Insomnia Coach® Podcast

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) As Juergen got older, his sleep began to change. Although this is normal, Juergen didn’t know that at the time! And, just as he began to pay more attention to sleep, COVID hit, work stress increased, and all the places he used to enjoy going to got shut down. Juergen felt as though insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it were starting to control his life. He felt as though he was losing himself and getting pulled away from the kind of life he wanted to live. This was when we started working together. Ultimately, Juergen became more willing to experience nighttime wakefulness. He became more accepting of the difficult thoughts and feelings that would show up. Juergen discovered that as long as he didn’t try to battle with all the stuff that was out of his control he could free up all that energy to do things that would help him live the kind of life he wanted to live instead. The skills Juergen learned and repeatedly practiced also helped when tinnitus returned after a long absence. Today, Juergen can notice when he’s getting distracted by his thoughts and feelings and is better able to disengage autopilot, bring himself back to the present moment, and refocus attention onto the actions he can control — actions that help him be the kind of person he wants to be and help him live the kind of life he wants to live, even in the presence of difficult thoughts and feelings and even after difficult nights. As a result, all the difficult stuff that is out of his control now has far less of an influence over his life — and he is also sleeping a lot better! Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: 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 Reed: 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 Reed: Hello, Juergen. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me and for inviting me. Can’t believe I’m on your podcast after having viewed so many of them when I was in the middle of it. Thank you very much. Martin Reed: Oh, absolutely. You’re not the first person to say that. Feels like a journey where you just go full circle, right? You listen and then eventually you know you’ve made it when you come onto the podcast yourself. Juergen Kuhmann: Maybe that’s the circle. Not of life! Martin Reed: Yeah, exactly. Well, let’s start right at the beginning. When did your sleep problems first begin? And what do you think caused those initial sleep issues? Juergen Kuhmann: I think it was a combination of things. I think, first of all I didn’t even realize how sleep would change when I get older. So at that time I was close to 50, and in the onset to it, I was starting to think about my sleep more because I said, “Oh no, I only got this many hours or that many hours.” And then so already there was, at the end of 2019, already starting. And then at beginning of 2020, I had a healthy event. Nothing big. I had a really bad tooth they couldn’t fix. Treatments and so on, I had this pain and infection in my head. Juergen Kuhmann: You make up stories about how this you this infection is there and it’s not going to get fixed. They couldn’t fix it after so many hours in the dentist’s chair and so that was bothering me during that time. Then I had a bunch of work stress and then COVID hit. So, which means my outlet was always sports and just swimming and skiing. I’m in in Colorado, and so once COVID hit, they closed the ski area, they closed the pool, so I was home with my work stress and my health problems and that’s where it started. I just said, “Man, how am I going sleep?” And I’m just ruminating and I didn’t have the outlet. I think that was one of the big causes. Martin Reed: Yeah. So I think probably you recognized that when you were going through that initial health issue with your teeth, your mouth. You probably didn’t think quite so much was wrong when you experienced some initial sleep disruption at that point, because most of us can recognize when something stressful or unpleasant happens we tend to have some difficult nights from time to time as a result. How did it progress? So how did you go from, “Oh, this is okay, it’s some temporary sleep disruption caused by this,” to, “Oh, I think there’s something more serious going on here. This seems to be a real problem.” Juergen Kuhmann: The health problem started in January, the work stress, like many people, the corporations, that companies said then, “Okay, this is COVID times, pandemic times, all this change, we have to change our story.” I work for a software company so we had to adjust to, how do our customers now want to do business with us? We want to help them. They changed their business on the spot, so how can we help them? So there was a lot of stress at work to make that switch. And so that was going like February, March of 2020, then they closed everything. And then I think it was April or so, I had this one super bad night where I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to keep my wife awake. And so, “Okay, I’ll sleep downstairs,” and I didn’t sleep at all that whole night. Juergen Kuhmann: The next day we wanted to go on a drive and get something done but I had to be fit for that and I wasn’t. I said, “Now I can’t even on my free day when I should not worry about work, I worry about other things so much now I can’t sleep. And so that was the trigger, this compelling event, I guess where I said, “Something’s really wrong. I need to get help.” Martin Reed: So what was that sleep disruption like for you? Was it difficulty just falling asleep at the start of the night or maintaining the sleep through the night? Or maybe a little bit of both? Juergen Kuhmann: I think mainly falling asleep. So just ruminating on thoughts and trying to stay in control, trying to control my thoughts, because I said, “Oh, now I’m going to think about sleep again.” And I’m so tired I want to sleep, but now this thought comes up again, “Don’t think about that.” So this, trying to be the control freak on things, as we talked before, right? Engineering background, we are known to analyze problems and trying to find solutions for it. And I couldn’t find the solution for it. And trying to find a solution for it, things just progressed to being worse. The methods I used to go through life and fix things didn’t work. So I was, “I need help. I don’t know where to go from here.” No, it’s falling asleep, yeah, to come back to your initial question. Martin Reed: So you touched upon the fact that you obviously tried lots of things, which everyone listening to this episode is going to be able to identify with, right? Because we have a problem, we want to fix it so we try lots of different things. Before we started to work together, what kind of things had you tried that upon reflection didn’t prove to be that helpful? Juergen Kuhmann: So, initially, in the early phase before that super bad night, I used sometimes melatonin. At that time when we still traveled for business, you remember that time? Martin Reed: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Juergen Kuhmann: So I had a lot of also international travel and people said, “Oh, you can use melatonin. Once you get there, you want to catch an hour or two, it’ll help you fall asleep.” So I had a little bit of experience with that stuff. So I used it and it initially helped a little bit, but it started not helping after a while. And then at that time due to the stress, and that started before, already in 2019 with work related stress, I didn’t sleep super great so I drank too much coffee. Not much but it has to always the stronger coffee. Can’t just be a cup of coffee, it has to be one with an espresso shot in it. It’s not that I drink a whole pot of coffee. Juergen Kuhmann: I like coffee but not that much, but then I have coffee at 4:00 or 5:00 PM. And then I love beer, so, okay then, to reward myself for the work day, I have a beer or two at night. And then it was little bit my hobby, so you try this and the microbrews that has a lot of alcohol. Not a huge drinker. I drank maybe every other day a bottle or two or three or whatever. But when it was three, I thought about, “Are you sliding into some things?” I was already thinking about, “Three beers at night? That can’t be right.” It was already annoying. And then the whole day with the stress at work and then things that interest you around politics, and so there’s too much on you in terms of stress. Juergen Kuhmann: So I knew something was wrong and I tried to fix it. With not getting to sleep at night so I have to wake myself up with coffee, which doesn’t really work. And then reward yourself, sit down with a glass of beer or a two at night, and that certainly didn’t help. I knew I didn’t want sleeping pills. I heard bad things about those before so I never had one ever in my life, but I did try a few things like that. Martin Reed: And what about on the behavioral side of things? Did any of your sleep habits or sleep routines change? Did you find yourself doing things like maybe trying to nap during the day or going to bed earlier or staying in bed later in the day? Anything like that to try and catch or chase that sleep? Juergen Kuhmann: That’s a good question. Not so much the nap during the day. I don’t think that that came up. Frankly, I don’t remember me napping during the day. I did get out of bed and just said, “I might as well read something,” in the beginning. But the very beginning, I was just lying in bed, getting more worried and more worried and more worried about all kinds of stuff. And when COVID hit, everybody was worrying about, “How is this? What’s happening? Where’s this going?” How this changed our lives and how we go through the day. And my son was six at that time, just in school and that changed and I would have to have him home. There were so many changes. At that same point in time with my health problems. And I think my abuse of caffeine and alcohol at the same time, I just exploded my face, if you will. It’s just bad timing. Martin Reed: And how about, did you find that you were making any changes to your day? I mean, obviously when COVID happened, you’d already mentioned there was a lot of stuff you used to enjoy doing that you just couldn’t do anymore, which is out of your control. Was there anything that you found yourself doing to try and maybe compensate for difficult nights? Were you changing your days around in a bit to protect your sleep or to increase the likelihood of sleep happening the following night? Juergen Kuhmann: Frankly, I didn’t even know. Before I met you, and I had also a counselor, but what you told me is you can’t control sleep, and I didn’t. I was out of ideas, frankly, more and I didn’t really do anything else and just give up and say, “I need to ask someone for advice what’s happening here with me.” Because I knew at that time how it affected my days. One thing that I noticed is I couldn’t be me anymore. There was that loss of control caused me to lose myself. Said, “I’m the provider, I’m being the one who’s doing the work and providing and have my role in the family. My family relies on me.” And I felt I couldn’t fulfill that role anymore because of the lack of sleep. I couldn’t be productive anymore. And so that losing my previous self was that shock that happened. And I said, “How can I go on if I can’t fix it?” There was a bit of desperation as well. Martin Reed: So we worked together for eight weeks, but as you already touched upon, that was a long time ago. It was about a year and a half ago when we were working together. So since then, you’ve just been going it alone, flying solo, as I say. Looking back at your experience when we were working together and how you’ve been doing since then, what do you feel were the issues that made sleep difficult, that perpetuated that sleep disruption? And ultimately, what did you end up doing to address those things? Juergen Kuhmann: Sleep, it’s just learning from the counselor as well how to not control my thoughts, but how to look at them in a different way, which the thought that I couldn’t fall asleep scared me and that created anxiety and that kept me up. So just the learning that mechanism is so different from everything else I’ve ever actually experienced probably. I couldn’t think of anything else to let things be, they’re good like that and not be so hard on myself trying to be the good person that succeeds and provides. And giving up on that was probably a hard thing but the thing that turned it around, I would say. I think that’s the main learning out of it. And it was a process. You helped me through as how to look at sleep in general. Juergen Kuhmann: So in order to get sleep, you shouldn’t care about it, which is just the opposite, because all I was think… One thing I come back to, what did I do to get my mind off it as well is I just started doing work around the house and going back into the house. When it was worse in beginning of May 2020, it was a few weeks after that initial super bad night is I wouldn’t want to come home because I knew when I was home that’s where the anxiety was. When I was going to bedroom and see my bed, there was like, “Oh, now you have to go there again and you know how this is going to end.” And so all this anxiety was building up. Juergen Kuhmann: So I tried to do a lot of work outside, yard work and whatnot and just to get my mind off it, but inside me, I was always thinking about sleep. And to let go of that, and you taught me some good tricks, I have to say. You wouldn’t call them tricks, but these were things to have me rethink how I see sleep, which is tricking my engineering mind into thinking differently. That was the first time that I think in my long life I thought about things like that, to letting go of things is the key, to just let it happen. And some things just happen and you don’t have to be in the driver’s seat. I think that’s one of the biggest learnings actually for my life. Juergen Kuhmann: I think, and I told you before, I think I lead now a much healthier life because I learned how to let go and not have to fix. I read a saying just a few weeks says, “You don’t have to fix every problem every day, just fix one and let the other be.” But in our society, I guess it’s like producing things and solving problems is a value we carry, but it can be counterproductive as we’ve seen. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. I think really the whole struggle with insomnia, it does come down to control. Right? There’s a problem, we want to fix it, in this case it’ll be I’m spending too much time awake at night, I’m feeling anxious. So we put effort into sleep and we put effort into trying to fight those uncomfortable feelings like anxiety and worry. But the brain is generating all those difficult thoughts and feelings because it’s trying to protect us. So it’s trying to explore ways to help us out. So it’s telling us, “Look, there’s something going on here. We got to fix this.” But because those feelings don’t feel good, naturally we want to fight them or avoid them and that tells the brain that we’re ignoring it, we’re not listening. So what does the brain do? It thinks that there’s a very real threat here and you are not listening so it yells even louder and those thoughts and those feelings then become even more intense. And I just- Juergen Kuhmann: And you feel the threat, although it’s all in your head. Everything’s all mind games and your brain’s just doing, I guess what, like you said, what it’s programmed to do to identify a threat and point it out to us. But that’s counter productive to what our conscious mind wants. Martin Reed: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the brain can’t really tell the difference between a real physical threat like a bear on your bed during the night, or just a perceived threat, which is being awake at night. It can easily fire up all those same defense mechanisms; the racing heart, the sweats, the chills, whatever, that whole fight or flight response, it’s no different. But obviously it doesn’t feel good and we’re trying to push that away and it’s coming back even stronger and that leads to more anxiety and more worry and more sleep difficulties. Martin Reed: So in my experience, I see that people tend to struggle to put insomnia behind them for as long as we’re engaged in that completely understandable and default path of trying to avoid nighttime wakefulness or trying to fight or avoid all those difficult thoughts and feelings and emotions that come with insomnia. Because none of those things are within our control. We just cannot control what goes on in our minds and we cannot control sleep. And you said yourself- Juergen Kuhmann: Makes so much sense now. Martin Reed: Yeah.- Juergen Kuhmann: It’s like, “Wow, I never thought this would be the solution,” is to not really… But it is a way to behave and think differently, yeah. It’s just a different kind of solution. Martin Reed: Yeah. And it is very different because I think from birth, we are trained to try and avoid difficult feelings. Like, when we’re babies, as soon as we cry, someone picks us up, soothes us, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” How many times in our lives are we told to cheer up, to smile, to lighten up, to have a sense of humor? We’re just bombarded throughout our entire lives, told how we should be feeling. So whenever we don’t feel that way, we immediately think, “There’s something wrong here, we need to fix it.” Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah. This is pursuit of happiness all the time. We have to be happy today, and then tomorrow we wake up and we have to be happy tomorrow. And then when it isn’t this way for…. I mean, the main phase for me was three months and I wasn’t happy. There was not much happiness. You taught me to pull out some happiness by, I remember sitting on the porch and asking you questions, and out there and I said, “Why do you reward yourself for a bad night?” I said, “I can do that. I can find a reward for myself for not sleeping well.” So there’s these things that you then translated into actions I could take. Because if you, where I was at the point where I was helpless, I had no tools left. Juergen Kuhmann: And I think you find these tools. They’re not going to fix it from one day to another, but gives you that little bit of hope and good feeling and happiness. So when I had a bad night, I just got myself a couple of donuts. I went to Starbucks and had a great breakfast that my family didn’t have. So I rewarded myself with food, I guess. So, but no matter what it was, right? So getting out of the fear or the bad mood once a day and make that your new rule, that gave me a little bit of hope, I said, “Okay, I’m making progress.” Juergen Kuhmann: Or the thing that you said, maybe I’m jumping the gun here in terms of what you want to ask next, but just thinking about that it’s not about how it feels today, it’s how the long term development is. It’s not that you are not sleeping today, it’s about just essentially working on the anxiety, just getting that down, and then you solve the problem in an indirect way, not directly, which I try to do and failed, utterly failed. Martin Reed: I love the way you touched upon that pursuit of happiness, because I think for many of us, if not all of us, we consider true happiness to just be that absence of difficulty, the absence of suffering. So as long as we try and eliminate any causes of suffering or any difficult feelings and emotions in that pursuit of happiness, we’re going to get caught up in that struggle. Happy people can be happy without the absence of difficult thoughts, feelings, emotions, and experiences. It’s just the difference, I think, is for happy people, they focus on what they can do, what they can control. Martin Reed: So they’re more likely to be engaged in actions that they have control over that help them just continually move toward the life they want to live, even when there’s some difficult stuff going on at the same time. And I think that’s where the trap is. We think that in order to be happy, we’ve got to get rid of all the bad stuff. That’s not the case. We just need to keep doing the good stuff, maybe adding more of the good stuff and that in the end becomes our focus. And I think that’s the true secret to happiness. Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah. Because there will always be some suffering in our lives. You see ourselves or somebody else, some bad stuff happening, but we can create those happy moments for ourselves and then be good with it. Done this. You’ve got some good times today, or if you don’t have them today, tomorrow is another day. That constant pursuit of, to coming back to the sleep, right? “Oh, today it didn’t work again. I only slept three hours, four hours. I feel tired today. I don’t feel like myself today.” I learned to move on from there and find parts of happiness even though… And I said about losing myself in the beginning. Because I didn’t get to sleep I didn’t feel like myself. Regaining parts of that. After three months they opened the pool again so I could go swimming. That helps. Juergen Kuhmann: So regaining a little bit more of, okay, that’s your old identity, that’s your old self, that’s what you found happiness in and you could go back to doing some exercise. We found back, also back to spirituality, I have to say I always considered myself a Christian and a believer but I didn’t practice any of this. And maybe COVID helped that too. But I fought my way back to that and that became a new me, that there’s somebody else who is in control and let go. It’s the same, when I got back into going to church and listening to and reading some scripture, I said, “It talks about being patient in affliction.” I said, “That’s it. You have to be patient in affliction. You have to let go.” Juergen Kuhmann: And if you believe in God or not, it’s not about religion, it’s about you can’t control everything. There’s other things that you got to let go for a day and just work on it. And sometimes it’s not the solution. The way to make yourself better might not be the direct way you think about. It might be that path not a lot of people go with letting go and being fine with discomfort. When I first read that line, I said, “Yeah, how can you be fine with discomfort?” But I think that’s life. There’s discomfort everywhere, small and large, and we have to accept that we are not in control of that. we’re just one person. Martin Reed: And I think it’s important to not gloss over this discomfort, because when we’re living with insomnia, when we’re living with anxiety, it is difficult. We’re not trying to trick ourselves. We’re not trying to think positive or to distract ourselves from that or to convince ourselves that it’s okay. All we’re really trying to do is to recognize that, yeah, it is difficult, it is challenging. This doesn’t feel good, but we just need to focus on what we can control. And we can’t control sleep, and we can’t control those difficult thoughts and feelings, they are definitely unpleasant. But let’s look at what we can do, what we do have control over that helps us really just live a life that’s aligned with our values even when all this difficult stuff is still present. Martin Reed: So instead of trying to fight or avoid the anxiety, maybe we just make a little bit of space for it, we acknowledge it’s there so the brain knows that we are listening to it. We’re not trying to ignore what the brain is saying. We acknowledge what the brain is saying. We make a little bit of space for all those difficult thoughts and feelings and emotions. And then we shift our attention onto our actions. What can we do now that helps us move toward the kind of life we want to live even when all this stuff is going on in the background that doesn’t feel good? Juergen Kuhmann: So that comes in, and I’m a total layman about this, right? So I had this counselor who was doing this acceptance therapy, and what you just said, that sounded like basically which I know not much about, but he used that to foster this acceptance of difficult thoughts and then to move on from there. And then in the beginning, that the sleep thought I recalled, it said, which is, “Oh, I can’t fall asleep. It’s not working again today.” This thought, to accept it, to say, “Oh, hello, welcome. You are here. The sleep thought is back. I acknowledge it, it’s true. I, again, can’t fall asleep tonight but I’m moving… Thank you for letting me know. Now I’m moving on to…” And then they have this body based exercises, which you see yourself where you lie in bed and stuff like that. Juergen Kuhmann: And maybe the thought comes again, you say, “Oh, you’re back again. Hi. Right. Thank you very much. Again, thanks for letting me know,” and then you go. And I guess the brain at some point gives up on showing you that same thought over and over again because you don’t react to it. I guess that’s how I understood that but it helped me deal with those thoughts. I got so scared about it every time, which was the main issue in the beginning. And so that anxiety lessened over time, over the months. And so I was able to let go. Juergen Kuhmann: And it was hard, but you still did things. I still worked out, I still did my work, so it could be me although there was this pain inside. It was tough, not sugarcoating it, but it’s a tool. And that’s what I was looking for in the beginning, get a tool because I was out of tools, and that was a tool I could use and that gave me safety. I felt I had some level of control how to react to that situation I found myself and I felt about it, so a way to go about it. And then hearing from you is that people had success give you that hope, watch your podcast and see how other people were successful with that. I have to say, this is not to be underestimated. If people’s stories out there that made it through and I just hoped I would be one of those people that make it through, and I did, yeah. Martin Reed: I like the way you refer to these actions that you can engage in that you have control over as tools, because tools don’t necessarily solve a problem- Juergen Kuhmann: Very procedural. Martin Reed: Yes, I mean- Juergen Kuhmann: Programmer. So there has to be a program! Martin Reed: Yeah, exactly. And that can be a real benefit. Tools, they’re not the solution itself but they help us get to that point. They help us on our journey. So I always say, if we implement something, if we implement a tool from the toolbox, if we have a great night of sleep, that’s not because the tool worked, that’s just because what you’ve been doing has proven to be helpful. And often it comes down to, we’re not trying quite so much that night to avoid nighttime wakefulness or to battle with all the stuff that’s going on in our mind. And similarly, if we have a difficult night, it’s not because the tools or the techniques or whatever you’ve done didn’t work, it’s just because on that night, maybe you were trying a little bit harder to avoid that nighttime wakefulness or you were battling a little bit more with everything going on in your mind. Juergen Kuhmann: That’s right. Martin Reed: It really is helpful to just focus on what we can control. And that’s where it can be an asset. You mentioned, “Oh, my engineer background. I just want this clear flow chart. If this happens, do this. Do this, do this, do this.” And that can actually end up being an advantage because we can be really tempted to engage in all different kinds of experiments. You know, “I’m going to try this, see if it works. Should I carry on doing that?” Martin Reed: If we just instead can just make a decision, stick to it, we just give ourselves a clear plan, so we might say, for example, “I’m not going to go to bed tonight before such and such a time, like before nine o’clock, because I know that I’m never sleepy before nine o’clock. I’m never falling asleep before nine o’clock. So I’m going to decide, number one, I will not go to bed before nine o’clock. Number two, no matter how the night goes, I’m going to get out of bed to start my day at,” choose the time, five o’clock, six o’clock, whatever feels good for you, seven o’clock, doesn’t matter. But you’ve just made that decision, you’re going to stick with it. One less thing to be thinking about. Juergen Kuhmann: And there’s that promise then. Once you have a bad night and you get up, for me from the beginning was 5:30. I had 11:30 to 5:30. 11:30 to 5:00 or something. I got up at 5:00 and I said, “I had a bad night.” But then you said, “This will create sleep pressure and you should have a better experience the next night. If the next night doesn’t work out either in terms of getting a little bit more sleep, at some point you will sleep.” So that also gave me hope to say, “Okay, I go that path. At some point, I will make a step forward.” So it’s always this little bit of piece of happiness I can get following this tool. You don’t want to use a tool that said, “Oh, it’s probably never going to work.” But you said, “Okay, there’s the sleep pressure so at some point your brain will make you sleep no matter what.” So that was great learning as well. Martin Reed: Yeah. And that’s the great thing about allotting an appropriate amount of time for sleep, because our temptation is to spend lots and lots of time in bed to try and chase sleep, to give sleep a good opportunity to happen, but that often just leads her more wakefulness during the night and keeps us trapped in that struggle. Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah, I was afraid of it, yeah. So reducing that time certainly helped, yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. And it also just helps remind us that we can still get sleepy. We can experience that intense sleepiness and it reminds us that no matter how difficult things are, sleep will always happen in the end. We will not remain awake indefinitely. We’ve never lost that ability to sleep. Juergen Kuhmann: It was hard sometimes at nine o’clock watching TV on the couch, I will be so sleepy. I said, “Oh, I can sleep on that couch, no problem. I fall asleep right now,” I wouldn’t have had any problem doing that, but I had to wait until 11:30. That was tough, staying awake. And then by the time 11:00 comes around, that anxiety comes up and, boom, I’m awake. But over time, it helped regulate it, definitely. It gave you, what do you call it? I forgot. What’s the English word? It gave you a route to go on. You had, maybe this is what you should do. And that gave me some sense of security. Know what to do and I know it’s going to produce a good result at some point and trust you in that. Because I used to watch your podcast where other people said it worked for them and also your professional advice in that. Martin Reed: Yeah. And the other parts of the plan that sometimes could be quite comforting is you always have that option during the night, if being in bed just really feels awful, really unpleasant, you can always just change that and just do something that you… I mean, you’re awake anyway. Why not do something that just makes being awake more pleasant? That technique also, or that tool or whatever you want to call it, the strategy is helpful during the day, too. If the day is difficult, how about we do something that might make the day a bit more enjoyable? And often that comes back to what our own values are, just living a life or engaging activities that help us move toward the life we want to live. Martin Reed: If we can keep doing those things, we’re helping to create and maintain good conditions for sleep, but we’re also training the brain that it doesn’t need to fear being awake at night. There’s no real danger or threat there. And we’re proving that by spending less time in bed. So the brain’s like, “Oh wait, how can wakefulness be a danger if this guy’s spending less time in bed?” If we’re doing things to make being awake at night more pleasant rather than tossing and turning and fighting, and if we’re living the kind of life we want to live during the day, even after difficult nights, the brain eventually learns that, “There’s no real threat here.” Martin Reed: And the real magic happens when we can drop that battle with our brains, you know? So the brain knows, “Oh, this person’s taking this seriously. They’re listening to what I’m saying. But also, on reflection, I’m seeing that being awake at night isn’t a threat.” And so it just starts to get quieter on quieter on quieter until we don’t really even notice it anymore. I think that’s where everyone who’s made this transformation, that’s really what they reflect on the process was. Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah. And in the beginning, I didn’t know that the brain is there and your conscious mind. I didn’t know you had to convince your… I’m using improper terms, probably. You’ve talking about “the brain had to learn”, I didn’t know they were separate things. I think, but there’s this brain that works on its own terms telling you to be anxious then you’re anxious. You feel it and you went, “Why am I anxious?” But I am. I can feel that that feeling is not very pleasant. And I mean, the turning point was when I go to bed, I say, “I don’t have to sleep if I don’t. If I’m not sleeping, I’m not sleeping.” Juergen Kuhmann: I say, “I don’t have to sleep. Maybe I just watch shows my wife doesn’t want to watch, but yeah, I can now because I’m not sleeping.” So there’s this positive, there’s an opportunity of doing something valuable to yourself, for yourself and I don’t care about sleep anymore. That’s where I am and I’m getting between, last week I had five and a half hours once, but I know why I had five and a half hours, because it was a lot of things going on right now with us. And so I know why I had only five and half hours. Two days later I sleep eight because I know that stress is over. But I don’t care anymore about it. And when you’re in it, that’s all you care about, is sleep. Juergen Kuhmann: The worst day was, it was 11:30 and I already was worried about sleep. How crazy is that? That’s the state you are in. And so starting not caring about sleep is easy to say when you’re out of it because at some point you usually I usually get 6:00 to 7:00, 7:15 or something like that. So I still know how long I sleep but I really don’t care about it. Martin Reed: I think that’s the key difference. We are always going to have some difficult nights. Just as we touched upon before, the real secret to happiness isn’t the elimination of everything that’s difficult in our lives. So we’re always going to have some difficult nights of sleep from time to time, what’s different is our reaction to it, how we interpret the meaning of that difficult night. And anyone that’s listened to a few of these podcast episodes will probably recognize that common trait is, “Yeah, I still have some difficult nights from time to time, but I really don’t care about them that much. They don’t consume my days. I don’t start to worry about what the next night will bring.” It’s just our relationship with those difficult nights and whatever the brain might want to generate in response is completely… Juergen Kuhmann: I’m actually at that stage right now, when I have a bad night I know I’m going to groggy in the morning, but come 10:00, 11:00 I’m woken up and I’m just going about my day. So it doesn’t when you’re in it, then you always think about it most of the time and it affects your day. And when I have a bad night now, I typically know why it was shorter and I don’t care anymore, because I know sleep pressure builds, like you told me. So the next night or night after that, I’m just going to be sleeping longer again. So yeah, that not making it the middle, the center of your life is I think the most important outcome. Not putting at the center of life and being able to just accept when there’s a shorter night. And typically I can tell why too. Martin Reed: So moving on, when we were no longer working together, you told me that you ended up developing tinnitus. And understandably that generated some concern where your brain was looking out for you again. So there were some anxious thoughts and feelings there. And before we recorded this episode, you said that insomnia and tinnitus tend to share that similar trait. They both tend to survive and thrive when we remain anxious about them. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I mean, I’m no tinnitus expert but I’m sure that some people listening might recognize that. So I’d love to hear some thoughts. Juergen Kuhmann: I had experience with tinnitus before, almost 20 years ago, loud concert and stress and so on so I developed this ring in the ear. And back then I went through a therapy called tinnitus retraining. So anyone who has tinnitus should look at that. Juergen Kuhmann: And so I got tinnitus I back, and it was the time where I was just getting better with getting off insomnia. I was sleeping better, then comes tinnitus. Martin, I was devastated. Because as you said, they share traits of anxiety. And when you get tinnitus, the thing that you develop is anxiety about how it affects your life, your day, you as a person, you start to think about you can’t do certain things anymore because you have that noise in your head and nobody else can see it. It’s like with insomnia, you can’t see it by looking at a person that they have it. And then come the sleep worries again. Because when you have tinnitus, you have that noise in your head, it affects your sleep, right? How can you sleep? Juergen Kuhmann: First of all, you develop anxiety, and then there’s a noise there. And I knew that this TRT, this retraining therapy helped me before, but I also knew it was a long-term process. It took me a year last time to get through it where it wouldn’t affect me anymore and it would be much quieter. But at the time when that onset happened, these feelings came up again, “When am I going to be sleeping again?” But what I found going through is, while still getting out of insomnia, I mean we had stopped working together, so I was good on insomnia, but then the sleeplessness came back because of tinnitus. I thought, “Okay, now these two problems are going to combine forces and I’m never going to sleep again.” I remember being totally devastated about it. Juergen Kuhmann: What I found out is you can only be anxious about one thing at a time. So me being anxious about tinnitus kept out the anxiety of insomnia, the deep down trying to control sleep because I knew how to not control sleep, to actually let it go. I still knew that, it was just very present in my mind. And I knew how to treat it, TRT. So with TRT, I know how to treat tinnitus with sound therapy and they have some CBT stuff as well. So it’s a little bit similar treatment like insomnia. Juergen Kuhmann: And so after those first initial weeks, I had my tool set for tinnitus, I had my tool set for insomnia, which was really more tools than maybe I wanted, but the focus was on the retraining therapy for tinnitus, not so much on insomnia, but doing the one helped the other. So essentially, I never experienced insomnia to that same degree when I had tinnitus, to the same degree before I had it again. So that was the lucky outcome. But in sense of therapy, it shares quite a few traits. What the therapy does to reduce the goal is not to reduce the sound in your head, the ringing in your head, it’s to reduce anxiety. So I said, “Oh, yeah, that’s what insomnia… Insomnia was not how you slept, but how anxious you were, and there’s always the next day.” And with tinnitus, they have ups and downs. It’s louder, it’s quieter, but over time you make progress. Juergen Kuhmann: I still have those ups and downs with tinnitus as well. And those, then I can think back about what I learned, also with insomnia to say, “Okay, today is not the best day, but I remember two days ago I had a fantastic day.” And I can take that as, “Okay, you have the tools, you keep going where you’re going.” So it’s tough being faced with that, but the tools are very similar. Also, the acceptance of thoughts, of negative thoughts and accepting those. And I said before, being patient with yourself and being kind to yourself in affliction, those things are learned when I went through insomnia. Juergen Kuhmann: As I said before, I think I live a much healthier life now. Also, not so much drinking anymore. Not because I think I… That essentially, I’m German so I still like beer, but it’s not such a big deal anymore and I don’t want to use it more as a crutch. I still drink coffee, just not so crazy anymore. So, and I’m more compassionate with myself. So putting that pressure on myself to do the right thing and to be the productive person, I stepped away from that and… look, other people go through lives in much more relaxed way than I did and they’re happy too. So I can now see other people living another life than I did trying to be this high performer in the corporate world, there’re other things to life, and I learned to see that and accept that. Martin Reed: I think it really can be this journey of self discovery, right? Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah. Martin Reed: I mean, it’s hard to see any advantage or any silver lining to insomnia and anxiety when you’re really caught up in the middle of it all. But when you get to that point where you’re able to emerge from it, it can be this sensation or this sense that, “I’ve learned something about myself here.” Like you just touched upon, “I learned that I can maybe be kinder to myself when I’m going through difficulties.” And a lot of people also tell me that they’re now more in touch with their values, the things that are important to them that they have control over. These are things we never lose. We never lose control of our actions. We can always do things, no matter how small that help us move toward the life we want to live. And when people emerge from this journey, it can be this reflection that we’ve learned a lot about ourselves, and now we might even be able to live our lives in a more enriching way than we would ever have had insomnia, had anxiety never played a role or an influence in our lives. Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah. It’s a tough way to learn to lead a better life. It’s a tough way to learn it, but I guess it was time for me to learn it. Because I knew I wasn’t heading down in a good direction. There was too much heady things on me. I tried to fix it with things I knew weren’t good for me. As a technical person, I live in reality and all this. If I don’t see it’s not real, “Oh, a lot of things we don’t see that are real.” And I certainly see that now. And I touched on spirituality before. I always was spiritual, but there are many things between heaven that we have no control over and we don’t know how those work. Juergen Kuhmann: And as you said, there’s the brain of yours and there’s your conscious actions, and that those are two separate on your mind. I don’t know if you’re using the right terms, but there’s a separation of the brain that’s on automatic. It does what it does, how it’s programmed, and it can go into a rabbit hole that makes you feel worse in how you consciously lead your life. And you can’t reprogram that brain just by flipping a switch, it has to learn anew as a program, new piece of code. So my brain had to learn a new piece of code. But it takes some time and you have to be compassionate with yourself. So, a lot of learning that came out of it. Now looking back, it’s always easy. When you’re in it, you have to be more tactical and you need those tools. But, no, I wouldn’t say insomnia was a great experience, but going, learning how to deal with difficulty like that, that’s the positive thing I take away from it. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Juergen, I really appreciate the time that you’ve given up to come on. I think that people are going to get a lot of value out of what we’ve discussed. The way you’ve described things is just really easy to identify with everything that you’ve described. But I do have one last question for you before you go, if that’s okay. And it’s this: if someone with chronic insomnia is listening and feels as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, they just can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Juergen Kuhmann: I think first of all is, listen to other people’s story, listen to mine and listen to all the other ones, Martin, that you put out, because also with tinnitus, a lot of people don’t know there’s a way to reduce it and more or less get rid of it, if you will. Because like with insomnia sleep problems, you don’t think about them anymore. You can get to that point and then it’s not a problem anymore in your life because you dealt with it. So I think the first step to give you hope that you can get better, you can get better back to your own self is to listening to other people’s stories. Everybody had a little bit different journey and that’s what I really appreciated, is you putting out stories of other insomnia sufferers. It said how did they go through that journey. Juergen Kuhmann: Because when you’re first faced with it, there’s no door you can go through. And suddenly you hear other people talk about it, “Well, that’s the door I went through and that’s the path I went and that’s the door this person went through.” And at some point, there’s some people you said, “Okay, they come from a different place,” but you find other people said, “Oh yeah, he or she, that’s like me.” And giving you that success story is very important as a first step to say, “There is a way for you to go as well.” And it might be a way no other one went before, but there is one for you as well. So that’s the one thing I would say, listen to all these stories, the good stories that are out there. People have gone through that before. And be compassionate with yourself. It will take the time it’ll take but you’ll get better, but step by step. So we have to be patient with ourselves. Martin Reed: Well, that’s great. I think that’s a really positive note to end on. So thank you again, Juergen, for coming up to the podcast and sharing your journey with us. Juergen Kuhmann: Yeah. Thanks, Martin, for inviting me. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life you want to live, I would love to help. You can get started right now by enrolling in my online course or you can book my phone coaching package. My online course runs for six weeks. It will help you make changes that can create better conditions for sleep, it will help you identify and get rid of any behaviors that might be making sleep more difficult, and it will help you respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a more workable way. You can work through the course in two ways. You can choose the self-coaching option and work through it by yourself with the support of an online forum that is available only to clients. Martin Reed: Or, you can choose to add one-on-one email coaching and work through the course with me by your side. With the one-on-one coaching option, you get unlimited email access to me for eight weeks, starting from the day you enroll. Any time you have a question or concern, any time you are unsure about anything, any time you want to focus on the challenges you face or any difficulties that show up, you can email me and I will be there to coach and support you. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com. Martin Reed: With the phone coaching package, we start with a one-hour call (voice only or video — your choice) and come up with an initial two-week plan that will help you create better conditions for sleep and practice moving away from struggling with insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it. You get unlimited email access to me for two weeks after the call and a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) Kristina had a very stressful job. One night, her husband woke her suddenly after experiencing a really bad nightmare. This event seemed to trigger the release of a lot of anxiety that had been building for some time and Kristina was unable to fall back to sleep. Unfortunately, sleep proved to be difficult on subsequent nights, too — and this created even more worry and anxiety. At first, Kristina found that she could fall asleep but would wake in the middle of the night with a racing mind and find it hard to fall back to sleep. This then shifted into difficulty falling asleep — and this change created even more anxiety and sleep disruption. Kristina’s mind constantly worried about sleep. Even if she was doing something she really enjoyed, her mind would interrupt her with thoughts like, “What if I don’t sleep tonight?”. She wondered if this would be her entire life from now on. She worried that if her sleep didn’t improve, she wouldn’t be able to live the kind of life she wanted to live. After trying lots of things that didn’t seem to help, Kristina started to do things that are known to starve insomnia of the oxygen it needs to survive. Instead of chasing sleep by going to bed earlier and staying in bed later, she started going to bed later at night — when she felt truly sleepy enough for sleep, rather than fatigued. She got out of bed by the same time each morning — no matter what. Whenever being awake at night didn’t feel good, she did something more enjoyable instead. Perhaps most importantly, though, Kristina decided to work on shifting her focus back to the present moment and what was in her control. She engaged in things each day that helped her continue to move toward the kind of life she wanted to live, independently of sleep and even in the presence of difficult thoughts and feelings. Sleep is no longer a problem for Kristina. There is no more mystery and there is no more struggle with wakefulness and difficult thoughts and feelings. Kristina’s experience proves that although we can get stuck, we are never broken. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: 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 Reed: 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 Reed: Hi, Kristina. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Kristina B: Hi, Martin. No problem. So glad to be here. Martin Reed: It’s great to have you on. Let’s just get started right at the beginning. Can you tell us when your issues with sleep first began, and what you feel might have triggered those issues with sleep? Kristina B: Absolutely. So, at the time it was specifically around Christmas of 2019. I had a couple different reasons that filtered all into one overlying issue, but a couple things were I had a very high stressful job that was very goal oriented and deadline driven, very micromanaged. So, I always had that kind of stress hanging over my head. Then that filtered into one night in particular. My husband had this really bad nightmare that he normally doesn’t have and woke me up from a dead sleep and kind of startled me. And I think from there, it triggered all of this anxiety that was building up for months and months and months. And I wasn’t able to get back to sleep, particularly that night. And then it kind of filtered in, in this drabble of days then leading into weeks that I did not sleep, probably going maybe four days in a row. That very first insomnia kind of problem started for me. So, it wasn’t one underlying thing. I think it was many different things, but what caused it to come out was that particular time that my husband had his nightmare. Martin Reed: Yeah. Wow. And so when you were experiencing that disruption, it sounds like it started by your sleep was interrupted during the night when your husband woke up, maybe. Was that what the sleep disruption was like for the following nights, the following weeks and months? Was it difficulty of falling back to sleep when waking? Or is it more just the whole process of falling asleep from the start of the night, or maybe both? Kristina B: So, that’s a great point. So at first for me it was the… I could fall asleep and then I would wake up in the middle of the night, kind of have these racing thoughts about what I needed to do, or checklist, and day to day things. So then, I kind of had this shift where it then turned into not being able to fall asleep at all, that I would just lay there for hours and hours. So, it was kind of twofold. I began with just waking up and then not being able to fall back to sleep. And then it turned into just not being able to fall asleep at all. Martin Reed: Yeah. It’s obvious that that’s going to make the nights more difficult, but I like to think insomnia isn’t just about nighttime symptoms. It comes with all these daytime symptoms too. Were you finding any knock-on effects on your days? How was insomnia affecting your days? Kristina B: Absolutely. So, with the insomnia, this was… The first instance was around that Christmas time and so going into the new year, I had then found and got a new job. I was really stressed with making sure that I was going to be able to have enough sleep. So I could function at this job. Then I was going to have enough sleep so I could enjoy my daily things. If there was something that I was having to do either at work or after work, or in my personal life, I always had then… was very anxious if I wasn’t able to sleep. So I think that the anxiety came hand in hand with that and those sleep related worries, definitely, I think was the biggest struggle that I had because that I think was the biggest effect from the insomnia. Kristina B: It was always, “What if I don’t sleep tonight?” Even if I was doing something that I was completely enjoying, it was always in the back of my head. And I always would think, “What if I don’t sleep tonight? If I don’t get enough sleep right now, I’m not going to be able to enjoy X, Y, and Z.” This isn’t going away. This is something that I need to find the root cause of it right now.” Kristina B: And so it led to a lot of sleep related anxiety or sleep related worry. That was the biggest thing. Physically I was okay. I did feel like I was always in that hyper arousal stage or feeling where it just… elevated heart rate and just kind of jittery, a lot of it. That’s kind of where it led to. Martin Reed: Yeah. So before we started working together, what kind of things did you try to do to kind of fix the sleep, to try and fix the anxiety? Looking back now you can reflect on… They probably had good intentions. They came from a good place, but maybe they weren’t proving to be helpful. Kristina B: I feel like I did everything that I could try to do or find that was online. I think the biggest thing when any individual is facing this, the first thing you do is just start Google searching everything. So I think the easier part was what I didn’t do, but I tried… First was melatonin, magnesium, obviously probably more than the recommended dosage, weighted blankets, essential oils, lavender, oil lotion, candles, aromatherapy, THC, either ingesting that, CBD oil. I mean, anything that was a, “Hey, this will help make you sleep more restful,” from a sound machine. Or anything that was… Blackout curtains, I pretty much did it all or tried it, we’ll say. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think you made a great point that our default whenever we have an issue, normally we just go online, search Google, find all these tips and tricks and techniques because we want to fix the problem. But unfortunately all these kind of tips, tricks and techniques that tend to be right at the top of all the search results, pages of stuff, that’s generally not that helpful for people with chronic insomnia. And it can be a bit… That can make things even more difficult because when we see… I would try this, try this, try this, then when we try those things and they don’t work, then we can become even more worried that maybe there’s something unique. We’ve got this unique strain of insomnia that’s not responding well to all of these things that we’re told should be helpful. Kristina B: Yes, that is so true. With that being said with Google searching and you’re doing your own thing, and I know personally for me, I have general anxiety disorder. So things get very heightened where sometimes my thoughts do get away from me, and I did happen to go to the doctors. I was always a good sleeper. I never had anything like this happen to me before. I loved sleep and naps and everything. So I went to the doctors and explained to them what was going on. And they had kind of chalked it up to stress and here was a variation of sleeping pills, or benzos, or antidepressants that I could take. And so I even had one doctor tell me that I should just lather myself in the lavender lotion and count my blessings twice. That’ll help me fall asleep. Martin Reed: Wow. Kristina B: Yeah, it was quite… So, it definitely, you try to find the… You think that you’re, like you had said, this is a different kind of insomnia that you’re experiencing and you just… Once you find that perfect little or think you’ll find that perfect little formula to help you combat it, you’ll be completely fine, but that’s all of these little things that you think you’re doing right are actually pulling you more from the actual root cause of what’s going on. Martin Reed: Yeah, exactly. And it can just add more… This veil of mystery to insomnia, when really there isn’t any mystery to insomnia. From person to person it’s really similar. The characteristics are almost identical from person to person. Our individual circumstances can be different. And as a person, we’re absolutely unique, but the insomnia, no, not really. There’s not really much mystery there. And as you know, when we were working together, we actually… Insomnia is just so predictable and so generic that we actually have a model that describes the development of insomnia, where we have some of us are just more predisposed to some sleep disruption. Maybe we’re we have a more sensitive arousal system. We’re more prone to anxiety or stress or depression. So, we’re already a little bit closer to that bar of sleep disruption than maybe other people are, but we’re not experiencing sleep disruption yet. We might go for years, decades, even maybe our whole lives without much sustained sleep disruption. Martin Reed: But then we get the second P which is the precipitating event. That’s just whatever triggers the insomnia. And some of us, we don’t really know. There’s no obvious cause, but many of us can actually pin this down to a specific event that happened, whether it’s our husband’s waking up during the night with night terrors, or a nightmare, or new job moving house, going on vacation. Just any change that leads to some sleep disruption. Martin Reed: Now we’ve got some so insomnia going on, probably more than nine times out 10, once that trigger is no longer relevant or we’ve adjusted to it. We fall back below that bar sleep comes back. But when it doesn’t, it’s almost always down to these perpetuating factors. And these are just all the behaviors that we implement to try and improve our sleep, to fix our sleep and all the thought processes that go on often related to putting pressure on ourselves to sleep, to put effort into sleep, or to try and push away all those difficult thoughts and feelings that like to come along for the ride when we have insomnia. These are the things that keep that insomnia alive. Martin Reed: And so when we can recognize that, that, “Oh yeah, this does sound like my insomnia,” we can perhaps also recognize it if we can change some behaviors, change our relationship with those thought processes. In other words, address all those perpetuating factors. We might then be able to make progress towards getting our sleep back on track for the long term, rather than these things that might just be quick fixes. This is like a real long term solution. Kristina B: Yes, yes, absolutely. And that was a big thing for me was always the… Setting it up so I wasn’t going to just… If I was having a difficult time falling asleep, or if I had woken up and wasn’t able to, to use everything and implement it. Because before the course, I would just sit or, excuse me, lay there, and just keep my eyes shut thinking that that was going to help me or that if you’re laying there still and to keep your eyes shut, that’s going to help you just automatically fall asleep, even if you’re you’re anxious and thinking about everything else and you toss and turn and then you look over at your partner and there’s sound asleep. And you’re like, “Okay, what’s wrong with me? This is just something that’s happening to me.” And then you kind of lead into this downward spiral before you take those tools to kind of take a step back. Martin Reed: Yeah. I always think it’s important to emphasize that all these things that we do to try and fix the problem, they’re completely understandable why we do them. They make sense. “I want to get more sleep, so I’m going to spend more time in bed.” It’s completely logical why we would do these things. But when we’re kind of caught up in that moment, in that struggle, sometimes it can be harder to see that there might be a different way of doing things that, for example, instead of spending more time in bed, “I wonder what would happen if we spend less time in bed?” If most of the time we’re spending in bed is awake anyway, what if we just spend less time in bed to…An amount of time that more closely reflects how much sleep at the current time we’re getting. Martin Reed: So, we’re not going to be taking sleep away from ourselves. But what we can do is take so much of that prolonged nighttime wakefulness away from ourselves while also building more sleep drive, because we’re going to be spending less time in bed. We typically will be going to bed later or getting out of bed earlier or maybe both. So we’re spending more time awake, more time for the body to get truly sleepy enough for sleep. Kristina B: Yes. The sleepy enough was a big thing for me and staying awake and because when you go through your whole life thinking, “Okay, bedtime is bedtime.” And even if I wasn’t tired, I would just crawl into bed and I would try to compensate for the hours that I wasn’t getting. So rather than going to bed at 10, I would climb in at eight and then that just led to more tossing and turning and frustration before getting out of bed and realizing that when you do acknowledge this, what we know as the sleep window and allowing yourself to feel what it’s like to be tired again after this prolonged period of just, well for me, anxiousness and sleep related worry, and just not being tired at all, it definitely helps you realize that this is what it’s like to feel tired again, rather than just trying to force your body to do something that it’s not completely ready for. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s easy for people without sleep issues to confuse fatigue with sleepiness as well, and fatigue, along with like anxiety and all those difficult thoughts and emotions, are probably the number one symptom associated with insomnia. But ironically sleepiness, not so much, because when we have a really intense sense of sleepiness, like we are really finding it hard to actually stay awake, we’re really likely to fall asleep. Martin Reed: But what can happen is when we are caught up in that struggle with chasing sleep like you described, or we’re using the clock to tell us when it’s time to go to bed, rather than that sense of sleepiness, we can feel… “I’m fatigued, I’m exhausted, I’m run down, I’ve got brain fog. I can’t think straight. This must be time to go to bed.” But fatigue doesn’t really lead to sleep, whereas sleepiness does lead to sleep. So, it’s really easy to get those two sensations confused and muddled. And that’s, I think, one reason why allotting a little bit less time for sleep, spending less time in bed can be really helpful because one of those early wins… I like to think of them as like little wins, a little stepping towards recovery, is you suddenly start to recognize that difference again between sleepiness and fatigue. And that can be really powerful. Just bringing that experience back. Kristina B: It really is powerful because… And then another thing that I would do is always watch the clock. And so knowing that it was not the clock watching. The clock obviously is not anything that doesn’t do any good for you except to perpetuate the problem. But it was definitely something that I felt different once I realized, “Hey, this is sleepiness.” Kristina B: And there were nights where, when I really started to notice things were working that I wasn’t even making it to my sleep window because I was so tired and actual sleepiness that I was falling asleep on the couch. So there was a few times that I would say, “All right, let’s try to go to bed and see what happens. And if I feel like I’m getting a little not tired again, I’ll get out.” And it definitely helped me realize that sleepiness is what’s going to lead to sleep. And, soon enough I was sleeping. So it was really good thing to recognize again. Martin Reed: Yeah, it can be really powerful. I think it’s almost ironic, isn’t it? Because our initial, your struggle is we feel like we just can’t sleep. And then if we start implementing the sleep window technique, we can then find, “I’m struggling to stay awake now.” It’s just a complete transformation that can really just give you that motivation to keep moving forward and stick with these kind of behavioral changes and maybe even implement some new ones too. Kristina B: Yes. Yes, absolutely. That was a big one for me was the sleep window. And that really was something that I obviously needed because before I didn’t know how to absolutely tackle insomnia. So, that was something that really helped me back on track with sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah. So, I’m just curious when, when we were working together and you learned about the sleep window and we were talking about how about we spend less time in bed, go to bed late or get up earlier, just allotting less time for sleep, what were your first thoughts on that? I mean, did it seem logical to you or, or was it kind of a leap of faith? What were your thoughts when you learned about this? Kristina B: Yes. At first thought, I was trying to go in as open-minded as possible, knowing that I was doing this course, and this is going to help. But at first, I definitely had those thoughts of, “I don’t understand why I would stay awake even more.” And then I would always think like, “Okay, well I’m always getting up to go to work at five or six in the morning,” and I have to go to bed later than what I thought would be a restful bedtime. At first I was like, “Oh, okay. This seems like I’m not going to get any sleep if I’m sleeping between the start time and when I wake up.” But I mean, at the beginning of it, I really wasn’t sleeping at all. So I learned that this is what I need; the step I need to take to get to better sleep. Kristina B: But at first it was a little bit of a challenge for me. I think the challenge came with doing things that would help me relax into that sleepiness. So it was the not watching the clock, and to learn to relax again and to use either tools that you had recommended or just to kind of relax in my own way. And that was really helpful too. Because I would just… If I didn’t have this sleep window, I would just sit there and watch the clock. And even when I did implement it, it was still like, “Okay, just because it’s whatever time it was, doesn’t mean that I go to bed, even if I’m not tired, just because this certain time is starting. If I was still wide awake doing those certain techniques or tools, or just relaxation things, if I wasn’t tired, it helped me to realize, “Don’t go to bed, because this is just going to keep me awake. I’m going to have to get out of bed soon and we’re just going to start the whole cycle over again.” Kristina B: So it definitely I think, it reinforced that if you’re doing this, then don’t go to bed just because you have this time. It was a big clock watching kind of mind thing for me. Martin Reed: Yeah. And I think that’s worth emphasizing as well because we do see some of the advice that’s online is, “Go to bed at the same time. Get out of bed at the same time.” And I think the latter point, getting out of bed around the same time each day, I think that can be really, really helpful because it helps strengthen the body clock, and it makes sure that we are just going to be spending enough time awake during the day to help build that sleepiness come nighttime. But I don’t necessarily think it’s always helpful to go to bed exactly the same time every night. I like to think of giving ourselves like an earliest possible bedtime. Martin Reed: So, let’s say we want to start spending six hours in bed instead of 10 hours in bed, we might say, “Okay, that’s midnight to 6:00 AM.” So, we think then instead of midnight, “I have to go to bed,” we can just have midnight. “I’m not going to check the clock anymore from that point onwards. And I’m just going to go to bed whenever I feel sleepy enough for sleep. But then regardless of how the night goes, I’ll get out of bed at 6:00 AM. Martin Reed: Just give that I for a couple of weeks. Many people find it helpful. But yeah, I think we can combine this bedtime with only going to bed when we feel a strong sense of sleepiness by just thinking of the start or the start of that bedtime as earliest possible bedtime rather than the time I must go to bed. Kristina B: Yes. And I like what you had said about waking up at a certain time every day. That was I think one of the other challenges that I had to overcome because I realized that when I was going through all of the height of this insomnia, I was definitely trying to… If it was on the weekend, I would, if I did fall asleep, I would potentially sleep in later. I was finding myself not wanting to, or having the urge to want to call out of work because I wanted to turn off the alarm and go back to bed. So, that was really important too. Just telling myself that, “Hey, no matter what time that you fall asleep and go to bed, you’re going to…” Kristina B: And I try to use it as more of a looking forward tool. “I’m going to wake up at say six o’clock and I’m going to complete whatever I have to do before work or take some time for myself.” So that was something that had helped me to with just the sleep window and having that set time to wake up too. Because that was also… I was noticing that, “Hey, okay. I’m not sleeping or I didn’t sleep last night, so automatically I’m not going to go meet my friend or family member because I’m going to feel so exhausted. I’m not going to have a good time because I’m going to be thinking about sleeping and everything.” So that was something that reinforced the positive sleep for me, was wake up at the same time, no matter what happens, even if it’s only an hour of sleep that you think you got just get up. So it was hard if I was asleep, because there were nights that there was no sleep, but it definitely helped with the days I got a little sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah. Did you have ever have those nights where it feels like you just fell asleep, like half an hour before your alarm was due to go off? Kristina B: Oh many, yes. Many times. I think the biggest thing was I would finally get relaxed and use a lot of the techniques or tools or just, I guess, pass out from pure exhaustion and then my alarm would go off. But that was another thing too that I would start. I noticed that I would be thinking like, “Hey, I can use this day and go to work and do everything that I need to do. Workout or go grocery shopping.” And by the end of the day, my sleep drive from last night’s non-existent sleep or whatever sleep that I didn’t get is going to help with this night’s sleep, rather than looking at it as, “Oh my God, I’m not going to sleep tonight,” or, “I can’t stop thinking about what happens if I don’t sleep. And I feel like this is going to go on forever.” Kristina B: So that was something too that really kind of helped with that, was building that sleep drive. So, even if it was a half an hour before my alarm, it was definitely a… Started to turn as the weeks went on. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think that’s one of the hardest things to do, I think is getting out of bed at that consistent out-of-bed time, especially on those nights where you got very little sleep or it feels like you just fell asleep just before the alarm is due to go off. Yeah. But, it can feel great at the time to just switch off that alarm and just kind of catch up on that sleep. But then all we are doing is we are just perpetually playing catch up. We’re never kind of setting ourselves up for good sleep on subsequent nights. We’re just always caught in that struggle of just playing catch up, just treading water. So sometimes we might have to sacrifice a little bit of that extra sleep we might have got in the short term to get those longer term results that most of us are, upon reflection, actually looking for. Kristina B: Absolutely. Yes. Martin Reed: One thing I did want to touch upon was the fact that when you started to implement this sleep know by allotting less time for sleep and when you started getting out of bed by the same time each day, it wasn’t like this miracle cure. It wasn’t like the very next day or two days later, everything was fixed and sleep was this magical experience for you. It took time, right, for you to implement these techniques consistently before you noticed some consistent results and started to get a little bit more confidence in the techniques? Is that fair to say? Kristina B: Yes, absolutely. It was not, I think we go, at least for myself, I went into this thinking that it wasn’t going to be that miracle. Snap-my-finger cure, we’ll say, that I think a lot of us set out to find with perpetual or chronic insomnia. So, it definitely took the time and the willpower to know that this is what I have to do to get my sleep back on track. And with that too, knowing that it wasn’t going to take or be an instant fix, it really helps your mind make room for more positive thoughts rather than always having just the self destruction that I think a lot of people experience in just listening to previous podcasts that you’ve done with individuals, that we think it is very, very specific to our personalities or whatever that we’re dealing with. But it definitely, if you allow yourself the time and just keep going, even if you’re going into it and you’re in your fourth week or the last week, and you’re having a really hard time or had a bad night, it helps you know that it’s okay to have a bad night, and sleep is going to come back. It’s all beyond your control, and the less control that we have with it, the better it’s going to be for us in the long run. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think the only thing that we can do to make sleep happen is to just be awake for long enough. That’s the only thing that we actually have control over is trying to stay awake. Any other kind of aspect of sleep, we have no control over. And it’s when we do try and control it, that we tend to get most caught up in that struggle.And this is where that sleep window could be helpful because we’re not trying to make sleep happen. We’re not trying to generate sleep. We’re just trying to build some sleep drive. We’re kind of reducing that opportunity that’s available for long periods of nighttime wakefulness. We just kind of setting the stage for sleep and maybe just undoing all those behaviors that we might have implemented to try and fix things that haven’t proven to be too helpful. Martin Reed: But yeah, I think it is really helpful to just recognize that we can’t control sleep, but what we can always control fortunately, are our actions and our behaviors. It might seem impossible or really difficult to do that, but we can. We can always do things even when our mind is telling us we can’t do them. Everyone listening to this, now we can just say to ourselves, “I cannot lift up my right hand,” or, “I do not want to lift up my right hand,” and then try and lift up your right hand. You can still do it. Martin Reed: You mentioned that you first learned about that sleep window and your mind was generating all those thoughts. “What if this doesn’t work? I don’t think this is going to work. This doesn’t sound logical.” But you are still able to do it. We don’t have to push all those thoughts away or try and challenge them or get tangled up in them. We just have to recognize that the mind’s generating these thoughts because it wants to look out for us, it wants to protect us, but we get to choose what to do next. And we can always make that choice. We always have control over those actions. Kristina B: Yes, that is I think so applicable to this and a lot of other aspects in life. But just knowing that, like you had said, your thoughts are just going to generate and they’re automatic and your reaction to them is the biggest thing of what we can control. Kristina B: I know for myself, I think the biggest thing with going through the insomnia was the sleep related worry all the time. I had these rapid fire thoughts of everything that I had mentioned before of what if I don’t sleep tonight or ever, or what if this is my entire life from here on out. And that would be the biggest struggle for me. So, definitely with learning, they’re just a thought, let it hang out and kind of carry on with your day. That was so life changing too. Kristina B: And it really, it applies to everybody. It’s not specific to a certain person, and everybody can do it, which is a great thing. Our mind, it’s so powerful, and if we start to give it what it’s telling us that we think we need, so worry, or stress related things, then it’s going to react to that and just kind of generate more stress thoughts. But if we just kind of let them hang out and carry on with our day or whatever we’re doing, it can take away some of that anxiety that surrounds it. Martin Reed: Yeah, definitely. I like to think of it as just making some space for them, because the mind’s always going to generate them. I think our default response just as human beings is, “This thought or this emotion doesn’t feel good, so I want to shut it down. I want to push it away, get rid of it.” But then it’s a bit like a beach ball where you’re pushing a beach ball under the water. It just pushes back harder the more you try and push it away. So if we can maybe change practice, it takes practice. It’s a new way of thinking or a new way of developing a relationship so to speak with our thoughts instead of just by default, trying to push them away. Martin Reed: What if we can just make a little bit of space for them? Acknowledge them that they’re here, identify them, maybe even name them. Here’s that anxiety again, make a bit of space for it, and then kind of redirect our focus and attention onto where we are, what we’re doing, the present moment. And actions and behaviors we can do that might be more constructive and more beneficial than trying to control our thoughts, trying to control our brains. So we might say, “Okay, I’m going to make sure I get out of bed at 6:00 AM today,” or whatever, whenever your alarm’s going off. Or, “I’m going to make sure that I call up my friend today,” or, “That I meet up with a friend today,” or, “I’m going to go for a walk today. I’m going to do something that’s kind of aligned with my values that helps me live the kind of life I want to live, even though my brain is in the background, going nonstop, telling me I can’t do this. I’m feeling anxious. ‘You should rest.'” Martin Reed: We still get to choose how to respond to that. And I think it does. It’s a new skill, right? I think it takes a lot of practice because I think all of our brains are hardwired to first of all generate difficult thoughts, but then also to try and get rid of them and stop them from happening. And that’s where we can kind of really get caught up in the struggle. Kristina B: Yes. I really, really valued what you had just said. That is just basically encompassing of everything with what you kind of think about and how you deal with things, so that was great. And I really like that beach ball analogy. It’s very valid because you’re not really doing anything by trying to think you’re pushing the thoughts away. Kind of just, oops, comes right back up. Martin Reed: Yeah. And you know, and what happens to a beach ball if we just let it float next to us if we’re in the ocean or a swimming pool? Eventually it just kind of drifts off all by itself. We don’t have to try and push it away. It will just come around. It will come and it will go if we just can make a little bit of space for it to do that. Kristina B: Right. Yes. So true. Very, very true. Martin Reed: Yeah. You know, I know that there was another technique, another change that you had made when you were lying in bed and finding that sleep just wasn’t happening. And it was just getting out of bed as an alternative to just staying in bed. And I remember when we were working on this, you mentioned that this is something you’d tried before, but maybe in a slightly different way. So we kind of explored maybe different ways of implementing this technique. Do you remember the differences you remember when we were working through that? What those differences were? And do you have any idea why you may have found a slightly different way of implementing this technique helpful? Kristina B: Yes. Before I had signed up for your course, if I couldn’t sleep, I would get out of bed. And with that kind of we’ll say my trial, getting out of bed, before I signed up for your course, I would get out of bed if I couldn’t sleep. And then I was also thinking, “Okay, I’ll give it a half an hour and then I’ll go back to bed.” Kristina B: But the biggest thing was that I was just watching the clock for half an hour and thinking that, “Okay, it’s a half an hour. I’m going to just go back to bed and then I’ll be able to fall asleep.” But it really didn’t do anything even. So, at first I would get out of bed and just go sit on the couch and either watch TV or read a book or do something. But it wasn’t a relaxation technique at all. It wasn’t anything that I really wanted to do. My mind was just ultra focused on the clock. It was always watching the clock and what time it was. “Okay, it’s been 30 minutes. I should go and try this again.” Kristina B: I was so anxious to try to get myself to sleep, it was just always… I was always watching the clock. So, when you and I were working together, it was more so of get out of bed if you can’t sleep; do something that’s actually relaxing; and don’t go back to bed until you feel that sleepiness. That was the biggest difference. And to not obviously watch the clock was that… Time is irrelevant in that sense and just use your body cues. If you think it’s been a half an hour or an hour or however long it takes, then that’s how long it’s going to take. Kristina B: The 30 minutes was just kind of a guideline. If you’re starting to feel those sleepy cues, then I would approach bed, but if not, then I would stay awake. So that was definitely I think the biggest thing, was to get out of if I wasn’t tired, but then to not watch the clock until I felt that I was ready to go back to bed doing something that was relaxing me too. It wasn’t stimulating me too much. Kristina B: I would go and read a book or I would go and just kind of stretch out or just sit in my living room and be mindful or breathe or meditate rather than thinking, “Well, I’m awake. I can just go and watch TV or do something that I have to catch up on or look on my phone,” which is never a good thing. So, that was I think the biggest difference. Martin Reed: Yes. I think, I think many people who have done a lot of research on it, some have probably come across this technique, which is usually referred to as stimulus control. And often it is suggested if you’re in bed awake for like, it’s always different, it’s like 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes, then you should get out of bed for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and then return back to bed and just keep repeating the process. Martin Reed: I think where this can be most challenging is we can easily lose sight of what the goal or what the purpose of this technique is. And really the purpose of the technique is just to prevent us from reinforcing the idea that the bed is a really unpleasant place to be. If we think that that is our goal, rather than trying to make sleep happen, getting out of bed during the night logically isn’t going to make sleep happen. And it’s not to punish ourselves for being awake or for finding it hard to fall asleep. All we’re trying to do is to make sure that when we’re awake, it’s not too unpleasant to be awake and that we are not reinforcing this association between the bed and unpleasant wakefulness. Martin Reed: So, with that in mind, I don’t don’t think we have to really pay any attention to the time. Like you said, when we’re just looking at the clock or trying to mentally, chunks of time, we’re just going to be more awake, just doing, being engaged in that process. Instead, how about we just use how we feel? If we’re awake in bed, as long as it feels good to be in bed, then we are not forming an unconstructive relationship with our bed because we’re in bed and it feels good to be in bed. I don’t think we need to do anything. But, if being in bed starts to feel unpleasant and it just feels like conditions aren’t right for sleep, then how about we just get out of bed or even just sit up in bed maybe, but just do something that helps make being awake a little bit more pleasant. Martin Reed: It really just gives us an alternative to just staying in bed and just struggling throughout the entire night, which is never, never really pleasant. Kristina B: No, it’s not. And getting out of bed, I really think is with all of the other tools, it is the biggest, we’ll say rule that I think is the most beneficial, because if you think that, “Hey, that’s not going to work for me,” you’re just going to lay there and toss and turn and think about… Your mind’s going to go and it’s not effective and like you had said, you reinforce that bad relationship with your bed, rather than getting out and saying… That was one thing that I had remembered too, once I started to really not pay attention to the clock and say, “Oh, you know, I’m going to go to bed when I’m tired, because my bed is a place of rest.” It’s not my adversary which I think I was treating it like that. And that really helped to form that relationship again with my bed. That’s where I get the most restful sleep and that’s where we’re going to sleep. And I really had to… It’s weird to say, but rebuild your relationship with your bed. I think when you go through insomnia you want to blame something and obviously you just subconsciously just blame your bed because that’s where you’re not sleeping and not resting and recharging. So, that’s the biggest thing that you think is the problem. I’m glad that we touched on that. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think it was about around like four weeks, six weeks of us working together. I remember you said that you kind of shifted your attention more towards things that you can do, things you have control over, like things that, actions that kind of add enrichment to your life, that add some enjoyment to your life, help you live the kind of life that you want to live. And you started to say… You started to experience the… You were finding that you were a little bit more able to be present, not always obsessing about the what-ifs I don’t sleep. You started to get that sense back that you do have a natural ability to sleep. Your relationship with your bed, like you touched upon, started to change. What was it that led to these changes? Do you think it was just purely those behavioral changes, or was there a change in your relationship with those thoughts and those emotions as well? Or, was it both? I’m just curious to hear your thoughts and how you got to that point. Kristina B: That’s a great question. I think it was a little twofold. If I had a day where I was adding enrichment and I basically, I think accepted what was going on and accepted that I don’t have control on any of this. And I don’t really have control on anything in my life, but, and nobody does except for nothing. But, I think the biggest thing was letting go and accepting, which really to me, was that, “Hey, I’m going to have these rough nights no matter how great of a sleeper I was or how great of a sleeper I think I should be. I’m going to have bad nights, even if I have five great nights. One night’s going to pop up and it might be really bad, but I’m still going to enjoy my life and enjoy those things that I can bring happiness and joy to myself.” Kristina B: That definitely had kind of brought my focus back to being present. I did use a little bit of meditation too, and that kind of helped for mindfulness, but it was mostly adding things that I wanted to do that I knew, regardless of how tired or sluggish or anxious I felt, I still enjoyed these things before, and I’m good to enjoy these things again, no matter what, and sleep is not going to take that away from me anymore. Kristina B: I think it was giving myself the confidence and power back with that. And knowing that, like I had said with the control thing, and kind of that I think was a really big breakthrough with the course, was just noticing that this is how it is right now and it doesn’t have to be bad. It’s kind of just the viewpoint on it, but definitely helped me for sure. And that’s when I really started to notice the sleepiness and everything was really starting to come back to me and really starting to strengthen the feelings of, “I can sleep and sleep didn’t leave me. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s no… I don’t have any ailment that’s causing this.” It’s just a matter of your mind at that point. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think everything that you’ve said is completely logical and I think there are going to be people listening to this that can recognize, “Well, yeah, sure. If I can get to that point where I can just let go of all the effort of trying to control sleep, or if I can just allow myself to feel all these difficult thoughts and emotions, then yeah, sure, I would probably be able to sleep fine. I realized that it’s the anxiety that is causing or perpetuating the sleep disruption.” But how do I get to that point where I allow that to happen or I accept it? What would you say to people having those thoughts right now? Kristina B: That’s a great question. I, I think it comes down to, and I know for myself and I know everybody’s different, but I think that I’m just kind of thinking back to when I was going through all of this. I think the biggest thing for me was it has to be when the time is right for you. And there’s nobody that can tell you when that is. And you think that it’s going to be a certain time and you think that just because you’re doing all of these things that it’s going to … Miraculously your mind’s just going to say, “All right, this is you’re fixed. You don’t need to do this anymore. We’re going to be perfect now or sleep great.” Kristina B: But I think it’s just when you’re ready. And I don’t really know if there’s a solid answer as to how to get to that, except to just not give up on yourself and not stop. It’s definitely a commitment. And like we had touched on before, the mind is a really powerful thing. This is a whole process. It’s not going to be an overnight thing, but if you keep going and not give up on yourself and just invest the time… I mean, we do so many things and between work and personal lives, it’s just I think realizing too that you have to… At least for me, it was I had to take care of myself too, which I think sometimes we can put on the back burner. I know. Kristina B: I probably got a little away from the question, but I don’t think it’s a tailored suit question. It’s kind of go at your own pace and when you are ready and when you keep doing these things, it’s going to fall into place. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think it’s great. I think that somewhere, a place where we can often get tripped up is this idea of acceptance. Accepting difficult thoughts, accepting difficult nights. That can be really hard to get our heads around, because it almost sounds a little patronizing at first, when someone tells you, “Oh, if you just accept that you had a difficult night or you just accept that you’re stressed, then everything will be fine.” We can equate acceptance with giving up, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s just about accepting what we can’t control. And what we can’t control is things like sleep itself and all the stuff that our mind wants to tell us and generate and all those thoughts and feelings, those emotions. It’s just about accepting what we cannot control. Martin Reed: I love that you said commit, because it’s then about committing to doing things that we can control that might help create better conditions for sleep. That might help just move us toward that kind of life that we want for ourselves, rather than our mind says something, we immediately react and end up kind of getting hooked and moving away from the kind of life we want to live. Martin Reed: And like you said, we don’t have to do huge changes immediately. We can just take those baby steps. We can just do small, subtle changes as and when we feel ready to do so. It’s almost like a version like exposure therapy, where we just try and do something that might make us feel uncomfortable. Let’s start off really small and then as we start to recognize that we can get through that challenge. We can face that challenge. Maybe then it’s time to add a little bit more or to try something else, try something new and just go from there. There is no one size fits all and we don’t need to pressure ourselves to do everything right away. Kristina B: Right. And that’s the biggest thing. I think there’s a lot of power with that too. And I think what you said of definitely don’t compare yourself to what everybody else is going through, or even people and myself right now doing this podcast, that everybody is at a different place. And everybody goes through things differently and reacts to them differently. It’s just do what’s the best for you essentially. But yes, that’s such a great point. Martin Reed: Yeah. We worked together for eight weeks, but that was a long time ago. It was like over a year ago when we actually stopped working together. Looking back on that kind of timeline, where do you feel you were at? How many weeks, or how many months till you got to this point where you felt just like more confident about sleep? It was like less of a… Sleep wasn’t up on a pedestal in your life anymore, and you felt more confident. It was taking less of your attention and you felt it was kind of behind you now rather than on your shoulder or sitting, waiting for your own future nights. Kristina B: Yes. I would say it was probably a solid month after completing everything, a month or two. I really had regained confidence with sleeping after the course was completed. And I really had noticed everything that we had talked about previously with reactions and enrichment and putting those anxious thoughts into the back of your head. But I do think that I gained the most confidence with sleep probably a month or two after I was complete with everything. Because at that point it just kind of became, okay, we’re still going to… If I’m having these thoughts, or have a bad night sleep, I have this whole tool chest of things that I can use that I know how to do now. And that really built the confidence with sleep is back and sleep is now my beautiful, awesome friend. Kristina B: I still do have a tendency to have a bad night’s sleep every now and then. I think it’s very natural and we have a lot going on in our lives and it’s easy for something to sneak up or be excited about. There’s a loud noise or you just can’t fall asleep kind of thing. But I definitely think that on average, it was probably a month or two after the course was complete. Martin Reed: Yeah. I love asking that question especially more recently because everyone wants to know how long is it going to take and everyone’s different. So, some people get results really quickly, some people longer. And just like you said, we can’t compare ourselves to others. We are all unique individuals. And also, because we can’t control sleep, when we try and hold ourselves to a timeline, we can then find that can be just like completely counterproductive, because we are trying to achieve results in a certain amount of time, but we can’t directly get those results. It is kind of like if we set ourselves the goal of, “I want to have a job promotion. I want to get this job promotion in like six months time,” there are definitely things we can do to try and increase our chances. We can say later at work, we can ask the boss if they need any extra projects being done. But at the end of the day, we can’t get that job promotion. We can just implement behaviors that might make that more likely to happen The timeline itself or reaching the goal that we’ve set, we can’t actually directly control. We can just control the steps along the way. Martin Reed: I think it’s really helpful that you said, “I worked with Martin for eight weeks, but it wasn’t until even a month or two months after we even stopped working together,” that you felt that this is just not so much of an issue for you anymore. That you felt really confident in the results you were getting. And like you touched upon, because they’re all skills based, behavior based, they’re with you for the rest of your life. So, you’re going to have some difficult nights like everyone does. If they stick around, you know exactly what to do in response to avoid perpetuating those temporary nights of sleep disruption as well. Kristina B: Yes, absolutely. And yet I still, still sometimes have I call them my junk thoughts, but I have, “Oh, what if I can’t sleep tonight because I’m doing something?” Or, I have this thought or had a bad day. I honestly just shrug it off now. Well, I know that I can’t control sleep. I can’t, and tell myself everything else. So it does go hand in hand. Martin Reed: Yeah. How would you describe… You probably don’t think about sleep quite as much as you did like a year ago, but if you just think about an average night, what’s an average night like for you these days? Kristina B: Well, I mean, I go to bed when I get tired. I mean, I would say, and I should preface this by saying I have a seventh month old baby. So sometimes I go to bed as soon as she goes to bed. But on average, and I will sometimes have to wake up in the middle of the night, but on average I climb into bed depending on the time is whenever I get tired and I’ve been able to just fall asleep with no problem. Kristina B: If sometimes my husband and I will watch a show or something in bed, because I feel obviously confident to do that again, and I’ll just pass out. I don’t stay up very long. So I don’t really have too many disruptions unless my daughter is awake. But if I do find myself waking up either to go to the bathroom, or I just have a thought come up and I can’t seem to let it go, I still will use the tools of getting out of bed or just relaxation, breathing, and visualization, those kind of things. They really do help. Kristina B: I’m sleeping restful with the sleep I do get, but I’m definitely sleeping restful. I wake up when, obviously still at the same time, because I have to go to work, but I’m not anxious feeling. I don’t feel that jittery kind of anxiety. So, I definitely have my sleep back. Martin Reed: Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. And what about your day? What are the days like now? Has there been any change into the quality of your days or how you reflect on that life satisfaction, so to speak? Kristina B: I still to add try to add as many enriching things as I can into a day outside of work and routine and everything like that. But I mean, on average, I have really great days. I mean, obviously everybody has a bad day here and there, but I absolutely think that in a weird way, it kind of made me take a step back with everything, having insomnia. And I know we talked about, you had mentioned, it’s not one thing. It kind of is all of these perpetuating things and it makes insomnia either happen or prolong it. Kristina B: But I definitely think that I had to go through it to teach me something about letting go and control, and I feel like I bring that into different aspects of my life now. So, I’ve learned a thing or two. And that’s just me personally. I’ve learned about the control and, and anxious thoughts and, letting things go a little bit more than I previously had. On average, I feel just like a better person. I don’t know if that sounds cheesy, but it definitely helped me kind of refocus a little bit with things. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think that’s great, Kristina. I really appreciate you coming on and just sharing your story because I think a lot of people are going to really identify with a lot of what you’re saying. I think these stories can just be so powerful because almost everything we read about insomnia is really kind of like doom and gloom, because it’s not nice. It is a struggle, it’s difficult, it’s a challenge. But if we can recognize our story or our experience in that of other people, and we can hear in their own words what it was like for them, how it was affecting them, the changes they made, their struggle with those changes and how they kind of came out the other side of it, it can really kind of give us that reassurance that our insomnia maybe isn’t as unique as we felt, that maybe if there was hope that that person had a transformation, maybe there’s hope for me too. And just give us the motivation and the confidence to maybe explore making some changes ourselves. I think it can just be really powerful. Martin Reed: But, having said all that, I realize I haven’t asked you this last question, which I ask every single guest, so I want to make sure that I ask you too, so you don’t feel left out. And it’s this: If someone with chronic insomnia is listening and they feel as though they’ve tried everything, they’re beyond help, they just can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Kristina B: I think the first thing would be to not give up on yourself. When you’re going through this and you feel everything, every emotion, and you feel isolated and alone, because nobody that you know has gone through this, don’t give up. It’s only temporary. It’s not a permanent thing. It’s something that you can absolutely find a solution for, and I highly recommend that you do use Martin’s course and implement every thing. Kristina B: I hope that you find sleep again, and I think that you will, but the biggest thing is to not think that this is the way life is going to be. This is not the end of your sleep. Your sleep will return, and know that it’s going to be okay. And I think we need to hear that more, but know that it’s going to be okay, and know that you’re not alone, and it will get better, for sure. It will get better. Martin Reed: Great. I think that’s a positive note to end on, so thank you again for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast and sharing your story of transformation, Kristina. Kristina B: Absolutely. Thanks for having me and good luck to all the listeners out there. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life you want to live, I would love to help. You can get started right now by enrolling in my online course or you can book my phone coaching package. My online course runs for six weeks. It will help you make changes that can create better conditions for sleep, it will help you identify and get rid of any behaviors that might be making sleep more difficult, and it will help you respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a more workable way. You can work through the course in two ways. You can choose the self-coaching option and work through it by yourself with the support of an online forum that is available only to clients. Martin Reed: Or, you can choose to add one-on-one email coaching and work through the course with me by your side. With the one-on-one coaching option, you get unlimited email access to me for eight weeks, starting from the day you enroll. Any time you have a question or concern, any time you are unsure about anything, any time you want to focus on the challenges you face or any difficulties that show up, you can email me and I will be there to coach and support you. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com. Martin Reed: With the phone coaching package, we start with a one-hour call (voice only or video — your choice) and come up with an initial two-week plan that will help you create better conditions for sleep and practice moving away from struggling with insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it. You get unlimited email access to me for two weeks after the call and a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page

Deeandra always slept well but a stressful period in her life led to 48 hours of no sleep whatsoever and this generated a lot of anxiety. Deeandra started to panic and thought that she had lost the ability to sleep. Doctors gave her different medications that didn’t always seem to be helpful and came with their own set of side effects. For three years, Deeandra put her life on hold while she engaged in a long list of rituals and experiments in an attempt to improve her sleep. Gradually, Deeandra moved away from trying to control sleep and avoid nighttime wakefulness. She started to go to bed only when sleepy enough for sleep. She decided to live her life regardless of how she slept at night. She started to do things she’d withdrawn from — she no longer canceled plans, she started to exercise again. Little by little she reclaimed her life from insomnia — and her sleep began to improve. Today, Deeandra averages around six to seven hours of sleep. She still has difficult nights from time to time but they no longer have such an effect on her life. In Deeandra’s own words, “life is about the time we spend awake, not the time that we sleep”. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: 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 Reed: 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 Reed: Okay, Deeandra. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. Deeandra: Thank you, Martin. Thank you for having me. Martin Reed: It’s great to have you on let’s just start right at the beginning as always. If you could just let us know when your sleep problems first began and what you think caused your initial issues with sleep. Deeandra: Well, it started in 2018. I was going through a stressful time in my life, lots of stress, lots of problems at work, and switching houses, and stuff like that. I was going through a tremendous amount of stress, but I actually used to be a really great sleeper even through stress and anxiety. I mean, strangely, I never really struggled that much with sleep before. But in 2018, I don’t know, maybe it was lots of stuff going on, and I basically just started struggling with sleep. All of a sudden I couldn’t sleep. Before I would have a sleepless night every now and then, and I wouldn’t really think much of it. It would happen and the next night I would be okay. I would go to sleep and I would recover from that. Deeandra: The first night, after this lots of stress, I struggled for sleep that one sleepless night. I said, “Okay, a sleepless night. It happens every once in a while. It’s nothing in particular. And the next night I will sleep.” And the next night happened and still, I didn’t sleep. And then I thought, “Oh my God, this has never happened before. Why I’m still not sleeping. I mean, this is the second night I’m not sleeping. This is new. I mean, this is not something I have experienced before. There must be something wrong with me.” I mean, who doesn’t sleep for 48 hours? Of course, I didn’t really go 48 hours straight without sleeping. Probably I slept something, but in my mind I wasn’t sleeping for even one minute. Deeandra: And the anxiety went through the roof right after that second night. And I really started panicking that maybe something is wrong with me. I mean, my brain stopped working. I have a neurological problem or something. Because after these 48 hours of sleepless nights I was really having lots of anxiety, and I just couldn’t understand how could I not recover from that. So, I went to the doctors and I said, “I’m struggling to sleep here. I don’t know what’s wrong. I mean, it’s all of a sudden. I know I am having this trouble sleeping.” Deeandra: They gave me a medication, a tranquilizer so I can recover from that. And they told me, “You know what? You are going through some stress, maybe just take it for two weeks to get your sleep back on track so you can recover and get some sleep. And then you’ll see that your sleep will magically recover on its own. It’s a cycle so it will get back on track without even trying.” I believed them. I said, “Okay, maybe something is wrong with my brain or something.” I don’t know. Deeandra: I took the medication. And of course, after I stopped my medication, I started having the sleepless nights again. And this was really strange. I mean, I said, “Why is my sleep not getting back on track? Something is wrong here. I mean, am I just going crazy? Am I losing my mind here? Am I going through…” I mean, I was really panicking. It was really consuming even my mind. Every day I was always thinking about it. So, I went to see a psychiatrist and I explained what I was going through. And they said, “Okay, maybe you’re depressed. Maybe you have a lack of serotonin in your brain. That’s why you’re not sleeping.” Deeandra: I said, “Of course I’m depressed. I mean, I’m not sleeping.” I mean, anybody would be a little bit depressed I believe after not sleeping for two days. So I said, “Okay, of course, my mood is not that great because I’m really tired and I don’t feel well, but I don’t think I’m…” I mean, there was nothing else. I mean, it was only the sleep at that point, even because the national stressors was actually resolved after… I mean, I was only struggling with sleep at that point. I mean, the initial stressors was really not an issue anymore. I was just struggling with sleep for no reason. And they told me, “Maybe, yeah, you need to fix your serotonin and get back on… Again, get back on track.” Deeandra: Nobody explained, “Maybe you need to address something else.” They just said, “Take this medication. Take the antidepressant, and it will get better.” Of course, again, I believed the doctor, and I took the antidepressant. And it was a sedative antidepressant, and I took it for six months believing that this was the cure for me. I mean, it was going to help me to fix my serotonin again, because I believe that something is broken. I don’t know if it’s normal for someone just to… I really believe that I lost this magical ability to sleep. I mean, I believe that everybody had this button that made them all… Deeandra: Yeah, that magical ability to make them sleep. And I lost it. I mean, I really thought I lost this ability. And it came in my mind that, I will never have this ability again. I mean, I will always rely on this medication which actually gave me really bad side effects. I was really tired, and it didn’t even work at times. I was really taking it for no reason at one point because it didn’t really work. Every night, I mean, it would work for a couple of nights, and then it wouldn’t work. And then, it really didn’t make sense after a while to take it. So I said, I don’t feel comfortable continuing to take it. So I basically tried to wind off the medication and this was also a struggle. You just can’t get off these medications without a long period of deteriorating the medication, and just making sure that you’re taking a lower dose every week or something. Deeandra: And it was a really, really difficult time in my life because I needed to weigh the dose and just being careful that I… Because I believe that if I just stopped taking it, I will not sleep. I mean, I need to do this carefully so I can recover from this. And no one actually mentioned to me… They actually talked to me about going to therapy, but they mentioned CBT in general for anxiety. And I went to this therapist and we talked about anxiety and unresolved issues, trauma, lots of stuff, but we never really addressed the insomnia itself. I mean, they always told me, “You have…” I mean, I know I’m an anxious person, and I know that I dwell on things more than others probably. Deeandra: And that’s why I said, “We need to work on anxiety then if this is causing my insomnia.” But no one really said something about, you know, explaining sleep to me or anything else. I mean, we would always work on the anxiety part of it, and it did help to lower the anxiety and just being less anxious and knowing all the mindfulness techniques to get through the day. But I think I was… I mean, I would just find myself terrified that my sleep would really always be this way. I mean, I started asking myself, “Am I going to be at…” I was 29 at that point, and I turned 30 and I said, “No, I’m 30 years old. And I can’t believe that I’m going through this at 30.” Deeandra: I thought that I would be doing lots of different things. I mean, I really wanted to go and study again. I wanted to go back to school. So, this was put on hold now because I was struggling so much with sleep. Basically, sleep was becoming my life for like… Yeah. I mean, it became everything I thought about from the morning, from waking up until the evening time. It was really the only thing I thought about, and it’s really consumed my day, and it was a really… This is how it started. This is how the insomnia began. Deeandra: But then, yeah, I tried to go to my therapist, and I believed her when she said, “Insomnia is probably going go away when you’re less anxious, and maybe after six months of antidepressant your serotonin levels are now higher. So now you’re going to sleep.” But I was really afraid, I said, “This is my life now. I’m just going to be this person that have to rely on sleeping pills, or maybe have to rely on medications for the rest of their life.” Yeah. So, this was it. Yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think it’s really interesting when people describe their background before chronic insomnia struck. Some people tell me that, “I’ve always struggled with sleep throughout my life, but then this time around, for some reason, the sleep disruption didn’t disappear.” And then other people like yourself tell me, “I’d never had a problem with sleep. And then this sleep disruption come around and it just would not go away.” And I think in a way that can generate even more worry and anxiety because- Deeandra: Exactly, yeah. Martin Reed: … it just adds so much more mystery to the situation. Right? Deeandra: Absolutely. Martin Reed: And then we can start to worry that something has changed. We’ve lost something, some ability or some chemical. Deeandra: Exactly. I mean, I even used to say in the past that sleep was my superpower. At some point, it used to say to my husband, even I struggled with anxiety, but I would say… I would sleep it off. I mean, I would go to sleep and then just… I used to be a really great sleeper that sleep was actually my favorite time of the day, going to bed and just relaxing and going to sleep and just waking up. And so, when this happened, I really believed them when they said, “Something is wrong with your brain.” Some chemical, hormonal issues, something is wrong. There can’t be a switch and just like that, I can sleep. Yeah. Martin Reed: Well, you touched upon the fact that, because this was just consuming your life, and it was basically making you put your life on hold. Right? You said you had these big plans to go back to school and start studying again so you put them on hold. Were there any other changes that you made to how you live your life or how you went about your days in response to this insomnia, either as a way to try and protect yourself from the effects of sleep disruption or to try and generate better conditions for sleep? What kind of changes had you made to how you were living your life? Deeandra: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, insomnia really affected my life when it happened, because I would wake up, and I would just say, “I have to survive today.” So, I will just do the minimum. I will just stay on the couch or something. I will not exercise, so I can survive today, and get through the day. And it’s really sad. But I had… My son would ask me to do stuff for them, and I would say, “No, I can’t. I mean, I’m really tired. I have to lay down or something.” Even, I would cancel plans with my family. Deeandra: I mean, I really enjoyed exercising, so I would really not go to the gym anymore because I said, “I can’t exercise if I didn’t sleep last night. I just can’t do that.” I mean, it would really consume my energy even more. I can’t even get through the day, so how can I do some physical activity without having any energy. I mean, insomnia was really like the… It had a huge grip on my life, basically. Yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. Absolutely. And this is just where I think it can be so helpful to peel away the mystery of insomnia, because from person to person, the way insomnia works, it’s almost identical. Some of us, we actually have this model that regular listeners of this podcast will be familiar with, called the 3P Model that we use to describe the development of chronic insomnia. And the first P is just predisposing factors. And you kind of touched upon, “I feel like maybe I’m a little bit more of an anxious person than other people.” So already, maybe, we’re a little bit more susceptible to some temporary sleep disruption. Martin Reed: And so then we have the second P, which is the precipitating factor. This is just whatever the trigger for a round of sleep disruption was. So for example, with what you were describing, there was a stressful time in your life. You were moving house, lots of different things going on. So we will probably expect people to experience some sleep disruption at that time. So now, we’re in the sleep disruption stage of insomnia. Nine times out of 10, probably more often than that, once that initial trigger is no longer relevant or we’ve adapted to it, our sleep gets right back on track or by itself. Martin Reed: But if it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, as you know and everyone listening to this will know, that’s when the real worry starts, and the real mystery seems to be generated around insomnia. But again, there is no mystery. When the insomnia sticks around, it’s down to that third P in the model, which are the perpetuating factors. And these are all the things that we completely understandably do in response to the sleep disruption to try and fix our sleep or improve our sleep or help to manage all the side effects that come along within insomnia, the kind of backfire on us and actually perpetuating insomnia and make it harder for our body to just naturally get sleep back on track. Martin Reed: We might do things like… Just use your own examples, because we feel so fatigued we’re going to just want to be less active. We’re going to want to spend more time being sedentary, being on the couch. We might withdraw from doing things that are important to us or that add enrichment to our lives. You mentioned for yourself exercise and going to the gym was important to you. Spending quality time with your child was important to you. And these were all things that changed in response, and other common things that we might do are, going to bed earlier, or staying in bed later just spending more time in bed in general, to try and catch up on sleep, or to make sleep happen. All that kind of ongoing research, and again, all of these things are completely understandable why we would do them because we are going through difficulty. We want to improve the situation and fix the situation. Martin Reed: But sleep is one of these things that doesn’t respond well to effort. And it’s when we start to do all these things in response that actually end up perpetuating the sleep disruption. And I think it can be so helpful to recognize this because it strips insomnia of the mystery. We don’t have to start… Well, if we can identify our own struggle in that model, then perhaps we don’t have to worry quite so much that there’s something uniquely wrong. Our brain is now missing a chemical, or there’s some hormonal imbalance, or we’ve lost that magical sleep switch because we never lose that ability to sleep. It’s just that our understandable response to that sleep disruption is usually what provides insomnia with the oxygen it needs to survive for the longer term. Deeandra: Yeah. I completely agree. And it was actually an obsession. I started to obsess about sleep in a way that I… Like I said before, my life now revolved about sleep, basically. I would think about sleep all day long. Am I sleeping enough? Am I not sleeping enough? Did I get enough sleep? How can I cope? I always heard about the eight hours. The eight hours, you should get eight hours, otherwise, you are not healthy enough. Your brain will be… You’re not functioning. I used to read… I go online. I read all these articles about insomnia and maybe the effects on health. I also struggle with health and anxiety. So, this would give me even more anxiety, because I think I’m causing myself some… I might get sick or something if I don’t sleep those eight hours. Deeandra: And actually, when I discovered your podcast, I was walking one day outside, and I heard someone on your podcast. They said something that really… I actually started crying because it really touched me because they said something like, “Life is about the time we spend awake, not the time that we sleep.” So, I mean, life is the time we spend awake. This is what matters. Sleep is just… It doesn’t matter. Life is about the moments that we spend awake. I shouldn’t obsess about sleep so much. And actually, yeah, I mean I said, “I completely agree because I wasn’t living anymore, basically.” All I only cared about was sleep, actually. I didn’t care about my life. I just wanted to sleep. This was my main goal in life, basically for a while. Martin Reed: Yeah. Absolutely. And that’s completely understandable, right, because our brain, its prime directive is to look out for us. And so, it’s always going to want to put pressure on us to fix any problems that it perceives are going on in our lives. It’s going to tell us, “Do that research. Try this. Try that. Do this. Do that.” And it can be really easy to just get caught up in all of those things our brain is telling us. But with a bit of practice, sometimes we can listen to all that stuff the brain is telling us, but then take a step back from it, and then decide consciously how we want to respond to everything our brain is telling us. We don’t necessarily have to do everything our mind tells us we still have that control. Even though sometimes it can feel like we don’t, there’s always control we have over our actions and starting to do some things when we’re awake that are important to us. And that bring us a sense of enrichment even when our mind is saying, “No, you can’t do that you must rest.” It can be really helpful. Martin Reed: And these don’t have to be huge things. If exercise is really important to you, it doesn’t mean you have to start doing 20 miles on the treadmill. It might just be reading about exercise or reading about fitness. Just any small actions you can take to just help you start moving back toward the kind of life you want to live, rather than responding immediately to everything your brain is telling us which usually ends up moving us away from the kind of life we want to live. Deeandra: Yeah. Martin Reed: And so, just to take a quick step back, you mentioned that when you were working through my course, you found it really helpful just to learn more about sleep and learn more about insomnia, and that knowledge helped you change your relationship with sleep. Can you remember any of the key insights that you learned that you found most helpful? I mean, you just touched upon that insight about life really is about what we do when we’re awake, as opposed to when we’re asleep. But was there anything in terms of just knowledge about sleep and insomnia that you found really helpful? Deeandra: Well, they always told me that I should go to sleep. When you go to the doctors, they give you this information, sleep hygiene and all this, you shouldn’t watch TV before bed, you shouldn’t work in bed, you should always go to bed at the same time, and wake up at the same time. And I would do that. Deeandra: I mean, what I actually learned from you, from when I started your course is that I was going to bed at the time that I wasn’t actually sleepy. I mean, there was this time that I said, “Okay, this is my bedtime, so I should go to bed at this time.” And I shouldn’t in any… I was really strict about it in a way that it was really actually affecting my life, honestly, because I couldn’t even go out to dinner with my husband because I had this bedtime. And it was a ridiculous bedtime because it was at 9:00, so it was really early. I had to be in bed by 9:00, and I had to be in bed by 9:00, and this was my bedtime. And I couldn’t even change it because he told me that I have to go to bed at that time. Deeandra: And I didn’t like… When I enrolled in your course, I learned that I should actually go to bed when I’m sleepy so I can prepare the perfect conditions for sleep. So, I started doing that, not going to bed when it was 9:00. I mean, waiting until I’m sleepy unless I’m sleepy. Instead of going to bed and just waiting for sleep to happen even if I’m not that sleepy, I would change that. I mean, I changed that. So, I would wait a little bit, not just at 9:00, maybe waiting till I get a little bit, you know, heavy eyes, doing something good for bed, or something else so I can feel more ready for bed. And that’s one of the things that I did, yeah. Martin Reed: We often see this advice, “Go to bed at the same time, get out of bed at the same time.” I think it’s close. I think that getting out of bed by the same time each day can be really helpful. It’s something I always encourage people to do because it gives the body clock, this strong, consistent morning anchor, so it can help regulate between sleep and wakefulness. But going to bed at the same time at night can be less helpful because a clock doesn’t know when we’re sleepy enough for sleep. What I think can be helpful is having an earliest possible bedtime, because like I touched upon earlier, a common behavior that can perpetuate sleep disruption is spending too much time in bed, or just generally allotting too much time for sleep. If we can give ourselves an earliest possible bedtime, that helps us avoid allotting too much time for sleep, spending too much time in bed, but it also helps change our mindset about it. Martin Reed: This isn’t the time you must go to bed. It’s just an earliest possible bedtime. So if that bedtime arrives and you don’t feel sleepy enough for sleep, then we just don’t go to bed until we do feel sleepy enough for sleep. And when we are feeling a strong sense of sleepiness, conditions are so much better for sleep to occur. And I don’t know if you recognize this in your own experience, but something I regularly hear from people is when I changed that, when I started to go to bed much later, I realized what sleepiness felt again because that sleepiness had been replaced by just ongoing fatigue, brain fog, exhaustion, feeling worn out, and it’s really easy to confuse that with sleepiness. So when we get that sense of sleepiness back, there’s a real struggle to actually stay awake, that in itself can just be such a powerful experience and a great reminder that we haven’t lost the ability to sleep. Deeandra: Yeah. I completely agree. And I actually really used to enjoy this night… I mean, before bed, I would watch a movie with my husband or something and just wind down or have a cup of tea or something. I used to love that, loved this bedtime routine. And after fixating so much on sleep, like a soldier, I was like at 9:00, I had to go to bed and just be under the covers. And I didn’t even give myself this… Even like the time that I really enjoyed actually, and I should give myself this enjoyable time by myself so I can do something enjoyable before bed that relaxes me. And I was fixating so much that for a long time, I didn’t even put my son to bed. Deeandra: I used to put him to bed every night, read him stories, and just put him to bed. I didn’t even do that because my bedtime had to be at 9:00. I had to be under the covers. I mean, it really affected even this quality time I had with my son before going to bed. He actually missed that. And he used to tell me, “I miss that, and I want you to put me to bed and just stay with me till I fall asleep.” And I just say, “I’m sorry, baby. But I have to be in bed.” I felt bad about it, but I was really obsessed. Deeandra: They told me that I had to be in bed every night at the same time, and I followed these rules, every night at the same time. And I just believe that I was actually setting myself for success if I go to bed early because I said to myself, “Okay, if I’m in bed by 9:00 and I didn’t sleep, so I have lots of time so I can try to sleep.” And at one point I will sleep, but what would actually happen, that I would go to bed at 9:00, and I’m still awake after three hours because I was not actually sleepy when I went to bed at 9:00. At midnight, I would be anxious and panicking and saying, “This is going to be a sleepless night and so on.” Yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. It’s so difficult. I think insomnia really likes to trick us. It’s almost like it tries to do deals with us. For example, “Don’t read to your son. Make sure you go to bed at 9:00, and then you’ll feel better.” That’s what insomnia is telling us to do. But insomnia has an ulterior motive. Insomnia is telling us to do that kind of stuff because that’s what gives insomnia the oxygen it needs to stick around. And say, it is a really tricky customer, insomnia. And this is why it can be helpful to just address any of these changes we can recognize we’ve made in response to insomnia that haven’t really proven to be helpful or haven’t really added to our quality of life because it is so easy to remove all those important things from our lives to protect our sleep or create better conditions for sleep. Martin Reed: You just touched on reading to your son, missing out on that wind-down routine, that used to be really enjoyable, that quality time you’d spend with your husband. We do all these things that end up moving us from the kind of life you want to live. And they don’t really have any effect on sleep itself because we’re still setting ourselves up for longer periods of wakefulness by doing things like going to bed before we feel sleepy enough for sleep. But we’re also… What else are we doing? We are kind of giving sleep a really negative role in our lives when our whole life just revolves around sleep, and our behaviors change in a way that leads to less quality of life because of sleep. It just changes our whole relationship with it. Deeandra: Yeah. Absolutely. I totally agree. Yeah. Martin Reed: You touched upon that thing, that behavior change that you found really helpful which was just going to bed later, going to bed when you felt a stronger sense of sleepiness. Were there any other behaviors that you changed to help create better conditions for sleep, or that just helped improve your quality of life during the day that now on reflection you can look back on and say, “That was helpful. That really helped me.” Deeandra: Yeah. Well, starting from… I said to myself, “Whatever nights I had the night before, I’m just going to live my life. I’m just going to go out and exercise and I’m just going to stay to insomnia, basically.” I don’t care, anymore if I have insomnia. Maybe I slept for a couple of hours the night before, and I was tired, then I didn’t feel like doing much, but I would basically just act like nothing was happening and I would just try my best to do everything I wanted to do during the day. I would go out, and just basically be active during the day instead of lying down, and just canceling plans or not just during my usual activities. And I changed that, I said, “No, I’m not just going to live insomnia win anymore.” Deeandra: I basically started to, little by little every day, doing something more. I started to go out for walks. And even if I had dinner plans, I would go out, even if I didn’t have much sleep the night before. And I would go to the gym and exercise and even if I was tired. So yeah, I definitely changed that. And then, I said to myself, “Eight hours.” Maybe after reading your tips and tricks and your advices and I thought, “Eight hours is not for everyone. I can survive on less. So, why am I going to bed at a ridiculous time? I mean, at 9:00.” I have to like… If I give myself the time I need at the end of the day to do something with my husband or do something I enjoy, I’m relaxing so I’m probably creating a better condition for sleep. Deeandra: Even if I get five hours, and I’m productive the next day, this is fine for me. I mean, it’s not a big deal then. I mean, nothing will happen. I mean, maybe I just need that. Maybe, I don’t need eight hours anyway. So, I started to get to go to bed later. Yeah, I mean, I just… Basically, caring less, I had all these rituals before bed really in a manic way. I mean, I really just prepare everything like I was going to war basically. My sleepy time tea has to be ready at this time, and I have to be under the covers at this time, and I shouldn’t watch any TV shows that was interesting before bed. Deeandra: I would watch only boring shows before bed. If I’m interested in watching a show and I like it, I wouldn’t watch it before bed because I said, “No, I have to watch a show that I really saw a million times that wouldn’t engage my mind.” So, I would only watch boring movies and old, boring movies and old boring shows that I didn’t even enjoy anymore. But I had to do that because I would be awake if I watched something that really interested me and engaged me. And yeah, so I stopped the rituals, basically. I just said, “It doesn’t matter anymore. Really, it doesn’t matter.” Basically, yeah, that’s it. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think that idea that we need to get a certain amount of sleep like eight hours is often thrown out there. I can just be one of these extra things, right, that it’s just more pressure that we put on ourselves to make sleep happen or to generate sleep. But nobody really knows where this eight hours came from. We don’t have much evidence that says human beings need eight hours of sleep. We just look at ranges of average sleep durations and try and guess from there. But I think sleep duration is like height. It’s something that we all have a unique height, or we’re all going to be at a certain height. We’re all going to generate a certain amount of sleep. And that’s different for everyone. And trying to get a certain amount of sleep or a certain type of sleep is a bit like trying to grow seven-foot tall. Martin Reed: It’s something we can’t control. And anytime we have averages involved, so if we say, “An average person will sleep six to eight hours,” something like that. There are always going to be happy, healthy people that exist outside those ranges because we are just looking at averages. And something else that can compound this concern about sleep duration is the fact that when we ask an average person who has no issues with sleep, how much sleep they get, they usually just guess based on when they went to bed and when they got out of bed, and they just count that whole time as sleep. So, they tend to overestimate how much sleep they get which is probably why we tend to get closer to eight hours when we’re asking people. But then, when we’re struggling with insomnia, all those prolonged periods of wakefulness can seem to be more intense. And studies show that we tend to underestimate the amount of sleep we get when we’re struggling with insomnia. Martin Reed: So that just makes this gap between our situation, the amount of sleep we are getting when we have insomnia, and where we want to be, just makes that gaps feel even wider, which can then just create more worry, more anxiety, and we put more pressure on ourselves to sleep and engage in more of those sleep efforts for something that we really have no control over. We can certainly create better conditions for sleep, but there’s nothing we can do to make sleep happen on command for us to get the amount of sleep or a certain type of sleep that we’re after. Deeandra: Yeah, absolutely. And actually, I just remember reading in your emails that sleep can’t be controlled. You can’t control sleep. Sleep will just actually happen on its own. It’s a built-in mechanism, and you can’t just control it. And yeah, I mean, when I read that, I said, “Okay. I have to lose some control here,” because I was basically trying to control it in a very obsessive way, so I have to just let it go. Now, let go of all the obsessing about it, all the controlling, everything, just let go, and it could happen on its own. Yeah. Martin Reed: But it’s really hard to do that. Right? Because even if we hear this over and over again, we need to abandon that control, abandon that obsession. It’s hard because the brain by default is wired to want to engage in rituals, to put effort into problems, and to troubleshoot them. How do you go from logically understanding that “Yeah, I need to lose control. I need to just stop trying to get involved in the process to actually taking action and doing it”? How do you make that transition? Because it’s difficult. Right? Deeandra: Well, actually, I challenged myself. I said to myself, “Okay, I will just not care and see how I’m feeling.” I mean, I was getting even two hours of sleep, three hours of sleep even, and the next day I would actually be productive, and I would go through the day, and I do everything I wanted to do. And I was fine at the end of the day, and nothing happened. I didn’t go insane. My job didn’t suffer. My family didn’t suffer. My health didn’t suffer. Everything was fine. I mean, and then I started getting a little bit more, I mean, four hours of sleep. So, my theory proved to be right. Nothing will happen. I mean, sleep is just… You don’t need to obsess about the eight hours, the rituals, and you just have to lose control because there’s no switch. Deeandra: I mean, I’m actually… Maybe because I’m a go-getter, when I want something I would work on it. I would just obsess about it. Maybe the obsession here has a positive side because when I put some… I mean, I obsess about something, I obtain it. If I really wanted to get my driver’s license, for example, I would study in an obsessive way, and I would just practice and practice and practice to get it. And then, I got my driver’s license. And then the same thing I applied for sleep. Before, I would say, “Okay, I have to work on sleep.” So, I would obsess about it, and try to work on it. And I would just try all this stuff. I would try like the… I heard about this heavy blanket that you would put on your preferred bed to calm you or something. It was called the gravity blanket, I believe. I would try that. Deeandra: I would try so many stuff, even supplements and ashwaganda and maybe melatonin and lots of stuff just to… Because I believe that if I put effort in sleep, it will improve. But yeah, it’s the only thing in life actually that you shouldn’t really put any effort in. And it doesn’t respond to the effort at all. You shouldn’t really try anything on sleep. The more effort you try, the more stuff you try, the more supplements, the more rituals, the more… And it doesn’t really respond to effort. It’s just natural. It’s like breathing at the end of the day. Martin Reed: Yeah, it is. And I love that analogy about breathing. I mean, I use it all the time because breathing is something that we can temporarily control. Right? We can hold our breath, or we can breathe really quickly, but it’s not something we can successfully control for very long. And we can hold our breath, but eventually, no matter how determined we are, we’re going to breathe. Our body is just going to remove us from the equation and make us breathe. And insomnia and sleep is like that. No matter how desperate we are feeling, if we’ve been awake for 48 hours, not even a minute of sleep, sooner or later the body is just going to remove us from the process and make some sleep happen. The body will always generate at the very least the minimum amount of sleep we need in just the same way that it will always ensure that we take the exact number of breaths that we need to take throughout the day. Martin Reed: It’s just something that we don’t need to put that effort and all that energy into trying to control or to get involved in. But like you’ve said, it is completely understandable why we would do that because when we have a problem, we want to fix it. But sleep is that one thing in life that just does not respond well to effort. But that doesn’t mean that we need to be resigned to living with chronic insomnia. It just means that we can shift those efforts to where they can be helpful so we can do things like starting to reintroduce, starting to reclaim our lives, doing things again that are important to us, only going to bed when we are sleepy enough for sleep, not engaging in all these rituals that probably deep in the back of our minds we probably know aren’t proving to be helpful, at least over the long term. It’s just so difficult. Deeandra: Yeah. And actually, I have an idea that maybe lots of people who struggle with insomnia tend to be control freaks in their life. Maybe, I’m wrong, but that is the idea that I get because we like to control everything. We want what we want. And they tend to be, people who are really goal-oriented and they want to reach their goals, so say they apply this mentality to sleep, and they try to get their goal of sleep. I will try everything. I’ll just put more effort. I will try harder. I will just try to apply everything I know to get this magic sleep, which is actually, you don’t really need to do anything, basically. Deeandra: Just like my husband, of course, I have a husband who is the world best sleeper, who doesn’t do anything to sleep, to generate sleep. And he always say, “I don’t know. I just go to bed and I sleep. I don’t do anything special.” Yeah, I mean, you don’t really need to do anything. Yeah. It’s like you never… Something that I always say to myself, I even heard that in one of your podcast episodes that “You will never just forget how to sleep. Sleep, it’s a function. It’s a biological function that we have.” And that really, really helped me because at one point I really thought that I lost this ability. And now I know, and I will never doubt that anymore. That just like I will never forget how to breathe, I will never forget how to sleep. It’s a built-in mechanism. It’ll never disappear or go away, or it just won’t happen. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. And this is another reason why I just love the way that we can explore our thoughts about sleep, our relationship with sleep, and change our behaviors around sleep to start insomnia or the oxygen it needs to survive because these are really, at the end of the day, they’re skills. So, once we’ve harnessed these skills, we’ve practiced them, and we are sleeping better, I think it makes us more resilient because we have this completely new understanding about sleep, insomnia. And we know that we are armed with these techniques that are going to be with us forever. So, if we ever find ourselves struggling in the future, we can feel so much more confident that we can react in a way that will minimize the length of our sleep disruption. So that one or two difficult nights aren’t going to be the return of a long-term problem again. Deeandra: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, sure. Martin Reed: Yeah. How long do you feel the process was for you from the time when you were really, really struggling to learning new insights about sleep and insomnia, gaining more knowledge about it, changing some behaviors, bringing back all those things back into your life that you’d maybe pushed away. How long would you say that process was to where you felt more confident that that sleep was no longer a big issue in your life? Deeandra: Well, I think I tried… I saw an improvement after about, I think a month or something, three weeks to a month. I saw some improvements in my sleep, and then just applying more behavioral changes and more advices that I saw in your emails and tips that I got from your videos and your podcast. And I saw an improvement little by little. After a month, I would say that I started to see that I was sleeping better, maybe not perfectly, but I was still sleeping better, and I was productive the next day. Deeandra: And when I started to see that, I was really encouraged to go on, and this is working. This is actually the only thing that is actually working. No medication, no supplements, just working on my mentality toward sleep, and changing my behaviors, changing the way I thought about sleep is working. And it was really helpful because when I saw this improvement, I saw… Before I thought that I had no hope at one point, and I was just destined to be stuck on medication for the rest of my life, or destined to have this life that was just full of fatigue and tiredness. Deeandra: And after trying all these tips, I saw an improvement. It was really a ray of hope for me. And I really… Yeah. I mean, it was really great to see that because I didn’t believe at first that only changing my behaviors would help so much, but I was wrong because it started to get better. And maybe at first, I was just getting maybe five hours and then just after that, it was a little bit more. Deeandra: And I actually saw myself an improvement in the way I felt. Even at my time, when I would be awake, I would be less anxious because I would always remember… Your voice is actually really soothing by the way. I don’t know if someone had already said that to you, but I would always remember a phrase that you would say after each episode of your podcast that you can sleep. And it would really calm me because I would remember, “You can sleep. You can sleep. It’ll happen at one point.” You shouldn’t control it. And those tips, yeah, I mean, little by little, it started to get better. Yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. What’s sleep like for you these days? If you just think back on your sleep over the last couple of weeks, or so, what’s an average night like for you now? Deeandra: Well, I would say about six or seven hours every night, which is really okay for me. I mean, it’s perfect. Actually, I feel great. I don’t feel the tiredness after six or seven hours, so this is fine for me. I do struggle every once in a while, maybe once a month, because as we said, we are more predisposed to insomnia because maybe I’m having some anxious thoughts or maybe I had a stressful day, but it will never last more than one night or a couple of nights. And I would always apply all the behaviors that I learned, and all the tips that you shared, and it would never be this panic or this anxiety-inducing thing. Deeandra: I mean, it would just be this, “Okay. I had a bad night of sleep. It will get better. It will pass.” And it passes, it never goes on. So, right now, it’s really going better. I mean, I would say my sleep at one point is maybe the sleep I had before, all of these problems. I started to see some improvements even before all this I thought that I was a really great sleeper, and now, sometimes I even get maybe eight hours of sleep or even nine hours of sleep if I can. And really, I thought that I would never get that naturally anymore. Even like having that, it’s really even built my confidence that really you don’t need anything to sleep. You can still get this nine hours. You can still get to those eight hours naturally. So, yeah, it’s going well. It’s going well. Martin Reed: That’s great. I always think that the real transformation is when there’s a change in how we respond to those one-off difficult nights. So instead of a difficult night, just triggering all this worry and panic and changing what we do during the day, being able to see a bad night for what it is, a bad night, a difficult night, and not responding in the same way as we might have done when we were really caught up in the insomnia struggle. I think that’s the real sign that a transformation has occurred, and that insomnia will never be able to work its way back into our lives again. That was really powerful for you to talk about that. “I still have some difficult nights every once in a while, but the way I respond to them, my interpretation of them, is completely different now.” I think you’ve already implied it, but are you finding that just your days now and just your overall quality of life has changed? Deeandra: Yeah. Absolutely. Honestly, I mean, in the past I would say, “This is just going to be my life now. I would just be this person who won’t be able to do much in life, basically.” And now, honestly, it feels like a new beginning for me to be honest, because I now can do so much stuff. Actually, I went back to school. Martin Reed: Oh, great. Deeandra: After getting better with those insomnia. And after seeing that I don’t need to put things on hold. I now applied for my master’s degree. This is a great win for me and a huge step that I need to take. Yeah. And just in general, even going on vacation or… This used to be a huge concern for me, by the way. Deeandra: I would always think that I couldn’t go on vacation, for example, because I would say, “I can’t sleep on a new bed. The hotels, maybe the bed is not comfortable. And then my vacation would be ruined by insomnia so I can’t go away.” And actually for three years, I didn’t go on any vacations at all. I mean, it’s just really sad because the best… Maybe there was some important anniversaries or maybe some birthdays or something that I missed on. And now, I can do that. I would say to myself, “Even if I go away, and I didn’t sleep for one night because maybe you have to catch an early flight or something. That’s fine. That’s fine.” Everybody has those one-off night every once in a while. It will never be a problem. I will never panic about it. So, yeah, I would say that my quality of life really, really changed. Yeah, in a much better way. Yeah. Martin Reed: That’s great. Well, Deeandra, I really appreciate all the time that you’ve taken to talk about your experience. There is just one last question I would love to ask you because I ask every single guest this question, so I don’t want you to feel left out. So, the question is this, if someone with chronic insomnia is listening and feels as though they’ve tried everything that they’re beyond help, and that they cannot do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Deeandra: I would say, I totally understand what you’re going through. Not everybody understands, honestly, that insomnia can be really, really difficult. I know because I’ve been there. I know you’re struggling. But don’t lose hope. And contact Martin, of course, because he’s really really patient and helpful. And I believe that he really likes to help people. Your life will get better and you can get through this. And yeah, I mean, search for the website, listen to the podcast, and contact Martin, and maybe just give it a try, and just see for yourself. Yeah. I mean, I believe that insomnia can be really difficult and lowing at sometimes, and we just feel like it’s hopeless at one point, but you really should try it and you’re not alone. And I use hug to be honest because you already need it because I know it’s difficult. Martin Reed: Yeah. Well, that’s great. And I think that’s a really, really good note to end on. Thanks again, Deeandra for coming out, taking some time out of your day to come onto the podcast. I just know that your story, your experience is going to help a lot of people. Thank you so much. Deeandra: Thank you. Thank you, Martin. Thank you. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life you want to live, I would love to help. You can get started right now by enrolling in my online course or you can book my phone coaching package. My online course runs for six weeks. It will help you make changes that can create better conditions for sleep, it will help you identify and get rid of any behaviors that might be making sleep more difficult, and it will help you respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a more workable way. You can work through the course in two ways. You can choose the self-coaching option and work through it by yourself with the support of an online forum that is available only to clients. Martin Reed: Or, you can choose to add one-on-one email coaching and work through the course with me by your side. With the one-on-one coaching option, you get unlimited email access to me for eight weeks, starting from the day you enroll. Any time you have a question or concern, any time you are unsure about anything, any time you want to focus on the challenges you face or any difficulties that show up, you can email me and I will be there to coach and support you. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com. Martin Reed: With the phone coaching package, we start with a one-hour call (voice only or video — your choice) and come up with an initial two-week plan that will help you create better conditions for sleep and practice moving away from struggling with insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it. You get unlimited email access to me for two weeks after the call and a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) Wayne’s experience with insomnia began when he was preparing for his board exams. Because he needed to get up earlier than usual, he started going to bed earlier than usual. Unfortunately, this made it harder for Wayne to fall asleep — and, as a result, nights started to become stressful and he began to experience a lot of sleep-related anxiety. In an effort to address this sleep disruption, Wayne started implementing a number of sleep hygiene rituals. He experimented with sleep supplements and started to record, analyze, and evaluate every aspect of his sleep. Unfortunately, these actions — although completely understandable — served only to perpetuate his insomnia. Ultimately, Wayne got his sleep back on track by recognizing that sleep is a natural process that doesn’t require or respond well to effort. He started to go to bed later at night. He started to make some space for difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions rather than trying to fight them, and he reminded himself that sleep always happens in the end. This process took time but today, Wayne thinks of sleep as a friend — not as an enemy or something to be feared. He no longer puts pressure on himself to sleep and he no longer puts any effort into sleep. As a result, he sleeps well and is living the kind of life he wants to live. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: 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 Reed: 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 Reed: Hi, Wayne. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Wayne Tan: Thank you for having me. Martin Reed: I’m really excited to go through everything we’ve got planned to discuss, but we’re never going to get anywhere unless we start at the beginning, so let’s start there. If you could just give us an idea of when your sleep problems first began and what you think maybe caused those initial issues with sleep. Wayne Tan: Okay. Yeah. My sleep problems started back in March of 2020, right around the beginning of COVID. It all happened around the time when I was preparing for my board exams for optometry school. I remember at the time I had given myself a very strict bedtime that I wanted to meet in order to basically prepare myself, not only mentally and also academically for boards, but I wanted to have a good sleep schedule. Typically, I was a person who went to bed at 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, a little bit later. You could consider me a night owl, but for this exam that I was preparing for, I had to get up basically around 6:30 or 7:00. To me, that was very daunting. I told myself I need to get the bed by 11:00 at the latest. I put this pressure on myself to really get to bed around that time. That was around March when the test was going to be. That’s when it all started. Martin Reed: Okay. What were those nights like when you started to experience those sleep disruption? Was it difficulty first falling asleep? Because I’m guessing that from what you said, you started to go bed a little bit earlier in order to try and make up for the fact that you’re going to be also waking up a bit earlier. Were you having issues falling asleep or was it more to do with waking during the night and then finding it hard to fall back to sleep? Or maybe it was the double whammy and a little bit of both. Wayne Tan: Yeah, it was a little bit of both, but mainly, for me, personally, it was falling asleep. If I fell asleep, most of the time, I could get through the night. Those nights were very stress driven and there was just a lot of anxiety that surrounded the nights. I can still specifically remember the night when it all started was about a week before the exam. I started taking sleep supplements to try to get to bed and even took NyQuil to try to get to bed. Wayne Tan: One night, I remember just taking some NyQuil and not being able to fall asleep. This panic kind of set in, thinking to myself, “What if this was exam night? I would not be able to sleep and I’m tired. I’m on beds and I’m not falling asleep.” I think my sleep… My relationship and my thought about sleep kind of broke down there, but most of my nights, to answer your question, were just difficulty falling asleep when I would spend upwards of two, three hours to fall asleep. Some days I couldn’t fall asleep until like 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning. Martin Reed: Wow. Yeah. I think one of the big challenges with insomnia is not only does it affect us at night, but it really can affect us during the day too. It’s like this thing that’s seems to be with us 24 hours a day. How were you finding it… If anything, were you finding that it was affecting your days as well? What were your days like when you were going through this struggle with sleep? Wayne Tan: I think in the beginning, before I went through all of my treatment, my thought about how my day was was very much to how I slept that night. If I’d only slept two or three hours, it just kind of… I just got this idea in my head that my day was going to be terrible, was going to be tiring. The days were just harder because I think I had put that impression on myself and that’s how it was. It was difficult, the days that I didn’t get sleep. You kind of spend your day kind of thinking about it, and it was quite consuming to go through it. Martin Reed: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You kind of touched upon it already in terms of the supplements and the over-the-counter stuff. Were there any other kind of things that you tried to get your sleep back on track or to fix this issue before you started implementing these behavior-change techniques, which we’ll talk about in a moment, that on reflection, you now think those probably weren’t that helpful, “All these things that I did”. Can you think of anything else that you’ve tried? Wayne Tan: Yeah, I spent a lot of time researching the internet and there were a lot of sleep hygiene things that were recommended. One of the biggest ones was just kind of removing yourself from any screen time before bed. I even got one of those lights that mimicked UV rays that I would kind of just shine at myself during the day to I guess, try to build my circadian rhythm, but all along, I wanted… I was always afraid of getting into a habit of depending on any substance in order to fall asleep. I actually, for the most part, stayed away from the supplements after I’ve developed this chronic insomnia. Wayne Tan: Then in the beginning, I was relying on it, but I think I grew fairly afraid of taking anything internally. I even saw a sleep specialist and they recommended me to have a sleep study and she prescribed, I believe it was Tramadol for me for the nights that I can’t sleep to fall asleep. I remember filling the prescription and to this day, I’ve only ever had half of a pill and never touched that stuff. Wayne Tan: I tried to stay away from it, but aside from that, I tried a lot of different things, trying to meditate before bed. I just felt like I was creating a lot of ritual around bed. It became almost like a obsessive worship of it. I think after going through the treatment with you, I’ve kind of… You helped me discover that although those things are good on their own that my obsessiveness with it actually made it counterintuitive and didn’t help me as it should. Another thing that I would do was I would have these “down times” right before bed. For a while, I thought there were working for me, so there were nights when I didn’t get to have my ritualistic downtime. I always thought to myself, “Uh-oh, this is the night that I won’t be falling asleep.” Martin Reed: Yeah. I remember when we were working together, this was one of the things we discussed, how your insomnia followed this really predictable path. You know how we have this actual model for the development of insomnia, the 3P model, where the first P is predisposition. Some of us are just predisposed not necessarily to chronic insomnia, but just to temporary sleep disruption from time to time. In your case, for example, recognizing that you’re a strong night owl and then knowing that you’re going to have to change your routine, that can trigger some temporary sleep disruption, which is the second P the precipitating event, whatever it is that triggers the sleep disruption. Again, really clear for you. You’re like this model textbook case, right? Wayne Tan: Yeah. Martin Reed: You were doing your studying, you had the exams, you had to get up earlier, a whole different schedule to what your body was used to. Normally, probably more than nine times out of 10, when whatever that trigger is is no longer relevant or we’ve adapted to it, our sleep just gets back on track. But if it doesn’t, that’s where that third P comes into play. It’s all these perpetuating factors. Martin Reed: This is just a symptom of being a human being that wants to fix problems. We do things like going to bed earlier, maybe even staying in bed later on the weekends to try and catch up on sleep on napping during the day, doing all that research, rituals, experiments, all that stuff that is done with the best of intentions and seems quite logical when we’re doing them, but they kind of backfire on us and they can end up making sleep more difficult. They perpetuate the problem. Martin Reed: I’d like to just talk about that. I like to just mention that model because it helps us recognize that what we’re experiencing isn’t unique and that there are those perpetuating factors that we can influence and we can control. Although we can’t control sleep itself, we can definitely control our behaviors in a way that helps create better conditions for sleep, removes any of those behaviors that might be perpetuating sleep disruption. We can also do things that explore our relationship with our sleep-related thoughts and just sleep itself that can help tackle those perpetuating factors too. Wayne Tan: Yeah. It’s funny, you mentioned that. People are typically problem solvers, so when you have a problem, you try to solve it. That really speaks to my character. I’m always a person when I see a problem, there’s got to be a solution. You got to go and figure out the solution. I’m in medicine, so that is even ingrained in me and trained since I was a student to kind of look at it that way. I think for me hat was really the perpetuating factor. Wayne Tan: I guess I just spent so much time thinking about how to fix the problem when in fact the solution is to really forget about it. Even though that was told to me, it was such a hard thing for me to let go, to actually let go of the problem and just trust that it’s kind of a thing that you can’t try to put effort into sleep. That really speaks to me. Sorry, could you repeat the last question that you asked? Martin Reed: Yeah. I was just summarizing how in cases of insomnia, they’re pretty much identical from person to person. Although our individual circumstances can be unique, the insomnia itself usually isn’t and how your experience was almost like this textbook example. You’ve got these clear predisposing factor, this clear precipitating factor and then all these clear perpetuating factors, so this desire to fix a problem, which is this human trait. Especially when we have kind of a very analytical mind or a very scientific mind. Martin Reed: We can get tripped up here because everything in life responds well to effort. I can’t think of anything that doesn’t usually respond well to effort apart from sleep. Our brain is naturally telling us you’ve got to put effort into sleep here. You’ve got to try to sleep. You’ve got to make sleep happen. You’ve got to control sleep. You’ve got to get a certain amount of sleep, a certain type of sleep. Do it, make it happen. As soon as we put that effort in, that’s when we tend to get caught up in the struggle because sleep doesn’t respond her to effort or to pressure. Martin Reed: The only thing that can make sleep happen is being awake for long enough. That really is all we can do, but that’s not to say… Just like you touched upon, it’s hard to say, “Okay, I just need to stop trying. I need to stop putting effort into it,” because we naturally want to fix a problem. This is why I think these behavioral change techniques can be helpful because they still give us an outlet for that effort. We’ve still got tasks that we can do that help create better conditions for sleep. We’re kind of redirecting our efforts in a more constructive and positive way on setting the stage for sleep rather than trying to make sleep happen. Wayne Tan: Yeah. That reminds me of something that we were working on. For me, thinking about sleep during the day was a really big problem for me. Something you told me to do was kind of limit yourself, kind of allow yourself to still think about it, but set a window for yourself to… I don’t remember how much time you allotted me, but it was like 15 minutes or 20 minutes a day where I’m allowed to think and research sleep as much as I want. But after that point you, you just got to let it go. Wayne Tan: I think that was also really, really helpful. Another thing that I was obsessively doing was kind of keep focusing on the numbers during the nights and tracking the sleep efficiency and how much sleep I was getting per night. I think there came a point when you were like, “Just forget about keeping track of the numbers and just let it happen.” I think that was a really big turning point for me was just learning to let all of it go. Martin Reed: The tracking can really be like this double edged sword because when I’m working with clients, many clients find it helpful to just start filling out some sleep journals just with best guesses, which is what I always encourage. If someone’s going to start filling out a sleep diary of when they went to bed, how much time they think they spent awake, for example, things like this, I always encourage them to just use your best guess because we don’t want you to be checking the time throughout the whole night getting, “I was awake for 17 and a half minutes at 3:07 AM.” Things like that, not helpful because we have to be alert to be able to record all those things. Martin Reed: If we’re giving the brain all those tasks, we’re not creating good conditions for sleep. Some clients just don’t find it helpful at all. They really benefit from just not even keeping any kind of sleep log and every week or two, just thinking, “How do I feel I did over the past couple of weeks? That’s just fine too because sleep is so subjective anyway. One person would feel great after five hours of sleep. One person would feel terrible after five hours of sleep. The numbers themselves don’t really matter. All that really matters is how we feel about our sleep. We really don’t have to be that analytical about tracking it and it just… Martin Reed: It’s one of those things that can just draw more attention to sleep, especially if we get hooked into using all those activity tracking devices with the apps and stuff. First thing, we do in the morning is check all the data. Another reason why they sometimes can trip us up is there’s not really anything we can do with that information anyway. If you learn that you’ve got X amount of a certain sleep stage, for example, well, there’s nothing you can do to change your sleep architecture. If it tells you you’ve been awake for a certain amount of time during the night, there’s not really anything you can do in response to actually cut that down. We can influence things, but we can’t actually directly control any of that information. Really it’s just extra external noise that we have to deal with. Wayne Tan: I’m glad that you said that sleep is subjective from person to person. Going back to what I said earlier, in the beginning, when I would get like two hours of sleep, I would just say to myself, “Today is going to be a terrible day. I will say one benefit that I got from going through all of the chronic insomnia was I’ve learned to live life normally with just a few hours of sleep. These days I don’t really let myself get influenced by that. Wayne Tan: For the most part, I get really good sleep, but there occasionally comes a day or two when not even that I can’t fall asleep, but there are just… I’m busy with work or whatever the circumstances, and then I’m not getting as much sleep as I like. Those days really don’t influence me the way they used to because I realized that I can function really well even if it’s just a few hours of sleep. The people who learn to live… Insomniacs are people who are really good at going through their day with minimal sleep. Wayne Tan: That is something that… It’s how you kind of view your sleep, your relationship about sleep. I think this program really did teach me to kind of really view your sleep. It’s something that you… Sometimes you can do it on your own, but I felt like I was one of those people who needed a guidance in kind of changing my mindset about how I viewed it. Martin Reed: Yeah. Let’s talk about that a little bit more because I remember when we first started working together. It was over a year ago now. I think it was like a year and three months or something like that. When you first came to me, you said that you had been implementing CBT-I techniques, but you felt a little bit frustrated or you weren’t getting the result you were hoping for. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? What kind of techniques, first and foremost, were you implementing and for how long? What was it about the process that you felt unhappy or uncomfortable with? Wayne Tan: I initially was doing sleep journaling and just keeping really, really good records about how I slept, how much I slept, what time I went to bed, my sleep efficiency. It was all color coded. It was something like a person’s who’s problem solving would do. Limiting my sleep was kind of also part of it. I have to say that it was helpful and that there were days when I would get my seven, eight hours of sleep. I think that became my issue. My biggest issue that I ran into was not getting very consistent results. I think I was the person to blame for that because I would get good stretches of sleep, maybe three or four days where I would fall asleep within 15, 20 minutes. Wayne Tan: Then I would kind of relax on my restrictions a bit thinking, “You know what? I think I’m good. I think I’ve reached that point.” Sometimes just getting out of that too early became my issue. Not only that, but there was still a lot of, I guess, bad views that I had of sleep that still lingered in my mind about it. I think ultimately for insomnia to finally go away, it really was changing your mindset about how you viewed sleep. I think that that was some… I needed you to help me with that. Martin Reed: Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because everyone listening to this is going to be like, “I recognize that I probably do need to change my mindset about sleep and my relationship with sleep, but how do we do that?” Do you have any tips for people listening to this? How were you able to do that? Wayne Tan: It’s such a simple phrase that you said to me, but, but it really stuck to me. It was like sleep is always going to win in the end. You’re going to fall asleep. It’s harder to try to stay awake for an extended amount of time than it is to sleep. You are naturally going to sleep. That’s something you can’t fight. It will happen. Maybe it doesn’t happen tonight, but it’s sure going to happen eventually. I guess that confidence that you have that sleep will come is what you really need because a person who’s not suffering from insomnia, they have a ton of confidence that sleep is going to come every night they lay down, maybe not instantly, but it’s going to come. Wayne Tan: People going through insomnia, what they lose is that confidence that sleep is going to come. Like I said, it’s a such a simple phrase that you said, but the nights when I lay there on, when my mind is racing and I’m wondering, “Am I going to sleep tonight? How is my day going to be if I don’t sleep?” That phrase pops up again and I remind myself sleep is going to come. You can try to fight it, but it will always win in the end. Martin Reed: That’s just something we cannot deny. It’s just a fact. No matter how entrenched our insomnia is we can always remember times when we have got some sleep, even if it’s just a couple of hours, because our body will always generate sleep, but yet when we’re really in the throes of insomnia, really struggling, our brains like to tell us, “Oh, you’ve had a difficult… You had no sleep last night. That means you’re going to have no sleep tonight and then no sleep the next night and no sleep the next night, but from a biological perspective, that cannot be true. Martin Reed: But it’s just our brain looking out for us. Our brain is there to protect us and do good for us, help us live the best life we can. It’s kind of like this really overly enthusiastic friend. It’s like, “Do this. You’re going to do great. How are you doing? Let’s do this. Let’s do that. How’s it going now?” It’s just trying so hard to help us out that it can kind of get in the way, but the truth is even when our brain is looking out for us and warning us that you had no sleep last night. “What if that happens again tonight? What if that happens the night after?”, the truth of the matter is that sleep always happens in the end. When we’ve been awake for long enough, we will always sleep. And that the body is always going to generate, at the very least, the minimum amount of sleep we need. It will always generate that. Martin Reed: Where we struggle to get more than the bare minimum is often down to those efforts. That human desire to get more sleep or to get better quality of sleep. When we get involved in that process, once the body has kind of generated that bare minimum, as soon as we then get involved, that’s when we can start disrupting that natural process because we’ve already got that bare minimum so the body can actually be awake now. When we get more than the bare minimum, it’s when we can take that step of removing ourselves from that process. Wayne Tan: I think there’s just pressure that you put on yourself. I think for me personally, that’s how it all started. Then that pressure turned into just my… The way I viewed sleep just morphed. Sleep is our friend and not something to be afraid of, but it became something that I was afraid of. I dread going to bed at night and laying there with the possibility of not falling asleep. I think what ultimately has to take place is you have to not be afraid of it anymore and see it as a friend that it’s always been in your life and that there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just your perception of sleep has changed. Martin Reed: A lot of clients that I work with find it helpful to just reframe the process of going to bed instead of this being now it’s time for sleep. It can just be now it’s time to just relax and rest, just changing the goal because as soon as you make sleep the goal, we’re more likely to put pressure on ourselves. We’re more likely to put effort into the process, these things aren’t helpful, but if we just make… I’m just going to go to bed, rest, relax, see what happens, sometimes that can create those better conditions for sleep because we’re helping to remove our goals and our expectations from that process. Wayne Tan: Yeah. I remember even reading research papers on how there were studies where people were told to try to sleep as quickly as they can, and in the control group, they were just told to sleep. The people who were told simply to sleep slept quicker, whereas the people who were told to actively try to sleep ended up spending more time than they would normally average would spend trying to get to sleep. Sleep, it’s just one of those things just really cannot require effort. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really interesting study, that one, and I like to refer to that one with a lot of the clients that I work with. As soon as we do try, that’s when we struggle the most. In that study you mentioned, I think it was maybe even like college students that slept great. They chose the healthiest people they could find, the people that generally set the best, but as soon as they said, “Right, we’ll give you like $100 or whatever to whoever falls asleep the fastest,” oh man, there was no sleep happening in that group anymore because of that effort. Wayne Tan: Yeah. Yeah. Martin Reed: We’ve talked a lot about the cognitive side, the mind side of things. That’s definitely a big part of the puzzle. We also touched upon a couple of those behavioral changes like you started to allot a little bit less time for sleep. Instead of starting to go to bed really early, maybe start going to bed a little bit later, just to reduce that opportunity for long periods of wakefulness and to build up that biological sleep drive, that natural urge, that pressure to sleep because you’re going to be a wait for longer. Were there any other techniques on the behavioral side that you found to be particularly helpful? Wayne Tan: The idea of going to bed later and spending less time in bed, that definitely does work. I was kind of a skeptic at first. It just seemed so counterintuitive, but it really works there. I don’t remember there was much… I feel like now that so much time has passed since my initial struggle with it, it seems like such a distant past, but I don’t really recall… Aside from just kind of having all these different rituals, which really wasn’t helpful for me, sometimes I like to drink tea at night. I cut that out of my life after I think 5:00. That was something I did, but now that everything’s gone back to normal, I realized that it doesn’t really help no matter how much tea I drink. I can still go to bed because that’s normal for me. I can sleep just fine. That is more of a hygiene than anything. Martin Reed: Yeah. Exactly. I think everyone listening to this is going to identify with those rituals that we try, especially all this sleep hygiene stuff, which isn’t usually helpful once we are at that stage, where we’ve got the chronic insomnia because this is now… We’re in the stage where it’s all those perpetuating factors that are at play. Often those perpetuating factors include all the rituals, “I’m going to try and meditate my way to sleep. I’m going to try this supplement. I’m going to try this tea,” or, “I’m going to take stuff away. I’m going to stop drinking coffee in the morning. I’m going to stop eating a certain food that I really enjoy just in case that could be influencing things.” Martin Reed: Just being able to abandon all those rituals, even if it doesn’t seem to have a direct change or influence on your sleep, first and foremost, in the short term, I have clients that tell me, “Wow, it just fell so liberating just to be able to remove all of that stuff and just make the approach of bedtime less this list of chores that I have to do, that I have to implement. I’ve kind of got that time back now.” Wayne Tan: Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, it’s liberating. It also kind of frees you in a way that you’re not really dependent on it. You really aren’t. You don’t need to do all of those things in order to fall asleep. When I was going through it, like I kind of briefly mentioned earlier I would, if didn’t get this ritual done, at the back of my mind, it just crept up as this question of, “Did I screw it up tonight?” It’s liberating to not have to think about those things and put all these restrictions on yourself. I think certainly there’s a place for them. You shouldn’t drink a giant cup of coffee before you go to bed. It’s certainly not going to be fuel for you to sleep, but it is very much of a behavioral, psychological battle that happens. Martin Reed: Yeah, definitely. You touched upon a good point there. Not only if we miss one of those rituals, that can in turn kind of lead to more worry. That, in effect, can make it more difficult, but even if we try implementing this new ritual or doing something new and then we feel like, “Oh yeah, this is working,” or, “I’m sleeping better now.” If we have a difficult night, then we start to worry that that new thing isn’t working anymore. We get caught up going down the rabbit hole of then looking for an alternative or looking for modifications. It can just be like this endless struggle and this… It can be this real distraction for a lot of people. Wayne Tan: And I absolutely did do that. I absolutely did that. Martin Reed: Yeah. You touched upon this earlier. You said that you found it helpful to just kind of ring fence some time during the day to just… Permission to worry or to freak out or to think about sleep as much as you wanted, just so that instead of it being just spread out across the entire day or trying to battle with those thoughts throughout the day… It can be helpful to set aside a little bit of time. Whenever these thoughts or worries crop up, you just be like, “Okay, I’ve noticed these thoughts or these worries cropping up. I’ll address that let’s say 3:00 this afternoon. I’ll give myself 15 minutes to just worry and think about sleep as much as I can.” Martin Reed: I think it can be helpful, like you touched upon, because it can help shift or just condense the amount of time we’re going to spend worrying down. But I think where it can also be really helpful… I don’t know if this was true for you or not in your experience, but I think it can be helpful as a way to recognize that although thoughts and worries can be difficult and uncomfortable, we don’t necessarily have to fear them or be afraid of them because they’re thought processes that the brain generating. Martin Reed: I think when we specifically allot time to worry, human nature is to try and push those thoughts and those emotions away. But when we are kind of giving our mind permission to generate those thoughts and worries for this set time during the day, I think that can be quite powerful as a way of helping us recognize that these are thoughts. They’re nothing more than that. They’re nothing less than that. They’re just thoughts that the brain wants to generate. Wayne Tan: Yeah, it is. Ironically, I’ve also applied that to my day-to-day life now when I have worries. There are some things that pop up in your personal life and you find yourself spending a lot of time thinking about. This is one thing that I’ve learned to just kind of give myself space to think about it. It’s okay, but not to really obsess. I think that is the key, not to spend your whole day thinking about it. Having that safe time set aside for yourself is important, not to shove it down because ultimately it’s difficult to tell somebody to just forget about your worries and it’ll go away. It’s difficult and you will learn that with time, but kind of being gentle and nice to yourself, I think, is really important to get through it. You have to be nice to yourself and taking away any opportunity to worry is not very nice. Martin Reed: Yeah. What I think would be helpful too is just recognizing… I touched one earlier that all these thoughts and worries are… It’s just your brain trying to look out for you, trying to take care of you. It’s not your brain trying to make you feel awful or miserable, although that can certainly be feelings that these thoughts can generate. I think just recognizing that the brain is looking out for us when it’s generating these thoughts and these feelings, they can definitely feel really uncomfortable. Martin Reed: But at the end of the day, we always get to choose our actions in response to them. We can choose to respond in a way that kind of leads to behaviors that we know, from our own experience, don’t usually make us feel better, don’t really help or we can try something new whereby we recognize, we acknowledge that, “Okay, my brain’s looking out for me, generating all these really difficult thoughts and feelings and emotions, but let’s see if I can take some actions that still help me move toward the kind of life I want to live, to implementing behaviors that might be different, might be helpful. Even though all these thoughts and feelings and emotions are present, even though they are difficult, let’s see if we can control our actions in a different way.” Wayne Tan: Yeah. Yeah. It is difficult. It was difficult living with insomnia. It felt like you were held down by weight. Changing your perspective on life really. It’s such a relief to be able to put down that weight. Martin Reed: Yeah, definitely. One thing that I know that you were keen to talk about, and I’d love to hear a little bit from you about it as well, was… Really what our conversation here has been out is how insomnia follows this common path. It’s pretty typical from person to person. The way we look to address those perpetuating factors is usually pretty similar from person to person. We look to change our behaviors in a way that create better conditions for sleep. We help to explore our relationship with all those thoughts and feelings and emotions that our brain is generating in an attempt to look out for us. Martin Reed: Insomnia is pretty much identical from person to person. The way we tackle it is usually pretty much identical from person to person. I believe that you used your experience dealing with chronic insomnia and changing behaviors and your relationship with thoughts to actually help someone else who was going through something similar. Is that right? Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Wayne Tan: Yeah, yeah. I think ever since I’ve gone through this experience and I’m just… I spent a lot of time and also just kind of looking out to make sure that there are people who aren’t also suffering with this. I know it can be fixed and it’s a terrible thing to just kind of hold onto. Anytime I hear people talk about, “Oh, I’m not sleeping well,” I kind of pursue that and ask them about it, but there was a lady who was kind of going through something very similar to what I was going through at my church. Wayne Tan: The circumstances of how this started may be different, but our experiences are relatively similar and you could probably attest to that. But I just kind of spent what I knew about sleep. I think kind of going through and being done with insomnia has taught me how to communicate that with somebody who’s going through that. I think everybody knows and understands this relationship they have with sleep, but it’s only people who suffered through it who can communicate that. Wayne Tan: This is why I think these podcasts that you host are very important not just for people to understand that there’s people out there who are suffering like they are, but also to allow people like me, who’ve gone through it, to be able to express it in words. I think it’s very difficult sometimes to put into words, but this lady who was spending on the orders of three to four hours of just laying in bed tossing and turning, trying to get to bed. The way she was describing it to me still sounded really like really early stages where she’s really anxious about it. Wayne Tan: That anxiety around sleep was starting to build up. I knew it was a something close and dear to her heart because she brought it up in a prayer group. It was something that was concerning her and something that she wanted to get rid of. I taught her what I knew about sleep and trying to restrict her sleep, kind of the regimen that I went through, but then more importantly, it was kind of communicating with her about this relationship that we have with sleep and how really it’s her perception of it has changed. Ultimately, that’s what she has to kind of undo in order to get rid of it. I’m happy to say she’s gone through it and she’s done with it and now she’s sleeping as she normally does in seven, eight hours of sleep. Martin Reed: Wow. Wayne Tan: I think for people who are going through it, I want to say to them you can get through this. Not only that, this is something you’ll carry with you for the rest of your life. There are days that I still worry about it, but then all of that relationship that I… And thoughts about sleep that I learned through it helps me get through those nights. It’ll not only help you, but also you can use that to help others get through these difficult times. Martin Reed: The reason why I love all these techniques is because they’re skills based really. We’re learning new skills and once we learn new skills, they’re with us forever. We can always just bring them back out anytime we find ourselves struggling again in the future, but I think you’re the first person I had on who’s told me that not only do you feel good because you’ve got all those techniques in your back pocket, but you’ve also been using them to help other people as well. I think that’s really powerful. That’s really interesting and exciting to hear. Wayne Tan: Yeah. I work with patients and sometimes they’ll talk about their sleep. If I think that it’s something chronic, I always kind of mentioned cognitive behavioral therapy as a potential thing that they could look up and pursue because I really do believe in it. I will have to say in the beginning I was a bit of a skeptic because it’s like, “Well, how much can I really change just because of how I think about something or my behavior towards something?” But the mind is a very, very powerful thing. Martin Reed: Yeah, it really is. Well, one thing I’m curious about, so I’m guessing that some other people listening to this would be curious about too, is how you slept in the end on the night before all those exams. How was your sleep? I’m guessing that your performance was good enough. How did that all go in the end? Wayne Tan: I managed to pass boards. Board certified now, practicing in Philly, doing my residency in Philadelphia. My sleep, it did take a while, I would say, before I’ve finally kind of gone back to what I would say baseline to where I was getting my seven, eight hours of sleep. Maybe sometimes even nine if it’s a lazy day. These days, I am waking up earlier, like around 7:00, and going to bed around 11:00 or 12:00 just because your circadian rhythm is also very, very powerful. Ultimately, these days I can’t help but fall asleep when the certain time comes. Wayne Tan: I think that is something going through it you have to rebuild is your circadian rhythm and resetting it in a way that it works for you and not against you. But I can confidently say that I’m getting all the sleep that I’m satisfied with. I don’t need… I think for maybe about six months I was getting six and a half, six, occasionally seven, but I learned to be satisfied with whatever came. I think that’s very important. Then ultimately when that happens, it all kind of sheds and you get to just go back to being normal once you’re satisfied with what you got. Martin Reed: If you can just clarify the timeline for me, when did you end up taking the board exams? Was it before we were together, when we were working together or was that after we were we were done working together? I’m just trying to remember. Wayne Tan: I started working with you. Then maybe about a month or two, then I took boards. It was a very strange time. My board certification was actually due March of 2020. COVID happened, so all of that got delayed. I had that like four-month period where I really didn’t have anything that I had to do because everything was closed and that probably didn’t help my insomnia because it just allowed me to do nothing, but think about it, think about my insomnia. But yeah, during that time I was getting three or four hours of sleep and some nights not even any sleep. I think by the time I was ready to do boards, I was pretty much at that point where I was comfortable getting six hours of sleep. Martin Reed: Specifically, what was… If you remember, how did you sleep the night before it was exam time? Did you have the best night sleep you’ve ever had? Was it like a miracle or was there a little bit of struggle there? Wayne Tan: It’s not a perfect story. Life events can still affect you. Martin Reed: Absolutely. Wayne Tan: You have to tell yourself that it’s okay that you get a bad night of sleep if you’re going through a something really important and stressful, and that’s okay. It’s absolutely okay for yourself to go through that. That happens. Boards came and I did struggle a little bit, but I used what I knew about sleep and calmed myself down and just reminded myself of all of those sayings about sleep. Ultimately, I was able to fall asleep. I think I fell asleep around 1:30 or 2:00. I was happy and I had no issue with that because I knew I can function with even like three or four hours of sleep because I’ve done that before. I function fine with four or five hours of sleep. Wayne Tan: I learned that only because I went through it. I think if I had taken the same boards without going through all of that, I probably would have still struggled to sleep at night. My mindset with four hours of sleep, probably would’ve been very different than after going through insomnia and going through the whole program. Martin Reed: Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s two really big, important points… Well, maybe even more… that you’ve made there, first and foremost being that we’re always going to have difficult nights from time to time. If you’re looking for the best night’s sleep you’ve ever had every single night of your life, that’s something you’re never going to achieve. We’re human beings. When there’s good stuff about to happen or when there’s difficult stuff about to happen, it’s normal for us to experience sleep disruption. Martin Reed: Second of all, we can still do things even after difficult nights. Even after no sleep whatsoever, we can still actually function. It can feel like we can’t function, we’ve lost all ability to function, but if you are still able to breathe and see and hear, then you are functioning even at a most basic level. It’s definitely not to kind of downplay the effects because they can be really difficult. It can feel as though I just have a complete inability to function, but we can function at some level. Martin Reed: Like you said, if we can give ourselves the opportunity to experience it, how capable we might be able to be, by giving things a try, we might surprise ourselves. I was surprised that you said you got much sleep at all the night before the board exams because I know if it was me in that situation, I probably wouldn’t have got one minute of sleep. But my interpretation of that is different. Because I’m not in that in the throes of the insomnia struggle, I would be like, “Yeah, it sucked. I didn’t get any sleep,” but I’d still go to the exam and I’d still feel reasonably confident that I could perform maybe not 100% of my ability, but probably pretty high up there and still do well. Martin Reed: I’ve had clients that have gone through really long periods of awful sleep and done amazing things like really intense job interviews and still passed them, done really intense boot camps, CrossFit, physical competitions and placed really highly. It’s kind of incredible how capable we can be even after really difficult nights. I think it’s helpful to recognize that we’re always going to have difficult nights from time to time and, second of all, that we can still be quite remarkably capable even after difficult nights too. Wayne Tan: Yeah. Yeah. Martin Reed: All right, Wayne. Well, I really appreciate the time that you’ve given up out of your day to talk to us. I feel like you’ve kind of already touched upon this, but this is a question that I ask every guest, and so I want to ask you to. It’s this. If someone with chronic insomnia is listening and feels as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help and that they just can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Wayne Tan: I would say that there isn’t anything wrong with you, that everybody is capable of sleep and everybody is capable of getting good sleep. With that said, I think it’s important to rule out any health issues that you may have, underlying causes that could cause you to experience insomnia. All things said and all of those things are ruled out and you’re just struggling with it, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It does require you to… I don’t want to use the word effort because it’s not… Effort causes sleep to be harder, but it does require you to kind of change your mind about things in how you view sleep. When I was going through it, it really helped me to hear people finally being cured of insomnia. Wayne Tan: It’s strange now that I’m on this side speaking to somebody who may be going through it, but I made it. I went through it and you can too, you really can, and you don’t have to live with it. You can put it down. You can put down this boulder that you’re carrying. It won’t be instantaneous. It will take time for it to happen, so be gentle with yourself, be kind to yourself and just remember that sleep is not an enemy. It’s your friend. You just have to learn to be reacquainted with sleep because you’ve always known it all your life even as a child. You’ve been friends with sleep. Just treat your time going through it as being reacquainted with this person that you just have a warped view of what. Whatever caused a warpage to happen, that can be undone. Martin Reed: That’s great. Well, I think that’s a really great note to end on, so thank you again for taking time to come on and share your experience, Wayne. Wayne Tan: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Martin Reed: Thanks. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life you want to live, I would love to help. You can get started right now by enrolling in my online course or you can book my phone coaching package. My online course runs for six weeks. It will help you make changes that can create better conditions for sleep, it will help you identify and get rid of any behaviors that might be making sleep more difficult, and it will help you respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a more workable way. You can work through the course in two ways. You can choose the self-coaching option and work through it by yourself with the support of an online forum that is available only to clients. Martin Reed: Or, you can choose to add one-on-one email coaching and work through the course with me by your side. With the one-on-one coaching option, you get unlimited email access to me for eight weeks, starting from the day you enroll. Any time you have a question or concern, any time you are unsure about anything, any time you want to focus on the challenges you face or any difficulties that show up, you can email me and I will be there to coach and support you. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com. Martin Reed: With the phone coaching package, we start with a one-hour call (voice only or video — your choice) and come up with an initial two-week plan that will help you create better conditions for sleep and practice moving away from struggling with insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it. You get unlimited email access to me for two weeks after the call and a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) Felicity had struggled with sleep, on and off, for her entire life. Usually, her sleep would get back on track after a few months of sleep disruption — however, when sleep issues returned due to some big life changes, Felicity’s sleep didn’t recover. In an attempt to make sleep happen, Felicity started to spend a lot of time researching sleep. She gave up coffee, she experimented with medication and supplements. She even booked herself into hotels because sleep seemed so impossible in her own bed. Fortunately, Felicity was able to get her sleep back on track and change her mindset about sleep by implementing behaviors that created better conditions for sleep. She practiced self-care and did things that helped her continue to move toward the kind of life she wanted to live, independently of sleep. Felicity did get frustrated with her progress — she felt improvements were not occurring quickly enough. However, because she committed to techniques that help set the stage for sleep and because she was ready, willing, and able to explore her relationship with sleep, Felicity’s sleep did improve. Perhaps most importantly of all, though, Felicity’s entire mindset around sleep changed — she stopped identifying as an insomniac, she started to be kinder to herself whenever difficult nights occurred, and she learned that sleep doesn’t require any effort and doesn’t respond well to effort. Sleep is no longer something that gets in the way of Felicity’s life — she lives her life independently of sleep and, as a result, she is sleeping well and living well. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: 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 Reed: 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 Reed: Hi, Felicity. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. Felicity Jackson: Thanks for having me. Martin Reed: It’s great to have you on. Let’s start right at the beginning, as always. Can you just tell us when your problems with sleep first began and if you’ve got any kind of idea what triggered that sleep disruption? Felicity Jackson: Yep. So, I’ve had issues on and off with sleep my whole life. So, I found, on your podcast, there’s two types of people. There’s the people who’ve had a short term event that’s created their insomnia, and then there’s the other people, like me, who’ve struggled with it on and off your entire life. So, I identified with that. Felicity Jackson: I remember as a young kid we had a family holiday house. All the kids slept in the same room, just stare at the ceiling and irritated by little noises. And then, I’ve had, during university exams or moving house or sleeping in hotels, I’ve always struggled a bit with having short term insomnia, but it always recovered itself. Felicity Jackson: In my mid 20s I went through period about three or four months of having insomnia, and that was after my pop passed away and I moved in with my grandma, and it was a hard time for our family. But that passed and I was pretty much, I guess, symptom free, if you wanted to use that word, for about eight or nine years. Felicity Jackson: And then the pandemic hit last year. And I was actually moving to the US in the March of last year, and I was literally ready to go the next day, had sold up, packed up and everything, and then I had to… I had decided not to go because it was so unstable and the situation in the US wasn’t looking good. So, I ended up moving in with my parents, and luckily, my job took me back. Felicity Jackson: I slept absolutely amazingly living with my parents in my old bed, but I wanted a life change. And Australia’s a big country. I was living in Victoria, which is in the south and I thought I can still have a new adventure. And I’d asked work if I could move to Queensland, which is at the top of Australia. It’s got a better climate. We’ve got good beaches and everything. Felicity Jackson: And the way they’ve handled the pandemic here is they’ve shut state borders. So the state, I’m in Queensland now, still has its border shut to half of Australia. So I was waiting until the border opened for Queensland, but I saw the situation was getting worse in my home state and I thought, I’m not getting stuck here any longer. So I packed a suitcase and I literally flew out to Sydney the next day. And over the next 12 weeks I worked out of hotels. I lived in 12 hotels, I think. Felicity Jackson: I was monitoring the situation every single day waiting for the border to open in Queensland. And I didn’t really know where I was going or where I was going to end up, but it came back pretty much straight away when that started. I didn’t let it worry me too much, because I knew that I was in a high stress situation. But then when I settled in Brisbane, which is the city I live in now, I expected it all to go away because a lot of the stress had gone away, but it didn’t go away. It just continued on and on and I was trying to ignore it, and I was… Felicity Jackson: I thought that I was settled, but in reality I was in a new city, I was in a new office. My relocation wasn’t actually approved, so that was a little bit of a thing with work. And then I decided to get on the dating apps. So I was out living my best life drinking and having a good time and pretending I was 25 again, and it wasn’t improving at all. And then consequent things that have happened over the last 12 months were just perpetuating it so bad that that’s when I ended up reaching out to you. Martin Reed: Yeah. So, what were those nights like more recently when you did that relocation and you found that those sleep issues returned and they seemed to be a bit more stubborn this time and not be going away? Was there a typical night? Was there an average night? Felicity Jackson: Yeah. I’ve gone everything from going to sleep instantly and waking up early, to spending hours trying to get to sleep but being able to sleep in but waking up a lot. I’ve gone through the full gamut. But during that time it was that I would go to sleep pretty fast and I would wake up multiple times. Felicity Jackson: So, I was just accumulating sleep debt. And one of the other times I’ve had insomnia in the past I got very depressed because of it. So when I got it this time I was determined not to do that, so I still was out. I never canceled any social things, but it just wasn’t helping. Going to bed at midnight one night and 8:00 PM the next night, obviously, that wasn’t helping either, but it was just those early morning wakenings and just the constant aching of my legs and headaches. Felicity Jackson: Also, I came from a city where it’s like a late night, late morning place, to living here where the suns rises at 4:30 in the morning. So, my normal sleep was I’d go to bed at 11:00 and I’d get up at 7:00. But then here I’m going to bed 11:00 and then I’m waking up at 4:30 and it’s broad daylight. And so I was almost in this jet lag state, and then I can’t get back to sleep when it’s broad daylight. It’s just against your body clock. So, I go to bed at like 8:30 now. So I’ve adjusted, but yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. So, back before you reached out to me, what kind of things… Were you doing anything? When you moved, you relocated, this insomnia came back, the struggle seemed to happen again. What kind of things did you try to do or to change to try and fix the situation that now you’re able to look back on it, probably weren’t that helpful? Felicity Jackson: So, I gave up coffee, which I loved and still love and also didn’t drink excessively. I would have one in the morning. I was on an endless research project to the point where I was studying brain scans from scientific studies and I was research… And obvious, when you read that having insomnia is going to give you basically every degenerative brain disease there is, that doesn’t help. Felicity Jackson: I would avoid sleeping in my own bed, so I would book hotels a couple of kilometers away from me just so that I didn’t have to sleep in my own bed or I’d go home to see my mom to sleep in that… I call it the magic bed where I had nine hours sleep every night. Oh, what else did I do? Going bed early, going to bed late, and then I tried all the herbs. Felicity Jackson: I tried sleeping pills. So they didn’t… I mean, they don’t work. So every little thing I tried that I mentioned worked briefly, and then it stops working. So the herbal ones, and then I even tried anti-depression medication, even though I don’t have depression. And what I found with that was that rather than having racing thoughts I just had no thoughts, but I still wasn’t getting to sleep. Felicity Jackson: So it was, I just try. Even during my recovery I’ve gone through phases of wanting to sleep in the same bed as my partner, to not wanting to sleep in the same bed as my partner, to just so many different little vices that I tried and they just had this short term or no effect. It’s actually really hard to get sleeping medications and stuff in Australia, so it was a bit of a… you need to have a long term relationship with a doctor, and you need to show that you’re getting therapy and stuff, and I didn’t have that here. Felicity Jackson: So when I moved to Brisbane getting sleeping pills stopped really becoming an option for me, which was probably a positive, because I found that, yeah, I might get seven hours sleep with a sleeping pill, but I’m dealing with this hangover of the pill as well, so I might as well just take the five hours and no pill side effects, than the seven hours where you’re feeling groggy and crap. Martin Reed: Yeah. Exactly. I think it’s quite ironic the way you described those side effects, because often a lot of our concern about sleep is based on how we feel the next day during the day when we’re awake. It just feels really unpleasant. We can feel groggy and maybe confused, that brain fog, and yet at the same… so we reach for a medication or a supplement or something like that that oftentimes can come with those very side effects that we’re taking them for to try and avoid. That’s why they can become such a double edged sword. Felicity Jackson: I used to suffer from really bad jet lag, so I might get somewhere in a really different time zone and it might take me a week of my holiday to recover. And I found that one time I did take sleeping tablets and it was just a game changer. I took them for a couple of nights and I was back. But when you’re on holidays you’re not researching sleep, right? You’re out enjoying yourself and- Martin Reed: Yeah. And just that change of environment as well. We can easily just associate our own beds or our own sleeping environment with that struggle. And so we can feel really sleepy, ready for sleep, and then we go into our bedroom and the brain is like, uh-oh, this is where bad things happen, wakey, wakey time, whereas when we go on vacation or, like you described, go into a different environment, a different hotel room, or go to your parents’ house, sometimes we can sleep. Martin Reed: But I think it’s one of those things that can sometimes be helpful in the short term, but over the longer term it’s one of those things, it worked at first, why is it not working now? And the reason it’s not working over the longer term is because it doesn’t really get to the root of the problem. Felicity Jackson: Yeah. Well, actually, all of my things failing, particularly the hotel one was the most stubborn, because that was something that I was doing a lot, which is quite expensive! Also, because I don’t like any noise or any traffic noise, so I’m like, you have to go five star basically to get that, but during my recovery the more that stuff stopped working, I think, the closer I was to coming good, because I thought… The first night that I couldn’t sleep in a hotel I was like, oh, well, that’s gone now, I might as well persist with my own bed. Martin Reed: Yeah. That’s a great way of looking at it. And I think we’ve opened this discussion really well, because I think a lot of people are going to identify with different aspects of everything you’ve described. A lot of people recognize that they would sleep on and off, have some little patches of sleep difficulties for as long as they can remember, whereas other people don’t. They’re like, this insomnia just strikes. Both are equally normal, so to speak. Martin Reed: But then we get this time where the sleep disruption occurs and, for some reason, it doesn’t disappear, and that’s where we are most likely to get caught up in the struggle. And that’s when we start doing all those things to try and fix the problem, understandably, and they all make sense when we’re doing them. I want to get more sleep, so I’m going to go to bed earlier, for example. Martin Reed: All these things that we do to try and fix the problem, but they backfire on us and they actually perpetuate the problem. That’s like filling up an oxygen tank, putting the mask onto insomnia, putting insomnia into intensive care, and looking after it saying, “Never leave me. Stay with me forever.” That’s the effect it can have. Martin Reed: And so, what we look to do in terms of effective long term solutions is to just address those perpetuating factors, so changing our behaviors in a way that helps create better conditions for sleep and exploring all those thought processes that we have about sleep, our relationship with our thoughts, not necessarily trying to dispute them or to push them away, but just to change the way that we live our lives with the brain broadcasting all those thoughts in the background. Martin Reed: And so, basically, that’s the more theoretical side of it, which you’ve just explained perfectly in practical terms. There was some sleep disruption every now and then, it stuck around, I gave up coffee, I started to book hotels, I did this, I tried supplements, I tried sleeping pills, all those changes, and over the long term they’re not helpful. And then we end up worrying more because all these things we are trying are not proving to be helpful. It just becomes such a vicious cycle, doesn’t it? Felicity Jackson: Yeah, that’s right. And just things like the sleepy time tea, and if you look at the ingredients of that, it’s just like chamomile and something else. And you just, I’m like, that does… I reckon a lot of those things, they help a good sleeper have an even better sleep potentially, even though that might be placebo as well, but when you’ve got chronic insomnia it’s, yeah, they work for a couple of days and then your anxiety gets even worse, because then they’ve stopped working, and then you just think nothing’s going to work. I’m going to be trapped in this hell forever. Martin Reed: Yeah. It is difficult. Although we don’t see sleepy time teas, for example, listed as something we see included in these sleep hygiene rules and rituals, they’re pretty much just another one of those things. Maybe they can be helpful if you’re already sleeping pretty well, you’re just looking for a little bit more optimization or a little bit more relaxation or something like that. But by the time we are dealing with the more entrenched insomnia, the sleepy time tea or supplements or things like that probably aren’t going to make much difference. Martin Reed: And that’s another area where we can get trapped, is adding those rituals, for example, sleepy time tea, but also, taking things away from ourselves that we enjoy. So like, for example, you said you really enjoyed coffee. That was one of the first things you gave up, I’m going to give up the coffee now. Martin Reed: So, it’s probably not going to have any influence on your sleep unless you’re drinking 12 gallons of it a day all the way up until midnight. But what it is doing is it’s training you, well, first of all, we’re taking away something positive from our lives, we’re taking away a plus, and second of all, we’re training ourselves that sleep is having a negative influence on our lives. I’ve got to sleep, because if I don’t sleep now, I’ve taken coffee away, what else am I going to have to take away? I’m going to have to take away going to the gym, or I’m going to have to take away going out with friends. Martin Reed: And before you know it, it’s just completely taken over your life and you’re just sitting in your room not doing anything. And that in itself still doesn’t help. It’s like our brain wants to do a deal with us, do this and you’ll feel better. So you do it. You might feel a little bit better right away, but then over the longer term it’s not really helping you feel any better. Felicity Jackson: Oh, I also got into a really bad habit of the lunchtime nap. And when we went back to the office after the… when they all opened up again, I was on this roster of one week in the office, one week not in the office. And I got to the point where, when I was in the office, I was sneaking home at lunchtime and things like that, and I just thought, oh, this is just not… Felicity Jackson: And then that would increase my anxiety. I’m like, what if my boss notices and I’m not there? I was lying and saying there was a tradesman coming over when there wasn’t, and I was like, this is just not helping the situation at all. And as a 35 year old woman, having a daytime nap’s just not acceptable. Well, I’m not living in Spain and running a late night restaurant having a siesta. Martin Reed: Yeah, it’s interesting that… talking about the naps, they can really be tricky because if we are someone that’s always had these short naps in the day even before we were struggling with insomnia, then maybe we don’t necessarily have to give them up if it’s one of those things that we enjoy. But the reason why we usually suggest trying to resist that urge to nap during the day is because when we nap during the day, if we sleep, we are relieving some of that sleep drive. Martin Reed: So if we just imagine sleep drive is like blowing air into a balloon, every minute of wakefulness we’re blowing air into that balloon, and the idea is when that balloon is really full we go to bed, it bursts, and we sleep. If we nap during the day we are letting air out of that balloon. By the time we go to bed then we got a floppy saggy balloon, probably not going to help with sleep. Martin Reed: But then, if we try to nap because we’ve had some bad nights, going through a bad patch of sleep, not got any sleep, and then we still don’t sleep, then we get even more worried because now I can’t even nap, so what is going on? Felicity Jackson: And you put your focus on the nighttime sleep, you have to get that good sleep, and then you don’t. Martin Reed: Yeah. Exactly. And where we can get tripped up then… I think where I see people with chronic insomnia often getting tripped up in terms of the daytime naps is people with chronic insomnia nap because they want to sleep. They’re desperate for sleep. They want sleep to happen. People without chronic insomnia nap because they’re sleepy. They’re actually finding it hard to stay awake. Martin Reed: And that might sound interesting to say, and people might be listening to this thinking, well, of course I’m sleepy, I’ve got insomnia. But the interesting thing with people with chronic insomnia is, we use this phrase, tired but wired, which has more to do with fatigue. Felicity Jackson: 100%. Martin Reed: So we can be really tired but our brain is wired, it’s keeping us going. And so, conditions aren’t usually right for napping for people with chronic insomnia. Most clients that I work with, when they try to nap, they’re not usually very successful at generating sleep. And I think it comes down to that intent, which is the second part of what I wanted to just quickly touch upon. What is our intent with anything? Martin Reed: When our intent is sleep, whether it’s listening to a relaxation session, if our goal is sleep, if we are napping because we want sleep rather than because we’re sleepy, if we are taking a supplement because the goal is sleep, all these things are unhelpful because they’re sleep efforts and they imply that we can control sleep. We can’t control sleep. We can definitely create better conditions for sleep, but we can’t wave a magic wand and make sleep happen. Nothing can do that. Martin Reed: And whenever we engage in a sleep effort, we’re also telling the mind, okay, I’m trying this, let’s see if it works. And so the mind is always a few notches higher now to see, okay, so tonight we took a melatonin at seven o’clock, we did a sleepy time tea at 7:23, we took a bath, the bath temperature was 98 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius, we used this certain brand of smelling salts, let’s see if that’s the secret sauce. And that increases the arousal and often just creates less favorable conditions for sleep. Felicity Jackson: I remember one day I fell asleep on the beach. I was so relaxed, which was extremely rare for that time, and I emailed you and I said, “Oh, I just ruined everything. I fell asleep on the beach.” And you did say, you were like, “Well, if it happened, it just happened.” Felicity Jackson: And I take that now that, say, it’s a Saturday and I’ve got up really early, and I’ve gone to the gym, and I’ve been at the market, and I’ve got something on that night, and I think, oh God, I just love to lie down and relax. Felicity Jackson: And sometimes I do indulge in a bit of a nap like that, but I always make that intention… I always think about what my intention is, and if my intention is to catch up on sleep, then I will not allow myself to have a nap. But if the intention is to just relax and just have a… when I’m actually feeling sleepy, I’ll do it. Martin Reed: Yeah. And I think that’s an important distinction to make, right, because when we are in the throes of insomnia we tend to find that a lot of our behaviors are centered on that intention of making sleep happen. And when we get to this point where we can move away from those sleep efforts, that attempt to control sleep, that attempt to make sleep happen, we can definitely start engaging in some more experiments and becoming a little bit more relaxed around it. Martin Reed: As our mindset changes, our behaviors can also change. And, like you said, I think a lot of it does just come down to our intent. And all of these techniques I talk about on the podcast and when I’m working with clients, these aren’t necessarily things that we are looking to be implementing for the rest of our lives. They’re just a way of getting us back on track, being aware of how our behaviors can influence sleep and how our relationship with our thoughts can influence sleep. Martin Reed: Once we’ve got that knowledge under our belt, we typically start to sleep a lot better or feel a bit more comfortable about our sleep. And then we can start, what’s the best term for it, just getting back to not having concern about sleep rule our behaviors. But we’ve always got those skills in our back pockets, so if ever we find ourselves struggling again, we can just pull them back out and just start implementing them again. Felicity Jackson: Yeah. 100%. And you do over and over and over again. Even on a weekly basis you’re pulling out those techniques just to bring you back on track, and just always having that. Felicity Jackson: Another thing you said to me was that you’ve never seen a unique case of insomnia. And I just thought that I found that so helpful that if you could basically see an improvement in everyone, even some of the people you’ve had on your podcast have been suffering within insomnia for like 20 years. And I thought if someone like that can… or, number one, I’m like, how terrible that they didn’t have the treatment options available to them. Felicity Jackson: But also, yeah, if you can help someone who’s had it for 20 years and who’s having multiple nights of no sleep every single week, then it will work for me. And knowing that was really comforting as well. Martin Reed: Yeah. I mean, I think it is comforting because… especially if we are one of, going back to what I was saying earlier, if you’re one of these people that have never struggled with sleep disruption before and then suddenly it just appears out of nowhere and it just seems to stick around, it can be really worrying. You can easily believe that there’s something uniquely wrong, that you are the only person with this issue, but there are many, many people out there going through exactly what you’re going through. Martin Reed: Everyone’s individual circumstances are probably unique, but the behavior of insomnia, how insomnia works, the influence it has, the way it affects our sleep, the way it affects our daytime lives is virtually identical from person to person. And like you said, I’m still waiting to work with a client or to receive an email from someone who tells me something I’ve not heard before, because… Martin Reed: That’s definitely not to belittle what people with insomnia are going through. It is just to reassure that, from person to person, insomnia is pretty much identical. And that means that if insomnia from person to person is identical, these techniques that have helped other people with the same insomnia as you are almost certainly going to help you too. Felicity Jackson: Yeah. Martin Reed: So let’s talk about some of these techniques. So we got a lot of the background stuff out of the way. When we were working together, what kind of, let’s start with the behavioral change side of things, what kind of new behaviors did you implement and find were particularly helpful for you? Felicity Jackson: I found the most helpful technique, and it’s something that I practice now, was the stimulus control. So the getting out of bed. Just to break that stimulus of… or break that association of having a frustration with the bed. And I still probably use this technique every week. If I’m thinking that, oh, I’m feeling anxious and I get out of bed. And it works nine times out of 10 that you go back to bed, or you might have to do it twice, and then you go straight to sleep. Felicity Jackson: So, that was the most helpful, and that was not something that I was doing at all. But then the sleep restriction, I think that helped because I was going to bed at such erratic times. That really helped, even though I was religiously waking up at 4:00 every day annoyingly, but I was going to bed all these different times and just having that rigidity of not having to worry about, am I going to get eight hours, am I going to get nine hours, am I going to get 10 hours, even though getting 10 hours is not something I’d ever done. All of a sudden I was striving to get this 10 hours. Felicity Jackson: And yeah, so probably I’d noticed small changes every week, and this is something we were going to talk about about how I didn’t see instantaneous results, which is what I like. And my personality as well is… and I’ve got friends who are in similar roles to me, so I’m in sales, which is already a stimulating job. You’re doing sales, you’re losing sales. Felicity Jackson: I run a big team of 30 people, and I speak to people with personalities like mine. And so many of them in the corporate world, we’re all the same, this kind of personality that’s like always on. I open my eyes and I’m there and I don’t have any sleep inertia and stuff. Yeah. So probably not having to worry about that timing of going to bed and getting awake and waking up, knowing when I was getting up. Felicity Jackson: That alleviated a bit of the anxiety of it, because I wasn’t striving for sleep anymore. I was just saying, well, I’ll get this much sleep or I won’t, and I’m going to get up and enjoy my day. And yeah, I expected really quick results. I probably just… I saw small incremental improvements every single week. Felicity Jackson: And I was on your forums thinking, why haven’t I had this magic cure that some of your other guests, this is probably just my assumption because you make an extraordinary number of assumptions as well when you have insomnia, is that the program worked in six weeks for some people, I’m five, six weeks in and I’m still… I might have gone from, say, four and a half, five hours to like five hours and 45 minutes or six hours, but I was still… I expected a miracle cure. I wanted fast results. Felicity Jackson: Normally, if I don’t get results in something I just, fail fast, move on, but this was not the technique that I could use. I had to persist. I had to have faith and… Yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. It’s funny you said that, because I was working with a client recently, and here’s what I find in my own experience, is the clients that come to me expecting this to take time tend to get results the quickest, the ones who start working with me and they’re quite understandably really keen to get faster results, things to turn around really quickly, they’re the ones that tend to struggle a little bit more and it takes longer for them to get the results. Martin Reed: And I think it just comes down to the effort again. It’s our natural human inclination to put effort into a problem to fix it, but the problem is sleep doesn’t respond well to effort. We cannot control sleep. It’s like with any goal. We cannot make ourselves reach a goal, but we can control our journey toward that goal. Martin Reed: So, I might want to be… When I was a kid, let’s say this, when I was a child I wanted to be a pilot of Concorde, the supersonic jet liner that’s not around anymore. So it turns out I made a good choice abandoning that. But anyway, I had that goal, but I couldn’t make myself become pilot of Concord, but I could go to school, I could join the air cadets as a teenager. There are all these things that I could control towards that journey, but I couldn’t control the actual goal, reaching that goal, that outcome, and it’s like that with sleep and within insomnia. Martin Reed: We can control our behaviors in terms of making sure we’re not spending 10 hours in bed when we are averaging four or five hours of sleep. We can try and go about our days as normally as possible, try and avoid those safety behaviors. We can control all these actions, but we can’t control sleep itself. Martin Reed: So if we can focus all of our attention on the actions, on the process side of things and just leave the outcome to just do what it’s doing, that’s when we tend to get the best results, and actually, ironically, the faster the results, because we are not focused on what we cannot control. We’re more focused on what we can control. Martin Reed: And it does take time though, at the same time. And I think the fact that you’ve identified stimulus control as being one of those really helpful techniques is a good illustration of that, because for people not familiar with the technique, what we often see, as we touched upon right at the start of this episode, was we can learn to associate our beds with unpleasant wakefulness, tossing and turning, anxiety, stress, and worry. And so our brain is like, all right, bed no longer equals sleep, relaxation, coziness, bed equals danger, risk, there’s going to be… It’s almost like when you’re a kid, is there someone hiding under the bed? And you start to freak out. Martin Reed: So what we want to do is just… the good news is that’s learned, right? It’s learned association. So it can be unlearned or we can relearn the original association of bed equals a nice place to be. And we can do that by just doing whatever it takes to make being awake in bed or just being awake at night a bit more pleasant. Martin Reed: And just as it took time to learn that the bed is not a nice place to be, it does take time to relearn that the bed can be a nice place to be. Although, it’s usually not… doesn’t take as long, it still does take time. So I think we do have to have realistic expectations too. Martin Reed: Let’s say you had insomnia for like 10 years, 20 years, you’re probably not going to turn it on its head in four weeks. It’s probably going to take longer. And I have clients that I finish working with them at, say, around eight weeks, there’s been some small improvements, and then I hear back from them in a month’s time or three months later and they’re like, “I kept on going and I got my transformation.” Martin Reed: So, it really can take a long amount of time. And I think if you come into it with the assumption that it will take time, that these changes can be difficult, especially in the short term, and although we can’t control the outcome, we can control the process, I think that can be really helpful. Felicity Jackson: I found that it did get worse at the start in terms of I was getting even less sleep. And even though I knew that I’d discussed that with you and you said that that’s normal, it’s just hard when you’ve got that every day and you are going to work and trying to not cancel on plans or anything. But when you’re just, yeah, getting those headaches and those body aches. Felicity Jackson: And then I ended up taking paracetamol and things like that. And then you wonder if that’s going to erode your liver. And you just got all this constant, even though I don’t think it does if you take two paracetamol a day. It’s just a bit of a myth. But I actually, it was only really about two months ago that I really started to be able to shift from associating a bad night’s sleep with having a sleep disorder, to associating anxiety about sleeping more to things that are going on in my daily life that actually have nothing to do with sleep. Felicity Jackson: And what that brought that on, and it’s just an extension of everything I’d learned from you, was that I did this leadership course, and it was three days. It was two nights staying at this hotel, which I was looking forward to because… This was actually when the hotel vice stopped working for me. And part of the leadership course was on the self-limiting identities. And this could be anything in work, right? This could be, I’m not smart enough, I’m not confident enough, I’m not good looking enough, whatever you are. Felicity Jackson: And I started to think about how I identified so strongly as an insomniac and how that was, I think, holding me back from really being able to move forward properly. And because I couldn’t help myself I ended up researching. I put insomnia identity in Google, and it came up with this study that said that people who had participated in this study had identified as insomniacs. And what this study found was over a third of them didn’t even have insomnia. Medically, they couldn’t even be diagnosed with it. Felicity Jackson: And I thought, oh, I’ve had three bad night’s sleep out of… in a fortnight, I don’t even have insomnia, I’m walking around saying I’m insomniac and I’m actually not. And I had a bad night, really bad night’s sleep that night at the course and I was just going down the spiral again, it’s going to come back, I’m going to go back to that hell, it’s all been for nothing, I’ll never get better, all the other people on the podcast got better, but I won’t. Felicity Jackson: And interestingly, the facilitator of the course, so there were 15 people doing the course, and she said, “Who had a good night’s sleep last night?” In the meantime, I’d just verbal vomited to her about my insomnia that morning. And two people put up their hand, out of 15. Two people had a good night’s sleep. Felicity Jackson: And I looked around, and I go to bed at 8:30, the course went until 9:30. It was talking about your self limiting beliefs and all of this real introspection. And I just looked around and I thought, I’m the only one spiraling out of control here, but I didn’t have a worse night than anyone else here. And they were just looking at it as a one off event. I had a bad night’s sleep last night, how shit, whereas I’m like, oh, I’m just going down this spiral of these negative thoughts. And after that I started to think that… Felicity Jackson: So I’ve just moved house a couple of weeks ago, and there were a couple of nights where I thought I’m not going to have a good night’s sleep, but I was able to say, well, you’ve just moved house, you’ve just moved in with your partner, I’m sleeping in a bed with him every night now, I’m sleep in a different bed, we’re still settling in, there’s boxes everywhere, yeah, you might have a bad night’s sleep, you probably will, but it’ll pass, just like it has the other times. Felicity Jackson: And even if it does, yeah, it’s not a permanent thing. And now that I’ve had that mental thing that I’d actually don’t… I’ve recovered from my sleep disorder, I can really disassociate that from any anxieties that I’d be feeling in the day. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think that’s a really interesting topic, how the role of insomnia identity plays into everything. There was a study that I recently read and it found that people that identified as insomniacs, that in itself was more predictive of what we call daytime impairment, more difficult days, than poor sleep was. So, just to repeat that, just having that insomnia identity was more predictive of daytime impairment than how you sleep. Martin Reed: So, I think there’s definitely something to having this identity, which we naturally as human beings, we’re going to form that identity, especially when we’ve had insomnia for long periods of time. But that means that it’s like this lower hanging fruit that maybe if we can tackle that and give ourselves a new more helpful, more constructive identity, that that can be helpful. Felicity Jackson: I kind of think of it as a bit like, say if you’ve had a history of a bad depression and you have one bad day where you had a shitty day, you think, oh, my depression’s coming back, whereas with me I’m like, I had a bad day, I’m going to get a pizza, I’m going to get some chocolate, I’m going to watch Netflix and think about my… drown my sorrows in this ice cream and tomorrow I’ll have a great day. I don’t think of it as anything that’s going to stick around. Felicity Jackson: And I’m trying to think about that a bit like looking at insomnia like that. Yeah, I had a bad night’s sleep. It was just a bad night’s sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah. And that’s the thing. I think, especially if we can remember a time in our past when we had some sleep disruption and it didn’t really affect us but all of a sudden now it is, often it does come down to our interpretation of what it means to have those difficult nights. Martin Reed: Back in the past maybe insomnia didn’t stick around because, precisely because we didn’t really pay much attention to having some difficult nights. But of course, we’re all human, when those difficult nights stick around, then we are going to start to get a bit more worried about them, and then that can feed into that negative cycle. Martin Reed: But really all these thoughts mean… I think we need to recognize that all these thoughts, whether they’re constructive or not, they’re all just our minds looking out for us. So when the mind’s like, if you don’t sleep tomorrow will be awful, you might lose your job, you’re going to get fired, you’re never going to make it through your day, you’re going to be a bad mom, you’re going to be a bad teacher, whatever. These are all our brain looking out for us, being… Martin Reed: It’s like having that really over enthusiastic really intense friend that’s just always calling you up, “How are you doing? How are you doing? How do you feel about that?”, just over and over. And our minds are like that. Our mind is trying so hard to give us the best life possible that it’s actually getting in our way. So we can’t control those thoughts because our brain is always going to want to look out for us. None of us will be alive today if it wasn’t for our brains wanting to look out for us. Martin Reed: But where we can make a difference is how we respond to those thoughts. Do we let those thoughts take over all of our actions and all our behaviors and move us away from the life we want to live, or do we recognize those thoughts as thanks, Brian, you’re looking out for me, doesn’t make me feel good but I realize you’re looking out for me, taking a step back, maybe you’re taking a moment, and then deciding how to respond. Martin Reed: Are you going to respond in a way that moves you away from your values, now I’m going to cancel that night out with friends, or are you going to still go out with friends, live according to your values, even with that megaphone in the background, your brain, looking out for you? Felicity Jackson: Yeah. There was one podcast you did, Celia, and she really kind of… I resonated with her, and she was someone who’d had sleep issues her whole life. Felicity Jackson: And she said a couple of things that really resonate with me. The first one was that her husband says to her that things are so much better than they used to be. And I think about that all the time when I’m like, oh, I’ve had a couple of bad nights, which is fewer and far between now. I always think that it’s so much better than it used to be. And the second one she said was that she had an obsession with being cured. So, I mean, this program is going to cure me, and once I let go of that… Felicity Jackson: It was funny that day that you released the podcast with Celia because I’d had quite a bad run of a couple of nights, and then I woke up and I looked at my phone and I think you’d sent an email saying that there was a new podcast and with Celia and I thought, I’ll listen to that. Felicity Jackson: And, yeah, just so many of the things she said was just… it was just like that serendipitous timing where… But the obsession with being cured, I let go of that because I thought, I’ve had this for so many times, or I’ve memories of this sleeping stuff since I was about eight years old, I’m never going to be cured, it’ll probably come back at some point or even in a short term capacity. But I think the way that I react to it is going to determine whether it sticks around for a couple of days or a couple of months. Martin Reed: Yeah. Exactly. What I really liked when I was talking to Celia was she just completely changed her mindset and she was just like, look, there is no cure. She just changed her mindset so that, look, there’s no cure. And what I liked about that was, I think she had framed it in a way that was like, look, there’s no cure to sleep disruption from time to time, it’s going to affect… it affects every human being on the planet, it’s going to affect me from time to time. Martin Reed: There’s no cure for that. We cannot eliminate every single potential trigger for sleep disruption. There’s probably like 10 billion of them, probably more. We can’t live our lives trying to eliminate all those potential triggers, but what we can do is make sure that we are not going to feed them, we’re not going to be that oxygen tank for the insomnia to stick around for longer than it needs to. Martin Reed: And we can also do things, no matter how small. Even if we’re really struggling, no matter how small, we can take tiny baby steps towards living the kind of life we want to live, even when we have difficult nights, even over really sustained period of times. There are still tiny teeny things that we can do that give the middle finger to insomnia and say that, hey, even though you’re doing this to me, I can still do this for myself. And I think that is a big mindset change that can be helpful. Felicity Jackson: Yeah. And I think if I’m going to have a job where for nine hours a day it’s full on, full on, full on and not stimulating, then I need to balance that out with other… and I think that’s where I haven’t done that in the past necessarily. And so, I look at it more as self care. I don’t look at it as things to stop the insomnia coming back. I just look at it as, well, I need to look after myself and, otherwise, I should get a more stress free job, even though I don’t know where that exists, but… And then, if I get a different job because of my insomnia, then we’re just back at square on that. Martin Reed: Right. Felicity Jackson: Letting it rule your life again. Martin Reed: Yeah. It can be really easy to end up getting caught up in that trap again, right, because it’s so easy to just suddenly be like… Well, I think what it is is because our brain is just so keen to look out for us. It’s always going to have those statements to give us like, oh, maybe if you stay home tonight, you’re feeling pretty stressed, stay home tonight, you’ll feel better and maybe you’ll sleep great, and it’s really easy to… Sometimes those thoughts can be really helpful when we listen to them and implement what our brain is telling us, but sometimes they can’t. Martin Reed: So it’s definitely a balancing activity. It can be tricky. And one of the things I see in clients that have really made that transformational change is they’re just less, what’s the phrase used, less reactive to the thoughts, better able to recognize that all these thoughts going on in the mind are thoughts and that we always get to choose how we want to react to them. Martin Reed: And we can react in a way that’s, going back to values, because I think it’s easy to illustrate, we can react in a way that’s not really aligned with our values or we can react in a way that is aligned with our values, even though our mind might be telling us not to go in that direction. Yeah. Felicity Jackson: Yeah. Definitely. Martin Reed: One thing that I do just quickly want to just circle back on, because I know it’s something that you were also keen to talk about, was just how this process can take time, that it is a journey. We’re never going to change. We can definitely change our behaviors overnight, but we’re probably not going to get results overnight, but changing our mindset, that definitely usually takes a lot longer. Martin Reed: Can you just tell us a little bit more about what that process was like for you? I think you touched upon earlier that it was… you were seeing these incremental improvements over months and months, but it’s only now more recently that you feel you’ve really hit that real turning point. Felicity Jackson: So we started, I mean, I first reached out to you about 12 months ago, and I started the program. And we both decided that I should stop and wait until I was really ready to do it, because I was trying to do sleep diary but I was in the midst of my little dating experiment, and I had a lot of social things on that I was… Felicity Jackson: In that 12 weeks that I was moving up to Queensland, I was on my own nearly the whole time, and that was just… it’s not healthy as a human to be like that. But particularly as an extroverted person, it took a bit of a toll on me. And then when I got to Brisbane, I was just taking every social invitation. I was so excited to be there. Felicity Jackson: And so, that was when I was going to bed at 11:00 and then 8:00 and then I just couldn’t commit to it, and we decided that I would pause it. And then I picked it up at the end of January, and this was just a better time for me. It was much more calm. I’d settled in to where I was. There wasn’t all the Christmas social activities going on. And so, I could commit to the program fully then. Felicity Jackson: So I think that’s a really important part of just making sure that you’re ready to do it and that you’ve 100% committed, otherwise, it won’t work. But yeah, it was just such slow changes that just required so much persistence just to keep having faith that I would get results if I continued along the path. And yeah. Felicity Jackson: I actually did break the deal and do a little bit of research on recovery, insomnia recovery. And that also helped me as well, because it really said that you’re not really expected to have full confidence until probably six plus months after you’ve done a period of, I guess, cognitive behavioral therapy and the sleep restriction. Felicity Jackson: And I think that really helped me as well, because I thought, oh, I am tracking to a timeline of the recovery that I was just expecting to be cured within the eight week program, and having a bit of a… I ended up having a video call with you probably in June-ish, and that got me back on track as well, but I also got a promotion during that time, just to add another layer of stress, and a new relationship. Felicity Jackson: And I got to the point where I’d reached the level of my stress, and I took a couple of weeks off work. I took three weeks off work, and that was just a huge benefit as well. I took it as leave, and that just allowed me to take one stimulating thing out of my life and get my stress levels down. And that really helped as well, because it was just… it was an uphill battle trying to control my insomnia when… or not control my insomnia. It’s a terrible way to put it. But to focus on my recovery from the chronic insomnia while having so many external stimulating things coming at me still, and I think just having those couple weeks off. Felicity Jackson: But I know that that’s not possible for everyone, but I took it as like, I’m going to have a holiday, I’m just going to do some things for myself and relax. And, as a result of that, the first couple of days got even worse, just like, I was still in the research projects and everything. But then I started to exercise again, which is another thing I’d given up. I started to exercise again. And I started to just do more calming things like having a few massages and stuff. And that got my stress levels down to a point where I could go back to getting up at the same time every day. And that really helped as well. Felicity Jackson: It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve just moved and I haven’t had really any bad… I’ve had a couple of slightly shorter sleeps, but I’m getting around the seven, eight hour sleep now. I had a couple of six night hours sleep, but… And I need that seven, seven and a half to feel rested. I’m not one of these lucky people who can sustain themselves on five hour sleep, but I haven’t had any of those periods where it just goes to having four hours then three hours then none and the spiraling despair. Felicity Jackson: It’s kind of, I’ve been able to bounce back, and I really just focused on that. Well, I’m still a little bit shaky about my confidence with sleep, but it’ll only get… Yeah. As Celia said, things are so much better than they used to be, and that’s what you just have to keep thinking and yeah. Felicity Jackson: I came across the techniques that you teach initially, because I started seeing a sleep psychologist here, and I ended up going with your program because he became progressively… the ability to talk to you every day, that was huge for me, just being able to say, “Oh, my sleep schedule is until 5:30, but what if I wake up at 10 past five, should I stay in bed another 20 minutes or should I get up, or what if I do this, or what if I do that?” Felicity Jackson: That was so good, just to have that constant support, because what I found with my sleep psychologist, and this is just a wonderful thing about the pandemic, is that he became so busy because there was such a big increase in insomnia during the pandemic that I couldn’t… I used to be able to get in with him once a week, and it got to the point where I couldn’t get in to see him for five weeks at a time, and it’s just not enough. It wasn’t enough support. And he even told me that it’s got a phrase, coronasomnia. And it’s just like an epidemic now. Martin Reed:Yeah. So much good stuff there. I think what I liked was making sure that if you’re ready to make some changes, to create these better conditions for sleep, it’s important to recognize that some changes are going to need to be made, right, and sometimes life… we might not be ready for that, whether life is really hectic for us right now if we relocate and we’re just starting a new job or something like that, maybe now isn’t the right time. Martin Reed: So, choosing a time that’s appropriate to start, but also recognizing there’s probably never any perfect time. It’s kind of like choosing when to have of kids. If you’re someone that wants to have kids and you’re waiting for the perfect time, that perfect time is probably never going to turn up. But recognizing that it does require change, so am I in a place right now where I’m ready to make those changes and really commit to doing something new, something different? Martin Reed: And then taking time off work. I think that’s one of these potential double edged sword things, right? And I think it worked really well for you because you used it as a time to do good stuff. So you started to get back into doing all the stuff that was aligned with your values, that made you feel good. You didn’t spend all of that time just lying in bed, I need to sleep, I need to sleep. Felicity Jackson: No. Martin Reed: I need to sleep. Felicity Jackson: None of that. Martin Reed: And that’s a trap we can fall into. We think, oh, take a couple of weeks off work, then what normally happens is we just have a whole day of nothingness ahead of us. And when we got nothing to do we’re going to be probably less productive. The megaphone in our brain gets a bit louder because there’s nothing else for us to be focused on. So that could be a bit of a double edged sword, but it worked for you, like I said, because you filled it with your values, filled it with good stuff- Felicity Jackson: And my- Martin Reed: … some- Felicity Jackson: … partner- Martin Reed: … self care. Felicity Jackson: … he actually lost his job, well, he finished up at his job because he was starting to study full time. So, it ended up that we had this time off together, which we’d never really had. So we could do things together as well that, obviously, he’s not going to lie in bed all day. So that took that focus off, that we ended up going on a road trip and… Martin Reed: Nice. Yeah. So like you were- Felicity Jackson: It was fun. Martin Reed: … using that time to basically live life, right, which is way more important than sleep at the end of the day. When we’re really old and we are looking back in our lives we’re probably not going to be thinking of all the great sleep we had. We’re going to be thinking of all the great things we did when we were awake. Martin Reed: And just the final thing you touched upon was this whole new label that we’ve got of coronasomnia or whatever they’re calling it these days. I think we just have to recognize that anytime something stressful happens we’re probably going to go through a period of sleep disruption, and dealing with this pandemic is just another one of those things. Martin Reed: But we see it in the media and stuff, everyone likes to put a label onto something and then share all this information that probably ends up just freaking us out even more about sleep and that isn’t usually helpful, but it just proves, again, that if you want to call it coronasomnia or insomnia or anything else, it’s all the same thing, because from person to person, insomnia is the same. It really doesn’t matter what label we put on it. Felicity Jackson: Yeah. Yep. And where I am now we’ve been… just by some miracle, have had barely any COVID-19 here, and the way they’ve dealt with it is if they had one… I mean, they’re relaxed a bit now, thank God, but even if they had one case they lock everything down, tell you to go home. So you’re going in the office, then I’m not going in the office, then I’m being sent home from the office, then I’m working, then you’re not even allowed to have your partner over, then you can have your partner over. Felicity Jackson: And it’s also created a divide between… so I’ve got a team around Australia, and you’ve got people hit hard by it, and then you’ve got people, like in state I’m in, living your life like it’s normal. And so it’s created this real divide as well which has had to be managed. You’re managing not only your own kind of uncertainty, but all these other people who look to you for their support as well. Martin Reed: Yeah. You know what I think it comes down to, it just comes down to the fact that life is difficult, and life comes with pain, and it’s just a fact of life. And where we can get really tripped up is when we try and just eliminate the pain and eliminate difficult thoughts, difficult emotions and feelings. When we make that our focus, that’s when we can really get caught up in the struggle. Martin Reed: If we can move away from that, trying to eliminate all this potential painful thoughts and memories and feelings and emotions more towards our actions, just doing stuff that’s meaningful to us, then that has… usually has a far better outcome because we’re focused on what we have control over. And we can always control our actions no matter how difficult the circumstances we find ourselves in. But at the same time, we do need to recognize that life is difficult. Martin Reed: We have to make some time for some self care too. Life isn’t easy. There are difficult times. And many of us are really good at being compassionate when friends are going through difficulties, but when we are going through difficulties we tend to tell ourselves off, you shouldn’t be feeling this way, you’re a failure, you should be doing this, you should be feeling- Felicity Jackson: What’s wrong- Martin Reed: … that. Felicity Jackson: … with me? Martin Reed: Yeah. Sometimes we need to turn this around and just imagine ourselves as our best friend, or what would I tell my best friend in this situation, what would I say to them? And sometimes just that in itself, giving ourselves that little bit of self-care can be helpful too. Felicity Jackson: And when I went to the doctor and I said, “Oh, I’ve got insomnia.” Felicity Jackson: And they say, “What’s your life been like lately?” Felicity Jackson: And I’m like, “Well, in the last 18 months I’ve lived in five houses, 22 hotels. I’ve moved states. I’ve had a new relationship, a new job.” Felicity Jackson: And they’re just like, “There’s nothing wrong with you. Go for a run.” I’ve had three doctors tell me to go for a run. “There’s nothing wrong with you.” is what they will say. I might just start believing it. Martin Reed: Yeah. When we’ve got that much on our plate I think it’s understandable to go through some sleep disruption. Not really much we can do about that, as I think your doctor’s, probably not with much compassion, shared with you. But it’s when we have adjusted to all these stresses or they’re no longer relevant and the insomnia’s sticking around, that’s when we can start to explore ways that we can create better conditions for sleep. Martin Reed: But, like you said, there’s always going to be times of sleep disruption. There is no magic cure. There’s no way of eliminating every trigger for sleep disruption. Living with some difficult nights from time to time is part of being a human being, but that doesn’t mean that we have to live with insomnia every night for the rest of our lives. There are definitely things that we can do to create those better conditions for sleep and to live the kind of life we want to live independently of sleep, and even perhaps in the presence of all those difficult thoughts and emotions that come along for the ride. Felicity Jackson: Well, one of the doctors I saw, he was an older German man, and he said to me in a heavy German accent, that, “The only thing wrong with you is that you don’t have your shit together.” Martin Reed: And so- Felicity Jackson: And so- Martin Reed: … did that- Felicity Jackson: … I just thought- Martin Reed: … transform everything for you? Was that a big insight and changed your life? Felicity Jackson: Well, he had a packet of cigarettes in his pocket, so I didn’t take too much notice of what he said. Martin Reed: Yeah. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Because it’s like when someone tells you, “Oh, cheer up.”, or, “Come on, don’t feel sad, don’t be angry, relax.” When we’re told how to feel or we’re told how we should be feeling, it’s never helpful. Felicity Jackson: Or you feel like punching someone in the face who says, “Have you tried melatonin?, or, “Have you tried listening to a meditation?” It’s like, yes, I’ve tried listening to a… Don’t tell someone with chronic insomnia that they should maybe have a warm bath and go to bed early. It’s just not helpful. Martin Reed: Yeah, exactly. You’re right. I think a lot of this stuff probably comes from the right place, from someone wanting to help, but I think everyone listening to this is going to know these things aren’t helpful. This is probably one of the things that someone listening to this is is going to come away and not end up researching, because they already know that bubble bath isn’t going to help, melatonin probably not helpful. Martin Reed: What is helpful is just making some behavioral changes to create those better conditions for sleep and just exploring the relationship we have with our thoughts, not trying to necessarily push them away and fight them, but maybe making a bit of space for them, and then making that decision to live the kind of life we want to live, even when they’re present. Martin Reed: So Felicity, I know I’ve taken a lot of your time, and I really appreciate it, but I would just like to ask you one final question, because I ask every guest it, and I would feel bad for you if I didn’t ask you the question too. If someone with chronic insomnia is listening, they feel like they’ve tried everything, they’re beyond help, they can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Felicity Jackson: I would say that the natural techniques is the gold standard for treatment, that persistence pays off, and that you probably won’t get fast results if you’ve had… If you’ve got the predisposition you might not get the fast results, but if you persist with the techniques and reach out to you for support, Martin, then, just like every other case you’ve worked with, you should see a significant improvement and maybe not a cure, probably not a cure. But, yeah, I mean, if you’re watching these podcasts, you’re probably not in the greatest shape and it’s worth a try. That’s what I would say. Hang in there. Martin Reed: Great. I love it. Well, thank you so much again for taking the time to come out on the podcast today. Felicity, I know that- Felicity Jackson: No problem. Martin Reed: … this conversation is going to help a lot of people. Lots of people are going to identify with everything we’ve talked about. So, again, thank you. Felicity Jackson: No worries. Thanks, Martin. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life you want to live, I would love to help. You can get started right now by enrolling in my online course or you can book my phone coaching package. My online course runs for six weeks. It will help you make changes that can create better conditions for sleep, it will help you identify and get rid of any behaviors that might be making sleep more difficult, and it will help you respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a more workable way. You can work through the course in two ways. You can choose the self-coaching option and work through it by yourself with the support of an online forum that is available only to clients. Martin Reed: Or, you can choose to add one-on-one email coaching and work through the course with me by your side. With the one-on-one coaching option, you get unlimited email access to me for eight weeks, starting from the day you enroll. Any time you have a question or concern, any time you are unsure about anything, any time you want to focus on the challenges you face or any difficulties that show up, you can email me and I will be there to coach and support you. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com. Martin Reed: With the phone coaching package, we start with a one-hour call (voice only or video — your choice) and come up with an initial two-week plan that will help you create better conditions for sleep and practice moving away from struggling with insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it. You get unlimited email access to me for two weeks after the call and a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 can sleep. Mentioned in this episode: Podcast episode with Celia Research study on insomnia identity and reported daytime impairment 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. Share this page

