge focus of your attention. It’s not something that creates a huge, difficult struggle and pulls you away from the life you want to live. Now it’s more like water off of a duck’s back. You know, it comes and it goes, and then you are moving on from it. Martin: It really has just lost all of its power and influence over you. And I do want to emphasize, you used the phrase self-compassion. And I think that’s huge because when we are struggling, we can be so hard on ourselves and mean to ourselves, and that doesn’t make things any easier. So giving ourselves some grace, some kindness can be immensely powerful. Martin: You discovered that thoughts are thoughts. They’re not more than thoughts. They’re not less than thoughts. They’re thoughts. So they’re not facts. Sometimes they might be true, but sometimes not. They’re not a reflection on who you are as a person. Martin: They’re not always an accurate prediction for the future. They’re not always an accurate reflection of the past. They’re thoughts. And so by listening to your thoughts being more open to them, it kind of came with that bonus that you were able to recognize, Hey, some of these thoughts aren’t even true. Martin: This thought is telling me that tomorrow is gonna be a disaster, but hang on a minute. The other day I had no sleep and I had a great day, or I had a good day, or an okay day. So you notice that with that acceptance, there’s a reminder that thoughts are nothing more or nothing less than thoughts, and you’ve got that separation too between your thoughts and your body. Martin: One thing you shared with us a little bit earlier was that as you practiced opening up, especially at first when it feels really scary, like what’s gonna happen if I start allowing these thoughts and these feelings to come in? It feels really uncomfortable. It can feel more and more intense. Then something happens, it kind of reaches a peak at some point, and then it kind of flows back down again. Martin: And you realize that even though it can feel really scary, really threatening your body is lying in the bed or on the couch in a safe place. So even though it feels very unsafe physically, you are safe. So with that openness and acknowledgement, you also got that reminder or that awareness that your thoughts are separate from your body. Martin: There was that detachment there, and that in turn can reduce some of their power and influence too. Courtney: Yes, and that’s something like I think with anxiety in general or insomnia, is like for someone like me who is, like I said, a recovering perfectionist type, the type A. You can have the bar set really high to where your idea of progress or success is. Courtney: I will never have a rough night again. I will not struggle with, you know, scary thoughts. My thoughts will balance out. I will be peaceful all the time, and that’s just not realistic, nor is that life and so much of our anxiety or other emotions or our body just responding to life. And so life is not perfect and that would be my encouragement to anyone struggling with it is maybe lower the bar a little bit. Courtney: I had to lower it many times to where, like I mentioned earlier, my idea of progress was just when my eyes got drowsy, like nowhere near a full night of sleep. But I was just happy with that. And so you can build on that versus trying to get your thoughts to be what you want them to be. Get your body to do what you want it to do all the time. Courtney: Because then what if that’s your standard? What happens when you do have a rough night, a couple, you know, down the road or a couple months, a couple years, for example? How are you gonna respond to that? So I even had that challenge last night. I had, you know, some troubling thoughts pop into my head and at first I was like, oh geez. Courtney: And I was really kind of dwelling on ’em, and I’m like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Just because I’m thinking it doesn’t mean it’s true, you know, separate a little bit. So it’s still a practice. But that I think is a huge part of insomnia is the thoughts that, that come in during those late nights when you’re, you feel like you are the only one awake in the world or in your neighborhood or wherever, and it’s dark and you are alone with the loud, intense thoughts and you just feel like you’re, you’re crazy. Courtney: You’re nuts because you can’t move past it. And really, like you said, you’re not broken. It’s just the dynamic of the situation. But you can separate and you can challenge them or write them down and. It will peak and it will, it will pass At some point. It will pass. Courtney: In the beginning, and I’m sure anyone who has struggled with this, can attest to this, that the beginning of anxiety is such a lonely place. And you feel so alone, like I mentioned, but then you start to hear from other people, especially on your channel. And it, it’s mind boggling to me how. Courtney: Insomnia starts and progresses is almost like a formula. Like we’re not alone because it almost plays out identically person to person, regardless of their job, where they live, if they’re a parent or not, if they’re married or not, if they’re male, female. It’s amazing to me how similar everyone’s experiences. Courtney: So you’re, it’s not, it’s not you, it’s the insomnia, if that makes sense. Or the response to it. Martin: One thing that you touched upon was how we’re measuring progress as we’re on this journey away from the struggle. Martin: Because for as long as we are measuring progress on sleep or what thoughts and feelings are showing up, we might be setting the stage for more struggle because our own experience probably tells us that we can’t directly control those things. So if we’re measuring how well we’re doing against something we can’t control there’s just so much potential to still be in that quicksand and not be free from the struggle. Martin: Looking for action based markers of progress can be more helpful. Like, am I doing more of the stuff that matters? Are the decisions I’m making more related to what I want to be doing or how I want to be protecting sleep or preparing for sleep? There’s so many potential markers of progress out there, but focusing on action based markers of progress can be really helpful because it keeps us focused on what is in our control. Martin: Which are our actions. Courtney: Yes. I remember like in the thick of it, there were days where I had said that, you know, the sleep consumed my thoughts. And I, I was walking around like a zombie in this in the sense of, all I thought about was I didn’t sleep last night. I probably won’t sleep tonight. And just like feeling so jealous of all my friends and family, like they’re sleeping with no problem. Courtney: Like, this is not my life right now. This is horrible. And now I, there’ll be nights I don’t sleep well and it’s like, oh yeah, I forgot I didn’t sleep that great last night. Okay. You know? It’s not always like that, but more often it is. And like I can look at my day and be like, oh, I had a great day. I laughed a lot. Courtney: I had a lot of joy. The weather was beautiful. I exercised, you know, I had a great day despite what my night looked like. Martin: There’s just so much in your life beyond sleep. Sleep is still a part of your life, but it’s not the main part or a huge part of your life anymore. It’s just one thing of many things. Martin: How long would you say it took for you to practice this new approach of less resistance, less effort, not trying to control sleep, thoughts, feelings, to get you to a place where you felt that you left the struggle behind, that you can now live your life independently of sleep, and even in the presence of whatever thoughts and feelings might choose to show up? Courtney: So let me see. For me, I think my full. Severe anxiety struggle was about two and a half to three years. So I had that, you know, under my belt before implementing these, these strategies. I wanna say it probably took me about six months, give or take to, to where I, I didn’t feel burdened by it anymore. Courtney: Now I will say the nights or the episodes I would have where I would have a couple nights in a row, I would start to get a little weary again and a little doubtful and a little nervous, but I would get through those. So despite those, or setting those to the side, I would say about six months. Martin: I’m really glad that you emphasized that there was still ups and downs along the way. It doesn’t mean that over the course of that six months, every day or every night was incrementally better than the previous ones. There were sometimes when things felt really good and other times where it felt like, oh, I’m getting pulled back into the struggle again. Martin: But what mattered was you just kept on with that practice. You acknowledged what was happening. Maybe you were being a bit kinder to yourself when you noticed that maybe you were getting pulled back into the struggle again and just refocusing your attention on acting in a way that you wanted to act in response, acting in a way that you knew was gonna be moving