Welcome to GoodbyeInsomnia
Here I have provided a set of tools, techniques and Information that will help you overcome your Insomnia for good. I dealt with severe Insomnia for half a year so I know the struggle that comes with such a condition. Luckily I found help early and have been collecting and applying a number of tools and techniques that I will teach and cater to you to get your life back for good.
What is insomnia?
Simply put, Insomnia is a fear of not sleeping aka a fear of being awake and it is this fear that puts our brain into fight or flight mode, this raises our heart rate, our cortisol, adrenaline etc. You’ve become what is known as hyper aroused. Since sleep is our most vulnerable state, your brain will not allow you to sleep if you’re hyper aroused since the brains’ main function is to keep us safe/alive.
What isn’t Insomnia?
There are many misconceptions as to what insomnia is, problems such as sleep apnoea, an anxiety disorder, continued external disturbances etc are being treated as the root causes for Insomnia. These are simply sleep disturbances. Once the disturbance has been resolved (CPAP for sleep apnoea, ear plugs for noise etc), the insomnia symptoms will go away. Yes, these problems can create the same type of outcome as insomnia (bad and interrupted sleep), but they are not root causes of what we know as “insomnia”. These misconceptions are a big reason as to why insomnia can be experienced for months, years or even decades as a person with insomnia is in a constant hunt for the “cure” which also keeps or even worsens the fear of not sleeping.
With a clear idea of what Insomnia is, do you feel this applies to you? Do you fear the incoming night? Are you in a constant battle to make sleep happen? Are you questioning if you will even sleep tonight? Are you minimising your life in relation to sleep? Are you in a constant search for the next supplement or medication that will “make sleep happen”? Is your confidence in your sleep basically non-existent?
If the answer is yes, this site is for you.
The stages of recovery
0 - No understanding:
At this stage you have basically no understanding of what’s going on, you have no idea as to why you can’t sleep like normal anymore. You see yourself participating in sleep efforts to make you sleep. You’re going to doctors’ appointments as you think you have something medically wrong. You are rapidly reducing your quality of life as you hold yourself back from participating in plans with friends, you are scared to book that long awaited holiday as you “need to fix your sleep first”, you are in a constant state of fear and always trying figure out what the hell is going on.
Below are the main stages to recovery, I would recommend you stick with stage 1 for the first 2-4 weeks and then look at stages 2 and 3, don’t worry if you don’t fully understand stages 2 and 3 right away, the knowledge in these stages becomes more understandable and evident the further into recovery you are.
1 -Simple understanding and behavioural changes:
Stage 1 is where you will gain the basic understandings of insomnia along with the behavioural changes to put in place, this is of course the stage your recovery truly starts, and everything can be implemented on day 1. You see change happening and new experiences take place, with these experiences more questions can arise and this is where we go onto stage 2.
2 -More in depth understanding of the recovery process:
With the behavioural changes and basic understandings in place, new experiences can arise, one key experience I want you to understand are speedbumps, this is where your sleep quality/quantity can decrease at times and stage 2 explains these events in detail. All other likely events during your recovery journey are also explained in detail.
3 -Recovered:
At this stage you understand what recovery is, you learn that sleep is not the only metric for being recovered, you understand that your relationship with sleep and the fear that comes with insomnia are 2 other main metrics to recovery. You learn acceptance is the end goal.
Extra - Concepts
As an extra, I have made the concepts page for when you need just a little reminder as to what the concepts of insomnia are. I have written basic definitions of each concept, this way you don’t need to read multiple paragraphs in stage 2 just for a reminder.
1 - The Start
This is where your journey out of insomnia begins. On this page I have laid out some basic understandings and behavioural changes that can be implemented right now. Even after looking at this whole page, you may still be rather in the dark for understanding what insomnia really is and what the journey out will consist of, but starting with the behavioural changes I have laid out on this page for the first 2 to 4 weeks will most certainly have you see changes already happen and the doorway to understanding the deeper teachings will open. The whole journey will be a conjunction of behavioural changes and education, but unlike most aspects of life, practice will be prioritised before theory.