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) Night after night of wakefulness led Amy to a dark place where she saw no way out. She felt helpless and doomed to a life of insomnia. Ironically, Amy became friends with someone else who was struggling with insomnia. This friend ended up enrolling as a client of mine and started to experience improvements in their sleep. Amy learned more about the behavioral changes he was making, and — even though she assumed these wouldn’t work for her — she figured she was already suffering so much, nothing she could do could make her situation worse. So, Amy started to spend less time in bed, she abandoned her sleep rituals, and she shifted away from trying to control sleep and all the thoughts and worries her mind would generate. After weeks of ups and downs, Amy started to get more sleep, more consistently. Now, she averages around seven or more hours of sleep each night and considers her transformation nothing short of a miracle. Amy’s story shows that no matter how desperate things feel, no matter how severe your insomnia may be, there is always hope. If you are willing and able to make some changes to your current sleep habits and your current relationship with the difficult thoughts and emotions that like to accompany insomnia, you can get to a place where you will realize that you CAN sleep! Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: 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 Reed: 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 Reed: Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Amy M: You’re welcome. Martin Reed: It’s great to have you on, and I’m really looking forward to our conversation. So without any further ado, maybe we could just start right at the beginning and talk about when your sleep issues first began. When did they first begin, and what do you think caused those initial issues with sleep? Amy M: So they began first in September of 2020, and I think the first thing that really happened is that we had raccoons in the attic, and that was causing some interrupted sleep. But it began, in earnest, when I was talking to a friend of mine and he mentioned that he was having sleep issues. And because I had had insomnia once before in 2013, I was very superstitious about talking about sleep. And when he told me what was happening, I suddenly got scared like, “Oh my God.” And I just suddenly knew I wasn’t going to sleep that night, just because of him telling me that his… It triggered something, and that’s when it really started. Martin Reed: I hear you mentioned the word superstition around insomnia. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Amy M: Yeah, well since I had the insomnia in 2013, and I had resolved it finally, but it was really difficult to resolve. Since then I’d always felt, well, superstitious. Once I was sleeping again from that first one, I mentally didn’t want to get anywhere near the idea of not sleeping again. So that’s what I meant by superstitious. So I knew that if I started to think about that much, that there was a danger of it happening. And then when it did come up with him, since he was a close friend and I often empathized with him, it just triggered this thing that set that off again. Martin Reed: It almost sounds as though you had this completely understandable desire to just not even want to think about sleep. Anytime those sleep related thoughts or thoughts related to insomnia pushed into your head, you want to try and push them out. And you would really be conscious about trying to avoid any situation or circumstance whereby you might even start to think about sleep or insomnia. Does that sound about right? Amy M: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Martin Reed: I think a lot of people are going to identify with that, because I think it can be quite helpful in the short-term, just to try and avoid any situation or circumstance where we think or talk about sleep or insomnia. But as you discovered over the longer term, it can be really hard to control our life or control our thoughts in that way, because our brain is always going to want to think things, and it becomes really difficult to sustain that thought suppression or that experience suppression. Amy M: Yeah. And there was more to why the actual insomnia began than just getting that thing from my friend. But then you’re also bringing up the whole idea about thoughts and controlling your thoughts. And having done a lot of meditation and been on a spiritual path for a long time, I had a lot of experience with trying to stop my thoughts and control my thoughts, and come to a deeper place of no thinking. But that’s getting a little bit ahead of myself and the whole story of how this began. So the other stuff that was happening is that, for certain things had not gone the way I had wanted them to. And I was… I don’t know what, settling into a new situation at this time last fall. Amy M: And then I started getting fear. And once the fear started happening, I had gotten this whole relationship with the fear and trying to not go into the fear, and then being encouraged by a teacher to just let myself experience the fear. And then these other things were happening where I have some properties, and I suddenly had to get them all inspected, get them repaired, pass inspection. And then by that time, I had started to not sleep, so it was that… Once you start not sleeping, you get into this whole downward spiral, where it becomes really difficult to feel positive. I’m sure people watching will identify. It just wrecks your life completely. And I found myself feeling incapable of doing things that ordinarily I could do without any problem. So everything just went down into a negative vicious circle. Martin Reed: Yeah, definitely. I think that was a big insight that you just touched upon, where you said that there was a teacher that you were working with, and they said maybe instead of trying to avoid or to fight or to run from these difficult or uncomfortable thoughts and emotions such as fear, maybe if we can get to a place where we’re more willing to experience those emotions or those thoughts or those feelings. It can sometimes be a bit more helpful, because often where we get caught up is in that struggle, that completely understandable desire to avoid uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And that’s where we can get a little bit trapped sometimes. Amy M: Yeah. Well, I have a lot of experience in my prior life of just going into emotion and experiencing emotion, and just coming out the other side. The problem with this was that, when I would attempt to go to sleep, that would all surface and then I would have this long, long stretch of time through the entire night, of going into it and coming out of it and having it surface again, and all of this stuff. Martin Reed: Yeah. Amy M: Yeah. Martin Reed: I think a lot of us can probably recognize that when there’s some strange or unusual or stressful or difficult periods of our life… You mentioned having raccoons in the attic, or having all those issues with houses, you’ve got to get through inspection, lots of stress. We’re going to probably experience some temporary sleep disruption, just as a normal human response. And normally our sleep gets back on track when we’ve adjusted or these issues are no longer as relevant. But in chronic insomnia and other longer-term struggle with sleep, we often see that even when those initial triggers are no longer present, the sleep issues remain. Amy M: Yeah, that’s what happened to me, because I did eventually get everything inspected and passed inspection, got the licenses, and I thought that it would be over then, but unfortunately it wasn’t. And then also in the middle of getting through… This was in December by then, getting everything finished, I developed a physical issue. So that physical issue then started to become another source of fear, because I had no idea what it was, how to treat it, what to do about it. So once the first issue was okay, then it just glommed onto the next thing. Martin Reed: If we were able to eliminate any triggers for sleep disruption or recurring or fresh triggers for sleep disruption, why do you feel like those sleep issues stuck around, even when those initial triggers were no longer an issue? Do you think it was more related to maybe your past experience struggling with sleep, or just the thought processes, your relationship with sleep, or those sleep related thoughts, worries, and ideas, maybe they were contributing to this ongoing disruption with sleep? Amy M: I think there were two things. I think one is that I adjusted to living without hardly any sleep. And at this point I think I was getting maybe two hours a night. Initially I had the type where I’d fall asleep for two hours, and then I’d wake up and be unable to sleep after that. But then it would also start careening into no sleep at all, just this form of resting. So I think I got acclimated to not sleeping, and I felt as if I had worked my way into this just dark place of living without sleep and struggling. And it seemed as if I had forgotten how to sleep. Actually, I was quite sure that I was not ever going to find my way out of this again, that I completely forgotten how to do it. And I didn’t really have any hope that I would again. So I think it had become that habit thing. Yeah. Martin Reed: I think that’s a common thing I hear from people, is this concern or this worry or this belief that, “I think I’ve just forgotten how to sleep, or I’ve lost the ability to sleep.” And that as a statement in itself can be quite scary, quite worrying, quite concerning. And then of course, that can feed into this heightened arousal, that can then create some ongoing sleep disruption. Amy M: Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t really just disruption, it was just night after night of not sleeping. It wasn’t like I’d sleep and I’d wake up, I’d sleep, I’d wake up, it was just lying there just for countless hours without sleeping. And I got into this thing where I was thinking, “Well, okay. I’m not sleeping, but I’m resting. And let me just try to settle into as internally quiet a place as I can, and just lie here and rest. If I can’t sleep, at least I’ll rest.” I did some research and realized that actually really was not a substitute for sleep, but I felt as if it was better than nothing. So I would be in bed for these long periods of time, just lying there, just resting. Yeah. And then also sometimes I would find myself having to do that during the day as well, because I was so tired all the time. Martin Reed: Right. I think a lot of people listening to this are going to identify with you there, because a common hallmark, a common thing that we see among people with chronic insomnia, is spending a lot of time, usually in bed, but just a lot of time resting, allotting a lot of time for sleep. Resting during the day, being more sedentary during the day, because after difficult night, after difficult night, after nights of no sleep or very little sleep, our brain is screaming at us to conserve energy, “You’re exhausted, you’re worn out.” But unfortunately the way this fatigue works is the more sedentary we are, often the more heightened that sense of fatigue can be. And often, of course when we are sedentary, we’re not really doing anything else, because by its very nature we’re sedentary. So the mind has nothing really to focus on apart from this ongoing thinking and worrying about sleep, which can again feed into those ongoing sleep difficulties. Amy M: I just got into this really dark place where I was lying there contemplating my character, thinking all kinds of negative things about myself, it was go into all of that. And then there was… I tried sleep medications initially and they didn’t work at all. Really, it didn’t help much. And I was given another one and I had an allergic reaction to it. And that was probably the lowest point, because I got this rash all over my body, it was causing my nerves to do all this jangly stuff through the night. I couldn’t even lie there comfortably. Amy M: So I think that was probably the absolute low. And of course depression comes on during all of this too, and really bad thoughts. Thinking back on it now, I mean, it doesn’t really make any sense logically, but this is… I mean you just lose this ability to live constructively. I think that the psychological aspect of it is really, really important. Martin Reed: Yeah. I completely agree with you. And I can just tell this shift in the mindset of you describing the back then and the way you’re reflecting on it now, you can just tell that your mindset has changed. You can think, “Well, on reflection now I’m beyond this.” This way of thinking doesn’t seem quite so logical as it maybe did back then. Amy M: I just wasn’t able to get to a more rational place. And I tried all sorts of things. But I did eventually get help with that. That help came first. It didn’t help get me rational, but it helped me to contend with this darker aspect that had become really, really strong, predominant in my life. My waking life as well as my lying there at night resting life. I can’t call it my sleeping life, because it wasn’t sleep. Just horrible. It’s just horrible. Martin Reed: Yeah. It really is. It really is very, very difficult, very challenging. And this is why I like to have these discussions with guests like yourself, because it shows that there is a way out, even when you feel like you’re really deep in this struggle with sleep and with insomnia. It is possible to come out the other side of it, no matter how hopeless you feel the situation might be at the present time. Amy M: Yeah. Even if you don’t believe it. And I didn’t believe it either. I mean, I kept trying things, but yeah, I thought that was it. Martin Reed: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about that. Because you mentioned that there were a few things you tried, that you’d increase the amount of time you’d spend resting. You tried the route of medications, supplements, things like that. What other things had you tried, that looking back on it, were probably not that helpful? Amy M: Sleep hygiene. And it’s funny too, because the sleep hygiene thing, I mean, it logically made sense, but it didn’t really do anything. And it was only when I heard you in a little discussion group saying that, that it didn’t actually really help. I listened to that a couple of times and I realized like, “Oh, wait. It really isn’t doing anything. Wow.” Martin Reed: One reason I think that these sleep hygiene techniques can be a bit of a trap, a bit of a difficulty for people with insomnia, is they just add a ton more rituals to our routine. Now we have all these things that we might feel obligated we need to do. And it almost becomes a full-time job just preparing for sleep, which is what the opposite of what sleep really should be. It should be effortless. And because sleep hygiene isn’t really effective for people with chronic insomnia, not only are we adding all these rituals, but then when they don’t work or we don’t actually find them all that helpful, we can then start to worry that something is uniquely wrong, that, “Oh my goodness, even sleep hygiene isn’t working. I must have some unique strain of insomnia. There really is no hope for me.” Martin Reed: As a standalone treatment, if someone has chronic insomnia and the only thing they try is sleep hygiene, we would probably expect that person not to notice much improvement in their sleep, because sleep hygiene is more of a preventative measure. I like to associate it with brushing your teeth. It’s great to brush your teeth, but once you’ve got that cavity, doesn’t matter how often you brush your teeth, that cavity is not going to get fixed. You need something different. Amy M: Yeah, that’s really true. I kept it up anyway, even though it wasn’t helpful. Yeah, I had a lot of rituals too, that really didn’t end up doing any good. I would do yoga, I would meditate, sometimes I would try meditating in the middle of the night. I mean, that might have the effect of bringing me… I don’t know what the word is, but more relaxed. I mean, the really funny thing about the whole thing is that, I could get to a place of not thinking, but I couldn’t turn my awareness off. I couldn’t turn my consciousness off in order to sleep. That was what made me think this was it, there was no way out of this. Martin Reed: Yeah. And I think it’s great that you mentioned that, because I think a lot of people are going to identify with that, because often our ongoing quest is to figure out how to flip that switch, how to turn our consciousness off or how to press on for sleep to happen. And often it’s that desire or our attempts to make that happen, that’s where we can get caught up. Because if we just go out on the street and ask someone who sleeps well what they do to make sleep happen, you probably get that blank stare. And it’s the very fact that they don’t do anything, they make no attempt to make unconsciousness happen or to make sleep happen, they just go to bed. They don’t do anything, and sleep happens. It’s when we try and completely understandably get involved in that process, that it can become the real root of the problem. Amy M: Yeah, you’re right. Trying makes it worse, actually. Martin Reed: Yeah. So as I understand it, you had a friend of yours who was also struggling with sleep, and you ended up using each other as a support system. Can you tell us a little bit more about? Amy M: Yeah, yeah, I can. So I just happened to be in a conversation with someone who mentioned that they had insomnia, and I didn’t know them at the time. So I just reached out to them and said, “Listen, I’ve got this really terrible insomnia too. Do you want to talk about it?” And he said, “Yeah.” So we started to talk about it. I mean, just talking about it, that in itself didn’t help specifically. I don’t know. We started to trade little bits of information about what might be useful. And he started doing research, and I’d been doing all this research and trying all these different things. And we became insomnia buddies. We hadn’t really actually met, but we were doing this by text. So we would wish each other a good night’s sleep each night, and all that sort of thing. Amy M: And then he encountered you on the internet, and he decided that he was going to spring for your program. I should say that I had already encountered your stuff months before that, and even started getting the initial emails. But because I’d gotten so paranoid, especially about finances, I didn’t want to spend the money. It was like identifying some other way out of this. I’m not going to pay for this. And I didn’t trust it also, to be frank. I thought, “Well, I’ll just spend the money and I still won’t sleep. I’m not going to do that.” Amy M: I didn’t really get it, and I just assumed it wouldn’t work. And honestly, it sounded too brutal. Really. It just sounded too damn hard, because I was also already so exhausted that the idea of being in bed for a shorter period of time, there was no way I was going to do that on top of what I was already suffering. It was already hard enough, I wasn’t going to make it worse. Martin Reed: I think it can be really difficult to come to terms with some of these techniques, like spending less time in bed, for example, because we equate more time in bed with more time asleep or more opportunities for sleep. But the fact of the matter is, what I think can be helpful is to just ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing at the current time proving to be helpful?” It might make you feel more comfortable spending long, long periods of time in bed, but is it really proving to be helpful helping you reach your longer term goals? If it’s not a problem and you’re comfortable spending really long periods of time in bed, and you don’t feel that it’s affecting your life in any way, it’s helping you live your life according to your values, then obviously there’s no need to make any changes. But maybe if you can recognize that, “This isn’t really helping me, my sleep doesn’t appear to be taking advantage of all these hours I’m spending in bed.” Martin Reed: Maybe it’s leading to some more fatigue, or it’s not really giving me that light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes it can be helpful to just think, “Well, maybe I can just make a change just for a couple of weeks as an experiment. And let’s just see if it does make any changes, if it is something that I want to pursue.” Amy M: You’re speaking very logically. And in this state of insomnia, logical thinking wasn’t really the norm for me. It was more like what felt like it might help. And it didn’t feel like being in bed for a short period of time would help. So my decision making capability was not so great. What you’re saying is really logical, it makes a lot of sense, but I wasn’t really making my decisions based on logic rationale at that time. Now I can, but then… Insomnia does this thing to you, where you just become, well I did, really negative. So what actually did convince me was that he signed up with your thing, and he started to get these email instructions, and he started to make progress. I felt like, “Damn. I’m not going to let him get ahead of me.” Amy M: And I thought, “Shoot, if it’s working for him, oh my God, I better do it too.” Right? So he was willing graciously to share with me the information you were giving him. So I just started following the same instructions, but it was really more like an ego thing, honestly, that caused me to finally think, “Oh my God. Can’t let this happen.” And then the other thing is that I realized that all I was really being asked to do was to stay up later. The part about getting out of bed earlier, well, I wasn’t going to deal with that. But it did start to dawn on me that, well, to go from 9:30, which had become the time that I got in bed, to 11:30, I could just sit upright and wait and those two hours would pass. And then I could try getting in bed then. But another thing that made a difference too, was the distinction between fatigue and tiredness and sleepiness, because I wasn’t experiencing any sleepiness. Masses of fatigue, but not sleepiness. Martin Reed: Yeah. So what happened when you started to stay up late? So was it just you noticed a change maybe from that sense of fatigue and exhaustion, it maybe started to turn into something else, something more akin to actual sleepiness. Is that how you describe it? Amy M: Yeah, it did. It did. It turned into sleepiness. And I think in the beginning, it didn’t really make much difference. And I have to say the part that was really difficult for me, was to get out of bed in the morning. Because initially I was getting out of bed late also. So I knew I had to scale that back. And my sleep buddy was now getting up at 5:30 in the morning. And it just seemed like something I just couldn’t do, so I didn’t do it. But I did start to get out of bed earlier and earlier. And as I got used to it, I guess the period of time I was in bed got shorter and shorter. So I think what started to happen initially was that I started to get those first two hours of sleep again, and then I’d wake up. And then there’d be a long stretch of time, during which I’d just lie there. Amy M: And then I maybe would get another hour, say from 4:00 to 5:00. So I’d put those together and I’d have three hours. Okay. Well, three is better than two. And slowly, slowly I’d get maybe two and then a long stretch, and maybe another two, say 4:00 to 6:00, something like that. So then it was four hours. And then maybe three hours in the beginning and two in the morning, and that was a huge victory because now that was three plus two was five, “Oh my God, this is it. I’ve got five hours.” It was broken sleep, broken by a lot, but at least it was a bit more. So really slowly I would get these pieces, and the pieces would extend a little bit at a time. So it increased the amount of overall time I was getting each night. And then I had one night when I slept for six hours, and it was just amazing, like, “Oh, wow. I won. This worked. Oh my God.” Amy M: And my experience of the day was so different, but then the next night I couldn’t sleep again, so it was like that. So I guess that went on for about a month and a half. And it just gradually, gradually increased over time. And then the pieces would sometimes merge and sometimes not. So sometimes I would get five hours straight, then the next night I wouldn’t. So it happened really slowly over a period of time. And then I started to sleep through the night, maybe five hours at first, and then after a while maybe it was six. Alternating, five, six, five, six, six and a half, back to five, like that. And I think that started around April. So the month of April was the first month that I started to actually sleep every night. Yeah. Martin Reed: That’s great. Amy M: And then it got longer. So now I’m sleeping every night. I mean, periodically I might have a night of four hours or something, but basically now, I think it’s around seven, seven and a half, sometimes eight, sometimes longer. But the point is I can now just get in bed and fall asleep. That’s just amazing. Martin Reed: That’s incredible. Amy M: It’s incredible. Yeah. It’s really incredible. Martin Reed: Listening to you describe the process something that stood out for me was, how you mentioned when you first heard about this technique of spending less time in bed. First thought is, that just sounds uncomfortable, sounds brutal. Sounds like it’s not going to be helpful. Sounds like something I just can’t even consider right now. But you allowed yourself to think about it. And then maybe it was percolating in the back of your mind for a while. And then you heard about your friend doing it, was finding it helpful. So instead of maybe just going crazy and only spending four or five hours in bed, you started off a little bit more gradually, maybe with a little bit more, maybe some more self-compassion or something. You just said, “Okay. I’ll just stay up later for a couple of hours. I won’t worry too much about the time I get out of bed for now. I’ll just start by going to bed a couple of hours later.” Martin Reed: And I think that’s great because, what happened there really was you got started. Even if we only feel comfortable starting off by maybe going to bed an hour later or two hours later, that’s still, I think, something that can be a really positive step. Because then if we do start to notice some improvements, it gives us that confidence and that motivation to then maybe make a few more changes, maybe go to bed a little bit later, or maybe then really work on getting out of bed at a consistent time in the morning, which can then lead to further improvements. So I think that’s helpful that you described that process, because some people might think that for it to work you’ve got to go all in, no looking back, you’ve got to be really strict, really brutal with yourself, sergeant major style, but you don’t. You can just start with small steps in the right direction, and that can really be a great way to get started on this transformation. Which is what you’ve experienced yourself. Amy M: Yeah. I’d say it’s true. Actually the thing is I completely ruled out trying this in the beginning. Yeah. It wasn’t like I was just thinking maybe this would work, maybe it wouldn’t. It was like, “There’s no way in hell I’m going to do this.” Martin Reed: Yeah. So was it just because the experience of your friend doing it and getting results, that just made you give it a try, or was there anything else? Amy M: It was. It was. Because I had heard about this from several people by then. Yeah, and just said, “No way.” I don’t know. I mean, I think that’s just a characteristic of my personality I’m not proud of. Yeah. I guess I hate to say it, but yeah, it was true. It was like, I wasn’t going to let him start sleeping and I wasn’t going to. But whatever it was it doesn’t really matter, it caused me to start to do that little bit of it. That piece. Martin Reed: I think it’s helpful to be a little bit self compassionate and understanding, because we’ve tried a lot of things, right. When we’ve been struggling with sleep, we’ve tried a lot of different things and yet most of them haven’t proved to be helpful. So when we come across yet another suggestion or yet another technique, and we’re just told to blindly trust it. And when it sounds as though it might be uncomfortable, like spending less time in bed, it makes complete sense that our brain’s default position is going to be, “Uh-uh (negative). No way. It’s going to be another one of these things we’re going to try, it’s not going to work. But this one just sounds like we’re going to put ourselves through torture and not get any results.” So I think it’s understandable why we would have that hesitancy or want to just brawl it out as a default position. That’s completely understandable. Amy M: Yeah. I would say that self-compassion was not something I had in spades through all of this. And actually gaining self-compassion has been a big part of what I did actually learn from this experience. And now the current experience I’m having, trying to resolve the other physical issue that developed while I was going through this. So yeah, it’s really important to have self-compassion, but something I was lacking in. Martin Reed: Yeah, I think self-compassion’s a big thing that we tend to not really pay much attention to, or gloss over. I like to think of self-compassion as just acting like a best friend, but to yourself. So if a friend of ours comes to us with a struggle, we tend not to have any trouble being compassionate at that time. But when it comes to our own struggles, sometimes it can be hard to have that same level of compassion, and especially when it comes to sleep issues. When we have difficult nights, we can be really hard on ourselves, we can blame ourselves even for having a difficult night. We tend to get lost then. That’s why I think having this self-compassion can be really helpful. Amy M: Yeah. I mean, it definitely is. I remember, I mean, I was trying to develop it, but it didn’t come easily. And in fact, I think really the self-compassion started more after I was already sleeping. And it’s really more developed where I’m having to be really gentle with myself and listen to my body and talk to my body. And yeah, it’s coming on more later. But if anybody has it, yeah, that’s definitely an asset. Martin Reed: I completely agree. What a practical way, I think, that we can just practice some self-compassion, might just be after a difficult night, maybe doing something nice during the day like treating ourselves, almost like giving ourself a reward or doing something that might help us feel a little bit better. Because often our default position after really difficult nights might be to do less during the day, for example, or blame ourselves for a difficult night. If we can just do something kind for ourselves after a difficult night, not only can that be helpful just from that self-compassion standpoint, but it can also just slightly improve the quality of our day. And maybe that could also come with a slight benefit of helping us recognize that, what we choose to do during the day also can influence how we feel during the day and the quality of our day, rather than it being completely a hundred percent, always determined by what happens during the night. Amy M: I mean, that’s a good point. I think you’re right. It’s not something that I did or really was able to do. In fact, especially in the beginning, I think a lot of it was the opposite of that. I would lie in bed at night and think about things that were unresolved. And then during the day I was too exhausted to really… And I couldn’t think clearly enough to really take on a lot of these things, and resolve them. In fact, in the beginning when I was really desperate and I was calling the doctor helpline at my health insurance frequently, and trying to talk to somebody who would have something for me, I remember one doctor saying to me, “What you’re dealing with, the falling asleep and waking up two hours later, there’s no medication for that. You will not be helped by medication.” He didn’t really offer a solution except to drink camomile tea. Amy M: Yeah, the whole health industry thing was so not helpful. And I went down that road many, many times looking for answers. But I think what you’re saying is true and right, is if one can do it, yeah, absolutely. Martin Reed: Yeah. And like you implied there, it’s not always easy to be self-compassionate, it’s not always easy to do some enjoyable things during the day after really difficult nights. Sometimes though, we need to do things or it’s worth trying things that might not come easily. If nothing else, just to try them out and just to see if they are going to be helpful or not. Amy M: Yeah, you’re right. I mean, I’m still working on that now. That’s a process for sure. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s a skill, self-compassion is definitely a skill just like relaxation is a skill. It can be really easy for us to think that we should just have these abilities or these skills just as part of who we are, but we don’t. And if we’ve never practiced self-compassion before, if we’ve never practiced relaxation before, we’re not going to notice improvements right away. It’s not going to come easy, it does take practice. It’s like any skill, like learning a new musical instrument, for example. We can probably realize that we’re not going to become great guitar players the first time you pick up a guitar, but yet when it comes to more emotional skills like self-compassion or relaxation, we can get trapped into thinking that it should be easy, but why should it be easy? It’s not going to be easy if we’re not skilled in those things, it does take practice. Amy M: It’s true. Martin Reed: And something else that I like that you touched upon, was when you started to go to bed later and you started to get these improvements in sleep, was that these improvements weren’t completely linear. It wasn’t like one night was good then the next night was better, the next night was just as good or better, the next night was just as good or better. There were ups and downs along the way, and it did take time. It wasn’t just this magical transformation that happened right away, it was something you had to stick to with the ups and downs. I think that’s helpful for people to hear, because we can believe or expect or put pressure on ourselves to just do better and better every night after every night, but there are always ups and downs. When you were going through that, going through, maybe you had some better nights and then some difficult nights, how did you get through those difficult nights in terms of having that motivation to just keep going? Amy M: I think when I shifted from going to bed at 9:30, and I don’t honestly really know why I picked 9:30. Nonetheless, when I shifted from going to bed at 9:30 to going to bed at 11:30… I don’t know. I think I made a commitment just to try this. And then it suddenly didn’t really make any sense to go to bed at 9:30 again, for example. And it started to make a kind of sense. And I started to realize like, “Oh, wait a minute, this is this thing that could work. So I’ll just keep doing that.” And I was going to get in bed anyway every night, so I might as well just keep doing it. It wasn’t really like at that point it made any sense to go back to what I’d been doing before. It wouldn’t have made any sense to start taking trazadone again. So I just got in the habit of going to bed at 11:30. Sometimes I’d be at that head bobbing phase by 11:30, but it just became the new thing I was doing. Does it make any sense? Martin Reed: Yeah, I think it does make sense. And it’s something that some people can struggle with. Some people like yourself, from what you’re saying, can just come up with this mindset of, “I’m just going to set it and forget about it. So from now on, I’m just going to not go to bed at…” In your example, 9:30, “I’m going to just going to go to bed at 11:30. And whether it’s a good night, an okay night, a really difficult night, doesn’t matter. The next night, I’m still going to go to bed at 11:30.” And I think that can be really helpful, because what it does is it shifts our attention and our efforts onto something we can control, like we can control the time we choose to go to bed. Away from our brain’s default position of trying to put effort into sleep or trying to control sleep, trying to monitor for sleep. Martin Reed: So instead of, “I’m having a really difficult night, I’ve got to sleep. Maybe tomorrow I should go to bed earlier.” Getting caught up in all those thought processes, we just have this default process of, “I’m still going to go to bed tomorrow at 11:30.” So you stick to this, you make this commitment. Like you said, you commit to what you can control, which is your behaviors, accept the things that we can’t control, which is what happens from night to night. And if we can be consistent with that approach, I think it gives us the best opportunity to experience those ongoing improvements. Like you explained, where sleep is still a bit fragmented, but every now and then there’ll be that little bit of extra sleep. Then a little bit of extra sleep, a little bit less sleep, a little bit more wakefulness. Until you had that real, what sounded that breakthrough moment when you just had that stretch of unbroken sleep. And that sounds like maybe that was that real light bulb moment for you. Amy M: Yeah. Until the next night when it didn’t happen again. Yeah. It’s so funny looking back on it, how I would lie there and I would try to… I mean, I remember at one point I was trying, right? I was trying to settle further, deeper, deeper, deeper into sleep. It didn’t work either. I remember hearing you say something about all you really have to do is get in bed and close your eyes, and I thought, “Oh, wow. Oh, remember that? That sounds way too easy.” I mean, the thing about all of it is that it’s involuntary. I mean, there’s so much we have no control over whatsoever, it has to just be turned over to the body. And all our trying is useless. Martin Reed: That’s definitely where we get caught up when we try to control the process of sleep. That’s why I think struggle is a great word, because we get involved in that struggle, we’re struggling with sleep, trying to make sleep happen. And the struggle really is what the problem is. It’s the fact that we’re involved in that struggle. But it makes sense why we do, because we want to fix the problem. So we’re going to put effort into it, but sleep is that one thing that doesn’t respond well to effort. Martin Reed: One reason why I think the technique that you found helpful, of going to bed later, spending a little bit less time in bed, is it can satisfy our desire to do something. So I think it’s hard to just hear, “Don’t do anything. The problem is you’re doing too much to try and make sleep happen. Just don’t do anything.” So then you go to bed and it’s like, “All right, how do I not do anything?” Because your brain wants that thing to do, right? So I think having some helpful things to do like going to bed later, to build that sleep drive, that can be helpful because now we’ve got some changes that we can make, or some behaviors we can implement to satisfy our desire to do something that can help create better conditions for sleep, without us falling into that trap of trying to directly control sleep or make sleep happen. How would you describe an average night these days? Amy M: Oh, I mean, I just get into bed and fall asleep. Periodically though, I wake up in the middle of the night. And one of the other issues for me is that my spouse comes to bed later than I do, and then meditates for a while, and there’s candles on and all this stuff. And previously I’d always just slept right through that. And then when I had insomnia, of course, that felt like a hindrance to my being able to fall asleep. And then now I just sleep right through it again. But most of the time now, yeah, I just fall asleep and then I wake up in the morning. It’s a miracle really. Amy M: I mean, there are nights when I’ve got to wake up really early in the morning, so I end up with only four and a half hours or something. But usually now, it’s like I just learned how to do it again. Martin Reed: I think we’ve covered a lot of really good ground, really good points. I’m really grateful for you to come on and share your experience and your transformation at the end of the day, and this is what I consider it to be. But there is one last question that I’d like to ask you before I let you go, and it’s a question that I ask everyone, so it’s this. If someone with chronic insomnia is listening, and feels as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, and that they just can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Amy M: I would tell them to try this. I would tell them to try it, even if it seems like it’s too hard and too brutal, just give it a shot. Just try maybe just going to bed a bit later. Yeah, I guess that’s what I’d say. Yeah. It worked for me. I don’t know if it will work for everyone, but it’s certainly worth a try. Yeah. And I really liked what you said too at the end of those videos, like, “You can sleep, because your body will eventually remember, even if it seems like you can’t.” Martin Reed: I think that’s a great note to end on. So thanks again for taking the time to come onto the podcast, Amy. It’s been great to have you on. Amy M: Thank you. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life you want to live, I would love to help. You can get started right now by enrolling in my online course or you can book my phone coaching package. My online course runs for six weeks. It will help you make changes that can create better conditions for sleep, it will help you identify and get rid of any behaviors that might be making sleep more difficult, and it will help you respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a more workable way. You can work through the course in two ways. You can choose the self-coaching option and work through it by yourself with the support of an online forum that is available only to clients. Martin Reed: Or, you can choose to add one-on-one email coaching and work through the course with me by your side. With the one-on-one coaching option, you get unlimited email access to me for eight weeks, starting from the day you enroll. Any time you have a question or concern, any time you are unsure about anything, any time you want to focus on the challenges you face or any difficulties that show up, you can email me and I will be there to coach and support you. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com. Martin Reed: With the phone coaching package, we start with a one-hour call (voice only or video — your choice) and come up with an initial two-week plan that will help you create better conditions for sleep and practice moving away from struggling with insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it. You get unlimited email access to me for two weeks after the call and a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page

Jennifer’s issues with sleep began 18 years ago when she started to wean her firstborn from breastfeeding. When Jennifer fell pregnant again, things got better — until it was time to wean her second child. As the mother of five children, Jennifer went through this cycle for a long time — and when she decided that she was done having children, she started to get really nervous about sleep. Jennifer tried lots of different things in an attempt to get rid of her insomnia — she tried different foods, she experimented with supplements, she tried medication, she tried alcohol. Fortunately, Jennifer recognized that her body wasn’t missing any vital vitamin, mineral, or chemical — and that a hormone imbalance wasn’t to blame for her ongoing issues with sleep. After listening to a few episodes of the Insomnia Coach podcast, Jennifer felt that it was her belief system that was the real reason why she was enduring an endless struggle with sleep. At this point, she felt ready to implement some changes that would lead to new habits and a new relationship with her thoughts and beliefs that would help create better conditions for sleep. When Jennifer started to feel a strong sense of sleepiness again (rather than ongoing fatigue and brain fog) and learned from experience that sleeping pills weren’t doing anything for her, she felt confident she was on the right track. Ultimately, Jennifer regained confidence in her natural ability to sleep after learning that she wasn’t alone and that other people were experiencing insomnia in a similar way to her, and by making changes to her behaviors and the relationship she had with her thoughts. It was these changes that helped create better conditions for sleep and helped Jennifer put chronic insomnia behind her. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that nobody needs to live with chronic insomnia and that evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques can help you enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life. Martin Reed: 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 Reed: Hi, Jennifer. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Jennifer B.: Yeah, you’re welcome. Happy to be here. Martin Reed: It’s great to have you on. I’m really excited for our conversation, which I’m just going to start right at the beginning, like I always do. If you could just tell us when your problems with sleep began, and what you think might have caused those initial issues with sleep? Jennifer B.: So I had problems when I was weaning my firstborn from breastfeeding. He is 18 now, and so I struggled with it for quite a while. I had gone to the doctor, and they had suggested some Benadryl. I tied it to the weaning, and it really didn’t get better until I got pregnant six months later with my second child. I have five children, so I cycled through this for 11 or 12 years. When we were finished having children, I really struggled with it, and was convinced that I had some sort of hormone imbalance or hormone problem that was leading to it, because I would sleep well for the duration of the pregnancy and the breastfeeding part. But it was always that weaning that triggered it. Martin Reed: Wow. So I’m guessing a workable solution for you wasn’t to just keep having more, and more, and more kids. Jennifer B.: Right. By the time I had my last one at 40, it just wasn’t going to be an option. That’s when I really started to get a lot more nervous about it. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. So what were the nights like when you were struggling with sleep? Maybe you can just describe what an average or a typical night was like when you were going through that struggle. Jennifer B.: Sure. I would lay awake there for a while, an hour or two. In the early days, I would get up and take a little swig of NyQuil, and then go to sleep, or I would go to sleep on the couch, and then I wouldn’t be able to sleep in my bed. Then I would wake up in the middle of the night and then not be able to go back to sleep. Then I would just get more frustrated and more anxious about it. Martin Reed: Yeah. So you mentioned the time you felt maybe it was hormonal related, because it tended to crop up when you were weaning. When you were struggling with that wakefulness during the night, do you feel like it was really hard to fall asleep because maybe there was a hormonal issue? Or do you think there was some something else at play, like maybe your mind was racing, or there were some thoughts that you were really struggling with? Jennifer B.: My mind wasn’t really racing until I got very anxious about it. So I had convinced myself that it was a hormonal problem. Then when I thought about that more, that’s when I would get more anxious. But it wasn’t really about stress or anything going on during the day. It was more about what my internal beliefs were about what was causing the problem, because it was just so consistent through all five of the babies that I had. Martin Reed: Yeah. So what do you feel it was about this idea of struggling with sleep or just experiencing long periods of wakefulness during the night that maybe created some anxiety and maybe fed into this insomnia and these prolonged periods of wakefulness? Jennifer B.: I was always worried about how I was going to function the next day, especially the more kids I have, and the job that I have as well. I wanted to be able to function for work. So it would get really hard. So I would end up just laying there, trying to rest the best that I could, and not get so angry about it. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think a lot of people are going to identify with that. I think one of the biggest concerns, if not the biggest concern when I’m working with clients is how are we going to function the next day? That concern really is at the root of so much of the anxiety, and in turn it almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy in terms of, because we’re worried about what the next day will be like, maybe we’re putting more pressure on ourselves to sleep. We’re putting a lot of effort into sleep, a lot of monitoring on sleep. That, in itself, makes sleep more difficult. Martin Reed: Then because sleep has become so much of a focus, it can also make the days more difficult, even if we do actually have quite an okay night or a decent night, because it’s just something that we’re always thinking about, always worried about. Okay, maybe last night was good. But what’s the next night going to bring? It does feed into itself and just becomes this vicious cycle of worry and sleep disruption. Does that sound like something familiar to you? Jennifer B.: Yeah, definitely. I remember nights where I would wake up early, and not be able to go back to sleep. Then I would start craving sleep for the next night, like I would just say, “Okay, I’ll make it up tomorrow night.” Then my husband has always been a great sleeper. So I would get so angry at him, as he just laid there, sleeping. I’m thinking, “God, he’s such a showoff. This isn’t fair.” Martin Reed: It’s really funny, I think there is another podcast episode where I had someone say virtually the exact same thing as you. It seems strange, because even when I’m working with clients, it seems like the partners that people with insomnia end up with are kind of like the world’s best sleepers. It’s just a really strange observation that I’ve made over the years. Jennifer B.: Yeah, that definitely applies to me. He can sleep anywhere. Martin Reed: Yeah. Just leading on from that, I think there may even be a silver lining to that, because I think a common question that we have when we’ve been struggling with sleep for a long time is what do I do to make sleep happen? What do I think about when I get into bed? What can I do to fall asleep? If we have a partner that sleeps really well, maybe we’ll ask that person. Then what tends to happen is we kind of get that blank stare back. “I don’t know what I do to make sleep happen. I just get into bed, and then I sleep.” Did you ever have that conversation with your husband? Jennifer B.: Yes, absolutely. Yes, definitely. He didn’t understand that. Martin Reed: Yeah. But sometimes, I think that can be really helpful, because maybe it provides a little bit of evidence that all these efforts and all these completely justifiable concerns about sleep, and the strong desire for sleep, and the striving for sleep, maybe that’s contributing to the problem, because if we have a partner that sleeps really well, and they have no clue what they’re doing to make sleep happen, maybe that suggests that if we get to that place where we can maybe abandon all these efforts, abandon all this striving, maybe we’ll be like our partner and sleep well, and not even give sleep a second thought. Jennifer B.: Right. I have a tendency to overanalyze a problem, and then try a bunch of different solutions for it. I’ll do that until I find one that works. Really, what worked was doing the opposite of that, which didn’t make any sense. But it’s true. Once I didn’t care about it anymore, then it seemed to go a lot better. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think it’s completely understandable, it makes complete sense why we would look for a solution, because whenever we have a problem in our life, we want to look for a solution. So that’s completely understandable. Our natural inclination to put effort into a problem, so if sleep is a problem, we want to put effort into it to fix it. Everything in life responds really well to effort, right? But sleep is kind of that outlier. I think this is where we can so easily get caught up, because our whole life experience associates effort with good outcomes. Martin Reed: So we do the same thing when we struggle with sleep, but the problem is with sleep, the more effort we put into it, the more striving, the more desire, the more difficult it becomes. We kind of make conditions more difficult for sleep to occur. That’s kind of where we can get trapped, because then we start to really, we can really start to worry that something is uniquely wrong with us. Maybe we’ve lost our ability to sleep, or there is something really, seriously wrong with our ability to sleep, or our sleep systems. So I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s understandable why we’re putting effort into sleep, and if we found that sleep hasn’t responded to that effort, again, that is normal and to be expected. Jennifer B.: Yeah, that was my experience. Martin Reed: So you touched upon you were using that NyQuil every now and then to try and generate some sleep. What kind of other things did you try in an attempt to get more sleep, that looking back, perhaps didn’t prove to be that helpful? Jennifer B.: I tried Benadryl. I would get so sleepy with that during the day. Then it progressed from there, to some of the prescription sleeping pills, several different types of those. Then I’d try beer, and then no alcohol, and then exercise, and melatonin, and magnesium, and black cohosh, and herbs. I’d go to the natural foods store, and try to figure out what I needed, what my body was lacking or had too much of to try to get that balance. It didn’t matter, that wasn’t the problem. I think the real problem was the belief system and believing that there was a bigger problem than what there really was. Martin Reed: Yeah. Did you ever find that that search for the solution, whether it’s all these different supplements, or medications, on reflection, maybe that was feeding into this concern, and this worry, and this focus on sleep? Jennifer B.: Oh, absolutely. Yes, definitely. Martin Reed: Yeah. The reason I ask that question is because I think it’s something that so many people listening to this are going to identify with. Again, it goes back to that natural inclination and that completely understandable desire we have to fix a problem. But the trouble with chronic insomnia is it’s not really caused by a mineral deficiency, or a vitamin deficiency, or hormonal deficiency. But yet we can get really caught up in believing that or trying these different supplements, these different experiments. Soon, we can even find ourselves maybe thinking less about sleep, and thinking more about, okay, what’s the next experiment to try? What’s the next ritual I can try? What’s the next thing, the next X, Y, or Z? Jennifer B.: Right. Then you pour over the internet, and try to Google solutions. It just made it so much worse for me as I got older. Then I got closer to perimenopause, and then I thought, “Oh my god, it’s going to get worse. Then I’ll be menopausal, and then I’ll never sleep for the rest of my life.” So it would build on the anxiety, and then the anxiety would make it so much worse. Finally, I just made a decision to figure it out. Martin Reed: Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So you found out about these cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia, these CBT-I techniques that I talk about. Jennifer B.: Right. I had talked to my doctor about it, and she was always willing to refill these sleeping pills. I kind of wish she wouldn’t. But I felt dependent on them until I was ready. I had listened to a couple of your podcasts. But she had mentioned a few of the techniques, like getting out of bed, and not making the bed a place where you lie awake and get angry, things like that. I thought, “I want to sleep. I don’t want to get out of bed. I want to get better.” Jennifer B.: It wasn’t until I listened to a couple of your podcasts and thought, “I could have done that podcast, or I can relate to this girl, or I tried these different things that this person tried.” Then after I had listened to two or three of them, then I knew that I could change my beliefs about it. Once I did that, that’s when everything started to work. Once I committed to the techniques, and believed that they were going to work. I think once I stopped believing that there was a big problem with my hormones, or with minerals, or with my chemical composition, that’s when things started to get so much better. Martin Reed: So it sounds like you were already familiar with a couple of the techniques, a couple of these CBT-I techniques. But it wasn’t until you really heard real life examples of people using them, and discussing, and talking about their experience with them that you had that confidence, maybe to really go all in and give them a try yourself? Is that right? Jennifer B.: Yeah, absolutely. There was a nurse on the podcast that I listened to maybe about a year and a half ago, and then there was a pediatrician. I related so much to those two women. Once I heard those, then that’s when things changed, and I knew that I could get better without having to take anything to go to sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah. So what kind of techniques did you end up implementing? I think you just touched upon this idea of getting out of bed when being in bed doesn’t feel good. Another core component of these techniques involves allotting a more appropriate amount of time for sleep, spending an amount of time in bed that’s similar to the kind of sleep that you’re currently getting. Were they the kind of techniques what you were implementing? Jennifer B.: Yeah. So when the pandemic started, and my work shut down, I thought, “This is a perfect time.” That was when I had become very scared about this for the rest of my life. When that happened, I thought, “If I don’t do it now, I’m not going to do it ever, probably.” So now that I don’t have to worry about getting out of bed at a certain time, or having this not work, I can really focus on it. So I had a piece of paper and a pencil next to my bed where I could take notes about what time I went to sleep and what time I woke up at. Jennifer B.: Then I went to the library and got some books that were interesting enough, but boring enough, like a book about grass, and a book about farming and ranching, where there were some interesting stories, but I really didn’t have much in common with the people writing them. So I would get pretty bored reading them. I would go downstairs, and put my head lamp on, and read for a while. Then when my head would bob, I knew it was time to go back. So I wrote down the times, and then figured out how long I was sleeping. It didn’t take very long. I would say maybe a week or so before I knew it would definitely work. So I think for me, it was just committing to the whole CBT-I process for about a week before I really saw substantial change, where I could sleep long periods of time without having to take any sleeping aids. Martin Reed: Wow, that’s incredibly fast to get those early results within a week or so. What was it, you mentioned that it took you about a week for you to realize there was some change going on. What was the symptom of that positive change? What kind of differences were you noticing? Jennifer B.: I felt sleepy. I just felt like I couldn’t go on anymore unless I went to sleep. Another thing that really helped me was when I had made the decision and had a date that I was going to start implementing the techniques, and sticking by all of the rules. I had gone and I bought a new bedspread, and new sheets, and new pillows. I said to myself, “These are going to be the sheets that I actually fall asleep on, and sleep soundly.” I got rid of my old bedspread, and my old sheets that I had had for years. Jennifer B.: I think creating that environment was really helpful for my brain to know, “Okay, these are the sheets I’m gong to sleep on and not have to take anything.” So that was another big change that I made, at least for me and my bedroom that was helpful. But I think the biggest thing was my belief system was changed. After a week or so of doing the sleep deprivation thing, I just felt differently. Like, I was so sleepy that I had to go to bed and sleep. I think the trigger was just the fact that I started believing that I didn’t need to have an aid or that I had a problem. Martin Reed: I think it can be so powerful to rediscover that really strong sense of sleepiness, because in my experience, people with chronic insomnia tend not to actually have that much sleepiness, but have a ton of fatigue. Feeling exhausted, worn out, run down. It’s really easy to confuse that with sleepiness. But there is a difference. Jennifer B.: Oh, I agree, very much. Because I was foggy brained for at least a decade, and never really felt particularly well rested. So once I was actually sleepy, then it changed for sure. I would try to go to be dearly, thinking that would help. That certainly didn’t. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think that’s one of these areas where we can get caught up, because when we mistake that fatigue for sleepiness, fatigue isn’t a sign that we need to sleep or that the conditions are right for sleep. But sleepiness is. So when we get those two mixed up, which is quite common, even people without insomnia can mix those symptoms up, if we go to bed when we’re fatigued rather than sleepy, it makes sense that we’re probably not going to fall asleep, because we’re not sleepy enough for sleep. Martin Reed: Then because we’re not falling asleep, if we have concern about that, it’s just going to heighten that concern. Then it makes conditions even more difficult for sleep to occur. So rediscovering that sense of sleepiness by maybe allotting less time for sleep or going to bed later, waiting for that really strong sense of sleepiness to appear, it can really be a breakthrough moment for many clients. It sounds like that was your breakthrough moment too. Jennifer B.: Yeah. It was such a relief. Martin Reed: Yeah. Absolutely. So what other kind of, were there any other behavior … Before we move onto the thought side of things, were there any other behavioral changes you made? Jennifer B.: I noticed a lot of things as I thought about this more during my time when I was analyzing. That wasn’t all bad, over analyzing, because there were things that I, once I started sleeping better, I did tie to not falling asleep or not sleeping through the night, or waking up early. That was if I would fall asleep anywhere other than my bed, so the couch, or in my kids’ beds after I would read to them, they would want me to lay with them until they fell asleep. I told them I have to stop doing that, I can’t do it anymore. We can read on the couch, and then I can lay with you for a minute, but that’s about it. So not laying there for 20 or 30 minutes, dozing off, and then going to my own bed. Jennifer B.: Screen time is a big thing for me. I still have to be really careful for that. Being aware of caffeine, that was big for me. Anything after 12 o’clock would affect me, even if it was just a piece of chocolate with caffeine, that sometimes would be something to keep me up a little bit later. Alcohol, I could not drink a lot of alcohol. If I knew I was going to, I would have to say to myself, “Okay, I might have a bad night’s sleep tonight.” I did a lot of meditation for this, and I still try to maintain that at least four or five days a week, because it really helps to not get so anxious about it, and to not think about it as much. Martin Reed: So what is it about meditation in particular that you feel was helpful? Jennifer B.: It was helpful to not get so anxious about it, and to not care so much about sleep, and to focus on something else besides work stress, or family stress, or worrying about falling asleep. It just kind of gave my mind a break. I look forward to doing it. I know that if I skip time for medication, I definitely feel a little bit more stressed and anxious, which can lead to the insomnia again. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think meditation, or any relaxation technique, is really an interesting topic of discussion, because it can be, it’s really easy to kind of get caught up in it as a concept of being a sleep effort. I’m going to meditate to try and generate sleep. If we go down that road, it’s really unhelpful, because it just leads to us putting more pressure on ourselves to sleep, as we’re supposed to be relaxing or we’re supposed to be meditating, in the back of our brain, the brain starts monitoring are we asleep yet? Are we feeling sleepy yet? Martin Reed: But on the other hand, if we can use meditation or relaxation as a way to generate relaxation, as a way to build skill in adjusting our relationship to our thoughts, shifting attention elsewhere, then I think it can be really helpful. A byproduct can be creating better conditions for sleep through a weakened arousal system. So I think it can be a bit of a double edged sword. If sleep is our intention, it becomes one of those unhelpful sleep efforts. But if it’s something to just promote relaxation and self awareness, and acknowledging and accepting thoughts as thoughts, that’s where it can be really helpful. Jennifer B.: Yes. So it was very calming once I got past that initial motivation for sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah. Jennifer B.: When I thought of it as more of a calming activity, and a way to keep stress from building up too terribly much, then it was better. It helps to avoid negativity in my mind, too. All of those are helpful for staying calm. Martin Reed: Yeah. Do you find that your meditation practice is helpful even when you’re not actively engaged in meditation? So for example, if during the day, when you’re active, some uncomfortable thoughts start to come into your mind. Do you feel like you now are more skilled or better able to manage your reaction to those thoughts thanks to meditation practice? Jennifer B.: Yes, definitely. So at work, if I have a stressful event, then I find myself just automatically going into some of the breathing techniques, and calming techniques. I find that if I’m in a period of time where I’m not meditating, or I had given it up for a week or two, that’s when I get a lot more stressed out. It seems to effect me where I can’t bounce back to the next activity, I feel. More stressed if I’m not doing the meditation. Martin Reed: Yeah. How long do you feel that, if you remember, how long were you practicing meditation before you found this is helping, this is helping me change my relationship with these difficult thoughts? When did you notice some positive improvements from that? Jennifer B.: I would say it took a few weeks to really see a substantial difference. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think it was kind of a loaded question, because I was expecting you to give me that answer. I would have been surprised if you had told me, “Oh yeah, just a few nights, a few days of practice, and then I was all good.” Because relaxation, really, is a skill. Right? It’s something that we have to learn to do. It takes a lot of practice. Jennifer B.: Oh, absolutely. I would start with just five minutes, and then I worked my way up to 10, and then 12. Then eventually 20 minutes or so. I didn’t really go beyond that. But it did take a few weeks to really see a substantial benefit with this stress reduction. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think that’s another area where we can kind of get caught up as well. First of all, as I just touched upon, if we’re doing something in a bid to generate sleep or sleepiness, it’s probably not that helpful. But also when people try relaxation techniques, if they’re new to them, we might just try them a couple of times. “Oh, no, this isn’t helping,” then move onto the next thing, just decide it’s not working. But it’s kind of like a skill. If one day we decide, “I want to learn how to play the piano.” We probably wouldn’t expect to be able to play the piano really well after just two days of practice. We recognize that it’s going to take a lot of practice. Relaxation is exactly the same. Jennifer B.: Yeah. It is. I agree. Martin Reed: Yeah. So I think earlier on you were talking about the thinking side of things, how your thoughts and your beliefs have since changed since you were struggling with sleep. Were there any specific thoughts or beliefs that you can recognize now, looking back, that were maybe not helpful, not that accurate, and that might have even been perpetuating this sleep disruption? Jennifer B.: I am going to go back to yeah, that hormone imbalance. Because it seemed to happen so frequently, every month, for a couple of days. That was pretty consistent, plus the weaning. Then being able to sleep once I would have kids, or I would be pregnant. I think that it was really … Just that thought, I had just convinced myself so much that there was a problem, and that everything that I was trying wasn’t working. The anxiety would build more and more. Then I would believe more and more, since the things I weren’t trying weren’t working, then it just was so frustrating. Until I found your site, and listened to a couple of the podcasts. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think, I don’t know if we’re touched upon this yet. But when we were talking, before this, before recording this episode, we were talking about the role of sleeping pills… Jennifer B.: I would say it was every single night, and it started as a quarter of a pill, then a half, and then a whole one, and then two or three, or four of them just to get to sleep. So it was more, and more, and more. Then my brain would be so foggy during the day that I couldn’t function, and I knew that there had to be a better solution. It seems like everybody could sleep but me. But yeah, just seemed to be more and more of these sleeping pills. Then I thought, people don’t have to take these. There has to be some other way. Martin Reed: How did you get to that point where you maybe had this realization or a changing of belief that, “Huh, maybe I don’t need these pills to generate sleep.” Or, “Maybe I can sleep without them. Maybe I can sleep well without them.” Jennifer B.: I had a refill of one of them. When I got the refill, I had a different shaped pill, I think. I had two or three nights where they weren’t working, at all. I thought, “They had to have given me the wrong medicine, they had to give me an expired medicine. This can’t be right. I’m going to go down to the pharmacy.” That’s what I did. I had woken up in the middle of the night and went there when they opened. It was a pharmacy where they opened really early, or were up all night. I can’t remember for sure. But I went down there, and I took the pills. I said, “You had to have given me the wrong ones. These aren’t working, I haven’t slept in three days, and I’ve had to take more.” I’m like, “This is wrong. You have to change it.” Jennifer B.: So she took the pills, and she’s like, “I just opened this bottle. Here you go.” It was very unpleasant, because I hadn’t slept that entire night. Went and yelled at this pharmacist. I got home, and I’m like, “What the heck just happened? What did I just do? I accused them of giving me this wrong medicine.” I got home, and I just thought, “That was so wrong. I have to make a change. I can’t be going down to the pharmacy and telling me they’re giving me the wrong stuff.” But that was a turning point for me, when I thought about what I did, and how ridiculous that was. So that was just prior to the pandemic, maybe a month or two. I had decided that I have to figure it out. Jennifer B.: I have to find something that’s going to work. I had talked to my doctor about it. When I thought more about the things that she was saying, “You hae to get out of bed, you have to make your bed a place for sleep, and that’s all.” A lot of the CBT-I techniques, once I had tied them in, and watched enough YouTube videos on CBT-I, and found your site, and listened to some of the other women. That’s when I knew I could a make a change. But it was that, yeah, that one trip to the pharmacy, where I was like, “This is wrong. There has got to be something different that I can od.” Martin Reed: So did they give you the wrong pills? Or was it just the fact they were a different shape? Jennifer B.: No, no. It was just they weren’t working anymore. If you take them enough, then they stop working, they lose their efficacy. That was really what the problem was. So no, they didn’t. Martin Reed: Wow. It’s amazing the things that, these coincidences or these events, these random events, they can enter our lives but just be real light bulb moments. Just change our whole way of thinking. Jennifer B.: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. So I had gone cold turkey after I was up to numerous pills at night. Just said, “Okay, this is the day I’m going to take them away, and do all of these CBT-I techniques.” Once I started to feel really sleepy even just after a week or so, that’s when I knew. Martin Reed: Wow. Jennifer B.: But it was definitely listening to the stories about others that really made me know that I could get better. So once I knew that, then I wasn’t trying to figure out a problem that really wasn’t there. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think it can be so powerful to hear other people’s stories. That’s why, again, I’m so grateful for you coming on to share yours, because from person to person, insomnia is pretty much unique. The struggle is the hallmark of chronic insomnia is virtually same from person to person. So when we recognize our own experience of others, and we hear how people have transformed their relationship with sleep, and are sleeping better, regardless of how long they’ve been struggling with sleep, it can just be so inspiring and so motivational, and so reassuring. It can be that impetus to abandon all these efforts, and this search, and that ongoing detective work, and to just really focus attention on things that are helpful, things that do work. Jennifer B.: Right. Yeah, if I can just help one person to not have to use any type of sleeping pill, then it will all be worth it, for sure. Because I struggled for 17 years. Not that I never have struggles anymore. But I’m so much better, and I know that it’s going to get better. Martin Reed: Yeah, and I’m glad you mentioned that, because it is important to realize that there are always going to be some difficult nights, everyone has some difficult nights from time to time. It can become easy to have either unrealistic expectations, to believe that implementing some techniques will give us perfect sleep, 100% of our nights for the rest of our life. It can be easy to worry as soon as we have a difficult night that, “Uh-oh, the insomnia is back. Now I have to restart this search, maybe these techniques aren’t helpful.” Whereas the fact is we just had a difficult night, and everyone experiences them from time to time. It’s completely normal and to be expected. Jennifer B.: Right. I was going to tell you about a period of time earlier this year where I had a little bit of a setback. I was skiing, and I had torn my ACL, which is one of the major knee ligaments. It required a surgery. I tore it on January 15th. They like you to wait a while after the injury to let all of the swelling go down before you have the surgery. So I waited about a month after. Part of the recovery process is both after the injury and the initial days, you’re super tired, and your body is worn down. So it takes a while for energy to heal. So I was laying in my bed with my leg up, and I had to do the same thing in the post operative period too. Sorry, I’d have to elevate it. Jennifer B.: I couldn’t really turn, and I couldn’t really move around. I had to be in one spot, because it was braced. I’m usually a side sleeper or a stomach sleeper. I was kind of worried about this, especially because I had to take pain medication for about three days or so afterward. I was filled with a lot of negative emotions about the injury, and I was scared, and I thought, “How is this going to heal?” I know the techniques to fix that knee injury are different from my college soccer days, when people would have it. They were a lot more immobilized. But I was thinking about to the people who used, who did have that injury. It’s 20 years later, and then I had that injury. I was just anxious, even though the techniques were different, and they like to get you up and moving a little bit faster. Jennifer B.: I did go through a period of time where my sleep was definitely affected, until I didn’t have to brace it at night, and I didn’t have to wrap my leg at night. It did start to get better. But I did have some difficulty going to sleep, waking up early, and some of the things that I had before with the insomnia. But I reviewed some of the techniques, and re-implemented them. So I told my husband, I said, “I need some more boring books.” I took those ones about grass and farming back to the library. So he got about a dozen of them. Once I could get around without my crutches after my surgery, I would go downstairs and read the book, and it only took about four nights or so before I did the sleep deprivation technique again, and got back on track. Jennifer B.: I knew that it would get better. So even when I was filled with all these negative emotions, and negative thinking about the injury, and being mad at myself for slipping on the ice, and falling backward, and tearing my knee up, going back to my meditation, and then the sleep deprivation, getting out of bed, it worked. It worked very quickly.b ut I think the biggest thing was I knew it would work, because it worked before. I wasn’t so anxious about it. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think it’s amazing how our whole relationship with sleep changes once we go through that struggle, because I think for someone who has never struggled with sleep or has ever had any issue with sleep, if you said to them, “Okay, let’s say I need to have surgery, and I’m going through the recovery process, and I have some difficult nights. I experience some sleep disruption.” The person would probably say, “Well, of course, you’re going to have some sleep disruption. You had a big accident, you had some surgery, you have to recover. Everything, there is a lot of changes going on there.” Martin Reed: But when we struggle with sleep, we can become really concerned by that sleep disruption. Maybe see it as something else we have to deal with on top of our recovery, or it’s a sign that the insomnia is now coming back. The insomnia is seeing this opportunity to come back into our life, and disrupt our sleep again. But I think that the great thing about these techniques as you just touched upon is you know they work. So you know that during this period of recovery from surgery, or if we’re unwell, then we listen to our bodies, we rest, we recuperate, and then when we’re able to do so, if we are still struggling with sleep, then we know we can just reach into our metaphorical back pocket and just re-implement those techniques that have worked for us before. Jennifer B.: Right. Yeah. It definitely worked when I had my surgery, for sure. But I think knowing that it would work was a big part of it. Yeah, sure, it was miserable for those four days, and I got out my pen and paper, and wrote down my times. It only took a couple of nights of writing down my times, and getting out of bed when I wasn’t sleeping, and up by six o’clock every day. It didn’t take long. But it’s miserable for a few days, but it gets you back on track. So I’m very thankful for that. Martin Reed: Yeah. It’s a difficult surgery. I remember my wife actually had it, I think it was a little while back now, like 10 years ago. She had the ACL reconstruction. I know that it is a difficult recovery journey. So yeah, I trust that you’re doing better now. How is the knee? Jennifer B.: Yeah, I’m four months post-op now. It’s nice and strong, it doesn’t give out. I think part of the recovery has been being appreciative of my body, and my health, and I’ll have this motivation to be stronger going forward, and to avoid the negativity, because quite honestly, in the week or two after the injury, and then a week or two after the surgery, my thoughts were so negative, and it just seemed to affect the healing part of it. Jennifer B.: So that’s where my meditation came in to be calm, and not thing about the negative part, and think about the positive parts, like next ski season I’m going to be super strong, and this is never going to happen again, because I’m going to be so much stronger than I was going in. So not having those negative thoughts can be really helpful, just like they were for the insomnia, once I got rid of the negative thoughts, and thinking, “I’m never going to be able to go to sleep again.” Then I was able to go to sleep, once I didn’t have a lot of that negative thinking about it and it was true with my surgery recovery too. Martin Reed: I like how you linked the two, because I was just going to do that myself. It’s amazing how through adversity we can become stronger. We go through these really difficult periods of our life. But I think we can emerge from them stronger, change in a way, a more positive way from those experiences. Jennifer B.: Yes, definitely. Martin Reed: All right, Jennifer. Well, I really appreciate you setting aside some time and coming on today. I would like to fit in one last question, if you have the time for it. Jennifer B.: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Martin Reed: It’s a question I like to ask everyone at the end of these episodes. It’s this. If someone with chronic insomnia is listening, and feels as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, and they just can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Jennifer B.: I would tell them to study the CBT-I, and learn all the techniques, become familiar with them, whether you believe it will work or not. Then give yourself a certain amount of time, say a week or two weeks, and follow the rules to a T. See how you do. That worked for me. Do the CBT-I for a week or two, and see how you do, because it didn’t take long once I knew it would work. Knowing that I wasn’t alone, and that other people have similar struggles was really helpful for me as well. Yeah, commit to it for a certain amount of time, and I think it’ll work. Martin Reed: That’s great. I think that’s a really positive note to end on. So thank you, again, so much, for coming onto the podcast, Jennifer. Jennifer B.: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for having me. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to The Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to implement evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques to improve your sleep but think you might need some additional support and guidance, I would love to help. There are two ways we can work together. First, you can get my online coaching course. This is the most popular option. My course combines sleep education with individualized coaching and is guaranteed to improve your sleep. You will learn new ways of thinking about sleep and implement better sleep habits over a period of eight weeks. This gives you time to build sleep confidence and notice results without feeling overwhelmed. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com/online. Martin Reed: I also offer a phone coaching package where we start with a one hour call. This can be voice only or video, your choice, and we come up with an initial two-week plan that will have you implementing cognitive and behavioral techniques that will lead to long term improvements in your sleep. You get unlimited email-based support and guidance for two weeks after the call along with a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) In 2019, Jovana experienced a night of no sleep whatsoever but she was confident that she would get some sleep the following night. However, the next night was just the same — Jovana didn’t get one minute of sleep. At this point, she started to panic, and her anxiety was further compounded by the fact she was a new mom. Jovana started to dread going to bed. She felt frustrated. She felt lonely. Fortunately, she found the Insomnia Coach YouTube channel and the Insomnia Coach podcast and started to realize that she was not alone and that her insomnia was not unusual or unique. Ultimately, Jovana stopped the endless sleep-related research and ongoing detective work. She stopped experimenting with medication and supplements. She started to remove herself from the process of sleep and began to accept that sleep cannot be controlled. At the same time, she committed to actions that helped her move toward the kind of life she wanted to live, even after difficult nights and even in the presence of difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions. As a result, Jovana regained confidence in her natural ability to sleep and is once again living the kind of life she wants to live. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that nobody needs to live with chronic insomnia and that evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques can help you enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life. Martin Reed: 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 Reed: Hello Jovana, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come on to the podcast. Jovana Mühle: My pleasure. Thank you, Martin. Martin Reed: So I’m going to start right at the beginning, just like I do with all my podcast guests. So can you just tell us when your sleep problems first began? And what do you think caused your initial issues with sleep? Jovana Mühle: So it first began, I think I know exactly the date, which is, it’s so weird, right? You remember some things very precisely, I think it was the 13th of December. And I think it was a weekend you can recall, and check if you’d want to check. I think it was 2019 13th of December. And it happened for me two nights in a row that I couldn’t sleep, so I really remember it’s the first time it began because before that, I would have bad nights of sleep but I wouldn’t panic. Jovana Mühle: And I wouldn’t react the way I did when it happened then in December, so basically, I had the feeling I couldn’t sleep. So I was laying down in my bed, I even tried to go to the couch, tried to sleep there, I just think nothing was happening. I didn’t sleep a minute, which never happened to me before. Because even if I had a bad night, and I couldn’t fall asleep, at some point and say, four or 5:00 AM, I would fall asleep, eventually. This didn’t happen then, and I didn’t know why, and then the night afterwards, I was sure I would sleep because I still had this belief sleep is natural. Jovana Mühle: It happens at some point, if you’re tired. It didn’t. And then it hit me really hard because I really thought there’s something wrong with me, there must be because I just had my baby a few months before. My son was born in August 2019. And I believed that maybe some, how do you say hormonal imbalance was the cause, or maybe the reason why I don’t know some. The thing is, I wasn’t informed very much about sleep. And all those things, even melatonin wasn’t a word for me. Jovana Mühle: I just thought there must be some chemical in your body, it allows you to sleep, and if you don’t have that, doesn’t work. So I really started thinking, I have a problem now. And it happened, so eventually, the third night I would sleep, but then I kind of I remember, I talked to some friends. And I was, can you imagine two nights in a row? Who had that? And I felt pretty lonely because I only had one friend who had it, and I think that’s one of the problems I had at this time is not knowing anyone who was going, or experiencing those things. Jovana Mühle: So I started to panic, I googled. And then, god, you can find anything on Google. So it happened a few nights after maybe just even a week afterwards, I couldn’t sleep again. And apparently, there was no apparent reason for me not to sleep because it’s not as if I did something different on that day. It’s not as if I overslept the days before. I couldn’t I had a baby, so it was, my baby was waking me up anyway, I was sleep deprived from my baby. So I thought this is not normal, something must be really bad with my health. Jovana Mühle: But the root cause, I think now, is not this hormonal thing. I really believe it was just stress, and insight, which was kind of there the whole time but I wasn’t really aware of it. And this is why when it happened again, I know now, but this is really in hindsight I couldn’t say that back then, but when it kept on happening, Christmas, I still had this, probably it was, it went on, basically until this year, beginning of this year, so kept on coming and happening. Jovana Mühle: And I couldn’t figure out what was the cause. But now, I would say I think it’s more stress related, and that my arousal system, as you told me is called, but this thing wouldn’t just come down. I wouldn’t calm down in the evening. And what’s interesting is, I don’t know why I wouldn’t notice that this was the cause, you know what I mean? In backwards now, I believe, god, it was so obvious, it was stress, but why would you think something’s wrong? Jovana Mühle: It’s very weird to me even now, to understand why somebody gets so lost with their thinking, it’s you take a wrong path, and then you. Martin Reed: It’s really easy to do. Did you ever have issues with sleep before that period of December 2019? Jovana Mühle: So I think I would say, but not a lot, I would say maybe, I don’t know, twice per year. So I would have a bad night where I would think about stuff, and then I noticed it’s already 2:00 AM, I’m still not sleeping. This is bad, I have to wake up in the morning, how I’m I going to do that, this kind of thing that. As I said four or five or even 6:00 Am, at some point, I would sleep. Eventually my brain would stop, think about those things, I guess, and then I would sleep. Jovana Mühle: So and this was rare, I wasn’t, I didn’t call myself insomniac. I didn’t even know really what this was, and then I started to pull myself I think insomniac now, when I had it a couple of times because it was just, I remember I was saying, but I don’t belong to those people, as if it’s something really bad. I really had this feeling, this is not me. And why is it happening to me, and I couldn’t figure it all out. And then I developed all the other problems like sleeping anxiety. Jovana Mühle: And I think this is the worst part because I already was anxious, because of my baby, being a new mom the whole thing. And then the sleep anxiety made it, this made my life horrible because I was dreading going to bed, even maybe just thinking about when the evening begins here, 6:00 PM already, should I go at 8:00 PM tonight to try to compensate? And this behavior began, wow. I was really I remember I was having, it was in my tummy because it’s somewhere in there to both stress ball, or something it’s holding you and I was really anxious. Jovana Mühle: Just thinking, Okay, I’m going to go to bed and it’s not going to work. And then what’s going to happen, I’m going to have another night without sleep. And wow, it’s frustrating. And the lonely part, feeling lonely, this component I think it was something that really wasn’t helping me because I figured when I started, when I discovered later on your podcast, your videos on YouTube, the whole class, everything. Jovana Mühle: This helped a lot and very fast. Just I know, I remember the first week I was watching at least five videos of yours, either hearing podcasts, or just some explanation videos, and I felt already a support just in knowing, okay, other people are having the same things, they are experiencing the same symptoms, or they are calling themselves Insomniac. So this thing, I think, is what I missed. And I’m sad I didn’t find this out before. Martin Reed: I think you touched on a great point about how we can just so easily get caught up in our thoughts. And a lot of it is to do with that especially that anxiety of what each night will bring. And I think something that some people listening to here will identify with, and I’m really glad you mentioned it was the fact that back in December 2019, apart from the fact that you have had a baby a few months before that, when those sleep issues kind of cropped up, there didn’t seem to be an obvious cause of them. Martin Reed: And that in itself can be quite concerning, right? And lead us down this rabbit hole of really starting to worry that maybe there’s a chemical imbalance, or there’s something uniquely wrong, we’ve lost that magical chemical, or that ability to sleep. And the reason I’m really glad you mentioned that is because sometimes there are obvious causes of sleep disruption, and that can be quite comforting. But sometimes there’s not and that can be where we can get caught up in our thoughts then. Martin Reed: But the fact of the matter is, it really doesn’t matter what the initial trigger of that sleep disruption is because we can eliminate those from our lives, there are always going to be some nights where we have difficult nights, sometimes it’s an obvious reason why, sometimes not. But it’s when we get caught up as a result of those difficult nights, and start to worry really start to feel anxious about what each night will bring, and start to modify our behaviors in response in a bit to try and protect our sleep, or to make sleep happen. Martin Reed: That’s when we can, the real problems can start, and that’s why it’s really helpful to kind of move away from trying to figure out the trigger, and instead just work on all those thoughts, and behaviors that can perpetuate the sleep disruption. Jovana Mühle: But even before I, no, after I googled obviously, first I googled, but then quite quickly I after a few months let’s say just after Christmas so it began December and I said I think 13th, so middle of December, and then I waited Christmas, it was bad. Everything was barging me. I think even already in January I went to a doctor, and okay obviously, not all doctors are bad, but her advice was pretty bad for me because the first thing she gave me was sleeping pills. Jovana Mühle: Obviously, not even the ones you buy over the counter, some herbs, or stuff, how do you call it it’s a drug I use, it’s like a Valerian. So not even that, she went full on, and gave me really a prescription of sleeping pills. And she was, no, if you take once per week, it’s fine. Now, obviously, this concept of I’m going to have one night of good sleep per week this is already triggering your anxiety because you think okay, I cannot do more than one because I’m going to be addicted, and it’s dangerous. Jovana Mühle: And I don’t know, I felt really, this was a bad idea to start with that. And the fact that she didn’t, she also said she didn’t want to test, or because I was mentioning my thought okay, probably hormonal imbalance, some chemicals, and magical chemical, it doesn’t work anymore. And she said, it’s very hard actually to, when you do a blood test, or you just want to go for a check. Jovana Mühle: She said, it’s quite hard to identify, where, if there is a problem really in the hormones, or something, she was also saying, there is a kind of no way to know precisely, if you really have this biological problem, or any chemical problem in your body. So this also left me okay, must be I don’t know, but it’s probably that it contributed to, it was just worse. Martin Reed: I think there’s two great points that you made there. The first and foremost is that we kind of sometimes can see the sleeping pills as being this kind of magical elixir, the solution to everything, but they can also come with their own issues, you said, If I’m only allowed to take them one night a week, does that mean that I’m just not going to sleep for the other six, then you’ve got this idea that sometimes they can reinforce this assumption, or this belief that we can’t sleep without some kind of external help, some external crutch. Martin Reed: And then just this drifting off into the detective work there’s some mystery going on, I’ve got to investigate it, is it chemicals? Is it hormones? Is it this? Or is it that, and often it’s that ongoing detective work that can really kind of trap us, and lead us down this slippery slope, and it can kind of just consume our lives, and we’re just spending every waking minute just thinking, or investigating what could be the problem here? Jovana Mühle: Exactly. Because for me, it wasn’t normal, that she would just prescribe those sleeping pills. I thought we need to figure out what’s the root cause, I wanted to know. So it really was you say, it really triggered my detective mode. And I kept on googling, and I thought maybe she has doesn’t know everything, I need to seek somebody who’s really professional, a generalist a doctor who really is just for sleep. But it’s funny how I didn’t think of this, how do you say TVCI? Martin Reed: CBT-I. Jovana Mühle: In French, it’s another way, but so the behavioral therapy, nobody mentioned that, she didn’t mention that. Martin Reed: That is a real shame, and your story’s really familiar, unfortunately, that we have this magical collection of techniques is cognitive and behavioral techniques, which is just a fancy way of saying, we can explore the thought processes that can perpetuate sleep disruption, and we can tackle the behaviors that we implement that can perpetuate sleep disruption. And when we take that kind of two pronged approach, it’s really helpful and really effective with chronic insomnia. Martin Reed: And it’s usually recommended as the first line treatment for chronic insomnia as well, but unfortunately, we have an issue where a lot of doctors just don’t know about it, often through no fault of their own, because the training just isn’t there most of the time. And also, we have an access problem. So even doctors that are familiar with the techniques, they don’t really have the time available to work through these techniques, one on one with their clients. Martin Reed: And there’s not many people they can refer these patients out to either so we have a real problem in terms of knowledge and accessibility of these techniques. And they’re not, we don’t need to shroud them in mystery. The techniques themselves are pretty straightforward, they can definitely be challenging to implement. But we don’t need to really ring fence access to them. They can be straightforward, people can implement them independently. Martin Reed: And if we can put all of our efforts into implementing those techniques instead of all the things that can lead us astray, this ongoing detective work, doing all that researching, or that doctor googling it can be so helpful and I like to emphasize this because we can get caught in this trap through no fault of our own, we can do everything right. We can go to the doctor, or we can look online, we can do our research but we can get trapped, or caught up because there’s a lack of information out there on the good stuff, the stuff that works and there’s a, we have challenges in terms of access to the good stuff as well. Martin Reed: So I think you touched upon the kind of issues that you were having it was, you would just be worrying about sleep all day long and then, we would normally expect let’s say if you didn’t have insomnia, we would normally expect after a night, or two maybe things would get back on track, you’d have those nights to catch up sleep, but it sounds that didn’t really happen for you. What were you finding was a kind of typical night? Was it issues just first falling asleep, or was it waking during the night finding it hard to go back to sleep? Or maybe it was both? Jovana Mühle: It was both. It started with the falling asleep, which I think was the main cause of my anxiety then because it was the worst part just dreading going to bed, but I also had and this happened, I didn’t know exactly when because it’s hard to say, because as I say I wasn’t sleeping through my night anyway because of my baby so even just breastfeeding, or just waking up to changed my baby, or something made me, sometimes I couldn’t fall back asleep, but I didn’t think about that until I had my insomnia, and then when this happened I could really notice. Jovana Mühle: I knew sometimes if my son would wake me up at two or 3:00 AM I wouldn’t sleep until the rest, even if I had fallen asleep first somehow, and I didn’t understand why falling back asleep it didn’t work. So I will wake up, do what I have to do and then go back to bed and then I just couldn’t sleep even if, maybe in this moment anxiety wasn’t there. So this is also why because I started to analyze because I was obviously, then conscious okay, I am stressed when I go to bed now obviously, I am stressed. Jovana Mühle: And I tried to do relaxation techniques, and stuff like that, and also mentioning this Valerian because I didn’t take those real sleeping pills for a long time because I was scared. And obviously didn’t work with the whole concept of I’m not sleeping five days, and I have one night what’s the point. So I quit this but then I tried to do a cure with Valerian, and this was kind of helping the time I was taking it because I felt less stressed I guess, so this is good because it’s worked on that but then the falling back asleep, falling back asleep when in the middle of the night this started not working, kind of really it was obviously well there’s something wrong now. Jovana Mühle: So this must be again another, you’re always kind of tried to analyze and to figure out what’s the root cause, and if something works the stressed part, it’s a bit relieved or diminished through this medication so then what’s next Why is still something wrong, god. I might not sleep at night, this is just, I don’t know, it was a very bad time so many bad memories of this, all the things I tried because it’s not the only thing after I finished three months of Valerian obviously, I went off and maybe, I think maybe for a week it was fine, kind of fine again. Jovana Mühle: But then I would eventually have another night where I didn’t sleep for a minute, and then I knew okay, so I’m back on this and I tried melatonin. I took it also, first of all, I figured this works. And I don’t know, in hindsight I don’t know why it worked because I don’t believe much in melatonin now after the whole experiences I had, but it did work, also maybe, how do you say, punctually so I would take it one time if I noticed I’m not falling asleep, and usually I do quite fast if I am falling asleep, it’s very fast. Jovana Mühle: So after 20 minutes, it’s not going to happen till, I think it’s more psychological effect they had on me, so I would just take it maybe it’s, by then it’s maybe 11 or 11:30, I would take it and still worked. And this is where I think it’s maybe a placebo effect it helped me to produce maybe my anxiety, or just it made me believe this thing could make me sleep. And I was on and off, and then again, I went to a naturopath, using naturopath, and she recommended not taking it the way I did because obviously it was already a couple months I was going this six months. Jovana Mühle: And she said, I think you need a cure because probably and this is where again, I fell back in my detective mode and whole, and she said, maybe you have a deficiency, or the pineal gland is not producing enough. Maybe you even have serotonin, a lack of serotonin, she was mentioning a lot of stuff there, and she didn’t really analyze or check it properly. Jovana Mühle: But she was saying, we don’t need to find out and run some tests, we can just take the cure you do again, three months of it, of melatonin every night, and she was melatonin too strong, you need to start with five milligrams, and you go on three months, and then you go back downwards. Basically, she felt this will teach my brain to produce it again, in case it wasn’t. And I remember I was thinking, god, we’re back again on something, and then I already knew I was dreading the moment I was to go off of it. Jovana Mühle: And I think it’s exactly at this point that I found out your podcasts, and your videos because I contacted you also and asked about this, how do I do that? Because I was I reduced from five and three, two, one. And then this is ridiculous, but I was taking even a quarter of one pill. So I reduced from one pill of one milligram, first, I did a half, then I had to cut into a quarter, and at the end I was still kind of biting off a little corner, this quarter of a pill and I was I’m so ridiculous, but I’m so thinking it’s I’m not going to sleep if I don’t take any. Jovana Mühle: So I don’t if I had this addictive profile people who are addicted to stuff easily, or just mentally thinking they need it. And, god, I couldn’t go on, and if I would, I wouldn’t sleep. So then I had my response to you. I had my confirmation. I’m not sleeping without melatonin. So what do I do now? Martin Reed: That whole, just listening to you describe that whole experience of sitting there and maybe we need to address the serotonin, maybe you need to have all this melatonin, maybe we need this and that, it made me start to feel anxious, just imagining myself in that situation. So I think you raised another great point there as well. And it’s when we end up taking supplements, or over the counter stuff, or anything, it could be prescription medication even, it can lead us to just it can reinforce this belief that we need something to generate sleep. Martin Reed: And then you said, especially if we taking it contingently, so for example, we’re not planning on taking anything tonight, we’re going to see how the night goes. And then if we do find that we’re struggling, then we might reach for whatever it is we’re taking, that can be problematic, too. Because first and foremost, we kind of setting up a little test for ourself, are we going to fall asleep pretty quickly, or are we going to fall back to sleep. So that in itself just keeps the brain a little bit more active, it has to monitor more for sleep and wakefulness, that can make sleep more difficult. Martin Reed: And then let’s say we do reach for whatever it is we’ve got close by, if we do then fall asleep, we’ve kind of reinforced this belief that that thing is generating sleep. If we don’t fall asleep easily, then we’re just reinforcing this belief that we’ve there’s something seriously wrong with us and that we’ve kind of lost the ability to sleep so really there’s no lasting positive outcome to these things. They can really be one of these one of these traps that we can get caught up in. Jovana Mühle: Interesting as you mentioned this thing of I say self monitoring, you kind of observing yourself, and trying to see if you are going to fall asleep, or not, but it happens unconsciously, right? And I didn’t know this was a thing as well. And I was trying, I remember, it happened also, maybe let’s say summer 2020. So December 2019 first time and then a few months later, I remember I had this for the first time when it’s not just this twinge normal ones you have when you fall asleep, it’s honestly my heart started racing so fast. Jovana Mühle: And I was feeling so alert, and stressed at the same time. I was relaxed the second before, so I didn’t know where this came from. I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to explain it, I remember I was saying this to some friends, the friend who had insomnia for example, and she didn’t have those things, but she also really like to talk much about insomnia because I think it was contributing to her anxiety as well, so I couldn’t I was lonely anyway. Jovana Mühle: And so I remember this feeling of just going to bed, even noticing this is the thing you’re noticing that you’re falling asleep, which normally doesn’t happen and then you have your heart, the stress, start racing and it wasn’t a physical twinge necessarily the thing you have sometimes, it was really, what’s happening my heart was pumping so fast. And luckily you describe it in your videos because this just a fact acknowledging the fact that this is a normal thing, or is a part of your brain wanting to be actually nice, and reward you, and tell you Okay, look, you’re falling asleep just after a few nights. Jovana Mühle: After I learned about this concept, self monitoring, I noticed it will fade off, it faded off and I didn’t have it anymore luckily. So because this was also a very bad thing, it would happen I don’t know maybe 15 times before I gave up even trying to sleep then because it was so uncomfortable. Martin Reed: They, I think in hindsight all these things, and we know once we have an explanation for them, it can be so reassuring, but before, we don’t know what we don’t know, right? And so if we don’t know what the explanation for these things is, it can just lead to more worry that there is something uniquely wrong, or that there’s something dangerous going on, or is really all just it’s just a manifestation it’s just a symptom of just heightened arousal, whether it’s thought based just thinking about sleeping pressure on ourselves to sleep monitoring for sleep. Martin Reed: Or the all the physical symptoms of heightened arousal, which is a racing heart feeling cold, feeling hot, sweaty all those things, these are all kind of normal reactions to heightened arousal it’s basically the body trying to protect us from what it sees as a threat, which is wakefulness, not falling asleep, the body can’t really differentiate between a real physical threat, and just kind of an imagined one, or just a mental threat or the reaction is the same so the body’s going to gearing us up to fight, or to run away, and that’s not really helpful when we want to be sitting there setting the stage for sleep. Jovana Mühle: Definitely, and not only that, I also noticed how I could fall asleep on the couch, and I was really sleepy, and you can fall asleep in the couch for a minute, and then I would go to my bedroom, and not even the part where you are fully suggest the fact that I would go into my bed, my mattress, this was already enough to make me fully awake, aroused I was just, I didn’t understand, and this is the other thing that helped understand when you explained the conditioning, or what do you call it. Jovana Mühle: And I think your brain has associating the fact that you’re not sleeping in your bed, so now we’re going to be awake in our bed. And it seems now, really in hindsight seems so obvious, but at back at the time it was I thought something was as you say uniquely wrong with me this is exactly the words I was using to say I have a unique problem something’s really wrong, and I’ll never find out. Martin Reed: I think it’s really helpful you just explaining all this, and just talking a bit about it because you said, it’s that worry that something is uniquely wrong with us, but the fact of the matter is insomnia from person to person is almost identical. So I just know from my own experience that so many people listening to this are going to be, my goodness, she is telling me, I’m hearing exactly what I’m experiencing and that in itself- Jovana Mühle: I found your videos, I was, god, I have this, finally. Martin Reed: That can be so reassuring, right? Just to realize that you’re not alone in what you’re going through isn’t unique, and that we don’t have to be looking for all the answers there. There are simple explanations to everything that you’re experiencing. See you mentioned I just wanted to go back really briefly about that, the trials, and tribulations of trying to come off that melatonin. You’re reducing the dose, you decided, because I remember you actually sent me an email about you really wanted to just get off this melatonin supplement. Martin Reed: And you would just go in smaller dose, tiny little nibble off the edge of the pill. But you went through that experience where when you had that night where there was no melatonin, then you have difficulty sleeping so it makes it really hard, right? So then have that confidence to maybe go a second night, or third night with no melatonin, it’s so much easier to just bring it back into our lives. So how did you shift away from that? How are you where we are today? Where I’m guessing maybe I’m assuming wrong you don’t have a big pile of melatonin pills right next to you. Jovana Mühle: I’m completely off since a few months, I think I stopped in February it was I guess I’m not sure exactly the months of this year. When so, there’s a thing I wasn’t paying much attention because it was, I was healing from this problem, and it was just happening smoothly. And then this when, counting exactly the days, but think I think it was beginning of the year. Jovana Mühle: And how I finally managed is just because I took a class honestly, so when I first I think I emailed you, or I was just I watched a YouTube videos, a few people interviews on your podcast. And this reduced the anxiety level of a lot, and I remember I would even watch before going to bed, sometimes twice the same, just to about this because it was a big problem of mine, I was really sure. Nobody has that, it’s unique, it’s very weird. Jovana Mühle: And just to have you say again, and again Okay, this is normal, this something that happens, and this reduced the stress level. So I remember, then I emailed you, and then you responded something very smart. It was what do you think, if you would go off melatonin now, and you wouldn’t you would force yourself to not sleep, now that you were recommending me to do that, suggesting I should note that, when you said, imagine just if you would force yourself not to sleep for five, or six nights in a row, do you think you still wouldn’t be able to sleep with your melatonin pill. Jovana Mühle: And I remembered this kind of triggered my motivation to really say, Okay, god, it’s so obvious just try now. And I think I kind of succeed, and maybe not the first time after this because I needed to kind of integrate this information, and probably rewatch a few videos saying always the same things, but just to accept those facts, and integrate them. And then I just, I think stress level was reduced enough, so actually, I wasn’t self monitoring me or my brain wasn’t monitoring. Jovana Mühle: And then I fell asleep, and it wasn’t enough after one night because I am, I think a very anxious person in general. So I was still think, okay, maybe one night, but I needed to have maybe a week of good nights to be able to build the self confidence. I think it didn’t happen after one success, it’s you need to have a lot of successes to just so that, there’s an overweight not this compared to what you’ve been experiencing since two years. So took a while, but I was watching, as I said, a couple of times, just for me, I need to have this, somebody telling me things a couple of times, so I integrate them quite well. Jovana Mühle: And then, it reassures me I’m not alone, or people are going through this, other people healed, or it’s not even healing, it’s, I guess, you understand things and you integrate them, and then you kind of you liberate yourself from all those beliefs. It’s not even you needed to heal, I didn’t need to heal from something, or maybe from a mental beliefs. But it’s not a healing that happened, it’s just some kind of integration of this information, and which would use this stress, anxiety, and slowly my brain stopped monitoring. Jovana Mühle: I think that’s what helped because it was about the falling asleep at the beginning of the night, but then in the middle of the night, sometimes I would have, again, where I couldn’t fall back to sleep, especially if it was early morning let’s say four, 5:00 AM for sure I would sleep anymore. But then again, this knowing you brought was reducing your sleep window and then I knew even before I tried to reduce it, I knew, okay, so it just means to me I’m rested, or it’s enough for tonight, and just this thing of accepting that maybe I don’t need to count eight hours on the clock to be, this helped because as I say, the first part of falling asleep was about having less stress, anxiety, not thinking of monitoring myself. Jovana Mühle: But this didn’t heal, or help the other problem immediately, which was fine because my worst nightmare was just going to bed. So when this was done, I was kind of okay, with sometimes just waking up at 4:00 AM or five and then I would lay in bed, but I wasn’t stressed anymore, I was, okay, maybe I’ll sleep maybe not at some point 6:00 AM, up, wake up anyway, or just and it’s fine. And we didn’t touch on that, but that was a big part of my understanding not needing to focus on those eight hours which was by the way the advice I got from the doctor because obviously, sleeping pills, but also sleep hygiene. Jovana Mühle: She informed me of all those things which just contributed to my anxiety again, and it wasn’t helping me so the fact that you kind of broke down all those elements of sleep hygiene was very good to just not be stressed if in the middle of night I’m not sleeping anymore, and then I tried eventually I remember I refused to do the sleep restriction because I thought since I still have a small child it’s waking me up at some point in the night, I’m not going to restrict too much because I didn’t know how to because sometimes I’ll be up anyway for twice in a night. Jovana Mühle: So it wasn’t eventually really going to help me, but at some point I realized Okay, if I’m always awake at five I could easily go maybe to sleep One hour later, and I’ll wake up maybe at say, you know what I mean? I did a bit of the sleep restriction, but not forcing it too much and eventually, I will still sleep maybe eight or nine hours because I’m quite tired in general and my child, I guess and then some nights I do sleep nine hours, and it’s fine, but some others I’m happy awake at five 5:30, and my day begins and it’s even a bonus time, so I’m not stressed about this part anymore for sure. Martin Reed: I think there’s kind of a common theme in everything that you’ve mentioned there, and I think it comes down to control, our desire to control sleep whether that’s through medication, or supplements, or trying to fall asleep trying to get eight hours of sleep, trying to sleep, and naturally wake up at say 7:00 AM instead of 5:00 AM. Martin Reed: Implementing all these different sleep hygiene techniques, or rituals all of these things really can just be distilled down into we’re trying to control sleep, and as you can probably tell just now looking back you’re able to do that it all just comes down to our desire to control sleep which is not helpful, it just increases arousal, makes sleep more difficult because sleep ultimately is something we can’t control, it’s a natural process and it’s when we try and get involved in the process that we tend to see sleep becoming more difficult than it needs to be. Jovana Mühle: Definitely and not to mention it, if I had a very bad night which means for me back then I wouldn’t sleep at all, I remember I would I was calling in sick, or not for work, but I just some things I had planned even with some friends, or nice stuff just easy easygoing things those ones I would cancel especially if it’s on the night following, on the evening following my bad night so I was no, I need to catch up on that sleep, so I go to bed extra early and it’s funny because I think from all the things that I’ve been through with insomnia where I’m now so I’m definitely I’m going to bed whatever time I want. Jovana Mühle: I’m not even thinking about it I’m falling asleep immediately as I always was before so I feel completely cured, but the only thing is sometimes I notice, and it’s interesting especially with the friend thing if I have friends over, or the dinner goes a bit longer, or something and sometimes I have thought about how I used to think before. So it’s maybe already 11:00 PM which is a bit late for me because I’m getting some time to get to bed, shower everything so I know I already think about it okay won’t be before midnight until I’m home showered, and in my bed. Jovana Mühle: And I still have this, in the morning I have I only have six hours a lot of sleep because I decided to have fun so I still have this little thing sometimes coming up in my mind and thinking okay, but usually what I do then, and I think it’s a very good recommendation for if you are cured, and you still have these problems at some point. I immediately think of everything I’ve learned Okay, so we’re not going to control sleep, we’re not going to try it will happen naturally and luckily I had I think enough months behind your success where it didn’t happen at all anymore. Jovana Mühle: So I kind of related that I don’t think that okay, I’m not controlling anything and look it works, it’s just natural, and just look repeating those things helped me. Martin Reed: I think what was really helpful that was just the way you were talking about, you’d sometimes call in sick after difficult nights, or you’d even cancel plans with friends. Those kinds of things are completely understandable why we would do them, but what typically then happens is, what are we doing instead. So let’s say for example, we call in sick from work, now we’re just kind of sitting at home, we don’t have any kind of distractions, what are we going to do, we’re going to start probably thinking, or worrying about sleep, maybe firing up Dr. Google again. Martin Reed: Maybe even just trying to take a nap, maybe we’re going to be more sedentary. All these things can kind of make us feel more fatigued, can generate more anxiety, more worry. And when we remove good stuff from our lives, those plans with friends, we reinforce this connection between difficult night equals difficult day. And definitely difficult nights can make the day is more difficult. But we also have quite a lot of control over the quality of our days independently of sleep. Often, what happens to us during the day, or what we do during the day, has more of an influence on the quality of our day, rather than this being completely 100, predetermined by how the night goes. Martin Reed: So if we’re able to still go into work, maybe or if we’re able to still go out with friends and carve out our days as normally as possible, can really help us come to that realization that a difficult night might not be the end of the world, it might not make the next day a complete disaster, there’s still an opportunity to be productive, or to have some good moments, or even just some, okay moments, after difficult nights, and then that in turn, maybe then we might put a little bit less pressure on ourselves to sleep, and feel be less likely to get caught up in all those anxious sleep related thoughts. Jovana Mühle: That’s not so easy, I have to say, because I remember, I think I can only now I can apply what you’re saying, and not cancel something, because I have this information in the background but if I would do that I tried sometimes I was okay, so good. I’m going anyway. And that evening it was COVID time anyway, so it wasn’t partying, or whatever it was more just staying up late at some friends, or having friends over. Jovana Mühle: And I remember I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I used to, you know what I mean? Even if I first have to do that, I will still have the anxiety because then you are really, this means I’m not going to bed before, maybe 1:00 AM, or which this is also the hard part, even if you shouldn’t cancel, how do you still enjoy something will bring some stress, and anxiety, and worrying. Martin Reed: Definitely, I think what can be helpful there is to kind of ask ourselves a question, and it will be something along the lines of, is this behavior helping me live the life I want to live? So for example, if you’re tempted to cancel those plans with friends, is canceling those plans helping you live the kind of life you want to live? If it is, then that’s fine. You don’t need to make, then cancel those plans. If it’s not, then why would you want to cancel those plans? Jovana Mühle: Okay, interesting. I think I’m going to keep this one because, as I say, sometimes even out by the end of an evening, or something, and if it’s late, I would still have those thoughts it’s late just this. I think this is so funny, because I think they’re really groups of people, either you’re born with this, or have to figure it. May be educate, get it from your parents, or from I was thinking did I get this from my parents? I think I did because I remember my dad was always saying, you need to go to bed. Jovana Mühle: I was maybe three, or four, or five I don’t know exactly because my memory is a bit low. But it was you need to go to sleep now because otherwise you’ll be very tired tomorrow. And I think this is something that it’s ingrained, or how do you say it’s a seed they put in you voluntarily, or unconsciously, but it can have this thing. It’s why I say there are two groups of people there was who don’t even look what time it is when they go to bed. And even if they need to wake up at five 6:00 AM very early to go to work. If there’s a nice movie, something on the TV or something they’re watching, it’s 2:00 AM they don’t care. Jovana Mühle: They just go to bed when it’s finished, you know what I mean? Those people I was never this type of people anyway, so I was always okay, so I have to allow myself to be able to sleep at least seven, eight hours. So this thing I think it comes on already from my childhood, or something either my parents kind of taught me somehow because I think, the next day if you don’t sleep enough, you’re it’s bad things are happening to you. I think this is why I say there are two groups of people, I really believe. Jovana Mühle: If you are already in this category of somebody who’s very conscious about how many hours you should sleep, and you kind of have this tendency to be worrying more about it. Martin Reed: Definitely and we see that in this common model that we have to describe the development of chronic insomnia, we call it the three P model. And so we start off with these predisposing factors, and some of them it might just be a different belief system about sleep we might just have place more importance on sleep, we might have been raised in a family where sleep was something that was talked about a lot, and maybe we were told that we must go to bed now, you must get out of bed now, you must get a certain amount of sleep. Martin Reed: We might have more anxiety, we might be really strong night owls, or really strong morning larks, so we might be more susceptible to some sleep disruption. So I think there are definitely some factors there that can predispose us, or kind of lift us closer to that bar of insomnia. And then we have I might as well talk about the last two now. So otherwise, people will ask me can we have the second P which is just the precipitating events, whatever triggered that temporary sleep disruption, that initial sleep disruption, it can be really hard to pinpoint that. Martin Reed: And it’s often not very helpful, because we can’t eliminate every potential source of sleep disruption from our lives. Normally, more than nine times out of 10, our sleep just gets right back on track, all by itself, but when it doesn’t, it’s almost always down to that last P, which is these perpetuating factors, which is all the changes to our thought processes around sleep, and all the behaviors that we completely understandably implement in a bid to improve our sleep, to control our sleep, to protect our sleep, that actually backfire on us, and make sleep more difficult. Martin Reed: Because all those thoughts and behaviors can end up lowering our natural sleep drive, our drive to sleep, they can disrupt our body clock, and they can lead to heightened arousal. And when we have high levels of arousal, we usually need to generate more sleep, try be awake for even longer to help overpower that arousal, and generate sleep. Jovana Mühle: It’s funny because I remember at some point I was, yes, obviously, not as some point. During the whole time, I was talking to my husband, and tried to get some support from him, which obviously wasn’t easy for him because he belongs to this other group of people. So no predisposition, nothing that triggered, he never had this insomnia thing, and he even because I was thinking at some point, okay, maybe this relaxation, or you have a lot of, what is the name, AMSR, those videos where people either cut through some sponge with a knife, very slowly, or something going on with some little pearls, or it can be sand. Jovana Mühle: I don’t know you usually see on those videos on YouTube