you closer or in the direction that you wanted to be heading. Courtney: Yes, yes. I remember in the thick of it too, like wondering how long it was gonna take me to feel better. And I remember hearing someone say, oh, it takes as long as it takes. And I was so frustrated by that. ’cause I’m like, I just want a number. Like, is this gonna be like a year? Is it like six months? Like what am I? Courtney: But it does, I mean, everybody’s different. Your body handles it differently. Like mine remembers very vividly what happened. So I, that I wouldn’t say presents a challenge, but like I said, I have to be more mindful than someone else might. So everybody’s different. But yeah, it’s just keeping in mind where you want to go and keep. Courtney: Keep going through what you’ve learned and holding close to the va, what you value about your life, and allowing the space and the compassion for the upsets or, you know, setbacks or whatever you would like to call those. Martin: How were you able to be patient with yourself when no doubt you wanted progress to happen like immediately, which is human nature. How did you practice being patient and just staying committed to the practice? Courtney: Yes, that was very challenging. Even with anxiety in general, I still struggle with being patient with myself initially because I do, like I said, I have unfortunately high standards for myself that I always have to lower. And so the nights of, you know, bad sleep or a really anxious day, I just constantly had to be like, okay, you know, I can’t, I can’t control this. Courtney: I just have to accept it. I will get through this. Like this will pass. Just constantly refocusing. But yeah, it was very hard because there’s so many days, even now with different things, I’m like, man, I’m still struggling with this aspect of something, or I haven’t moved past this yet. And again, that’s the initial response. Courtney: But then I have to, you know, kind of be mindful of that and respond with, I’m growing. Life is not perfect. Progress is not linear. And that kind of helps with the patience part. But it is very challenging, I will say that. Martin: So it sounds like when you felt impatient you reminded yourself that you are on a journey. Martin: You are learning that you are growing that you’re heading in the direction you want to be heading. And on any journey there’s gonna be ups and downs. What matters is just continuing on the journey if it feels like that journey matters. Courtney: Yes. One thing that like was frustrating for me is like, I would hear different success stories and of anything, like, you hear success stories or you read about ’em, and people don’t always share that they’re still working through things. Courtney: Sometimes it’s just like, oh, I struggle with this thing now I’m here on the other side of it, and life is great. So when you are like me and you’re still working through different things, it’s hard not to see that as a sign of failure and understand that that is the normal, it’s normal to ebb and flow and you know, like you said, sleep is not perfect. Courtney: It can’t be controlled, so you can’t gauge your progress off of that. Martin: Yeah, that’s a good reminder that we are never gonna reach this perfect end point moment in our life where everything is perfect for the rest of time. When we’re struggling, we often feel like, if only I can get rid of this one obstacle, then everything will be perfect. Martin: But the reality is once one obstacle goes away at least one more is gonna show up because life is a journey and that journey involves many obstacles. Courtney, I’m curious what would you say an average night is like for you these days? Courtney: Oh, I would say most nights I probably, I don’t know, I wander upstairs around like 9 30, 9 45, you know, and then I’ll get in bed and my husband will, I have chat real quick, and then he passes out within 30 seconds, which is amazing. Courtney: But I will grab my Kindle, read. It depends how tired I am. Read maybe a paragraph, maybe a page, and I’m out. Around 10 o’clock, 10 30, and I get up about six or six 30. And yeah, sleep. Sleep pretty good. I would say. Martin: I think what really stands out for me there is that there’s no kind of mention of, well, I come home I, I turn all the lights down in my house, I make sure the thermostat is set to a certain temperature. Martin: I put on some blue blocking glasses. I drink some warm milk. You know, there’s, there’s just nothing there. It was just, I wander up to bed I talk to my husband for a bit, I read and then I get outta bed in the morning. There was just like nothing else. There’s none of that effort. None of that trying, none of the, the rules, none of the rituals. Courtney: Yeah. And I’ll say, you know, there are a couple, you know, nights here and there where like recently I was anxious in general about different things, and I was like. Struggling with some night sweats and just feeling on edge and maybe some vivid dreams. And so I got up and came downstairs and just got some water and sat for a minute and went back up to bed. Courtney: And those are the nights that, like I said, I just had to be more mindful that, you know, maybe through my anxiety, my body’s trying to tell me to slow down or pay attention to something. But it’s not an indication now of like, oh, something, you’re gonna go back there. You’re doing something wrong. It’s because I know most nights are like what I just told you prior to that. Martin: You’ve got a normal human brain that’s gonna generate anxiety and all different thoughts and feelings from time to time. Now they’re just not pulling you into so much of a struggle. You’ve got that skill in your back pocket now to kind of acknowledge them to make space for them. Martin: To be kind to yourself and to not feel as though you have to do anything with them because they are thoughts and they are feelings. And ultimately you get to choose how to respond to them. Courtney: Yeah. And that’s something that is super beneficial about this insomnia journey is not only have I learned to how to relate to my thoughts at nighttime, but during the day, ’cause there’s, you know, during the day I’ll just be going through my day like anybody else would. Courtney: And I’m sure anyone can relate when you get a crazy thought that pops into your head and you know, before it could really jar me and it could cause anxiety or something like that. But now I’m just like, oh, okay, that’s just a thought. Like, doesn’t mean it’s true. So the benefit I think of this insomnia journey is it can benefit all areas of your life. Courtney: You learn some skills that can apply to everything. Martin: As you become less of an opponent to certain thoughts and feelings, they become less distracting. So they can show up during the day. You are able to just quickly acknowledge them and refocus on where you are, what you’re doing, what you want to be doing, rather than, you know, the magnifying glass comes out and you’ve got some, a pair of tweezers and you’re kind of looking through that thought and it’s just the whole focus of your attention. Martin: And you miss out on the whole world around you. You’re missing out on where you are and what you’re doing. Courtney: Yes. Yep. Exactly. Same as like the insomnia monster, if you will. The more attention you give to it, the more it grows. And same with those thoughts that pop into your head. The more attention you give to them, the more they can get, they can really grab a hold of you and then you’re dwelling on them. Courtney: I just remembered, I never shared how I was able to get off the sleep medication because that can be a huge source of shame and like struggle is the sleep medications themselves. So coming from someone who was on three and I, and that was just at one time, like there was a lot of adjustments, made a lot of changes. Courtney: What did it for me was tolerating those uncomfortable thoughts because I told myself, okay. As I try to decrease my dosage and wean off of this, this is gonna create some really uncomfortable feelings and thoughts and I, it’s okay. This is expected. So it did. And as I expected that to happen, I was kind of prepared for it and I was able to sit with that and over time it got a lot better and I was able to challenge the thoughts that like would say, well you still need sleep medication. Courtney: And I would be like, well no. ’cause I took half a dose last night and I slept really good. So that was huge for me, was able to get off of those through challenging and tolerating the thoughts. And thankfully I haven’t had, I haven’t had to take a sleep aid in, gosh, three or four years I think. So it’s possible if you feel completely like gripped by sleep medication, it is completely possible to get off of it and sleep well. Martin: I’m really glad you touched upon that because we talked about so much good stuff. I feel that that kind of got a little bit lost because you were telling us right at the start that you just felt trapped in this life of medication dependency almost. It felt like you had to take this medication