Insomnia is mostly overcome during the day
With Insomnia, you may find yourself holding back from doing stuff you like doing. Maybe a friend has invited you to a late-night party, maybe you want to go abroad but you’re worried the hotel won’t have the “right conditions for sleep”, or you hardly leave the house anymore as you feel safer at home. Whatever it is, you most likely have found yourself holding back from life and your everyday tasks now revolve around sleep. This is what feeds the Insomnia, the constant worry and hyper fixation on your sleep, the need to control your sleep. Focus on what you can control, which is what you do during your time awake. The more you allow yourself to do the things you love, the more your brain will learn that being awake is no threat. Little by little, new deep learnings at both a conscious and sub conscious level will be created.
Your Insomnia isn’t special
One of the most important things to learn early on is that your insomnia is not special, your recovery may look a little different, but the root cause for everyone with insomnia is the fear of not sleeping/wakefulness. I did doubt I would recover, having a condition that you can’t directly treat with effort makes you think you will have this condition for life, but I along with thousands of others are proof that even with these doubts in place, you can still recover. The day I am writing this, it has been a year since these doubts were at their greatest, I truly thought my life was pretty much over, and now here I am living a life closer to what I truly want, and this includes helping people like you, people like myself a year ago. No matter how much doubt gets in your way, trust the process and you will recover in time.
Still have other avenues to explore?
If you still have beliefs that something else may be causing your insomnia, feel free to look down these avenues as the question(s) will sit in your mind until have an answer. If you believe your insomnia may be caused by something medical, have this checked out. For me I thought it may be sleep apnoea, I did a sleep apnoea test, and it came back negative. I thought it may be something else medical, so I bought a few home tests, they came back fine. This is how I was able to move on from these questions as to what the root cause of my Insomnia was and accepted it was a fear of not sleeping/wakefulness. This is how I was able to go 100% with the same recovery process I have written out on this site.
Behaviour Changes
The gentle sleep window
Every person is different when it comes to the amount of sleep we need, some people need 7 hours and some need as little as 5, this is why the 8-hour recommendation is now being seen as more of a myth. Let’s compare the 8-hour myth to shoe size, let’s say you’re a size 8 but someone came along and told you that you need a size 9, well you would know this isn’t true as you can measure exactly what shoe size you require, the same can be done with sleep, albeit being a little more tricky to measure as you can only really go off historical rough guesses of how much sleep you require.
Let’s say you got around 7 hours of sleep a night before your insomnia, well we can now use this a basis for your sleep window. Set a time that the window starts, let’s say 12 midnight, so this is the time you only allow yourself to go to bed at a minimum, you would then set your alarm time for 7am, you now have a 7-hour sleep window in place. Think of this almost like a bed time and wake up time, a very normal thing in society, but don't be militant about the "bed time", only be militant about the wake time by setting an alarm and only put your head down/go to bed when you feel sleepy. The goal here is to only allocate a set period you can go to/be in bed, this will allow your sleep drive to gain more pressure throughout the day as the sleep drive is what makes you sleep and the more pressure it has, the more likely you will fall asleep and longer you will sleep.
What to expect from the sleep window
When you implement the sleep window, expect your sleep to become incredibly bumpy, some nights you may get a good night’s sleep, but other nights expect to be sleeping worse than when you started this journey.
The reasons for your sleep being better some nights can have several explanations, but the most common reason can be the fact you’re taking advantage of your sleep drive since you are only allocating a set part of the day to sleep.
There can also be many reasons why your sleep can be even worse some nights than before you implemented the sleep window, the biggest reason can be explained as the fact you are now finding the courage to go face to face with the perceived threat of wakefulness, so as you are going face to face with the fear, your brain may feel even more threatened.
The good news is, just like insomnia, this period will end. I will not give an estimated time for how long this period usually lasts as to remove any pressure to your recovery, but it is usually the shortest period of the recovery.
Reduce or eliminate napping
Napping reinforces negative behaviours that will feed into your insomnia and enables an unhelpful pattern of sleep. Making napping a habit can reduce the pressure on your sleep drive which can cause fragmented and unrefreshing sleep. I would only advise having a nap if you really need to but do it as minimal as possible and limit a nap to 20-30 minutes. This type of advice is even given to “normal” sleepers, nevermind someone with insomnia.