fingers moving through some material. And it’s kind of relaxing to watch those but I remember, I was trying different things just to relax before bed. And I remember I asked him, do you know sleep is something special, I asked him, his face was he didn’t know what to tell. He was you just close your eyes and you go to bed. Jovana Mühle: And this also helped a little bit, to kind of realize what, or to validate what you were saying in your videos, being sleep is natural, and there is no need to control anything around it. And it happens naturally. And this was kind of a validation because for those kinds of people belonging to this other group, where they’re just naturally good sleeper they’re not doing anything. And it helped me to let go a bit of this wish to control everything because it wasn’t working obviously. Martin Reed: It can be I think, that can be really powerful is just asking someone who we know doesn’t have any issues with sleep. What’s your secret? What do you do to make sleep happen? And I get emails from people, how do I make myself fall asleep? What do I do when I get into bed to make sleep happen? We can, it’s that very act of trying that is the challenge, that is the obstacle to sleep happening, that the less we get involved, the easiest sleep becomes. Martin Reed: And I think that something else you mentioned, which I think is really worth emphasizing is that even today, sometimes if you’re out late, for example, you might think, if I stay out, this might mean I’ve only got six hours left to get sleep, or less time. And I think that the reason I emphasize that is because that’s normal and natural, it’s just the brain looking out for us, our brain is kind of hardwired, our brain is hardwired to protect us at the end of the day. Martin Reed: So it’s always going to consider what the worst possible scenario might be. It’s kind of we were living in a cave, and we see a bunch of people from a tribe that we didn’t know way off in the distance, the brain, the person that passed on their genes successfully, their brain told them don’t go down there, we don’t know those people stay in the cave. The brain of the person that didn’t get to pass down their genes probably said, go down. We don’t know who those people are, let’s go say hi to them, went down there probably got boiled in a big cauldron and eaten. Martin Reed: So our brain is, we are all here today, every single one of us because our brain is really cautious. It wants to give us the worst possible outcome in our mind because that’s its protection mechanism. It’s always going to be doom and gloom priority number one, that’s how it protects us. So we don’t want to prevent that from happening. We don’t want to try and push those thoughts away, or fight them or avoid them because it’s futile. It’s just our brain trying to protect us, we’re always going to have thoughts, some of them are going to be happy nice thoughts, some of them are going to be unpleasant thoughts, but they are just thoughts, so we don’t have to react to them. Martin Reed: We don’t have to fight them. We don’t have to try and avoid them. Sometimes it’s helpful to just recognize there’s that thought, I’m only going to have five hours to get to sleep tonight, but here I am out doing things that are important to me, that are meaningful to me, that are enriching my life. Maybe that’s worth more than getting an extra hour, or two of sleep tonight. Jovana Mühle: This is good. I’m going to keep this for me for if it helps again because I was thinking if those thoughts begin, and you engage in this, when you’re really, I was thinking, Okay, anxiety might come back. And this is when I’ll be again maybe self monitoring my sleep, or something this. So it’s good to say this, and emphasize on this that you should not engage, you just acknowledge Okay, this is a thought and not try to too much think, okay. Jovana Mühle: So anxieties may be coming back, or maybe Okay, I’m going to be aroused now, as soon as I go to bed. My arousal system would be not aroused, you know what I mean. My arousal system will go on, and I will all these symptoms we usually have. So this is why I think this is a very difficult part in not perpetuating your problem even if it happens once in a while here and there, just I think what you said, not engaging too much, with this thought just acknowledging it. Because what I do now, obviously, I do have sometimes trouble falling asleep, but it’s very rare, it may be happen only twice in the last couple of months. Jovana Mühle: And what I did is when I noticed, and this is also something I had from your online course, was if you feel bad, if you’re anxious, or angry, or even frustrated, any bad emotion you might have while you are lying in bed, then you should get out of it. And this is what I do, and I practicing this, from where I am now, this is great. So I would just stand up, go out of my bedroom, go down, maybe even watch some TV, which also was interesting because from a sleep hygiene, you should not do that, or they say you shouldn’t. But actually, when you are an insomniac are struggling with so many issues, you just do that, and your distress and you won’t think about your insomnia which is your main problem I think. Jovana Mühle: So I go down in the living room, and I would watch maybe some TV, or even on my phone I actually don’t read I do something else. I have a book there so if it happens, I could just read, and usually just falling asleep there will solve my problem meaning I will wake up maybe after an hour, or two because I know either the TV is still on, or my light is on, and my book is on me, or you know what I mean? I just fall asleep for, slept a few hours. And then this is something I cannot explain I think it’s due to the fact that I’m relaxed then I go back to bed because I think okay, it’s more comfortable than my couch. Jovana Mühle: So I do this, I go back even if it’s already 4:00 AM, or something, I go back, and I always fall back asleep. And I’m thinking, wow, this is interesting. This shows just the fact that if you’re thinking about even your stress, and this pressure you’re putting on yourself doesn’t work, just moving up, even walking, going up the stairs, where you think I might be wide awake now. Not at all. I think I fall asleep in a second, and this is another validation for me that it’s just natural, and you really don’t need to think about it, control it, just let go of all those things you’re doing. Jovana Mühle: Going back to my bedroom, the stress is gone. Because I know, because there’s this kind of knowing, I can sleep my body can do that. So actually, I’m just going to go back and it works. Martin Reed: Exactly, if you can sleep on the couch, then you can sleep anywhere. So it shows that you can sleep if you’re one of these people that you recognize you’ve got that really high conditioned arousal, where you seem to be able to sleep on the couch, but you can’t sleep in bed essentially, you’re into bed wide awake again. Well, this just shows that maybe it’s an arousal, an anxiety issue, rather than a sleep issue, because after all, you are recognizing that you’re able to sleep somewhere else. Martin Reed: And so it shows that you can sleep and everyone can sleep as long as you’ve been awake for long enough. So, I think that’s helpful. And just having that plan in place, we said we don’t have to react to all these thoughts that race through our mind. They can be unpleasant, they can make us feel uncomfortable, but we can also have a plan in place. So if being in bed really starts to feel unpleasant we’re tossing and turning. We just don’t feel good, conditions don’t feel right for sleep. Then we might as well get out of bed and just do anything that might make being awake a bit more pleasant compared to staying in bed, and struggling. Martin Reed: And that could involve watching TV, might involve reading doesn’t really matter too much what we do because our goal isn’t to make sleep happen, because we can’t control sleep, it’s just to make being awake, a bit more pleasant. But it comes with that bonus that we’re not reinforcing that conditioned arousal, we’re not reinforcing that association, or that idea that the bed is an awful place to be because we’re getting out of bed whenever it doesn’t feel good to be in bed. And that can be really helpful. Martin Reed: So I know I’ve taken a lot of your time, and I’m really grateful so I’m just going to kind of get to the last question which is the one that I like to ask everyone, and that’s this if someone with chronic insomnia is listening and feel as though they’ve tried everything that beyond health, they can’t do anything to improve their sleep. What would you tell them? Jovana Mühle: Watch this podcast, watch the videos I would tell them, honestly I would tell them to get informed about all the things we just mentioned in this episode, but get informed about how sleep is natural, how it happens naturally, how they, this knowledge it seems so obvious to some people, and you need to go back it’s something so simple and obviously to go back to this. So I would honestly try your course which is great. Jovana Mühle: This is what I thought because I was already anticipating what will happen if this doesn’t work, we kind of thinking one step forward and I was thinking okay, so if the online insomnia coach doesn’t help me, I’ll get someone in person, I thought maybe this I need this contact, this is the next step. So maybe if you feel online stuff don’t really help you then definitely do the CBT-I therapy, the cognitive therapy, I would do this. Jovana Mühle: And it’s difficult to say because if you had this since your whole life, it’s also hard I can understand how hard it is to imagine a different way of living, or being regards to your sleep because for me I could relate to how it was before it happened two, or three years before that. So I had the goal of kind of going back to this detached, just relaxed person I was regarding sleep, and if there is where maybe I don’t know if you’re really struggling since you’re a kid, or a teenager, or something. I guess it’s really important to have somebody to help you, or follow you, a coach, you basically with this, and to know that you’re not alone. Jovana Mühle: I would say this is one really important thing, knowing that there are other people struggling, and maybe even people who are not willing to talk about this because they know that this triggers them, or contributes to their own anxiety, and which is something I couldn’t understand, and now I do a bit. And I think this is important if you have those people so find someone else maybe who can talk to you about this, and use those platforms. You also have I think one, I didn’t use this one, but I think there’s a forum, or something where you can also ask questions, and talk to other people, and have this I think this helps to feel supported to not be lonely. And to be reminded you’re not having a uniquely wrong issue. Jovana Mühle: It’s something, insomnia is very similar, and it’s natural, this word, it happens natural sleep happens naturally, everybody can sleep this is you’ve been printed out I was thinking, also I did this on my fridge you can print it out somewhere, put it in there have a constant reminder of those things until you integrate them when you’re breathing, your body you really have the knowing from the inside, not just somebody telling you need to kind of really integrate this information. Jovana Mühle: And I think then you’re really cured because I think everybody can be cured. It’s obviously everybody can sleep, it’s natural. It’s funny, I wish I had all this information when it started because I would have saved a lot of money buying my pills, and everything I did consultations, and would have been sleeping better earlier. So don’t waste your time trying other things just. Martin Reed: I think I don’t, that’s something I hear a lot is I wish I’d found out about all of this sooner. It’s very common that people feel that way. And obviously it’s understandable but I think the great thing is, the past is the past, but what matters is the present, and now you do know all these techniques. And just talking to you, you can just tell that your whole relationship with sleep has just changed, but if sleep issues ever happen again in the future, you’re in a completely different place now. Martin Reed: You know way more about sleep, you know specific techniques that have proven to be helpful, you know you can just pull them out of your back pocket, and just implement them again if needed. So maybe you’ve come out of this even stronger, you’re now more resilient, more confident. So maybe in a way maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but maybe there is even a glimmer of a silver lining to this whole experience. Jovana Mühle: I believe in that I’m working actually as a healer, energetic work, and stuff this. And I do believe that all experiences have actually a good purpose for us. We learn something from it, even the bad stuff, so I would take away, this is definitely. Jovana Mühle: And even just by talking to some friends, I didn’t know they had this, and I recommended also your podcasts, and videos, and everything. And I think even just being able to help other people who are maybe not talking, but still, 9:00 PM thinking I need to go to bed, and everything’s a bit stressed around this bedtime thing there’s helping others. Martin Reed: That’s great. All right, well, I think that’s a great note to end on, so thanks again for being such a great guest, and sharing your experience, it’s been great to talk to you, Jovana. Jovana Mühle: Thank you for having me. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to The Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to implement evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques to improve your sleep but think you might need some additional support and guidance, I would love to help. There are two ways we can work together. First, you can get my online coaching course. This is the most popular option. My course combines sleep education with individualized coaching and is guaranteed to improve your sleep. You will learn new ways of thinking about sleep and implement better sleep habits over a period of eight weeks. This gives you time to build sleep confidence and notice results without feeling overwhelmed. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com/online. Martin Reed: I also offer a phone coaching package where we start with a one hour call. This can be voice only or video, your choice, and we come up with an initial two-week plan that will have you implementing cognitive and behavioral techniques that will lead to long term improvements in your sleep. You get unlimited email-based support and guidance for two weeks after the call along with a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) Cindy developed postpartum depression shortly after her daughter was born and was prescribed medication to help her sleep. The medication seemed to work at first but Cindy soon found that it wasn’t helping and this led to more anxiety and more sleep difficulties. Cindy thought that her brain was broken and started to implement lots of different safety behaviors in a bid to get her sleep back on track. After trying to eliminate all the possible causes of her insomnia, Cindy was continuing to find sleep difficult. Fortunately, Cindy realized that it was all the effort she was putting into sleep and all the behaviors she was implementing in a bid to protect her sleep and create perfect conditions for sleep that were keeping her insomnia alive. Cindy started to accept the possibility of nighttime wakefulness and the reality of nighttime wakefulness when it occurred. She took steps to make nighttime wakefulness more pleasant and took comfort in the fact that nights of less sleep build sleep drive and increase the likelihood of sleep on subsequent nights. Ultimately, Cindy stopped putting pressure on herself to sleep. She stopped striving for sleep, she stopped putting effort into sleep, she stopped trying to fight or avoid sleep-related anxiety, and she started to recognize that all the anxious thoughts produced by her brain were just that — thoughts. Nothing more and nothing less. Today, Cindy doesn’t take any sleep medication and she is sleeping well. Perhaps one of the biggest insights she shared is that she no longer uses sleep itself as a measure of her success. In Cindy’s words, it’s our relationship with sleep that is the true measure of success. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that nobody needs to live with chronic insomnia and that evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques can help you enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life. Martin Reed: 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 Reed: Hi, Cindy. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast. Cindy Xia: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me here. Martin Reed: It is great to have you on. I’m really excited for everything that we’re going to be talking about. Let’s start at the beginning. Can you just tell us a little bit about when your sleep problems first began, and what you feel caused those initial issues with sleep? Cindy Xia: So it started when I had Feena in October last year. And I had a great pregnancy, a great birth. I felt really good. Feena was actually a pretty good baby. And for the first few days I was actually still doing okay. I was really sleep deprived from looking after her, but I had no problems just passing out whenever I had the chance. And then around a couple of days in, I just remembered feeling really off, really jittery and just feeling like I couldn’t switch off. And now I think back, it was sort of probably the beginning of my postpartum depression, but I felt it as anxiety. And so it sort of built and built and built to the point where I couldn’t sleep anyway. And then around nine days postpartum, I had a really scary mental health crisis, where I think the cumulative effects of the sleep deprivation actually made me hallucinate. And I had this really scary… Cindy Xia: I thought it was a psychotic episode. I’m not sure what it was. But I was lying in my bed, trying to nap. And for some reason I thought my whole house was floating in the clouds. I wasn’t dreaming, I believed it. And I just remember thinking, “Oh no, something’s wrong with me. I need to get help.” So then anyway, long story short, the crisis team was called. They came in and then they looked at me and they said, “Well, you’re not psychotic.” And I was like, “Oh, thank goodness.” And they said, “But you really, really, really need to sleep, because sleep deprivation is torture, and it can drive people crazy. You have to sleep. So let your mum look after your baby for the night. Here’s some sleeping pills. Go and sleep for eight hours and go.” Cindy Xia: So I was very relieved. I was just like, “Oh, it’s just sleep. Easy. I’m super tired.” And so that night it was fine, I was knocked out for eight hours and I felt good the next day. And then I noticed something over time. I started to notice that it was harder and harder to fall asleep at night, even though I knew my baby was with my mum, I knew that she was okay and that they were giving me quetiapine for sleep. And I knew that the amount of quetiapine I was taking, it should be enough to knock me up. But I think there was one night where it didn’t knock me out, and I was so freaked out. I thought, “Oh my gosh, something is happening in my brain. Why can’t I sleep even with these drugs?” Cindy Xia: Yeah. And then it got to the point where I think it was also the anxiety from my hormones, it was also making it very hard to sleep as well. So yeah, it was pretty traumatizing. And it got to the point where Feena was actually sleeping quite well. She would sleep four or five hour blocks quite early on. And the big irony was that she was sleeping, but I wasn’t sleeping. It was quite fun. So yeah, that’s how it started. It started with a mental health crisis. Martin Reed: Yeah. So do you feel that part of the problem was maybe you just weren’t expecting sleep disruption, or maybe you were expecting some sleep disruption, but when it was combined with everything else that was going on, it just kind of made the whole reaction just even more intense? Cindy Xia: Yeah, I think I wasn’t expecting any sleep disruption, at least not in the form of insomnia. Because I had expected to be sleep deprived because everyone tells you a baby… well, you don’t even sleep when you have a baby. If you don’t sleep, you don’t wake up. So I expected that, but I just thought if you’re sleep deprived, you will sleep so much easier. So I thought I would have no problem sleeping. And I actually had no problem sleeping in the beginning when I was still feeling quite good, but I did not expect to be so wired. That’s how I felt tired but wired in the early days. Cindy Xia: Again, I think that was hormonal. And I don’t think I could’ve slept even if I tried. But back then, it just made me panic because I thought the insomnia was… Basically, I just thought my brain was broken. And then what was scary was that even after being Feena was sleeping well, and even after my hormones seemed to be getting better, that insomnia actually stuck around. Yeah, that’s when I knew I actually had a bit of a problem. Martin Reed: Yeah. So I think a lot of people listen to this are just going to identify with a lot of what you said, regardless of if they’re new parents or not, especially that phrase you used where we can feel tired, but wired. We really feel that strong sense of fatigue or sleepiness, but we’re just so wired, it seems to be really difficult to sleep. Martin Reed: So with that in mind, I think many people will probably also recognize that, well, there’s a clear and obvious trigger for some sleep disruption here, the new baby. Most of the time when we experience some sleep disruption, our sleep just gets back on track all by itself once we’ve adapted to whatever that trigger is, or got used to it, or we’ve adapted. But in your case, it didn’t. Like you said, Feena started to sleep well, but you were still struggling, even though that wasn’t the obvious trigger or the obvious factor now for that sleep disruption. So with that in mind, what do you think it was? Why do you think you continue to struggle with sleep even when your daughter was clearly no longer the primary cause of that sleep disruption? Cindy Xia: I think because it was the first time in my life that I struggled with sleep in this way, because in the past I was a pretty good sleeper, but I would not be able to sleep if, say I was sharing a room with someone. That was my thing. I just couldn’t share a room, and I would know I would have a bad night. But I knew if I could sleep alone, I would be fine because I didn’t feel any pressure. But it was like after having Feena and after going through all that craziness, it was almost like that sleeplessness had crept into even when I was sleeping alone. And I felt like I had no more safety behaviors to go back into. Because I was sleeping alone, my baby was in a different room. She was with my mum. And that was really frightening, because I thought, “Well, in the past if I had problems sleeping, I could just move to a different room or tell that person to go away. But now I can’t sleep and I don’t know why. I don’t know why I can’t sleep, and I don’t know what to do about it.” So I guess it was a sense of helplessness and not knowing why this was happening. Martin Reed: Yeah. So you mentioned that in the short term you were on sleeping pills, found them helpful at first, but then it felt like they just stopped working. I think people will probably identify with that as well, that experience. What kind of other things did you try at that point in a bid to improve your sleep? Cindy Xia: Quite a few things. So the first thing was, I thought that my baby was a trigger for my sleeplessness. So I thought, “Okay. I can’t keep her in the same room, because I’m probably waking up to all the noises,” so that’s why I moved her out of the room. It was coming to summer when Feena was a newborn, so it was getting quite warm. And so I thought, “Okay, I read that elevated body temperatures makes it harder to sleep.” So I thought, “Okay, I’m going to sleep, drag my mattress downstairs under the air-con, blast it at 20 degrees and try to sleep.” I thought… Oh, there were loads of things. I thought, “Oh, blue light is bad. Don’t use your phone after dark. Don’t even look at it. Don’t even touch it. Don’t even think about it. Don’t drink tea,” even though I water down my tea like five times before I drink it, but, “Don’t drink tea because that bit of caffeine is going to keep you up for five hours.” So I tried to eliminate all the possible causes of sleeplessness, basically. It didn’t work. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think a lot of what you’ve described there are what we consider these sleep hygiene techniques or rules, whatever you want to call them. And I think people with insomnia are experts on sleep hygiene. They’re probably the most hygienic sleepers are people struggling with sleep that you could ever imagine. And I really think that sleep hygiene, especially by itself, just really isn’t helpful for people with insomnia, because I think it just draws even more attention on sleep, and leads us to put in more pressure on ourselves to sleep. And now we have this huge list of rituals. So not only are we struggling to sleep and desperate for sleep, we now feel that we have to add these 10 different rituals onto our days and our nights. Cindy Xia: Yes. And if one of the conditions is not quite right, then that adds more anxiety to it as well. Martin Reed: Yeah, exactly. So I think you mentioned that you found this one specific video on the YouTube channel, that you found really helpful. And it’s kind of like your first step, that light bulb moment. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that video is about, and how you identified with it, and why you found it helpful? Cindy Xia: Yeah. So as with many people struggling with sleep, I scoured Dr. Google and Dr. YouTube, and looked everywhere. And a lot of the results were just sleep hygiene things. And I just thought, “I’m trying all these things, it’s not really working.” And then I came across your channel. I’m not sure exactly what terms I looked up, probably how to fall asleep or something, quick, without medication. And I came across your video, which was Letting Go of Sleep Efforts and Safety Behaviors. And I don’t know, there was something about it that was just so counterintuitive to everything that I was reading online, because everything I was reading online was just more sleep efforts, basically. But your one was the complete opposite, saying don’t even try. In fact, those things would actually make you insomnia worse. And the only thing that can help you sleep is just staying awake long enough and just being calm enough before sleep, basically. And I just thought, “Oh great. This is finally… I don’t have to do anything. I’m good at doing that.” So I just decided to do nothing. And that first night, actually, I slept straight away that first night. And it was really good. Martin Reed: Yeah. Yeah, I think that is a big thing. And I think it’s almost extension of this idea of the sleep hygiene rituals. They draw more attention to sleep. We’re doing all of these things in an attempt to make sleep happen, but at the end of the day, sleep is something we can’t control. And it’s often when we try and control it, when we try and put all that effort into sleep, that sleep becomes more difficult or more elusive. So if we can focus our attention on maybe just creating good conditions for sleep to occur, like only going to bed when we really feel sleepy enough for asleep, being active during the day, as much as we can. Those kinds of things are way more helpful than trying to directly control sleep or directly put effort into sleep, because that really just makes things more difficult. Cindy Xia: Doesn’t work at all. Martin Reed: But at the same time, I think it is important to emphasize that it’s completely understandable why we would do all these things, because everything in life responds positively to effort, sleep is the exception to that rule. We aren’t to know that until we put all this effort in and it kind of backfires on us. So I’m really keen to just get the message out there that if you do identify yourself as being in this struggle, putting all this effort into sleep, and you’re finding that nothing’s improving, that’s understandable. It doesn’t mean that there’s something seriously wrong with you. It’s not you, it doesn’t mean you’ve got this different, more virulent strain of insomnia. It’s all completely understandable and predictable why you’re still struggling. And it’s probably because you’re caught up in that struggle. So if we can shift away from that, that’s often when we start to notice those improvements. Cindy Xia: Yes. And I think, actually, insomnia is actually really common. And I would be surprised if a lot of people don’t have it, because I think it’s a sign that you are human. We naturally worry about things, and we naturally try to protect ourselves against or react against something that is frightening us, or something that seems out of our control. So I think, yeah, instead of thinking something’s wrong with me to have insomnia, I think that’s normal. Well, it’s not ideal, but it’s not surprising. Martin Reed: Yeah, definitely. And I think there’s also a difference too, between temporary more short-term sleep disruption, because that is definitely a part of life. There’s nothing we can do to prevent difficult nights or sleepless nights. That’s just part of being human. And that is a difference between what we consider to be chronic insomnia, the longer term problem. That longer term chronic insomnia is typified by whatever that initial trigger was, is probably not even present anymore. Now our issue is more to do with a change to how we think about sleep, and how we react to our thoughts, and any behaviors we have implemented in an attempt to understandably improve our sleep, but have backfired and made conditions worse for sleep. A common example would just be spending huge amounts of time in bed to generate more sleep, but really all we end up doing is just generating more wakefulness. Cindy Xia: Yes. Yes. I was doing a bit of that in the beginning, because when you have a child sleep becomes more valuable than gold, which there’s your sleep pressure right there. And so whenever she slept at night, whether it’s at 10:00, or at 9:00, or 11:00, I’ll be like, “Okay. Right. It’s time for me to go to bed and make the most of this.” But actually normally, because I’m normally a night owl and I normally sleep at quite atrocious hours, like 1:00, or 2:00, or 3:00. So my circadian rhythm was already not helping at the same time. Martin Reed: Yeah. So one thing you touched upon is you saw this video and then it kind of clicked about putting effort into sleep, and safety behaviors, doing things to try and protect our sleep. And I think you mentioned that you just became more accepting of being awake at night. You just learned to be okay with having difficult nights, okay with feeling the effects of a night of insomnia during the day. This is a big challenge faced by people with insomnia. How do we accept this? How do we become okay with difficult nights? Martin Reed: So I’m really keen to hear your thoughts on that. How were you able to kind of recondition yourself to be accepting of wakefulness, and not see sleep as something you had to battle with? Cindy Xia: It’s a process. It does not happen overnight. And the first night that I saw your video, I slept while there not because I was obviously very tired. But the process of accepting wakefulness for me took many months, I think, because it’s one thing to understand it intellectually and go, “Oh yeah, that makes sense. I just have to accept it.” And it’s another thing for your body and your mind to follow, because if you’ve been primed to fear something, it’s very hard to uncondition it. It’s possible, but it’s very, very hard. Cindy Xia: So for me, I focused a lot on number one, was just realizing that I don’t have to sleep, because in the past, when I was sleeping on my own, and I could sleep whenever, I never thought, “Oh, I’m going to sleep now,” when I go to bed. I always thought, “Oh, I’m just going to lie here, think about a few things, and look at my phone, and close my eyes.” And I never thought, “I’m going to try to sleep. I’m going to try to sleep.” And I always remembered that back then, I would think, “If I can’t sleep, I’m just going to get up and read a book.” I’ve always believed this my whole life, I was going to do that. Cindy Xia: But obviously, when I had a baby, I just thought, “I feel like reading a book would be wasting this precious sleep time.” But then realizing that actually, I can just get up and read a book. I’m not tied to this bed. No one is watching me. It doesn’t matter. So that kind of alleviated some of the pressure to try to sleep when I’m lying there. And the other thing was, I guess, dealing with the brain-deadness the next day. I think what really helped was when I was watching your videos, you talked about sleep drive. And firstly, that’s a great name for being completely trashed, that’s basically how I felt. I just think, “I have great sleep drive.” And so it just turned that feeling into a positive thing rather than something that’s negative. Cindy Xia: It made me think like, “Oh, it’s okay. I’m just collecting sleep drive, so tomorrow I could sleep extra well. And if not tomorrow night, then the next night. It’s fine.” And also, because I had been sleep deprived to the point of hallucination in the early days, and I had recovered from that, I guess I wasn’t as… Well, I was afraid of that, but I also knew oh, it’s fine. I’m probably not going to get as bad as that, so it’s okay. I mean, even if I hallucinate again, it’s okay. I guess, because I had hit rock bottom, so I just was more accepting, being tired was fine. So it was definitely a process. It takes a lot of time to decondition yourself. And I think the first time when it started to get better was when I had those sleepless nights, but it wasn’t that bad. I felt quite like, oh. I got up, I did a couple of things, went back to bed. Got up, and I was like, “Oh, I feel fine.” Cindy Xia: So then the next night I thought, “Oh, if I have one of those nights again, I’ll be all right.” And so I think it was that little moment when I thought, “I will be okay,” was when I started to be more accepting. Martin Reed: Yeah, why do you feel that those sleepless nights felt a little bit better? Do you think it was just a change in your reaction to them or your relationship with them? Or was it because you were doing different things, like instead of struggling, you were getting out of bed and reading a book or something like that? Why do you feel like those sleepless nights started to feel better? Cindy Xia: I think because, firstly, I started to realize that I was able to sleep. That’s the first thing, and I wasn’t just lying there wondering why my brain’s broken. And the second thing was, I just thought, “It’s just a matter of time. It might not be tonight, it could be tomorrow night.” So I think just realizing that everything was going to be okay and that there is a way out of this and I just needed to give it time. And right now, tonight might not be a night where I get lots of sleep, and that is okay. And just having things to do actually really helps. Because it’s super boring just lying there. I would much rather go on Facebook for five hours at night, than staring at the ceiling and wondering why I can’t sleep. So yeah, it was just a combination of lots of things. Martin Reed: Yeah, I think that understanding the concept of sleep drive, like you touched upon, can be so helpful. All we mean by sleep drive, for people not familiar with it, is the longer we’re awake for, the stronger that pressure to sleep becomes. None of us can stay awake indefinitely, we’ll always sleep in the end. Martin Reed: When we’re struggling with insomnia, the brain can play tricks on us, right? We can have a really difficult night, and then we start to really become concerned that the next night is going to be really difficult too. Whereas the reality is after a really difficult night, the chances actually start to tip in our favor that the next night or the night after that will be a little bit better, because of that accumulation of sleep drive, because there’s been less sleep, more wakefulness, it increases the likelihood of sleep on subsequent nights. And that in itself, just understanding that concept can be really reassuring, just as you touched upon. Cindy Xia: Yes. Yes. Martin Reed: Something else I really liked was how you said, “In the past, when I went to bed, I never went to the bed and thought, okay, now I’ve got to fall asleep.” But yet, when we’re struggling with sleep, we start to put that pressure on ourselves, right? Cindy Xia: Yep. Martin Reed: And it’s like if a client asks me, “What do I do to make myself fall asleep when I get into bed?” And it’s kind of like, well, how about you just go and ask someone who sleeps really well and ask them what they do to fall asleep. And you’ll probably just get a blank stare, because the very process of falling asleep involves no attempts or no effort to fall asleep. And if we can recognize that we’re trying, that could be part of the problem. So I think that was really, really interesting the way you mentioned that. And it’s kind of ironic because I think deep down, we all know this. If we have a history of being able to sleep well in the past, we can remember that this was never anything I put effort into or thought into, so why am I doing it now? Martin Reed: And just so much of our thought processes and our behaviors change. Like you touched upon in the past, “I would just read a book if sleep wasn’t happening,” but then your mindset changes. “I don’t want to read a book, because that might take sleep away from me.” Cindy Xia: Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Absolutely. Martin Reed: Everything just changes. So sometimes it can be helpful to just try and identify all these changes we might’ve made, and see if we might be able to just pick away at them and start to undo them, and see what kind of effect that might have on our sleep. Cindy Xia: Yes, absolutely. And I remember in the early days of insomnia land, I would even try to monitor when I would fall asleep. I would think, “Oh, if my leg jerks once, it means I’m getting there.” Or if I start getting those dreamy thoughts, I go, “Oh, I’m nearly there.” And obviously, that would wake me up on it. And I’d go, “Darn it. I was so close. So close.” And whenever I had a dream, that was the best thing, because I knew I had slept. I thought, “Yes, I did. I had a dream.” Martin Reed: I noticed a few weeks ago, maybe more recently, you posted into the forum and you shared this really great analogy about sleep anxiety and how it relates to performance anxiety. You’re a professional musician. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Cindy Xia: Oh yes. It’s great. So yeah, so performance anxiety in musicians, or if you’re doing public speaking, I think it’s considered the third biggest phobia in the world. More people fear performing than death. I don’t know. Don’t quote me on this. No, it’s very funny. But yes, performance anxiety it’s very, very similar to sleep anxiety, because you feel this intense pressure to succeed in what you want to do on the stage, and that will generate anxiety, but often the anxiety will also inhibit your ability to do that very task. So it becomes this negative feedback loop to the point where you just completely crash and burn on the stage, and then those bad experiences will also make you obsess about future performances. Cindy Xia: And so a lot of people think, “Oh, well, when I’m on stage, I’m just going to try harder so I don’t make mistakes, or try hard to focus.” And that’s very, very counterproductive, because often leads you to fulfilling the prophecy. So that’s very similar to sleep anxiety, because the more you think, “I am going to sleep so well tonight. I’m going to try so hard. I’m going to have all these things ready. My sleeping pills, and my perfect blanket, my lucky socks, the temperature set at the perfect degree,” and I don’t know, “my melatonin and all sorts. And then I’m going to sleep.” And then obviously, the harder you try, then you are not going to sleep and it sort of all goes down from there. Cindy Xia: Yeah. And the thing when I’m coaching my piano students to get through performance anxiety, I say to them, “Don’t worry about making a perfect performance, because that’s actually nearly impossible, actually. Yes, you can prepare for it, but in the actual day, yeah, you really can’t control anything, really. You almost have to just expect the unexpected and you go in there and just play your heart out, play your music. You have to be prepared for anything to happen, and you will have to know that you will be okay regardless of even the worst catastrophe.” So I guess if you take that analogy to sleeplessness or sleep anxiety, the only way to sleep well is to know that you will be okay, even in the worst catastrophe, which I guess is having zero hours that night and tossing and turning and feeling anxious, and feeling horrible. You will still be okay even when that happens in the worst case scenario. Cindy Xia: Yeah. So it is very hard because it does take time to train yourself out of that negative loop of, I have to try. Because it’s very counter intuitive. It’s like you have to not try to make it work, basically. Yeah. So it’s quite interesting. Martin Reed: Yeah, it is really interesting. Let me ask you this. Do you ever think that maybe there’s even an advantage to some of this performance anxiety in terms of you’re about to get on stage and maybe you feel that adrenaline and maybe it actually, in some way, helps your performance? Keeps you more focused? Cindy Xia: It does actually. It does, because I mean, I love performing. I love it so much. You get to a point where no matter how… Okay, there’s a myth that great performers never feel performance anxiety. That’s not true. Everyone feels it, everybody. But you get to a point where you feel the performance anxiety, and it doesn’t affect how well you play. I know that I could be vomiting backstage with nerves, and having all these catastrophic thoughts of, “What if I make a mistake and I can’t recover from it?” I could be having all those thoughts, but I know that the moment I walk onto the stage, despite having all these physical reactions and the thoughts and everything, and slippery fingers, and racing heart and blah, blah, blah, I know that I can still deliver the best performance. Cindy Xia: And actually, the reason why I’ve been able to do that is because I have practiced performing under those conditions. Yeah, and I love performing. And now when I feel the anxiety or whatever, this performance anxiety, I feel pretty excited because I know it’s like, oh, it’s my time to perform. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The reason why I ask you that is because we have this belief that anxiety is bad. All anxiety is bad and it must be avoided at all costs, and often that’s when we can get caught up in it. So I’m definitely not suggesting that performance anxiety is something we should strive for when we’re trying to sleep. But what I’m trying to get at, is it’s okay and it’s understandable to experience anxiety. Martin Reed: And just like you touched upon, it really is… How we get caught up in anxiety or how we respond to anxiety is really just down to our reactions to the thoughts we have that generate that anxiety. And it can be so helpful to recognize that thoughts and anxiety can definitely make us feel uncomfortable, but they’re not a danger to us, and we don’t have to try and fight them, or avoid them, or suppress them. If we can just get to a place where we can acknowledge that these thoughts are thoughts, our brain is hardwired to generate thoughts, often it can be another way that we eliminate this struggle, and this battle internally, when we find our mind racing. And all that effort that goes into suppressing, or challenging, or doing anything with thoughts, the truth is we don’t have to react to them because they are just thoughts. Cindy Xia: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s one thing that I learned a lot about as well, that, yeah, our thoughts are just thoughts. Our brain is trying its best to protect us, but sometimes it has what I call an allergic reaction, which is reacting to something that’s actually not dangerous. And the best way is just to let it freak out a little bit, and just go, “Cool,” but I’m not going to change any of my behavior to face this threat that doesn’t exist in real life. Because otherwise, your anxiety will start to target itself, because it can’t really find anything else to target, so it will start picking on itself. And that’s when you get into a real bad loop, because then you start to fear the fear, which will will generate more fear. Cindy Xia: So, yeah. I read somewhere that… It was a really good quote. It said, “People with anxiety disorders… That anxiety is like discomfort, but not danger.” So it feels like danger, because that’s how we react to danger. But sometimes we can react as if there was danger when there isn’t any. And the key thing is not to change our behaviors as if there was something dangerous. We’d just go about our day, acknowledge that I’m feeling anxious, I’m thinking catastrophic thoughts. Cool. I’ll just do my thing. Yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah. Yeah. I think you made a great point there as well, where you say, “Often the fear becomes the fear.” We are fearful of experiencing fear. And I think the challenge is the brain just cannot separate real threats, like there’s a grizzly bear about to break in through the front door and attack us in our sleep, and just a perceived threat, like if I don’t fall asleep, some kind of disaster will happen tomorrow. So the body will react the same, regardless of whether it’s a real threat or a perceived threat. And then if we try to push that thought away, we try and suppress that thought, then I think the brain can be like, “Oh wow, you’re trying to suppress this thought. It must be real. It must be really serious. We need to think about it more.” And it just ramps up that intensity, and that’s when we can really get caught up in our thoughts. Cindy Xia: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Especially the thought of… Because this is I guess the most common thought of an insomniac, which is, “What if I don’t sleep ever again?” Or, “What if my insomnia comes back?” Or, “What if, what if, what if…” It’s always the what ifs. And these days, if I think these thoughts, I just laugh at it because I don’t believe it. It’s the same as saying what if I walked outside and, I don’t know, an alien abducted me? Something kind of ridiculous. And I just go, “Is there something I should be worrying about? Oh, nah.” So if my brain starts thinking, “What if you don’t sleep tonight?” I just go, “I don’t know. You tell me. It’s fine. Everything’s all right.” Yeah. Hearing the thought, but just shrugging it off. Martin Reed: Yeah. And I think it can be helpful too, to just recognize that the brain is always going to want to focus on or think about the worst possible outcome. Because at the end of the day, that is a survival mechanism. That’s why we’re all alive today is because our brains are hardwired to consider what the worst possible outcome might be to protect us from that. But then again, we get caught up if the worst possible outcome is often the least likeliest outcome. There’s often that thought that we have often isn’t that accurate, but really we don’t even need to get too involved in that, because these thoughts are just thoughts. Cindy Xia: They’re just thoughts. Martin Reed: We don’t have to respond to them. They can make us feel uncomfortable for sure, but they’re not a reflection of who we are. They’re not a prediction of the future. They are just little bursts of chemical activity in the brain. And we get to choose how we respond to those thoughts. Cindy Xia: Yep, absolutely. Yeah. Martin Reed: So we’ve really focused on the thought processing side of things, and you touched upon trying not to allow our thoughts to control our behaviors. So extending on from that, on the behavioral side of things. Were there any changes you made to your behaviors in terms of when you went to bed, or when you got out of bed, that you feel contributed to your kind of transformation? Cindy Xia: What I did was I compared my safety behaviors and all of that with how I used to sleep, and I tried to go back to how I used to sleep. I mean, I used to sleep atrociously, but not because of insomnia, because I just didn’t… I used to love being awake, and I would just think, “Stay up late and watch shows.” And, “oh, okay, fine. I’ll go to sleep. Ah, boring.” So I used to find sleep boring, and I used to love being awake. Whereas on the flip side, when I struggled with sleep, I found that sleep was amazing and I hated being awake. So it was more about thinking, “Okay. Well, what did I used to do,” which was basically nothing, “to go to sleep?” And doing more of that. Cindy Xia: So one of the things I used to do for me, which is not recommended for other people, but I like to lay in bed awake purposefully. I know they say don’t do that because it’s not good. But for me, because that’s what I used to do, I used to just lie in bed and go on my phone, and just relax, and just feel like bed is a safe place to be. You don’t have to sleep, you can just lie there, that’s fine. So yeah, I did that. I also did a lot of things that broke my mental barriers about how I thought I should sleep. So for example, I mentioned how I thought I couldn’t sleep in a hot room. Well, one night I just thought, “You know what, I’m going to sleep bad even if I slept in a cold room. So I’m just going to try and sleep in a hot room tonight. I don’t care.” So I moved my mattress back upstairs, and it was 27 degrees, which felt hot to me, and I slept that night. And so immediately, my brain just went, “Oh, you don’t have that problem. You can sleep in a warm room.” Cindy Xia: Other things like drinking tea at night, one night, I just thought, “You know what? I’m just going to drink a cup of tea right before bed.” Don’t do this with coffee, that probably won’t work. But a diluted tea, it’s fine. I just thought, “I’m going to do that.” Slept fine. And I thought, “Oh great. I can drink tea again.” And I guess my biggest one was sleeping next to my baby. That was a really huge thing for me, because I had to always sleep really far away from her, because I felt like she triggered my anxiety. But one night when I was feeding her in bed, I fell asleep with her, again, not recommended for safe sleep guidelines. Cindy Xia: So one night I fell asleep with my baby next to me in bed. And that was amazing, because I realized I had no problem sleeping with my baby next to me. So basically, everything I thought I couldn’t do, I couldn’t sleep next to my baby, couldn’t sleep in a hot room…. So all those safety behaviors, I broke all of them, and that was so big. It just made me realize, oh, the only thing that will make me sleep is being awake, being tired. Cindy Xia: And so now, comparing my behavior now when I go to bed, I have no sleep hygiene behaviors whatsoever. I do everything opposite of what people say you should do when you go to bed. Use your phone, go to bed really late. I nap as well, I love napping. I nap hours a day. It doesn’t affect my night sleep, because I don’t force myself to sleep. If I know I napped three hours in a day, then I just think, “Oh, I’m probably not going to sleep till 2:00 or something,” so I just stay awake a bit longer. Yeah. So I think it’s just doing the opposite of what your anxiety is telling you. And that really changed how I saw my ability to sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah, that’s great. I think first and foremost, you deserve a lot of credit just for giving yourself the opportunity to test all those safety behaviors and all those rituals, just to see if they really were helpful, or if they weren’t helpful, if you could still sleep in a hot room, or if the room had to be a certain temperature. Because just tackling that or running an experiment, just testing those beliefs, sometimes then you have to deal with that fear of, what if I’m setting myself up now for a difficult night? So I think you have to be willing to experience some difficult nights when you give yourself that opportunity to test these beliefs and these behaviors. And sometimes, too, that first night or those first few nights, maybe you will struggle, because maybe you’re paying attention to monitor for the effect of the change that you’ve made. So it might take a little while. But from your experience, did you find that the first time you tried to sleep in a hot room, or the first time you drank tea, or the first time you tried to sit with your daughter, you slept well, or did it take a few attempts? Cindy Xia: I think for me, I was lucky because a lot of it happened accidentally. So for example, the hot room, baby next to me one happened at the same time. And also, the nightlight was on. I had actually never slept in a room with any kind of lighting. And so that actually broke an old safety behavior from even pre-insomnia. And so I thought, “Oh wow, I can sleep with a nightlight on?” And so yeah. So a lot of them happened accidentally, which was really helpful. So once that happened, I thought, “Okay, I’m going to drink some tea tonight.” I knew the tea wouldn’t actually harm me, because I’d been drinking tea at night for years. Yeah, and then using phone. Cindy Xia: Yeah, so I think mainly because I wasn’t thinking, “I’m going to test this tonight.” It was more of once I had a little bit of confidence, I thought, “I’m just going to add an extra thing I used to do in the past and it’s going to be fine. And if it’s not fine, I don’t think it’s because of the tea.” Yeah. Martin Reed: Just taking a step back just to get the bigger picture here. So how long would you say this journey was, from your lowest point of struggling with sleep, to getting to this stage where you don’t even really think about sleep, or maybe you don’t even care about sleep anymore? How long was that journey, would you say? Cindy Xia: I think about four months. If you count day one as the day I called the crisis number, till the… Four months was when I went back to work, and that was when I found your video. That’s when my sleep got instantly better. But I would say that even during that time, I was having bouts of pretty good and okay sleep, considering I had a baby. But obviously, had a lot of sleep anxiety, and lots of safety behaviors. But I was obviously sleeping because I was just really tired, and I had all this medication knocking me out. Cindy Xia: And around Christmas last year, I decided to cold turkey my medication, my sleep medication. Bad idea as well, but anyway, I did it. And I experienced a whole string of zero sleep nights. I think it was just a withdrawal from the drugs. And that really freaked me out. And then that’s when I realized I actually had a problem with insomnia, because at that point I was waiting for things to get better. It hadn’t gotten better, it was getting worse. And that’s when I was like, “Okay, I need to do something.” Then I found your videos. I went, “Oh, okay, nothing’s wrong with me. I just need to do nothing, basically.” And then my sleep improved right away, I would say almost right away, but I would still have the anxiety. I’d still have those thoughts in the day going, “But what if you don’t sleep again tonight?” And I actually tried to not take note of how often I had those thoughts. I would say I would had them, I don’t know, like three thoughts every 10 minutes. It was ridiculous. Cindy Xia: Walking through the day like, “Oh, do you remember the time you had a psychotic episode because you were sleep deprived? What if you don’t sleep again? What’s stopping you from not sleeping tonight?” Yeah, and then that’s when I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is going to take a little while to go away.” Sleeping better didn’t cure my anxiety. It wasn’t that. It was more I started to remember my relationship with sleep. So what I mean by that is because in the past, my relationship with sleep was like… Sleep for me, it’s like a cat. You can’t get a cat to sit on your lap by chasing it. Cindy Xia: I’ll just be like, “Oh yeah, I’ll just sit down. The cat can come sit on my lap anytime. If you don’t come, it’s okay.” But then after I struggled with sleep, I was just chasing this cat around with a broom and saying, “Get back here.” And I was like, “Why am I not sleeping?” And then afterwards when I started to learn more about what sleep actually is, and actually realizing I couldn’t control it, and realizing that doing nothing actually just improved my sleep. And that’s when I was like, “Okay, that’s right. I used to just wait for this cat to come rather than chasing it around.” And so I think when my relationship, my core relationship with sleep changed, that’s how I slept better. Martin Reed: Yeah, I think that’s great. I love that analogy of chasing the cat around. I have cats, and I think anyone else that has cats will definitely… Cats do what they want, and it’s when we want them to do something that they do the exact opposite. And I think sleep is exactly the same as that. When we really, really want it and we start chasing it, it becomes increasingly elusive. Cindy Xia: Yep, exactly. Martin Reed: But I also love the fact that you described that there was still anxiety. You still were having anxious thoughts. And it also sounds like there were ups and downs. It wasn’t like every single night was better than, or as good as the last. And that’s really helpful for other people to hear, because sometimes we can gauge continuous improvement as a reflection if we’re making progress, when the truth is there’s always going to be ups and downs. The key is to just keep moving forward, and just try and keep on going. Cindy Xia: Yes. And I think it’s important not to use sleep as the measure of your success. It’s more of your relationship with sleep that is the measure of success. Because I have nights where I’m just not tired. That’s just how it is. I am just not tired. Or sometimes my baby keeps me up to 4:00 AM, and by that time, my body’s like, “Nah, you’re not going to go back to sleep.” And I guess it’s like learning to be in tune with your body again. And rather than forcing your body, saying, “Where’s the off button?” And press the off button, knockout. Our bodies don’t operate like that. We aren’t robots. We can’t just press a button, we can’t switch off. Cindy Xia: I think that’s the struggle with a lot of people with insomnia. They just think, “I wish there was just a button for me to press to turn my brain off and go to sleep,” but it’s not like that. It’s about finding that relationship with your own body again. And I guess almost like respecting your body, respecting that you’re afraid, you don’t feel like you want to protect me right now. You don’t feel safe and you don’t think it’s safe for me to be unconscious. Okay. Okay. I see. That’s okay. That’s okay. Yeah. And it’s almost like I’m letting my body just do what it wants. And whatever it chooses to do, that is okay. I trust it. I trust it will rest when it wants to rest, it will be awake when it wants to be awake. Cindy Xia: And yes, I mean I have nights where I get very little sleep, not very often anymore. I reckon probably once every three months, which I reckon is probably the same as the general population. And I have a baby. I think I’ve done amazing, honestly. I sleep so well, considering I have you. Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the nights was because we both caught a cold and she had a stuffy nose, and I just thought, “Okay.” But I wasn’t worried about insomnia. I just thought, “Oh yep, this is going to be a little bit tricky.” Still slept, so okay. Cindy Xia: There was another night where I think I had a five hour nap. That’s not really a nap, that’s just a sleep. But anyway, I had a five hour nap in the afternoon. And then I got to the nighttime and I thought, “Okay, all right. I think I’m fully nocturnal now.” And it was fine, I just got up and did some laundry and then around like 4:00 in the morning I thought, “Oh, I’ll just lie down a bit,” and I still slept. So it’s fine. You don’t have to sleep, just do whatever. That’s my philosophy at night. Martin Reed: Yeah. I love it. And I love how you just emphasize that really it’s just about a change in our relationship with sleep. To be one maybe where we just trust our body’s natural ability to sleep, and just let it do what it wants to do. Sleep might not happen tonight, or it might take longer to fall asleep. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t have to try and change that, or try and put effort into… Or just try and get involved in the process. Sleep is an autonomous process. We can make sleep more difficult, just like we can make breathing more difficult by holding our breath. But at the end of the day, the body knows how many breaths it needs to take throughout the entire day. Very few of us focus on making sure we get a certain number of breaths every day, so why do we need to focus on making sure we get a certain number of hours or certain number of minutes of sleep each night? The body takes care of this. The body wants to take care of this by itself. Martin Reed: Moving towards a place there where we can just be a bit more trusting, change our relationship with sleep. I think that’s the key to longterm success, really putting insomnia behind you for good. Cindy Xia: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I was talking to a friend recently and she was mentioning how, when women go through menopause, they often go through insomnia, because she’s going through sleep disruption at the moment, and I’m kind of coaching her through it. And we both laughed and we said, “Oh, we’re fine.” We’re all set for menopause insomnia, because what we’re going through now is just going to set us up to be bulletproof in the future, so I’m not worried about that. Yeah. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s great. Well, Cindy, I think this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on, especially with the little one there, who’s been really well-behaved. She’s doing great. That’s so cute. I do just have one last question, which is a question that I ask everyone who comes on, just as a way of finishing off the discussion. So I’d like to ask you that question too. And the question is this. If someone with chronic insomnia is listening and they feel as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, and that they can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Cindy Xia: The first thing I would say is I feel for you. It is so hard. It is hell. People do not understand how hard it is, because they think, “How hard is it just to sleep?” It’s the first-world problem. Maybe it is. So the first thing I would say is I really, really feel for you. It is absolutely horrible, and it can really bring you down to the worst mental state ever. But the second thing is, is that you will be okay. Your insomnia is not special. Your brain is not broken. You can sleep, you will sleep because your body is programmed to sleep. And yeah, you will absolutely sleep. It is not an easy journey. It does take a lot of time, because again, the fear response in the body is very, very strong. That’s why we are alive. It will take a lot of time, and a lot of patience from you, and you will have lots of ups and downs. Cindy Xia: And yeah, it is a process, but once you’ve gone through it, you will realize that if you can conquer this, you can conquer absolutely anything, absolutely anything, because insomnia is so hard. Yeah, people who don’t have it, don’t get it. Yeah, I always love talking with people who had insomnia because we can always joke about it. And I say, “Hey, welcome to insomnia land. How many zero hour nights have you had?” Yeah. But no, anyone who’s listening and who thinks their brain is broken, you are not broken. You will be fine. You will sleep, but more importantly, you will love being awake, and that’s what will help you sleep. Yeah. Martin Reed: I love it. I think that’s a great note to end on. So thanks again for coming on, Cindy. It was great to talk to you. Cindy Xia: You’re welcome. Thank you. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to The Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to implement evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques to improve your sleep but think you might need some additional support and guidance, I would love to help. There are two ways we can work together. First, you can get my online coaching course. This is the most popular option. My course combines sleep education with individualized coaching and is guaranteed to improve your sleep. You will learn new ways of thinking about sleep and implement better sleep habits over a period of eight weeks. This gives you time to build sleep confidence and notice results without feeling overwhelmed. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com/online. Martin Reed: I also offer a phone coaching package where we start with a one hour call. This can be voice only or video, your choice, and we come up with an initial two-week plan that will have you implementing cognitive and behavioral techniques that will lead to long term improvements in your sleep. You get unlimited email-based support and guidance for two weeks after the call along with a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 can sleep. Mentioned in this episode: Videos: Get rid of chronic insomnia by getting rid of sleep efforts and safety behaviors Even if you have chronic insomnia, sleep drive always wins — you can sleep and you will sleep! Cindy’s forum post: 100% cured from postpartum insomnia 🙂 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. Share this page