even though you knew it really wasn’t giving you the kind of results you wanted, but you felt like you had no alternative to it. Martin: So was it a case that you got some practice in first with this approach of lowering that resistance to being awake at night, lowering the resistance to the thoughts and the feelings, and then as you started to feel as though you were building that skill, then you started to tackle them moving away from the medication. Martin: Like what, what was the start of that journey like for you of moving away from the medication? Courtney: I had enough self-awareness then to know, okay, I need to get some of these practices under my belt and be, you know, comfortable with them before I try to make a big change like that. Because as I mentioned, there were nights I would try to think about, okay, maybe I could not take that medicine tonight, or maybe I could decrease the dose and instantly I would be like panicking. Courtney: And I was like, okay, okay, so let’s tackle this first. And then once I realized like those strategies were working and I, the one night I was feeling drowsy before I even took my medicine, that was an indication, okay, I don’t need the sleep medication to induce drowsiness. So that was the first step and then I was able to build on that later on. Courtney: And then I think what also really helped was one of your videos talking about how or I had read, maybe you shared it, there was a study that talks about how sleep medications what on average give you 40 extra minutes of sleep or something like that. I had read, it wasn’t even anything significant and I’m like, why am I taking this medicine if I’m trying, if on average it helps you gain an extra, you know, however many minutes of sleep and I’m awake all night anyway. Courtney: So it was just a logical, like, this is not actually helping me. So it was that combined with the, the step taking the building on each step that I took. Martin: Was it a long process for you of moving away from the medication or did it happen quite quickly? Courtney: It was a very gentle, slow, prog, slow process for me, and I knew it would have to be just because of how, like I, how I handled change in general. Courtney: But especially with that, I was like, Ugh, I’m just gonna give myself a lot of grace and a lot of time and yeah. Yeah, I was able to get off of it, but for me it took a while. Martin: Did you have that temptation as you were moving away from the medication, reducing your dose, that you’re starting to feel more confident and, yeah, I don’t need this medication to make sleep happen and then may be a really difficult night shows up and then your problem solving brain fires up and it’s like, well, we need to go back to the medication. Martin: Was, was that something you experienced and if it was, how did you respond? Courtney: Yes, those old thoughts would creep back in and I would be like, oh, you know, ready to go back to that. And I had to challenge that. Like, no, this didn’t help you before. You will get through this. You don’t need them, you don’t actually need them to sleep. Courtney: So those were the thoughts that I would have to challenge. I couldn’t just, you know, write ’em down like I would actually have to challenge them. But yeah, much like my body remembers what happened, the old thoughts are very much there to, so I would have to. Re just be, make, be mindful of that, that it’s gonna be, it’s gonna take a while. Courtney: My body remembers that, and therefore those thoughts might come back again. Martin: You reminded yourself of that conflict that can happen between our problem solving brain and our experience, maybe like the wise mind perhaps. So your problem solving brain was like, no, we need to go back to the medication. Martin: And it’s so easy to listen to that problem solving brain because it serves us really well in so many areas of life. But not all the time. And you drew on your experience and you reminded yourself that, you know, I’ve got this bank of evidence here that tells me that I don’t need medication to make sleep happen. Martin: That sleep can happen without it. With less of it, I can feel drowsy. So there’s what my problem solving brain is saying isn’t always true in effect. And it was helpful for you to remind yourself of that. What does it feel like now that you’ve eliminated that medication from your life and that you are sleeping and living your life independently of that? Courtney: Oh man. It, it’s just so freeing to be out of, out of that place. I didn’t ever think I was gonna get out of, I thought once I’m dependent on medication, like I, I don’t even know how I would be able to get out of this, this place, but I did. And also, like, it just, it’s so much more trust for my body. Like my body knows what to do and I can just, I can trust it to do that. Courtney: So that has been cool that I don’t need to intervene. So again, a lot of freedom. Martin: Courtney, if someone with chronic insomnia is listening to this and they feel as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, that maybe they are the one person that’s truly broken, they’ll never be able to stop struggling with insomnia. Martin: What would you say to them? Courtney: Like if they’re already watching this, they’re already on your channel. Like just try to stick to these videos and drown out anything else, because that can be very confusing and you can easily fall back into, well, maybe I need to try that supplement, or maybe my sleep problems related to that. Courtney: Like just keep it focused on the educational content here, as well as the success stories that you’ve shared on here. Because like we said, you know, it’s a common theme through everyone that has struggled with insomnia and we all have come to the same place maybe a little bit differently, but we’re essentially on the other side of that big battle that we had. Courtney: So that should give people hopefully a lot of hope that. There’s, this is where the space is to heal from insomnia. So try to drown out other advice or articles or videos. You know, it can get very confusing and it can make you feel a lot worse. You are not alone by any means, and as many people have been where you’re at, I have as well, and I, I thought I was the exception. Courtney: I didn’t ever think that I would be where I’m at today with how much medication I was on, how many doctor’s appointments I had to go to, how much sleep I had lost. I, I was in such a dark pit that I didn’t think I would ever get out. And if you’re willing to give yourself time and have self-compassion, you will get out. Courtney: And, and don’t feel bad if you know you’re someone like me where you, you, your, you know, your prayer life isn’t working or you feel like it’s not working, or all the supplements you’re taking are not working. It’s not you. And. It’s okay to be there. Like it’s okay to not be okay, but you do have a lot of hope in this entire channel here that you’ve provided and the videos, the testimonies is proof that there’s hope and you can be one of the people talking about your story. Courtney: So hanging there, it’s, it’s awful. It’s really, really hard. Like, I, I don’t want to glaze over that. I wouldn’t wish insomnia on anybody. It is a very, very dark and scary place. But you, there is so much hope. Martin: Thanks again for the time you’ve taken out for your day to come onto the podcast and to share your experience, your insights, your journey, your transformation. Martin: I just know is gonna help a lot of people. Courtney, so thank you. Courtney: 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. 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!

Amber had always been someone people counted on. A nurse. A mom. For most of her life, sleep wasn’t something she worried about. It just happened. Then life changed. After her second baby — who arrived early and had some health problems — nights became more difficult. She’d lie down only to wait for the next cry. It felt easier to stay awake than to sleep. Years working as a NICU nurse added another layer. More responsibility. More pressure to perform. Sleep felt increasingly fragile and one night she couldn’t sleep at all. Panic showed up. Heart racing. Mind spinning. Insomnia became something to fix. She researched. Tightened her routine. Optimized sleep hygiene. Tried teas. Tried prescriptions. Got in and out of bed. Tried relaxing harder. Tried doing everything “right.” Nothing worked. In fact, the harder she tried, the more she struggled. Nights became lonely and exhausting. Life started to revolve around sleep. Then, in the middle of the night, searching for help, she stumbled across stories of people who weren’t fixing sleep — they were changing how they responded to being awake. Less fighting. More flexibility. More focus on living. It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t perfect. But little by little, Amber’s struggle loosened. And sleep stopped being the boss. 