The less you nap and the more you stick to your sleep window, the more your brain will learn that it only has sleep opportunity between the start and end of your sleep window, so it will give you the most amount and most high-quality sleep currently possible between those times. The brain loves working on a schedule.
Stop Looking at the Clock
People with insomnia usually have a habit of looking at the clock through the night to see how much sleep opportunity they have left. This, of course, is incredibly unhelpful. Each time you look at the clock in the night, you are further reinforcing an unhelpful pattern of sleep, this can be caused by your anxiety rising up each time you look at the clock, so this creates a scheduled response in the brain to wake you up at these times as the brain is detecting a threat at those times. This explains why the 3AM phenomenon exists. I reccomend you set an alarm for when your sleep window start and once for when it ends, this way you can remove analysing the clock all together. This is something I still do myself as I find looking at the clock in the night isn’t helpful at all, I see it as a negative behaviour or at best neutral.
Sleep Drive
The sleep drive is what makes a person sleep. The “fuel” of the sleep drive is wakefulness, so let’s say someone gets/needs around 6 hours of sleep, this means they need around 18 hours of wakefulness to fully fuel their sleep drive. Now let’s say this same person gives themselves 7 hours of sleep opportunity, well their sleep may become fragmented and lower in quality as the sleep drive will be weakened. In this situation, I would recommend this person give themselves around 6.5 hours of sleep opportunity a night to get the best quality sleep but also not to add pressure to get the “right” amount of sleep, if I were to give this person a 6 hour window, then they may feel pressured to fall asleep quickly of wake up the least possible in the night and this just goes against what the recovery is all about.
Befriending(allowing) Wakefulness
People with insomnia are in a constant state of chasing sleep and this is exactly what tells our brain that wakefulness is a threat. When you find yourself awake at night, follow the advice of either counter control and/or stimulus control as outlined below:
Stimulus control:
Stimulus control is when you get out of bed and do something to pass the time and when/if you start to feel sleepy again you return to bed and allow the chance of sleep to come. This version of befriending wakefulness is advised for when you feel anxious and/or find yourself fighting to get to sleep in bed so you can remove the association of wakefulness and fear with the bed.
Counter control:
Counter control is when you find yourself awake in bed but you’re feeling calm and relaxed, you find no need to get out of bed. You can pass the time by maybe watching tv, reading a book, listening to music or simply lying down with your eyes closed allowing the best chance of sleep to come.
Now you don’t need to do one OR the other, both can be used, it just all depends on how you’re feeling while in bed. Feeling anxious and fighting for sleep? Stimulus control. Feeling calm and relaxed in bed? Counter control.
Allowing yourself to just be awake at night allows you to face the perceived threat of wakefulness aka not sleeping, and as with anything you fear and isn’t inherently harmful, the more you face it the more your brain will learn it isn’t a true threat. THIS is how the MAIN root cause of insomnia is overcome. At first these behaviours will feel incredibly foreign as they are going against what your brain wants you to do to escape wakefulness, paradoxically what your brain wants you to do while going through insomnia is actually what keeps you in the loop of insomnia, also over time you will find that these behaviours have become second nature to you and this is exactly what recovery is all about, it’s an organic transformation of the mind and once you’ve overcome insomnia you really become immune to it.
Further Understanding
Type of Insomnia
Onset
Onset Insomnia is when it can take a very long time to get to sleep or not sleep at all.
Maintenance
Maintenance Insomnia is when a person can fall asleep just fine initially but can wake up multiple times throughout the night. Sometimes it can also take a while for this person to fall asleep again. 3AM awakenings are a well-known version of this.
Early awakenings
This is when someone will wake up far earlier than their alarm clock and can’t get back to sleep.
Sleep efforts
Sleep efforts are as they sound, efforts you put in place to “make sleep happen”. As sleep is a passive process, just like digestion, no effort is needed and paradoxically the more effort you put into making sleep happen, the less likely it is to happen. Examples of sleep efforts can be warm baths/showers, supplements such as magnesium or melatonin, cherry juice, meditation and breathing techniques. Really anything can be a sleep effort, as what makes something a sleep effort is doing the thing purely to make sleep happen, so to combat these efforts you need to ask what your intent is, is your intent with something you’re doing to make sleep happen? If so, change your intent or remove it all together. Meditate before bed but you enjoy it? Change the intent from sleep to enjoyment. Drink cherry juice before bed but hate the taste? Remove it. The sleep efforts themselves aren’t an issue as it’s not meditation or a warm bath that is stopping you from sleeping, it’s about the intent of trying to make sleep happen that is the issue as this is telling the brain you’re trying to escape being awake.