Listen to the podcast episode (audio only) When COVID led to Jake having to work from home he found himself working way beyond the usual nine to five. Jake found himself answering calls and texts at all hours of the day and even started to take his computer to bed. Work soon encroached into his weekends and before long, Jake found that he no longer had any kind of sleep schedule. When he took a vacation he found it really hard to get any sleep at all and this led to a lot of sleep-related research, a lot of anxiety, and a lot of worry. Fortunately, Jake’s sleep recovered — but only for a few weeks. Then, his insomnia returned and was even worse than before. Jake thought that his sleep was broken and that something was wrong with him. The good news is, there’s no real mystery when it comes to insomnia — from person to person, insomnia is remarkably similar. It’s often our relationship with our thoughts and the behaviors we might implement in a bid to improve our sleep that provide insomnia with the oxygen it needs to survive. As Jake learned more about sleep and insomnia he implemented evidence-based techniques to help build sleep drive, strengthen his body clock, and weaken arousal. He started to spend less time in bed, he got out of bed during the night if being in bed didn’t feel good, and — perhaps most importantly of all — he tried to live the kind of life he wanted to live during the day, independently of how he slept. Now, Jake’s life doesn’t revolve around sleep and he no longer tries to control sleep or put effort into sleep. As a result, he is sleeping a lot better and has regained confidence in his natural ability to sleep. Click here for a full transcript of this episode. Transcript Martin Reed: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that nobody needs to live with chronic insomnia and that evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques can help you enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life. Martin Reed: 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 Reed: Hi, Jake, thank you for taking the time out of your day to come on to the podcast. Jake Zandi: Oh, thanks for having me, Martin. I’m very happy to be here today. Martin Reed: It’s great to have you on. Let’s start right at the beginning. When did your sleep problems first begin and what do you think caused your initial issues with sleep? Jake Zandi: Well, so we’ve all been going through this pandemic for the past, I think it’s over a year now since it’s hit the States. Yeah, I was doing pretty good with work and everything like that, working at an actual physical location. Once the pandemic hit, I think it was like in March of last year, I was told to go home. I actually just started the job probably two weeks prior to that. So, I had never really worked from home before and that’s something I’ve never really had to do. So, I didn’t really know, at first, I didn’t really have the discipline, you know what I mean? Of working just nine to five like my old job was. Jake Zandi: So, I got caught in, I want to say, probably bad sleep habits. This is what really first started happening to me. I was going to bed late because I would take work with me. I would take the computer with me into bed, which is a big no-no. I was answering phone calls or text messages in all hours of the day. So, basically, my nine to five turned into, when I wake up I start working until I go to sleep and in between intermittently. So, I was good for probably a few months. I was doing this working whenever. Unfortunately though, it started to bleed into my weekends. Jake Zandi: So, working from home ended up being on my weekends when I was trying to relax. I didn’t really have the downtime that you usually have from just nine to five, Monday through Friday. So, I just started working a lot and I think what happened was I was getting stressed out from work. I don’t blame anyone but myself on this one, because it was just me not having that discipline of, you know what, if I get a text message or if I get an email after work, work hours or whatever, I should just let it go and get to it in the morning. Jake Zandi: But I didn’t have that discipline and I wasn’t getting up early and I would sleep longer and longer, until before you know it, my whole internal clock was off. I ended up going on a vacation. I lived in the north east, so we went up to Maine for the weekend. I went with my fiance. We stayed in the hotel room and I guess what threw me off was I getting work text messages and all the stuff on Friday night into Saturday and I was like, “Oh, man, I told her I was going on vacation for the weekend.” But that ended up throwing me off a little bit. Jake Zandi: I didn’t think anything of it, but for some reason, that Friday or yeah, it was that Friday night I didn’t sleep at all when we got to the hotel. I slept like probably, well, I can’t say I didn’t sleep at all, but I probably slept like two hours. I thought, “Well, that wasn’t fun. Hopefully, I’ll be good for the whole day and I’m on vacation, so I want to really enjoy this weekend.” Then, it went to that next night, it went to that next night, and again, I slept like two or three hours, and I was like, “What is going on? This has never happened before.” So, I start to think about it more than usual. Jake Zandi: I’ve had, like anyone, a bad night sleep and I was even in the military and I used to do 24 hour shifts and stuff like that and never thought twice about having difficulty sleeping. But now, it’s just like, I don’t know, I freaked out a little bit. I started researching things. I was like, “How come I’ve had a couple of bad night sleep?” I just didn’t really identify that it was maybe me being stressed with work and being just in a situation where there’s just a lot going on in the world, there’s a lot of anxiety right now. We’re still living it. But yeah, it ended up snowballing into something that was pretty crazy. Jake Zandi: I ended up having like a week’s night or a week of bad sleep after that. I was freaking out. So, I went on YouTube, I was Googling all these things and how to sleep better, and how to fix sleep problems. It ended up being really … It became very stressful. Like I said, I’ve never worried about sleep ever in my life. I love sleeping. I’d consider myself a good sleeper again, but I was very distraught. I didn’t know what was going on. A lot of the stuff that I found online would freak me out. It’d say, if you don’t get good sleep, you’re going to have higher risk of cancer, or higher risk of cardiovascular disease and all of this stuff. Jake Zandi: So, I started becoming a little bit of a hypochondriac as well. It just really blew out of proportion. I was basically keeping myself awake and I was feeding insomnia with all these thoughts and ideas and what ifs, but it’s where it all went down hill and it stayed that way for a while. Martin Reed: So, when you first had those really difficult nights when you’re away on vacation, did it seem obvious to you why those hard nights were happening? For example, you’re getting into bed and then just finding your mind was freaking out about work or something like that, or was it just you couldn’t come up with any explanation? You were just finding it really hard to sleep whilst you were away? Jake Zandi: It was a little bit of both. It was a little bit I think it was because I was stressed out that I wasn’t able to sleep, but it was kind of, “All right, enough is enough. How come my mind isn’t shutting off?” Do you know what I mean? I wasn’t really able to come down from all these anxiety. Then, before you know it, I feel like the anxiety of work and all these other stuff, they almost transformed into, I don’t know if that’s the word, but it turned into basically this worry about sleep. Then, I really didn’t worry about all the other stuff anymore. Jake Zandi: I was like, “I’d get to that when I get to that.” I’m worried about what’s going on now, and it was just feeding it. It was a vicious cycle, like a dog chasing its tail. I don’t really know how to explain it. It was just, I could not get out of it. So, it got really scary. Martin Reed: Yeah, I think a lot of people will identify with that, like the dog chasing its tail, because as soon as we start to worry about sleep, that does tend to, unfortunately, make sleep more difficult. Then, sleep becomes more difficult. So, then we quite naturally worry even more about sleep. It just becomes this vicious cycle that you can just feel so trapped in. It just seems like there’s no way out. Jake Zandi: Yeah, I think another thing is, the harder I tried to sleep the further it got away. I couldn’t get sleep because I was trying so hard to sleep that it became … I’d be awake all day and try not to take any nap just in case, so I could make sure that the night was good. It was difficult. I couldn’t even really take naps either, because I was so worried. I was just so anxiety ridden, I guess you could say. I had never really experienced that. So, it was quite bizarre, quite bizarre. Martin Reed: Yeah. So, when you returned home from the trip, what was your sleep looking like at that point? How would you describe a typical night at that point? Jake Zandi: Yeah, so a typical night was, I’d worry all day. Then, getting home it was just, that night I got back from the trip, it wasn’t a good night sleep. It was me worrying about, “Hey, will I get a good night sleep tonight?” I think that was really the first night where I just really started to worry about the sleep and kind of freaked out about everything else. I would go to bed and then just lay there. I think what ended up happening was, and I’ll get more on this subject later, but I would end up going to sleep earlier than I used to. I’d be in bed earlier, and I’d try to sleep earlier. Jake Zandi: That would just in turn make it harder. I would lay in bed, like I said, I take nine hours and I’d usually sleep about seven to eight. That was my normal sleep cycle. I was just trying to catch up on the sleep, like hopefully it will just happen if I just lay here long enough. It ended up just being even worse. I think it honestly exacerbated it and made it so much worse than it was, was me trying to lay in bed. I was only getting three or four hours those first few nights being home. It was rough. Until I did eventually end up having normal sleep. Jake Zandi: I don’t know if something came up or whatever, but I forgot about all these issues. Oh, I didn’t forget about it, but it was like less and less and then I felt better. I think it just took one good night of sleep where I slept nine hours or something like that. Once I got that nine hours, it was like, boom, I’m reset, I’m good, no issues. There’s nothing wrong with me and I was good for about two weeks, or I think it might have been three. So, I was good for two or three weeks. Then, before you know it, boom, I had a bad night. Then, that bad night turned into more bad nights. Jake Zandi: Then, it was worse than before. It was like three or four weeks. It was just terrible. Most nights I was struggling to fall asleep. I’d have that occasional night where I got a good night sleep, but for me, it was mostly I could not, for the life of me, fall asleep because my mind was racing. I was wired and I just couldn’t slow down and relax, and it was bad. Martin Reed: Yeah. I think a lot of people listening to this are going to identify with every now and then you seem to get that good night. It might not be fantastic, or it might be, but you tend to get these other nights that are actually pretty good. You think, why are these not happening every single night? But the typical explanation, and there’s no real mystery to it. Most sleep disruption is happening or is being sustained because of the arousal system. We’re more worried about sleep or we’re paying a lot of attention to sleep, maybe putting a lot of effort into sleep, trying, striving. Martin Reed: This makes sleep more difficult, so we get less sleep. But when we get less sleep, our sleep pressure, that drive the sleep, the body wants to sleep, that urge to sleep becomes stronger and stronger. So, we can’t go indefinitely with no sleep, for example, sleep always happen in the end. So, when we have those better nights, it’s because our sleep drive has just reached its tipping point where it’s so strong, it’s overpowering all that arousal, all that anxiety, all that worry, all that effort, all that striving, so sleep happens. Martin Reed: But unfortunately, then you’re back at square one because now that sleep drive is being relieved, so your arousal system is back in charge and it puts you back onto that cycle of sleep difficulties again. Jake Zandi: Right. Martin Reed: So, this is why we really want to take a two-pronged approach by building that sleep drive, spending a little bit less time in bed or just an amount of time that’s more appropriate to the kind of sleep you’re getting. Also, sort of seeing what we can do to weaken that arousal system, so we don’t need to be awake for quite so long in order to get those better nights of sleep. Jake Zandi: Of course, no, I agree with you, because after a while your body just … you have to sleep. The sleep drive really does kick in. Martin Reed: Yeah, and I think in a way it can be a little bit reassuring because it shows that you can still sleep. You can still get those nights of a few hours plus of sleep. So, if nothing else that shows that your sleep drive system is working, your sleep isn’t completely broken, that you are capable of sleep, then you’ve got something to build on, something to work on. So, if nothing else, I think those one off better nights can serve as a little bit of reassurance perhaps. Jake Zandi: Oh, for sure, for sure. That’s something that I really started to notice, was eventually … At first, I thought my sleep was broken, like I’m having issues, there’s something wrong with me. For me, it was very anxiety based. So, it was basically me, my mind, keeping myself awake, and then my body was just always tensed. I wasn’t relaxing at all. I just really couldn’t get there. Until eventually I feel like I just wore out completely, just burnt out. Then, my body would just, whatever, head hits the pillow, you’re out. Jake Zandi: Then, that would happen, and that would be awesome, because I was like, “Wow, that really helps with my sleep confidence.” Yeah, that was really cool to experience that. Then, that’s when I did end up finding your videos on YouTube and ended up learning more about CBT and CBT-I, and I really think that that’s huge. With the whole sleep restriction and all of that, that was very good, but I don’t know if I’m skipping ahead, Martin. Martin Reed: No, no, that’s great. I think that’s a great point to move on to that. Like you said, you came across my YouTube channel. For anyone that’s not familiar with it, you can find it at YouTube.com/insomniacoach. Really, it’s these sleep related thoughts that we can develop and these sleep related behaviors we implement in response to difficult nights of sleep, through no fault of our own, because we want to fix the problem of disruptive sleep. But unfortunately, they can perpetuate that sleep disruption. So, in order to get our sleep back on track, really what we want to do is address those thoughts and behaviors. Martin Reed: If we can do that, we create better conditions for sleep, and we do that through building sleep drive, strengthening our body clock, and our good friend, the arousal system, we lower or we weaken that arousal. Can you tell us a bit more about any of the thoughts? You mentioned that kind of anxiety, could you tell us a bit more about any of the thoughts that you perhaps identified that could have been fueling your insomnia, or maybe you touched upon one of them, spending a lot of time in bed? Any of the sleep related behaviors you’re implementing in a bid to improve your sleep that on reflection might not have been that helpful? Jake Zandi: Yeah, so it really was a lot of those thoughts of, “Will I be able to get sleep tonight? How will I function tomorrow?” Then, there’s also the, “Is there something wrong with me? Is there something going wrong?” Then, that’s when a lot of it was, I was Googling a lot of stuff, I was watching a lot of videos, because I’m a big YouTube person. I love watching videos. I think it’s great. I get a lot more insight than just reading something on Reddit or whatever. But yeah, it was just a lot of worry. Jake Zandi: Then, you’d see something, or read something where someone is like, “I haven’t slept in a few days.” Then, before you know it, you’re like, “Is that going to be me? Am I going to be this person who’s not being able to sleep and then basically being bed-ridden?” It was just a lot of bad, negative sleep thoughts. That was feeding it. If you’re thinking negative all the time about something, it’s probably not going to work out. It’s not going to be a positive outcome. Jake Zandi: I never thought this would happen to me, so that’s why I was like, “What is going on?” I never thought that I would basically, not lose control of my sleep, but lose the confidence and my ability to have a good restful slumber, do you know what I mean? So, it was bad for a while, but that’s when I found you, and I watched a lot of your videos. I researched a lot of my own. Read articles about CBT-I, and that was where things started turning around significantly and pretty quickly. I was very surprised. Martin Reed: So, I think that the first thing that you did was reduce the amount of time you were allotting for sleep, is that right? Jake Zandi: Yes, yup. So, instead of going to bed early and then allotting nine hours in bed trying to sleep, physically trying to sleep, and before I get into that, I did try all the sleep hygiene stuff, it didn’t work for me. Some things, I guess, but that became ritualistic. Then, before you know it, you have to have tea at night and do certain meditation, and listen to this tape and that tape. Anyways, that didn’t really work for me and it became more of a hassle. It gave me either more anxiety about trying to sleep, because if I didn’t do one thing, I wouldn’t be able to get that sleep. Jake Zandi: But the CBT-I is what really worked, and it was that sleep restriction, which I’ve tried first. Instead of going to bed, I think it was like 11:00 trying to sleep, I stay up until I think 1:00, 1:30. I actually started to feel sleepy, naturally, like I used to, you know what I mean? Martin Reed: Yeah. Jake Zandi: So, it was letting go of trying to fall asleep at 11:00 exactly and all these other stuff, and staying in bed so long that I would go to bed and I would wake up within, I think it was a six and a half hour time frame. Then, I was able to sleep and I slept six and a half hours, but it did become clear that if I just got out of bed and didn’t sit there all day, I was able to start my day sooner. I was able to do all these normal things. Have breakfast. Have tea in the morning, or whatever. I usually do tea because I’m not really big into coffee, but yeah, I just felt like I was able to have a full day. Jake Zandi: Then, at the end of the day, get naturally tired, naturally sleepy, and go to bed. But yeah, it took me probably a few nights of just trying the sleep restriction until it eventually felt like I was in a groove, in a rhythm. Almost as if like my circadian rhythm reset and it knew when to go to bed and when to wake up and it was less effort. So, that helped tremendously, sleep restriction. Martin Reed: Yeah, I think that you touched upon it. It was getting that sense of really strong sleepiness back again, because it’s so easy to forget it, that sense of sleepiness, because when we have insomnia, it’s often replaced by this sense of fatigue, feeling worn out, just exhausted and run down. That doesn’t feel good, obviously, but it’s not a sign that we need sleep at that time. Jake Zandi: Exactly. Martin Reed: There is a difference between fatigue and sleepiness, and what can happen is when we go to bed when we’re fatigued instead of sleepy, we’re probably not going to fall asleep. Then, because we’re not falling asleep, then we start to get all those worries, “Why am I not falling asleep? I’m exhausted. I’m so worn out. I can barely concentrate. Why am I not sleeping?” Well, the reason you’re not sleeping is probably because you’re not sleepy enough to sleep and then because that arousal is kicking in. This is through no fault of our own, because everything we’re doing is completely understandable. Martin Reed: We want to fix the problem of this sleep disruption. Unfortunately, sleep is that oddity, because it response poorly to effort and striving, it is one of these things that gets worse the more we want it. So, by doing things like giving ourselves less opportunity for sleep, we’re still giving ourselves a good opportunity for sleep. I never recommend spending less time in bed than you typically spend asleep. So, we’re still giving you that opportunity for sleep. By doing that, we’re really building that sleep drive. We are getting that sense of sleepiness back. We’re creating better conditions for sleep. Martin Reed: Just as you found, it can just feel so good to get that sense of sleepiness back and that does help with sleep onset and it does help weaken or lower that arousal, too. Jake Zandi: For sure. I also noticed, too, is if I actually waited to feel sleepy, because I would feel tired, “Oh, I’m tired. I’m tired. I need to go to bed. I need to sleep.” Do you know what I mean? But I wasn’t really sleepy yet, so it was just, like you said, your mind keeps going and it’s like, “Why am I not asleep yet? I’m not asleep yet.” But the sleepiness, once I started feeling that again, I also started to care a little bit less and less each night about if I was going to get good sleep or whatever, because it was, honestly, the more sleepy I was the less time I had to think about it. Jake Zandi: The less powerful it got. I also had better quality of sleep. Instead of waking up multiple times of the night like I did before, and this is something I want to touch on, before if I did wake up, it was hard for me to fall asleep, but I also did wake up multiple times throughout the night. But it was, yeah, it was pretty bad at first, but I do want to touch real quick on the other technique that I did use when I had these troubles, when I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep, was I would get up and do something boring or whatever. Jake Zandi: Whether it’s coloring a coloring book, or read a book, just in a dim light, quiet area. That was just like my reset. So, I would do that as well. That was another technique. Martin Reed: One thing I did just want to talk about quickly, just with the sleep restriction and allotting less time for sleep, just waiting for that strong sense of sleepiness to occur. Another reason why I think it can be helpful is it shifts attention away from the clock as well, because often when we’re allotting so much time for sleep, like you touched upon, it was probably closer to nine hours and you were getting nowhere near that amount of sleep, is often you can have this idea, “Okay, it’s 10:00, now, I have to go to bed, or 11:00, I have to go to bed.” Martin Reed: Without any consideration of how sleepy you are because you’re so keen to get a certain amount of sleep. You want to give yourself that opportunity, but the problem is, the clock doesn’t know when we’re sleepy. So, if we go to bed based on what the clock is telling us, that could lead to some sleep disruption because we might not be sleepy enough to sleep. Also, if we get really ritualistic about, it’s X o’clock, so now I must go to bed, it can leak into our lives as well. Because then, we might not want to, for example, go out for dinner or go out to the movies, or socialize with friends because we feel that we have to be back for that set bed time. Martin Reed: So, I just think it’s really helpful to not only allot a more proper amount of time for sleep, but to really try and shift the tension away from using the clock as your guide for when to go to bed. Yes, maybe it can be helpful to have an earliest possible bed time. So, if you are implementing a sleep window, you can say, “I’m not going to go to bed before,” I think you said for you it was like 1:00 in the morning? Jake Zandi: Right. Martin Reed: But even then, if 1:00 in the morning rolls around and you don’t feel sleepy enough to sleep, it can still be helpful to just wait for those natural sleepiness cues to appear before going to bed. Jake Zandi: Oh, for sure. Yeah, it was just like night and day. Honestly, it was such a big change instead of trying to go to sleep. Because like you said, the clock doesn’t know when you’re sleepy. Another thing is clock watching, too, that would keep me up at the beginning, was I’d look at the clock, look at the clock, “What time? Oh, my God, it’s 2:00 in the morning, I’m still awake, what’s going on?” But that was all that sleep effort, I was trying to sleep, I was trying to get to bed at a certain time and stay asleep for a certain amount of time, and hopefully not wake up. Jake Zandi: It was just adding more and more anxiety, but having that sleep restriction and just staying up, like I say, I stay up and I read until 1:00. If I feel sleepy at 1:00, I’d go to bed at 1:00 and then I’ll wake up 6:30, 7:00, whatever it may be. Then, it would just get better, and better, and the quality of sleep would get better and better, because after a while it didn’t seem … Eight hours sounds good, but who really gets a straight eight hours of sleep? It seems very hard the older you get, especially. Jake Zandi: But the quality, I rather have six and half, six to six and a half hours of quality sleep instead of just sleeping, trying to sleep for eight, nine hours, waking up, going back to sleep, and having to do all these things. Do you know what I mean? The sleep restriction was huge for me and that really built up that sleep confidence again. But yeah, if I did have bad nights, I would implement getting up out of bed and then doing something relaxing, going back to bed, and usually I’d be successful in falling asleep. So, that worked as well. It was my reset. Martin Reed: Yeah. So, let’s talk about that, because I think it can be really helpful, too. Okay, so we’ve got a plan in place right now, I’m not going to go to bed before a certain time. I’m going to get out of bed no matter what at a certain time in the morning. So, another good plan to have in the toolbox is what to do if you get into bed and then you find it hard to fall asleep, or if you wake up during the night and find it hard to fall back to sleep. Often, I like to say that if being awake in bed feels good, there’s no reason to do anything, because it means the conditions are right for sleep. Martin Reed: But if being in bed doesn’t feel good, then it can be a good idea to get out of bed and do something that would make that wakefulness a little bit more pleasant, compared to staying in bed when being in bed doesn’t feel good. It sounds like that was a technique that you implemented. So, yeah, I’m really keen to hear more about how you implemented it and how you feel it worked for you. Jake Zandi: Yeah, so at first I was nervous of trying that. I was afraid to get out of bed. I was like, “Oh, well, what if I get out of bed and then I’m not that sleepy when I come back?” That wasn’t the case, that wasn’t the case. The first time I actually tried it, it did work and I was very surprised. So, I got out of bed. I think I must have woken up maybe three in the morning and I was like, “Oh, man, I’m up at three in the morning, I really want to sleep. I really want to get to bed.” It’s just one extra thing you have to do, but it works. For some people, it might not work, but maybe staying in bed works, like you were saying, if the conditions were right for sleep. Jake Zandi: But if I’m feeling wide awake, I’m not going to sit there anymore. So, what I’d do is I’d get up. I have an adult coloring back or whatever. I’ll color in that in low light. Actually, I have one of those Himalayan salt lamps that I have, and I’ll turn that on and I’ll just … Even if I stood up in bed that has worked for me, but usually the couch is the best for me. If I go out to the living room, it’s a different room. I can get that sense of being able to reset my mind, do whether it’s reading techniques, that helps too. I can even do a quick meditation if I don’t feel like coloring or reading a book that late. Jake Zandi: But 20 minutes is kind of like my perfect thing. I don’t look at the clock or anything. I just guesstimate. If it feels like it’s been 20 minutes, and I’m starting to feel sleepy again, which I usually do, I’ll head back to bed. Usually, what happens is within a couple of minutes I’m asleep. So, it’s like, the head hits the pillow, but it’s a good way to get out of bed, get back to a reality, I guess, you know what I mean? Instead of being in this anxious state of not being able to sleep, to be able to get back to a sense of, “I’m here. I’m all right. I can breathe.” If for whatever reason it takes longer and you got to do it again, it’s not the end of the world. Eventually, you will sleep. Martin Reed: I think that the phrase you used, it helps me reset my mind, was something that I just picked up on, because often when we spend time awake in bed, that’s when we start to ruminate. The mind starts to fire up, maybe notch up into a higher gear. We’re in bed, it’s probably dark, we’re alone with our thoughts, it can be hard to move away from that when the mind decides it wants to go into hyper drive. So, getting out of bed and just doing anything else can act a little bit just like a circuit breaker, like a reset switch, and help calm the mind a little bit more quickly, compared to if you have stayed in bed with nothing else to focus on other than those thoughts. Jake Zandi: Right, and it breaks that frustration, because after a while you end up going from anxious, to frustrated, to, “Man, I’m not going to sleep, tomorrow’s ruined. Blah, blah, blah.” Then, you start really feeding those anxious and negative sleep thoughts. So, yeah, it’s just very helpful to just get out, reset, breathe, everything is going to be fine, and just have some sense of optimism. That’s really what was able to help, too. So, that did work for me, and these were all tools that I can still use, do you know what I mean? If I have bad nights now. I’m doing a lot better. Jake Zandi: I’m basically back to before this was happening. But sometimes, I do have those thoughts here and there, “Oh, man, something big is coming up.” But yeah, that was very helpful, those techniques. Martin Reed: Yeah, and I think something else that can be helpful to recognize as well is, you might not fall right back to sleep just because you got out of bed. Even if you get in and out of bed a few times during the night, you might not fall back to sleep. Because we can’t control sleep, our goal isn’t necessarily to do something or to make ourselves fall back to sleep. Really, what we’re doing is just trying to give you an alternative to staying in bed if being in bed is just not proving to be helpful. So, getting out of bed, doing something else, if nothing else, it will probably make that wakefulness a little bit more appealing compared to staying in bed. Martin Reed: But the real bonus it has, and this is more of a long term benefit, is it prevent your mind from reinforcing this negative association between the bed and unpleasant wakefulness. A common symptom of that is feeling really sleepy before going to bed and then you get into bed and you just feel wide awake again. Or, waking during the night and suddenly feeling really awake, even after very little amount of sleep. Because your mind forms powerful associations and if we repeatedly spend a lot of time in bed and it doesn’t feel good to be in bed, our mind learns the bed is not a good place to be. Martin Reed: So, as soon as we get into bed, or as soon as we wake from sleep, the brain is like, “Uh-uh, we got to activate all the fight or flight response to protect you from this evil bed. This bed is a horrible place to be.” So, the only way we can really break that association is by only being in bed when we’re either asleep or when conditions feel right for sleep. We do that by just getting out of bed whenever it’s not good to be in bed. So, even if you don’t fall asleep that night, what you’re doing is still going to be helpful, by getting out of bed instead of staying in bed when being in bed doesn’t feel good. It’s still going to be helpful over the longer time, too. Jake Zandi: Exactly. That’s something I noticed, because sometimes if I would just try to go to bed, when this was all beginning, when this was all starting, I’d get anxious and be like, “Oh, no, I don’t want to go to bed.” You know what I mean? Because I had bad nights there, and some nights it was sleeping on the couch for me that felt better. I did notice that. I was like, “Well, if I can sleep on the couch, why can’t I sleep in the bed?” Because I created those negative sleep thoughts and then that arousal and all of that, it just became second nature without me being able to really control it. Jake Zandi: I had to do something about it. I feel like, from what I know, your mind will follow your body and vice versa. So, just if I’m sleeping on a couch, I should be able to sleep in the bed, no problem. So, I really just stopped using the couch for a place to sleep or whatever when I was having these difficult nights, and retrain my brain to know the bed as a comfortable place to sleep, the right place to sleep. I almost created like a, what is the word for it? It became like a haven, like a place where sleep happens and not a hangout. Jake Zandi: The bedroom to me now, I don’t go in there, I had a TV in there, but we don’t watch anymore. So, the TV, I’d rather be in the living room where I can watch television or relax and do all these things and then head to the bedroom. I think coming into the living room has been great because it associates the living room with a place to be awake and a place to relax, do you know what I mean? So, going back to the bed after that reset, the bed feels like the proper place to sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah, you’re making a really good point there. That’s something I think people are going to identify with is I thought that I was able to sleep on the couch, why couldn’t I sleep in bed? Often, it does come down to that conditioned arousal. We’ve conditioned ourselves, again, through no fault of our own, it’s just the fact that we’ve spent so much time in bed when being in bed didn’t feel good. Our brain is telling us that it’s got to protect us from being in bed. In order to do that, we have to be awake. Martin Reed: But if we are in a different environment such as on the couch, we haven’t got that association. So, we’re able to relax, we’re able to feel sleepy, and we’re able to fall asleep. So, if nothing else, the fact that we can fall asleep on the couch proves that we can sleep, as you had just touched upon. So, how do we then make that transition? How do we shift that sleep from the couch to the bed? I think it is a case of accepting that there’s going to be some sleep disruption in the short term by only allowing yourself to sleep in bed instead of the couch. Martin Reed: But if you only allow yourself to sleep in your own bed, if that’s your long term goal, is to sleep in your own bed, then by only allowing yourself to sleep in your own bed, that is where you will sooner or later sleep, because sleep drive always wins in the end. Sleep always happens in the end. So, if you refuses to allow yourself to sleep anywhere other than your own bed, that is where sleep is going to happen. Every minute of sleep you then get, you’re going to be in your own bed, you’re going to be reinforcing that more positive association between your bed and sleep, instead of the couch, or the guest room, or anywhere else. Jake Zandi: Exactly. That’s just, at this point now where I’ve done so much, I look at the bed differently now. Because when I started having these issues, I looked at the bed, like I said before, a negative place. I had so many bad experiences in there, not being able to sleep, having terrible days the day after. It just snowballed into, I don’t want to even go in the bedroom anymore. I’ll just stay on the couch and hopefully fall asleep. But once I retrain myself to sleep, and you have to retrain yourself to association things with sleep, the bed has become my natural place to sleep. Jake Zandi: It’s the designated place to sleep and I no longer look at it with that negative look like I did before. It seems like these thoughts, once you do that enough, these thoughts, these negative sleep thoughts, they start to fade and have less power, which has been really cool. I don’t know if I’m jumping ahead again, Martin, but that was something that was very empowering, was the fact that these negative sleep thoughts became less and less and less because I had so many good nights after these issues in my own bed. So, now, I’m having maybe less sleep at first, but I’m having quality sleep. Jake Zandi: I’m actually tired. That sleep drive built up all day and it was awesome. It was such a great experience to just come out of that and I was like, “Oh, finally, I’m able to get a hold of myself again.” After having so much bad sleep with bad associations, it was just reassuring that I was able to sleep again. I guess I look back and a lot of the stuff that I was doing was, I was making it worse by trying to go bed earlier and staying in bed later. Before you know it, I was basically setting myself up for failure the next night because I just wasn’t using any of the energy that I did have, because I was so fatigued all the time. Jake Zandi: I thought I was sleep deprived, but I don’t think I was ever really sleep deprived. I think a lot of it was just fatigue from the worry. It was doing more damage than lack of sleep at that point. Martin Reed: Yeah, one thing that I think is important to recognize, too, is just as it took time maybe for our minds to associate the bed as not a nice place to be, it’s going to take time to retrain our brains, our minds, to see the bed as a place for sleep and as a nice place to be. So, I think it can be helpful to emphasize that just because sometimes we can try these things. For example, we might decide, “Okay, I’m not going to allow myself to sleep on the couch. I’m only going to sleep in my own bed.” Then, after a week or two, you’re not really finding you’re making progress. Martin Reed: Really, that’s understandable because just like it took time for the mind to associate the bed with unpleasant wakefulness, it’s probably going to take a little bit of time for it to re-associate the bed with sleep and more pleasant wakefulness. So, it is really a case of just try to be as consistent as possible and really trying to take a long time approach wherever possible. Jake Zandi: Right, and it’s not an overnight fix. It’s not going to take one try at it and that’s why I really stuck to it. I wasn’t successful right away. Maybe that first night I was tired from probably the night before so I did get that six and a half hours of sleep and I was like, “Oh, that was great. That was quality.” But it takes time, because then I did have some nights where I was still struggling and still having the negative association, and then still worried. But like I said, overtime I did get … It did only take me about a few nights to start getting back on track, but in between there were some nights where either it took me a while to fall asleep or I was up at a certain time. Jake Zandi: But really, once you have those days where you’re not sitting in bed, laying in bed trying to catch up on sleep, and all these other stuff, and trying to take naps and all of that, you’re able to just really feel naturally tired and naturally sleepy at night. You just got to keep trying at it and eventually it will work no matter what, I think. Unless there’s something like a physical ailment or something like that. For me, this was anxiety based. So, this was able to really help, that sleep restriction, and being able to reset and using the CBT-I techniques. It was very helpful. So, I’m very glad I found these techniques through your videos. Martin Reed: Now, I want to move on to, we’ve talked a lot about things that you were doing at night, trying to create better conditions for sleep. It would be good for us to move on at some point to things you might have done during the day to help improve your sleep. But before I do that, I just want to check, was there anything else that you can think of that you found helpful in the evenings or at nighttime to create those better conditions for sleep? Jake Zandi: For me, what worked for me is just having time to relax. Actually, what I do now is if I had a really busy day, because sometimes I feel like in my more busy days, it’s harder to come down and relax, because I had so much going on. That’s just for me, at least. What I do now is I’ll have a designated hour before bedtime where I relax, I can do some meditations, some breathing techniques, some reading, whatever it may be. It’s actually very so much of the stuff that I would do when I’d reset in the middle of the night, if I had to go get out of bed for 20 minutes or so. Jake Zandi: But now, I really focus on mindfulness trying to really just get the brain to slow down, the mind to slow down. Because if you’re overactive in your mind when you’re trying to sleep, it’s just going to take longer. Eventually, sleep drive will kick in and you will fall asleep, but this is something that has really been helping me out, is just meditation, mindfulness, relaxation an hour before bed instead of doing work or whatever, having something that’s very exciting happening. It’s nicer to just come down before bed, and I have allotted myself an hour to do so every night. Martin Reed: Yeah, I think that can be really helpful, just giving ourselves that time to unwind. It’s important to emphasize that we’re not using that hour to try and generate sleep or generate sleepiness. It’s just some time for us to relax and unwind, and it can also be helpful to just make, because it helps make that period before we would normally go to bed. Maybe the times that we would look forward to were often the time that we fear or dread. So, if we reserve that hour before bed, for example, for just like it’s me time, I’m just going to do things that I find relaxing, I find enjoyable, I’m not going to do any work, no chores, just good stuff. Martin Reed: That period before going to bed can then become a time that we might start to look forward to, which in itself could just be a transformation in our way of thinking of the approach of bedtime. It also just helps ensure that we’re creating better conditions for sleep, just because we’re going to be in a more relaxed state. The arousal is perhaps going to be lower. If we’re doing things we enjoy, it can also maybe even just serve as a distraction. It helps us recognize sleepiness cues. Martin Reed: If we’re not wired in the hour before bed, we’re more likely to recognize when we are feeling sleepy instead of fatigued and tired. So, we might then be more likely to go to bed when conditions are much better for sleep. Jake Zandi: Exactly. I do want to bring up one point, Martin. An issue that did come up that I did realize, so once I got my sleep back on track, I felt like doing the sleep restriction and all of that was extremely helpful. When I got almost too confident, I start to drift away a little bit. What would happen was I would get too goal oriented before bed with certain things. It’s happened here and there, not every night, but it could be that one night where I’m really thinking about something about whether it’d be work, an event coming up, or whatever it may be. Jake Zandi: Those goal oriented thoughts will keep you awake, at least it does for me. So, it is good to have that relaxation time, that you time, but maybe stay away from the goal oriented stuff and just do the relaxing things you enjoy doing. So, that’s just one point that did come up, because there was a couple of nights, actually … No, there was a couple of nights where I had something on my mind and that kept me up. Then, the next day I was like, “Oh, no, am I back? Am I relapsing? Is this happening?” Jake Zandi: But no, I just implemented the techniques again and was able to get through that, but definitely having that relaxation time before bed and doing relaxing things is key to really help you, like you said, look forward to going, transitioning into the night and going to sleep. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. Unless you have anything else to add in terms of the night time side of the equation, maybe now would be a good time to move on to the day. Jake Zandi: Oh, yes. Martin Reed: Because so much of our sleep is actually influenced by what we do during the day rather than by what we do during the night. So, I thought that would be good to touch upon. So, on reflection, what kind of changes do you feel you made to what you do during the day that perhaps helped you improve your sleep at night? Jake Zandi: Okay, yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because this was very important and this really helped turn my bad sleep around and get back to normal, better sleep. Throughout the day, before, when I was first going through all these sleep problems, like I said, I’d never gone through anything like this before, I was so hyper-focused on it all day. It became that vicious cycle of, “I’m worried, am I going to get a good night sleep?” From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, I was worried. This lasted or months, until I was able to implement CBT-I techniques. Jake Zandi: But now, what I do is I try to wake up in a positive, optimistic mindset, try to have the best day I can have. I exercise more now. I know it’s winter, where I am it’s cold in this time of year, so I’d go on my … I had a exercise bike at home that I’d go on and do that, do some cardiovascular stuff. Then, I’d go do work. So, in the morning, I wake up, do some exercise, go to work, try to socialize as much as I could with people. Do things that I typically would have avoid when I was going through the worst of my insomnia. Jake Zandi: I would avoid going out and that was huge avoidance. That was a way to cope, I guess, to, “Well, I’m too fatigued to go out. Too tired to do this.” I basically had to push myself and start doing my normal activities, much normal as I can make it, because we’re still going through COVID and things were still restricted. But there’s definitely that light at the end of the tunnel, but anyways, it’s just keeping busy, keeping up with friends, family, just anything you can do to really just keep your mind off of all the sleeping. Jake Zandi: Because when you think about it all day, you’re basically setting yourself up for an anxious night, but yeah, those are things that I do now. I go out, I have things to look forward to. I make plans. At first, when I was first going through this, I was afraid to make plans for the next day, or a few days, because I’d be afraid, “Oh, what if I have a bad night? I won’t be able to perform and go do what I needed to do, or spend time with people I want to spend time with.” But once I started to, and even if I did have a bad night, start going out and start making plans again and doing things, I started feeling more confident as well. Jake Zandi: I was almost looking at sleep as it’s good for you, it’s important but it’s not as important as I thought it was. It’s not going to keep me from doing the things I love doing. It was getting to the point where I was so sick of just worrying, and worrying, and worrying, and Googling things and watching all these videos and stuff. No offense to your videos because those were very helpful, but it was like, that consumes so much of my time before that I brought to bed with me every night. I worried. The worry was more powerful than having a bad night’s sleep in means of being fatigued and not feeling well the next day. Jake Zandi: I feel like I’ve come to learn, but yeah, it’s important to keep up and do the things that you love doing and not let this consume your life. There’s so many people that go through sleep issues or insomnia. Like I said, I felt very desperate at times for help and I didn’t know what to do at first. I didn’t know if I needed to go to the doctor, or get on sleeping pills, or supplements, or whatever. I was very hesitant, so I didn’t do that. I didn’t want to become addicted to sleeping pills. Sometimes they can give you sleep but not … Like you’ve said in some of your videos, it makes it easier for you to turn on that nervous system and fall asleep because it doesn’t generate sleep. Jake Zandi: Those medications just help with all the anxiety and stuff like that, because sleep is just natural, biological process. So, hopefully I didn’t go too far off topic on that. Martin Reed: No, I think that was all really, really helpful stuff. I think it’s so important to be as active and engaged as possible during the day and independently of sleep, not without sleep to control what we might do during the day for so many reasons. If nothing else, because one of our biggest thoughts that can keep us awake at night is concern about what the next day will be like if we don’t fall asleep, or if we don’t get certain amount of sleep. So, if we can just explore that belief by seeing what we are capable of doing during the day, even after difficult nights of sleep, we might surprise ourselves. Martin Reed: We might recognize that perhaps we do have some control over the quality of our day than how we sleep the previous night. I think we do have more control over the quality of our day, how we feel during the day than sleep alone. If we do things that we enjoy during the day, even after difficult nights, by their very nature because we’re doing enjoyable activities, we’re going to get some sense of enjoyment out of that activity. But it can be difficult, because our minds can be screaming at us to conserve energy, to not do anything, to cancel all of our plans because we are just not capable. Our brain wants to trick us into telling us we’re not capable after difficult nights of sleep, or after no sleep. Martin Reed: This can perpetuate the problem, because then we kind of … We’re often canceling plans that we might have otherwise enjoy it, so we’re guaranteeing that a difficult night leads to a difficult day or a less pleasant day. Then, because we’re less active, we’re not really doing stuff, then our mind has got all these free time on its hands. Jake Zandi: Exactly. Martin Reed: It’s going to want to worry, it’s going to want to generate anxiety. We might then want to try doing things like napping, which is going to reduce that sleep drive if we nap. If we can’t nap, then we worry even more because we can’t nap. So, doing good stuff during the day can really help break that connection between sleep, quality of sleep and quality of our days. When we can start to recognize that we do have a lot of control over how we feel during the day, this is not to say that sleep has no influence, it definitely does. But we do have a lot of control over how we feel during the day. Martin Reed: If we can break that connection between 100% of my day is predetermined by how I sleep 100% of the time, we might then start to put a little bit less pressure on ourselves to sleep. That thought that I must fall back to sleep, I must get a certain amount of sleep otherwise today will be awful. We can chip away the anxiety that kind of thinking can generate. So, in turn, we start to enjoy better days, and because we are a little bit less worried about sleep, we can start to enjoy better nights too. Jake Zandi: Oh, exactly. This is one thing that I did. I heard somewhere, I can’t remember now, I think it was a quote, but it was, “Don’t live to sleep. Sleep to live.” I’m not sure where that … I came across that when I was doing some research or whatever, but that really stuck with me, because you should be enjoying your life. You shouldn’t let a bad night sleep really ruin the whole next day, because you might be a little tired, fatigued, or whatever, but you can still get through the day. You can really get through the day and still have an enjoyable day. Jake Zandi: Even if it’s walking out, going to the park, and then just being out in the sunshine and enjoying the sounds of the birds chirping, or whatever. It’s honestly much better than sitting at home on your couch and just wallowing, worrying, because I feel like for me at least, the worry was doing much more damage than the lack of sleep. Then, regardless, in the end, your body always does generate that sleep that you need. If anything, you do get that minimum amount of sleep that your body will need to get through the next day. So, I don’t know, throughout this whole process, I don’t think it didn’t happen … Everything happens for a reason, I believe. Jake Zandi: I’m very optimistic and I believe in things like that happening. I think that for me this was, I wasn’t paying attention to myself. I wasn’t taking care of myself enough mentally and physically. This was like a wake up call, if anything, literally, because I was awake all the time. Anyways, it was quite the experience, and at first it was very, very scary, but in time in using CBT-I techniques, you’ll get that confidence again. So, it’s been great. Martin Reed: I think that just doing anything during the day, anything you can add to your day, even if it’s just something small, like a walk around the block, or walking out to the coffee shop, or anything that we can add to our day that we might otherwise have avoided based on how we sleep is helpful. We don’t have to be out training for our marathon. Just any kind of activity or anything we enjoy. These things don’t even have to all be physical. Just things that we are passionate about, that motivate us, that gives us a sense of enrichment, or enjoyment. Martin Reed: These are all great things we can add to our lives. If we do it independently of sleep, there’s never a negative outcome, because we’re going to have better days and we’re going to maybe put less pressure on our selves to sleep, so we might have better nights in response to. I think something you touched upon with that quote as well is, when we’re all on our deathbeds, hopefully a long, long time from now, we’re not really going to look back on our lives and think, “February 3rd, 1996 was a great night of sleep. That gave my life all of its meaning.” Martin Reed: Instead, we’re going to be remembering all the things we did when we were awake, that added enrichment and joy to our lives. This show us that really what happens during the day is far more important than what happens at night. So, perhaps if we can focus our attention and our efforts on living our day time life independently of sleep, then perhaps sleep will take care of itself because we’re then not giving it the attention, or putting the effort into sleep, the two things that can make sleep much more difficult. Jake Zandi: Exactly, I couldn’t agree more. It’s just what you do during the day is just so important. So, if you just waste away, waste your day and not do anything, you’re going to continue to have the problem. So, for anyone listening, it is good to get out and stay busy, and do things that you really enjoy doing. Like you said, Martin, even walking around the block, that can make a world of difference for the next night, honestly. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. So, what’s an average night like for you these days, Jake? I’m guessing you’re probably not tracking your sleep that much these days compared to when you were struggling, but just on reflection, how would you describe an average night? Jake Zandi: Well, an average now, like I said, I don’t really think too much about it. The only thing I really implement now would be that relaxation time at the end of each day. If I don’t do that, then I set myself up for a little bit harder time falling asleep. I don’t think about it as much at all really. I don’t talk. Some days I used to talk to my fiancee about it all the time, or my mom, I’m very close to my mom. I’d call her and be like, “Oh, I didn’t sleep good last night.” Or, she’d ask me how I was doing, or how I’ve been sleeping, but this is something that’s just really kind of … it’s irrelevant now. Jake Zandi: It’s something I don’t really worry about. So, talking about it less and less, thinking about it less and less. I’m now sleeping, I think last night I slept eight and a half hours, which is, that was pretty awesome. This is coming from someone who’s going through night after night of just terrible poor quality anxiety ridden sleep. But yeah, I slept really good last night. Then, maybe the night before that I slept probably seven and that’s all I want. My goal is to just get back to seven to eight hours and I’m back doing that. Jake Zandi: So, I’m thinking less and less about it. I’m worried about it less and less. If I talk to you about maybe a month ago, I’d probably still be very anxiety ridden. But I’m doing pretty good. I feel good and my sleep is basically back on track. It’s 99%, because you’re not always going to have a perfect night, and I don’t expect to always have a perfect night. Martin Reed: Yeah, I think it’s that shift in the mindset, which is really the key evidence of success, because when we don’t really worry about sleep, we’re not really paying attention to sleep, thus typically when we’re sleeping the best. So, if you just ask an average person on the street, “Oh, how many hours of sleep did you get last night?” They’ll just going to guess, they’ll think about it for a few seconds, “When did I go to bed? When did I get out of bed?” And just fill that entire period with sleep. But when we have insomnia, when we’re struggling, we kind of know everything about our sleep almost down to the minute. Martin Reed: We’re really analytical, we’re really monitoring. Perhaps we can use that. If we can recognize that there has been this difference, maybe we can use that as evidence that paying so much attention to sleep and really monitoring for sleep maybe isn’t that helpful. Maybe if we can just take an approach of, sleep is going to happen, accepting each night for what it is, shifting our attention to what we do during the day, and just allowing sleep to come naturally, because sleep does want to come naturally. It’s only when we crave it, when we strive for it that it tends to be a bit more elusive. That can be so helpful. Jake Zandi: For sure. So, it really is like that, it will happen, it will happen. That’s what I really got out of sleep restriction, like I said, it was the biggest technique that worked for me, it really did. Once I had a few nights of good quality, six and a half hours of sleep, that was better than the nine hours laying in bed, getting four or five hours of broken sleep or whatever. So, yeah, anytime I feel like I’ve reset, but you have to work at it. It didn’t come free. It came with having to implement techniques, but now, yeah, I don’t think about it really. Martin Reed: Yeah. Jake Zandi: So, it’s freeing, a very good feeling. Martin Reed: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jake, I really appreciate all the time that you’ve given up to come on to the podcast. I just know that many, many people listening to this are going to get a lot of value from it, and it’s going to prove to be really helpful, but there is one last question that I haven’t asked you yet, and it’s a question that I asked everyone that comes on. So, I would like to ask you, too, and it’s this, if someone with chronic insomnia is listening and feels as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, and they can’t do anything to improve their sleep, what would you tell them? Jake Zandi: I’d say, don’t give up on yourself and don’t, really, just don’t feed into the negative sleep thoughts. Try to turn those negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Really, really try to implement. I know it sounds scary, but try the sleep restriction. Try to reset as well. If you can’t fall asleep, get out of bed. Do something relaxing for about, 20, 30 minutes and try again, because you’ll be successful eventually. If you have to do it multiple times, you have to do it multiple times, but don’t give up on yourself. Jake Zandi: Don’t feed into those negative sleep thoughts. Turn those sleep thoughts, those negative sleep thoughts into positive sleep thoughts and eventually, you will reset. You will feel better. Get out. Live your life. Don’t wallow. I know it’s easier said than done, but I struggled for a while with this and I’m someone that would never have struggled with this, I don’t think. But with everything happening in the world, I did get very stressed out and very anxious about a lot of things. Jake Zandi: But in the end, just don’t give up. In time, if it takes you five weeks, or if it takes you six months to have the sleep restriction work, it will work. You’ll have that confidence back. I think that’s really all I got to say. Martin Reed: That’s great. Just because I know people are going to be thinking this, do you have any tips on how you might turn those negative sleep thoughts into more positive ways of thinking? Jake Zandi: Well, for me at least, having a positive day, do you know what I mean? Trying to turn, almost like I had to rewire my brain, it felt like, but if I went out and I had a positive day, smile more, try to just get out and enjoy time with friends, family. Yeah, the more positive things that you do or just getting out of bed and getting off the couch or whatever, and getting out into life, my mindset and my thought process became more positive in general. Jake Zandi: I was able to think, you know what? Instead of having a bad night tonight and worrying about it, I was like, “You know what? I’m going to sleep good.” Even telling myself, “I’m going to have a good night sleep tonight.” It worked. So, it was very helpful. Martin Reed: That was great. So, I think one thought that you can have which maybe you would consider one of your negative sleep thoughts would be something maybe, “Oh, if I don’t sleep tonight, tomorrow will be awful.” So, you’ve kind of identified that as a thought that is a challenge for you. So, then, you’ve put some effort into making the next days better, independently of how you sleep and then through your own experience. Maybe you’ve been able to turn that thought on its head. So, one like, “If I don’t sleep well tonight, I know that there are things I can do to feel better during the day tomorrow.” Martin Reed: That’s just off the top of my head. Is that the kind of thing that you’re getting out, like the way you can just transform your way of thinking around sleep? Jake Zandi: Yeah, that’s basically it, no matter what. Because for me, if I didn’t do anything and I sat around and I felt bad for myself all day, those thoughts would continue to … I’d be in this rabbit hole of negative thinking about it. Even if you just go out, like you said, do something, take a walk, go around the block, even something so simple like that, it’s going to really change your mindset. It doesn’t sound like it might not work as well, but if you get out and just try it, you’ll notice the difference. It really works. Martin Reed: Yeah. Absolutely. All right, great, Jake. Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Again, I really appreciate you giving up the time out of your day. I think we covered lots of great points and I think it’s going to help lots and lots of people, everything that we’ve discussed. So, thank you. Jake Zandi: Well, thank you for having me, Martin. Thank you. Martin Reed: Thanks for listening to The Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to implement evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques to improve your sleep but think you might need some additional support and guidance, I would love to help. There are two ways we can work together. First, you can get my online coaching course. This is the most popular option. My course combines sleep education with individualized coaching and is guaranteed to improve your sleep. You will learn new ways of thinking about sleep and implement better sleep habits over a period of eight weeks. This gives you time to build sleep confidence and notice results without feeling overwhelmed. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com/online. Martin Reed: I also offer a phone coaching package where we start with a one hour call. This can be voice only or video, your choice, and we come up with an initial two-week plan that will have you implementing cognitive and behavioral techniques that will lead to long term improvements in your sleep. You get unlimited email-based support and guidance for two weeks after the call along with a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone. Martin Reed: 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 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. Share this page