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. So Amber, thank you so much for taking the time out for your day to come onto the podcast. Amber: Thank you. Martin: Let’s start right at the very beginning, as always. Can you tell us when your issues with sleep first began and what you think might have caused those initial issues with sleep? Amber: Yeah. For the most part I’ve been a pretty good sleeper. Amber: However, I’ve had some points in my life where it’s become a little bit hard and I would say the first time that I noticed a significant change was that was after I had my second baby, he was early, he had some health problems. And I noticed, that I started losing my sleep then. Obviously every new mother does anyways, but I was worried about feeding him. Amber: I was worried about him getting enough to eat. I would get him settled and then I would lay down and just be waiting for that next cry. And so it was like almost easier to stay awake in a way, but not in the long run. So that was the first time I noticed it. And then the bulk of my career I have been a NICU nurse, which also made me a little anxious about my newborns. Amber: Sometimes I would be a little bit anxious before certain shifts. Not always, ’cause I worked for 25 years and it was great. But occasionally I would be anxious about getting to bed and in time and getting enough sleep. And so I noticed it there. And then I went back to school a few years ago to become a nurse practitioner and I probably had a little bit of a harder time sleeping during school. Amber: I got a lot more sensitive to my husband’s snoring during that time and, very light sleeper. And then after that, when I got my first job as a nurse practitioner, I was very on edge and very anxious. And while I was orienting for that job, I did not get a lot of sleep. I still at that time wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the sleep itself. Amber: Just aware that I wasn’t sleeping enough. Then I would say a couple years ago is where it really came to a head. I had various just normal life stresses going on with various kids and things. And one night I just could not sleep. And I started to recognize that I was having a bit of panic attack and I had some experience with panic and anxiety in the past, like mainly around that baby that I told you about. Amber: I had learned to work through that and I really hadn’t experienced a lot of it for probably a good decade and a half, but I noticed it that night and that generated a real fear response to me. And I thought, I remember distinctly having thought, oh my gosh, is this gonna keep me from sleeping now? And that’s, that was the hallmark. Amber: That’s what started it. And it became its own beast from that point on. Martin: You can recall a lot of times in your life when there were some stressors going on, for want of a better word, and that impacted your sleep. But it tended to be the case that once those initial triggers were no longer present or as relevant, things tended to get back on track. Amber: I had experienced times in the past where my anxiety was higher and I have always known that my personality goes a little in that direction, but it was manageable. I had been able to manage it and I had learned to manage it pretty well previous to that. Amber: But this time it I think the fear that it was going to affect my sleep, I did not know how to deal with that, and that scared me on a whole new level. And so now I feel like I was dealing with two things, just, being an anxious sort and now not being able to sleep on top of that. Amber: I value my health and I work in healthcare and so I do pay attention to details for sure. Amber: And getting enough sleep was very important to me. I know all the health benefits of that I’ve, and so the thought of not being able to have that and trying to function without it was quite terrifying to me, especially thinking of taking care of other people’s health. Martin: So you’ve got that added pressure to perform sleep because it’s not just about you, it’s also about all the other people you’re interacting with and caring for each day. What were you doing to try and get things back on track? Amber: I just go right to trying to problem solve. And of course that’s an important part of my job. That’s how I’ve dealt with being a mother and any other role I’ve had is to figure out, okay, what do I need to do differently? Amber: I need to understand this better. I’m gonna research it. I’m going to read about it. I’m gonna see what other people do and I’m gonna try all those things just, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna fix this. That’s what I thought. I’m gonna fix it. And so I did several different things. A lot of things that I’ve heard described on your other episodes. Amber: Sleep hygiene was a big thing, and that is actually something I talked to patients about. And so I thought I need to make my sleep hygiene better and I need to make sure I get in bed at a certain time and have everyone be quiet. I can’t have my noise in my room. I need to be really relaxed, so I’ve got to force myself to be relaxed. Amber: Try some of the sleep herbal teas. I don’t love medication, so I was trying not to go there in the beginning. Eventually I did go and try some medication. I have plenty of nurse practitioner friends that could write me a prescription for something. And so I tried various things, but only briefly I will say I, because I quickly realized that there was no medication that was helping. Amber: It might help initially. And then very quickly I discovered that my alarm system was stronger than the medication. And I think I tried maybe two or three different things and I just thought, I’m not gonna do this anymore. ’cause I don’t really wanna be on it anyways and it’s not helping. So yeah, I tried all those things. Amber: It was a difficult time. Amber: There was one night where I tried Ambien. I had tried hydroxyzine, I had tried Trazodone. Those two didn’t help at all. Amber: And one night I tried Ambien and I knew as a professional that’s not a medication that you want to take for very long ’cause it can really be disrupted to sleep. But by that point I was so desperate that I thought maybe if I took it a couple nights, it would help reset me. And that was even the term that the provider I talked to and I had was that maybe I needed a couple nights of reset. Amber: And I, so the first night I tried it and I was really relieved knowing that I had it that night. So I think my anxiety went down quite a bit right there. ’cause I knew I had something that was going to help and I just slept like a log that night. And so I thought, great this is it. I’m gonna do this a couple nights, I’m gonna get rid of it and I’m gonna move on and be normal again. Amber: And the very next night I took it and I slept really hard for maybe two hours and then I was up the rest of the night and I was pretty blown away that I had overpowered that medication that I knew to be pretty strong. And so from, I just threw it out at that point because I thought this isn’t working and it’s not gonna, it’s gonna, give me side effects anyway, so I don’t want it. Amber: So yeah I was really to the end of my rope at that point. I didn’t know what else to do. Martin: I think a lot of people will identify with at least some kind of aspect of your experience with the medication there. You’ve got that thing and it can feel like a sense of relief. Martin: It’s almost like you’re delegating all of the effort that you might felt you had to put into sleep to try and make it happen, now it’s not your issue anymore, it’s down to whatever this thing is. So you take it and it’s that’s it. Now there’s no more effort. There’s no more trying, there’s no more pressure, there’s no more performance anxiety, and that in itself can just immediately create better conditions for sleep. Martin: Maybe the real issue is all the understandable trying and the pressure and the effort. Amber: Yeah that’s very true. And as you were talking, I actually was thinking of something else I tried. I had an another provider tell me to at night it was a CBT thing. It was to get out of bed when I started feeling those anxious feelings so that I wouldn’t associate my bed with that anxiety. Amber: And I thought that makes sense ’cause I’m really struggling when I’m laying in my bed. And she told me also to pull out the Old Testament and read Leviticus ’cause it’s really boring. And maybe that would help. And I did it and it was boring. But I found after a while it, it helped a bit initially, but I found after a while that the exercise of getting in and out of bed when I was feeling anxiety was adding to my anxiety. Amber: ’cause I was just like, oh, here I go again. I’ve, been in bed for 15 minutes. I gotta get out again. It was just something else I had to keep track of. Martin: Did it almost feel like an additional punishment on top of being awake, this kind of obligation that I should be getting out of bed as well? Amber: Yes, it did. Very much yeah, it was not relaxing to me. Martin: I’ve had guests on the podcast that have found it really helpful to get out of bed during the night, and I have other guests just like yourself that did not find it helpful to get out of bed during the night. Martin: And I think really it just comes down to what our intent is. If we are getting out of bed because we are trying to get rid of anxiety or thoughts or feelings or to get rid of insomnia, to make ourselves feel sleepy again, to make sleep happen, then we might be setting ourselves up for some struggle if our experience tells us that’s out of our control if we’re getting out of bed, just because to us, that feels like a more productive way of spending our time awake during the night. Martin: Maybe that is gonna be helpful for you. And if your goal is to just use that time awake in a way that’s more useful, that involves less struggling, we can then see that it doesn’t matter, does it? You can do that in bed. You can do that out of bed. Because our goal is just to experience this with less struggle. Martin: It’s the struggle that kind of adds all that extra difficulty on top. Amber: That is very true. And that is what I had to come to. It took me a while. And I know I actually emailed you a few times about, I wanted you to tell me exactly what to do and of course you won’t do that. Amber: Your answers are to help people search themselves to find out what they need to do because it is very individual. And I finally came to. I just need to see how I feel in the moment. If it feels better, if I want to stay in bed, then I’m gonna do that. But if the feelings of, I don’t know, anxiety or restlessness, get too much for me and I would rather do something out of my bed, then I’ll do that. Amber: So I really ended up not having a certain way of doing things, which I think was a key. Martin: You were giving yourself more flexibility. Whereas when we were in problem solving mode, it’s I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this. And they’ve got this long list, haven’t we? Amber: Yeah, the algorithm. Martin: Exactly. Yeah. But then when we start to ease up a little bit, don’t cling onto it quite so tightly, we can become a little bit more flexible. And that in itself can be quite freeing, right? Because Amber: it is Martin: now we realize we’ve got options again, and that just opens things up a little bit. Martin: That doesn’t mean that things are just immediately gonna change, but it can just relieve some of that weight from our shoulders and help us realize that we can choose what we want to do. Amber: It’s quite liberating actually, when you get to that point. Martin: Just to rewind a little bit, what was an average night like for you back then, if there was such a thing? Amber: In the beginning, just sheer difficulty. It was miserable. It was absolutely miserable. I felt very isolated and very alone because of course everyone else in my house is completely out sleeping beautifully. And I am not. Amber: And it seemed to me like everybody in the neighborhood was sleeping great too. And I am up pacing and walking the hallways or trying to, focus on something that I can’t focus on. Having a lot of an anxious feelings. It just was awful. And then dreading the next day when I was going to be exhausted and very certain I wasn’t going to be able to perform in any of my roles the way I wanted to. Amber: That was the beginning. As time went on, that very slowly improved, but I did still have a lot of difficult nights as I moved forward. Martin: How was this influencing your days when you were still tangled up in the struggle? Amber: Yeah, that was really hard. I called in sick the next day at work and I hardly ever call in sick. I think I’ve missed, gosh, two days and two and a half years. I really, but I didn’t think I could be capable of my job the next day, and I was terrified of myself and terrified of how I would let down other people. Amber: And so I stayed home and just continued to suffer at home. And then, I mentioned my job a lot. That’s a really important role to me. But of my most important role is that of mother. And as family member to my family. And I also felt like I was not able to do a good job there. I felt like I was not quite present. Amber: They could tell that I just wasn’t as happy or didn’t have the energy. I wasn’t doing things that I enjoyed as much. It was just really became enclosed in myself and an obsessed about how I could fix this problem, not a good way to live. Martin: It makes sense why you called in sick to work not only for yourself, for your own wellbeing. It felt what if I might make a mistake at work because I can’t really focus. I’m so distracted. So it’s completely understandable why you would do that. And then at the same time, when you call in sick, you’re not doing that career or that job that might feel important to you. Martin: That’s reflection of who you are. It’s all this stuff influences your actions in a way that you get pulled away from that life you want to live. And that could be your work, your home life, your family life, your identity. It just feels like your actions start to serve insomnia, sleep, all these thoughts and feelings rather than your actions serving you, who you are and the life you want to live. Martin: And that just makes it all so much more difficult. Amber: Yeah, that’s so true. It’s like insomnia became the boss. Amber: I wasn’t new to the sensation of anxiety or panic. I had episodes of that in the past and I was feeling pretty confident that I knew how to handle that. ’cause it had been so long and I had moved through some really difficult things in my life. Amber: And I did okay. So then this thing came along and it was mysterious because I’d had this confidence so I could handle anxiety and difficult things. But this was a whole new thing and it caused me to go right down to the bottom again and go, what is wrong with me? What is wrong with my brain? Amber: Why I felt like I wasn’t doing it to myself, but I couldn’t understand how or why I was doing it to myself. So yes, very mysterious and very difficult for me to understand in the beginning. Martin: When you came across my work, what made you think that there was something different or something new or opened up this possibility that there’s a new way forward here? Amber: As probably most people that encounter your work it was in the middle of the night while I was on, looking for help in the middle of the night because I was just desperate. And I stumbled upon some of your, maybe one of your YouTubes, I think, and you were interviewing somebody like this. Amber: I listened to the person’s story and I thought, oh my gosh, that sounds exactly like how I feel right now. They were really expressing how desperate they were in the beginning and how confusing all the feelings I was feeling at the time. And so that really grabbed my attention because I heard the same level of desperation in this person’s description of themself, and yet they were now being interviewed by you and having worked through that. Amber: And so it gave me hope. And as I listened to it more, I realized that it actually was very similar to how I had learned to manage anxious thoughts or anxiety in the past. And that was to let them happen. So it was a different level of learning how to let something happen. So that cognitive understanding started coming. Amber: The more I would listen to your things on YouTube and your podcasts, I had, I felt like it made sense. It resonated with me. Martin: This is why I’m just so grateful that people like yourself are willing to come on because it, it can be so powerful to hear these journeys and these stories. Martin: There’s that validation. There’s the acknowledgement that you’re not alone, and then there’s that hope, and you had the bonus of being familiar with an approach of opening up to insomnia, opening up to panic, fear, anxiety. Amber: It’s a paradoxical thing that, that is how you get through it is by actually allowing it to happen. Amber: So that, that was a pivotal moment for me and started my process of recovery, which certainly didn’t happen overnight. But the cognitive understanding was there. Martin: So in terms of allowing it to happen, in a practical sense, how do you allow insomnia, for example, to happen when you really don’t want it to happen. Martin: How do you allow anxiety to happen when you really don’t want it to happen? What does that look like in, in terms of practical action? Amber: Yeah. That that, that was the next big hurdle was trying to figure that out. I asked that question of myself and of you, I think several times again, and it’s not something that you can figure out overnight. Amber: It takes a lot of practice. I think ongoing practice, I don’t think that practice ever ends because there’s always a new layer of things. Amber: One of them was to not beat myself up for things, because I realized that when I would get really frustrated and go, why can’t I do this? Why can’t I? What’s, why do I think this? Amber: Why is my brain so busy? Why do I think I have to problem solve everything? Why? I realized that I was just throwing fuel on the fire. I was just putting more pressure on myself. Friend said to me one morning, something that stuck with me, and you actually repeated in an email something very similar. Amber: She said I would never change your problem solving mind. It makes you who you are and look at all the things you’ve been able to do and accomplish. Because of the way your mind works and who would you be without your mind the way you were? And you had said something pretty similar to me about that too. Amber: So from that point on, I started looking at that differently and not flogging myself for just being who I am and seeing the benefit of the way my brain works. That was a big realization for me. And then another one was to realize when I was starting to try to prob over problem solve, maybe, oh, it worked this night but this didn’t work that night. Amber: Maybe I did it a little bit wrong. Maybe you know, I’m not following the algorithm. It was frustrating ’cause professionally, I really do have to follow algorithms a lot. And so I was having to pull away from that natural way of thinking. And not get stuck in this loop of problem solving and just letting it be, not worrying about it so much. Martin: Step one perhaps was, not beating yourself up over something that your own experience is telling you is out of your control. If you could have made a certain amount or type of sleep happen, you would’ve, you’d be doing it, right? If you could magically and permanently delete anxiety from your mind, you would’ve done it. Martin: But your experience tells you that’s not possible. You tried and tried. The conclusion from your experience was that’s not possible. So it sounds like part of your journey towards opening up a little bit more to this difficult stuff that you’d rather not experience is to acknowledge that it is out of your control and that your mind isn’t working against you, it’s not your adversary, even though it can sometimes feel that way. Martin: Because anxiety generally speaking doesn’t feel good. We can see it as a negative thing or a bad thing. If only this anxiety will go away, I would be able to sleep. If only this anxiety would go away, I would be able to be the person I want to be. Martin: But the brain generates anxiety because it’s trying to give us information about something. It’s trying to remind us of something that’s important. It’s trying to protect us. It’s trying to look out for us. It’s trying to keep us safe, and it’s gonna do this whether there’s a real threat or not, because it’s hyper cautious. Martin: It’s focused on doom and gloom. ’cause all the good, happy, fluffy, safe stuff isn’t a threat or a concern. So the brain spends no time on that. It’s only ever gonna focus on what might happen or the worst possible outcome or the worst possible experience. Martin: If we feel anxious that maybe we left the gas stove on. And so we turn around in our driveway and we go back in, we find out we did leave the gas stove on. Is anxiety still a bad thing when it stopped our house from exploding? It’s like what we add on top of it that is the source of so much of our struggle. Amber: Yes, very true. I think, I started using an analogy in my head as I was figuring this out more as a NICU nurse, which. Amber: All those years, if you’ve ever been in, in a neonatal intensive care, there’s a lot of alarms that go off all the time. And so sometimes the nurses get a sense of whether it’s an alarm that needs to be paid attention to or not. And people who haven’t been in there are really on edge because they can just, why are we not getting on top of all these alarms, but the nurses like this one, this is okay. Amber: We’re okay. We don’t need to do anything about it. And I started to realize that’s what was probably going on in me is I, I had an alarm that had some value to it and at times I needed to, of course I need to attend to it. I don’t wanna not be fearful of anything. But it also can go off for things that are not really urgent or really emergent. Amber: It might be a mistake, it might be like in the nicu, maybe the baby’s wiggling and setting off their alarm, and it’s not a problem. So realizing that a little more was helpful to me. Martin: I think that’s a fantastic analogy and I love how you connected it to a real ongoing experience that’s relevant to your life. Martin: ‘Cause that always makes this stuff so much more powerful. And yeah, there’s, these alarms are going off. Sometimes they’re helpful, sometimes they’re useful, sometimes they’re less helpful, sometimes they’re not helpful, they’re not useful. Sometimes maybe they’re more of a distraction than anything else, but what are they? Martin: At the end of the day, they’re snippets of information and we get to decide how to respond. The alternative approach if you’re in that ward is to just be so focused on, I must not hear any alarms today. I can’t hear any alarms. That’s first of all, that’s just gonna take so much of your energy, focus and attention. Martin: How are you gonna be able to care for your patients and do the stuff that matters when your brain is, all of its capacity is on trying to avoid hearing an alarm. Amber: And as time went on, I think my alarm system got a little smarter. I wasn’t going off as much because it wasn’t bothering me as much. Amber: One other thing that’s come to me while we’ve been talking that I also realized I had a few different epiphanies while going through this, and I realized, I kept realizing different levels at which I was trying to force something to happen. Initially it was trying to force sleep. Amber: Then it was trying to force myself to relax and not have anxiety. And then when I started doing your program and going about it that way, then I was trying to force myself to be okay or maybe even being awake or be okay with the anxiety. And I wasn’t. And it took me a while to realize, oh, I don’t have to like this actually, I can acknowledge this is hard. Amber: It is not. This is not ideal. This is not what I wanna do. This is not how I wanna feel. And that’s okay. But I can make a choice here. I do have a choice in what I’m gonna do next. I can have a choice in my discernment. And that was probably one of the bigger epiphanies that I had. ’cause that one really carried out over into other parts of my life too. Martin: I’m glad you made that point because when we hear about this idea of reducing our resistance to something that we don’t really want to experience or to accept it, this whole philosophy of acceptance, a common reservation I guess that people have is but I’m not okay with this. How do I make myself be okay with something that I’m not okay with? Martin: I want to be asleep. I don’t want to be awake. And that’s where we can get tripped up. Because it’s not about pretending that you are okay with it. It’s not about pretending that you enjoy being awake pretending that fatigue doesn’t exist, pretending that anxiety doesn’t make things more difficult, that you enjoy it, that it’s great to experience. Martin: It’s about accepting that this stuff is gonna show up and it’s trying to fight it or avoid it just makes things more difficult. And it’s about, just as you touched upon, bringing your focus back to how you choose to respond to it when it shows up. Choosing to respond in a workable way, a way that isn’t going to layer on all these extra pieces of difficulty and struggle on top of it when it shows up. So I’m really glad you mentioned that because I think that is important. Amber: Yeah. Yeah. I think that is important. I think that’s a really common misconception when someone starts back on this journey, whether it’s insomnia or trying to deal with anxiety, is then trying to figure out how am I supposed to be okay and enjoying this? And you really can’t, that’s not, that’s really not what we’re trying to do here. Amber: It’s okay to acknowledge that it’s hard. Martin: It might even be essential to acknowledge that it’s hard and that in itself might be part of opening up to it. Amber: Yeah. Agreed. Amber: I have memory of when I was young, when as a child and I’d get the stomach flu and I had to throw up. It was just a horrible thing. I did not wanna throw up. I would fight it, and my mom would come with me to the toilet, she would hold my head up and she would just rub my back. Amber: And she would keep saying, just let it come. Just let it come. And I trusted her, and I would let it come, and I would let you know, have the release, and then I would feel better. And it’s more like that to me now. It’s I can let this happen. It doesn’t feel good right now. Might even feel worse before it’s done, but it’s not gonna stay this way. Amber: I know that now. So that’s a different thing. And then instead of getting really frustrated with my busy brains that likes to think about everything and figure out everything. Now it’s more oh, let’s just see what’s on, what’s on TV tonight? What’s on the brain tonight? Amber: I’m more like, wow, look at my busy brain. Isn’t that amazing? It can bounce back and forth. To this, that and the other. And it goes fast. Sometimes it’s a little fast for me, but I’m actually more grateful for it now ’cause it helps me keep track of a lot of things and stay on top of a lot of things. Amber: So I look at that differently as well. Amber: Another big learning point is what what I can control and what I cannot, and to, there are a lot of things we cannot control and to try to control them, escape from them, or numb yourself to them, distract yourself, it just adds to something that might already be difficult. Amber: So letting those things be, and then finding where I can control, which is my actions, my response I went into, when I started this out, I did try some meditation, but my understanding of meditation has changed so much in the beginning. I was trying to force myself to relax. I was trying to make my really naturally busy brain not think of anything, and it just doesn’t happen. Amber: And so that would become more and more frustrating to me. It was just a frustrating experience. I thought I’m never gonna get this down. Now. I choose to relax. I can relax my muscles and my body and I can let myself breathe. But it, you mentioned the word intent or motive in the beginning. My intent of my motive is different. Amber: It’s not to force total relaxation and calm and quiet my brain and not have thoughts. Now it’s, I am relaxing myself to allow them, if that makes sense. And it has been that has been a real game changer for me as well, because I realize the more I do that, oh, actually, I. I don’t really feel that anxious anymore. Amber: It’s just gotten better and better. It doesn’t mean I don’t have anxiety, but I’ve, I have a very different approach now and it feels so doable to me compared to the way it used to feel. Martin: Would you say it’s almost like you are practicing and building skill in experiencing, I’m just gonna say anxiety ’cause that’s the last one that you mentioned. Martin: Experiencing anxiety with less struggle. So it’s showing up, but it’s losing the more you practice experiencing it with less resistance, it’s almost like it starts to lose its power and influence. So it still shows up, but it’s not as strong, it’s not as distracting. It’s not got that power it once maybe held over you. Amber: That’s exactly what’s happening now. The thing if I, if for example, if I go to bed and I’m worried about one of my kids or a patient I saw, and it’s leaving me with this unrest inside. I, now we’ll just realize, okay, I’m going into one of these loops where I’m thinking about this a lot, worrying about it all. Amber: The worry in the world is not gonna change it. I’m gonna just name I’m feeling this way because this is going on, or this is happening and I’m just gonna allow it to happen. I’m gonna relax and allow it to happen. I can maybe think of some more solutions tomorrow, or I can check in on the thing. I just start coming up with things I can do. Amber: To help it. And it really has it has more of a profound effect on me in helping me get through this. Martin: Whilst you were talking, I was thinking back to that alarm analogy you were sharing, and I was thinking that maybe a brand new member of staff, maybe they’ve just finished their training and they’re in that ward for the first time, hearing all those alarms go off, it must be terrifying. Martin: It feels like you’ve really thrown in the deep end, but then as you build up that experience of listening to those alarms going off nonstop choosing through experience on how you’re responding to each of one, each of them, the alarms are still going off, but they’re not having that huge effect on you, that huge physiological effect on you anymore. Amber: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s very it’s very comparable to that experience. Martin: How does this transfer to sleep then? So we’ve talked about opening up to the thoughts and the feelings. How does that get you to a place where you are not struggling with sleep anymore? Amber: With sleep it’s really was the same thing. Amber: The, I bring up anxiety a lot because I feel like the anxiety and the lack of sleep was just so intertwined with this experience. I did have to become more okay with being awake and that took time. And your direction on choosing values, value-based activities was very helpful to me because I’m very aware of what my values are and you know what things lead me more towards those and that type of life I wanna live and. Amber: So I did go I went through a very sleepless period of time. I think there was one time where I felt like I didn’t get sleep for three nights in a row. Sometimes I don’t know that we’re totally aware of how much sleep we actually get, but that’s what it felt like to me. And I actually carried on. Amber: I didn’t feel my best. Of course it wasn’t great, but I carried on very normally for those days and I was able to see, wow, I was able to accomplish, these things at work, at home. I had connection with people. I laughed with people. I had some good conversations. And so that was a big confidence builder to see that I actually really can do a lot without sleep. Amber: It doesn’t feel, the way I like to feel, but I can do it. And so it took some of the fear out of that for me, and that was very helpful. Martin: Maybe it comes down to exploring what we can do that might make this whole experience a little bit less difficult or a little bit less traumatic. It sounds like one way that you moved toward that goal was by committing to actions that reflected your values, living the kind of life you wanted to live, even when sleep wasn’t showing up. Martin: And by doing that, I think a natural byproduct maybe, is that we do start to get a little bit more comfortable with being awake because it’s not having such a huge impact over our lives anymore. Even if it’s just a 10th of a percentage point better, we’ve got that 10th of a percentage point more control over our lives now. Martin: It can snowball. So we become a little bit more comfortable with being awake. That’s not to say we want to be awake, but we just start to get a little bit more comfortable with it. We are less resistant to it. It’s not gonna pull us into quite so much of a struggle and in effect. That kind lowers it down on our list of priorities, perhaps for our problem solving brain. Martin: Our brain’s oh, maybe we don’t have to fight this quite so hard. We don’t have to engage in this battle. And when we are not engaged in that battle conditions for sleep just become better because we’re not in the middle of a battleground at two o’clock in the morning. We’re awake. We’re experiencing all these thoughts and these feelings, but we’re not in a battleground anymore. Amber: That’s absolutely correct. And since then, my attitude now I’ve had a couple of circumstances with maybe a teenage child that’s, been late for curfew coming home or maybe a medical issue with somebody that I need to help with. It’s late in tonight. And instead of thinking, oh my gosh, I’m not gonna get sleep now, I’m like, bring it. I can stay up and I can handle tomorrow. I’ve done it for three nights in a row. Amber: I, it doesn’t scare me like it used to. So it’s a big shift in my perspective on that now. Martin: That is a really big shift. I’m curious to know, as you were practicing this whole new approach that we’ve been talking about, did you find that progress was just it was kinda like this up upward curve where things just progressively got better and easier and less struggle. Martin: Or was it more kind of ups and downs, or was it more just like someone had thrown a plate of spaghetti against the wall and it was just all over the place? What was it like for you? Amber: I like the spaghetti analogy that it probably felt like that for a while. All over the place. I keep using the term cognitive understanding because in my head I could understand what you were saying or what I was hearing from other people. Amber: It made sense to me. It resonated and I knew this was the way to do it, but anything else I’ve had to learn, whether it is becoming a nurse or a nurse practitioner or I used to run a lot of marathons, learning the best way to do that. Learning it in the book can make absolute sense. Amber: And you think you’ve got it, but then actually putting it into reality and doing it experientially is an entirely different thing. And that does not come as quickly and it takes a lot of practice. And that’s exactly what happened with this. It took a lot of practice and I had a lot of ups and downs. I have a plate of spaghetti. Martin: Yeah. And like when you’re learning any new skill there’s gonna be times when it maybe things feel easy, that you’re making great progress, you’re ahead of schedule, and then there’s gonna be times where it feels like nothing is working. You’re doomed to failure, you’re beyond help that you need to go back down that rabbit hole of looking for some something else to do instead. Martin: I love the fact that you drew in your experience, in marathon running in your own career, the skills, achievements, they take a lot of practice, they take a lot of action, they take a commitment to action, and they also come with ups and downs, and they also come with all those thoughts and feelings that I just gave a few examples of, this isn’t working. We should give in. Martin: If we think of where we’re most skilled in life, that wasn’t just immediately given to us, we had to earn it, and we earned it through committed action. Even if it’s just doing a little bit every day, it all adds up. It’s just continuing to do things that move us in the direction that we want to be heading. Amber: Absolutely. And I do think when you start making that initial improvement, so when I first started to improve and I had a few good nights of sleep and I thought, oh, this is it. I’ve arrived. I figured it out. And then you have your first whatever you wanna call it, set bump, or, barrier in the road and you have another bad night. Amber: It can be really deflating. ’cause you thought, oh, I figured this out and now this isn’t working, and what did I do wrong? You start, you catch yourself going through all of the same rabbit hole again. And so it is, there is a lot of patients required with those setbacks, they are going to continue to happen. Amber: And I heard. I don’t remember where I heard it, but I heard someone say that they those types of setbacks come up for a reason. It’s an opportunity to practice. It just means that you need to practice again. It’s not really a bad thing, it’s just an opportunity to refine a skill. And again, changing the way I looked at those, ’cause those were pretty, they’re pretty hard, those setbacks once you start on the road to recovery. Martin: 100%. And especially like you said early on especially if you’re really early in your journey and maybe you string some good nights together, or you have a few days where you notice you’re not completely overwhelmed with all these thoughts and feelings and you can feel really confident and motivated, yes, this is working, I’m doing really well. Martin: And it can be so deflating and difficult when the difficult stuff shows up again. And even when you are further along in your journey, there can be lots of ups and downs and it can feel like you’re, it’s almost like your brain is, whoa, you’re back to square one. Martin: Everything you’ve been doing up to this point was a complete waste of time, waste of effort. The truth is that it’s just your brain looking out for you. Again, the truth is you’ve just had this experience of some difficult nights or some nights where less sleep happened or some nights of no sleep, or you’ve noticed those thoughts and feelings showing up and gaining a little bit more power. Martin: That’s what’s happened. Anything else that you are getting from that is stuff that we are understandably adding on top because we still don’t want to experience it. But what matters is identifying this is a normal part of any journey and that it is about how we choose to respond. And that’s something that we always have power over. Martin: We have the power over our choice of actions, and it’s easy to respond in the way we wanna respond. When things feel good, when things feel easy, it’s when things feel difficult, that it’s most important we respond in the way that reflects how we wanna respond, and that’s really what counts. Martin: How long would you say it took for you to get to a point where insomnia and all the thoughts and the feelings that can show up with it and after it weren’t creating a struggle for you that you could do things that matter, live your life, do what’s important to you, independently off sleep, and even in the presence of uncomfortable, difficult thoughts and feelings. Amber: I think it’s hard to put a specific number on that because in the journey, I feel like I, I would go to that for quite a while and then maybe have a little, regression or whatever, and then I would go back to that. Amber: But I will say, I think over time those regressions would get further and further apart. And so maybe six to eight months is where I started feeling like I was settling in back into my more normal self, my more baseline self. Martin: Yeah, that’s helpful because I think it’s a reminder that really what we’ve been talking about this whole time are skills. They’re action-based skills and skills. Take time to learn, to develop, to practice. There’s gonna be ups and downs, there’s gonna be setbacks. And that takes time. We all obviously want immediate results. We wanna be able to just deal with this right now. Martin: If I could offer that to people, I would offer it. I’d be a trillionaire. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s not easy, it’s difficult, and it requires ongoing practice. Amber: I can honestly say that even though there were times where I just feel like this really brought me to my knees I wouldn’t change it now because of the benefit I’ve gotten from it. I don’t think there, there’s things that I don’t think I could have learned in another way. I think it’s benefited how I’m able to help others and of course my values, my roles, my role as mother. Amber: Professionally as nurse practitioner or family member or friend, the people in my life, those are really important to me. And so this outlook and this focus of what I can and cannot control and how to allow these things to move through, to just be able to move through them and not go down the rabbit hole has been really helpful. Amber: I’m very empathetic towards people that are going through something similar and it doesn’t have to be insomnia because so many struggles go down this road, right? They don’t necessarily have to be insomnia. And of course professionally I hear a lot about these types of things. I’m in that type of a position, and so I do, I have a lot of empathy. Amber: I understand how things feel how difficult thoughts and feelings can fill, and I can give better guidance and direction. I can do that for my children and other people in my life. Martin: It can be really hard to think of any positive aspects to this struggle when you are in the midst of it. It can almost sound disrespectful to think that there could be a growth opportunity, or it could have somehow have any positive impact on our lives. But a common theme that runs through so many of these podcast episodes is this sense of growth that can only come from that journey that has been experienced. Amber: I mentioned how when I have had setbacks with insomnia or anxiety, I can see it more as an opportunity to practice. And so now when other things occur in my life that are difficult I think I can go to that maybe a little more quicker now because of that experience that here’s another opportunity. Amber: This is happening. How can I go about handling it? What can I control, what can I not? And let myself move through it. And then I would say even just day to day, I think I take more I have more gratitude for things too, because. I’m not struggling with the battle and the calv calvary, as you mentioned. Amber: Now I have more awareness of things around me that are important to me, or even small things like, good weather or flower. It does, it opens your eyes to other things. Martin: These are transferable skills. Martin: They don’t exist only for insomnia, only for anxiety. They can enrich or enhance your life in so many other ways, and that’s where you can end up coming out ahead. So like you shared, maybe now you’re finding yourself better at practicing gratitude. You find yourself better able to focus on values-based action. Martin: Maybe you’re getting more from life because your values have just become more front and center. And so you’re ensuring that your actions reflect who you are, who you want to be and your, you focus, the focus of your attention is expanded. So maybe you are able to savor a few more of those moments that we might once have been on autopilot and missed out on. Martin: If someone with chronic insomnia is listening. And they feel as though they’ve tried everything. They’re beyond help. They’ll never be able to stop struggling with insomnia. Martin: What would you say to them? Amber: Yes, I’ve anticipated that question and that’s really the reason I did this. I was a little reluctant in saying yes, but because this helped me so much, I couldn’t say no to you. Because this is doable. Even though you may be at the point where you feel like you’re completely broken, you’re completely alone. Amber: No one understands. I’ve tried, A through Z, it’s not working. It is doable. It’s not gonna happen overnight. But it will happen. And it’s the key things that we’ve been talking about. It’s practicing, it’s being patient with yourself in the process. It’s being kind with yourself in the process. Amber: It’s identifying what you have control over and what you do not. And, practicing those things over and over is really what will help this settle down. It’s very doable. Martin: Great. Thank you again, Amber, for coming on. It’s just been a pleasure listening to you describe your journey and your transformation. So thank you. Amber: 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. 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!

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!

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