Supplements
One of the most common sleep efforts are supplements as they are cheap and easy to take, there's also a lot of marketing around many supplements such as magnesium where companies will talk about how they will improve your sleep or will say something as bad as “Got insomnia? try magnesium glycinate”, so it would seem obvious that someone with sleeping issues would try this type of sleep effort. The good news for your wallet is that you do not need supplements for sleep, they can however improve sleep quality, so if you wish to continue to take supplements, be sure the intent has nothing to do with making sleep happen but is for health first and even perhaps sleep quality.
Looking for the next “fix”
During Insomnia you may be on an infinite adventure to find the “fix” for your sleep. You see that you’ve tried A, B and C and now we need to find D as this may be the thing that “fixes” your sleep, D could be something as simple as a sleep supplement or something as insane as patting your head and doing exactly 7.62 spins before bed. The best thing here is to remember that sleep requires literally 0 effort and the more effort we apply the worse we sleep, sleep is a 100% passive process. The next time you find yourself looking for your next “fix”, please tell yourself that what you’re buying or applying will do nothing or even the opposite of what you want.
Counter sleep efforts
Counter sleep efforts can be a tricky concept, you find all the sleep efforts you have in place, and you may automatically think the opposite is what you “need to do”. Let’s say you have a warm bath before bed to calm yourself down and your intention here is to make sleep happen, well now that you see that you have this sleep effort in place, you think you need to stop having the warm baths. But this is not how it works, recognising something is a sleep effort is just recognising you’re doing something to make sleep happen, as said previously you can simply change the intention of the action(s) or drop it all together, this is easy once you recognise something is a sleep effort and you accept it will not make you sleep, thinking that doing the opposite thing will make you sleep is a counter sleep effort. All you need to do to have neither sleep efforts nor counter sleep efforts in place is question why you have an action in place. Again, if you enjoy it and accept it will not make you sleep, keep it. If you hate it and now accept it will not make you sleep, drop it. Sleep efforts and counter sleep efforts are all about intention.
2 - More In-Depth
The perceived threat
The root cause of insomnia is a perceived threat of not sleeping aka being awake at night. This perceived threat is the very thing that keeps us awake. The reason it keeps us awake is because the brains #1 job is to keep us safe, so if the brain is detecting a threat, whether that be perceived or real, it will keep us awake instead of allowing us to go into our most vulnerable state which is sleep.
The idea that you can remotely find not sleeping/being awake at night as a threat may sound like complete horsesh*t, but I ask you to really look inside yourself and see if you can recognise the fact that your mind is seeing not sleeping as a threat. Do you find yourself getting anxious when the sun goes down? Do you find yourself putting sleep efforts in place to “make sleep happen” such as “sleep” meds or supplements? Are you limiting your life in relation to sleep? If so, these things are happening because you have a fear of not sleeping.
Also think about this, anything can be feared, one example that many people laugh at is a fear of clowns. Many of us don’t have the fear as we know that clowns are usually not threatening, but some of us do have the fear and this fear (most of the time) is perceived. Another example can be spiders, this is one that many of us do have, yet we know many spiders are not to be feared, yet we still do fear them. Both are an example of a perceived threat. Now let’s add a real fear into the mix, a fear of wolves, through our evolution our brains know wolves are to be feared, they are usually a real threat, if you heard a wolf in the night, you would instantly be woken up, we know this as it’s common sense really. Our brain reacts the same to a real threat and a perceived threat, the brain literally sees them the same way.
Befriending wakefulness
The initial reason for the creation of this perceived threat does not matter, so if you do or do not know why this perceived threat has been conditioned into your mind, it doesn’t matter, the way to recondition the brain to no longer consider not sleeping/being awake as a threat is the same.
The way you recondition the brain to longer see not sleeping as a threat is to expose yourself to being awake at night and during the day with courage. Allow yourself to be awake at night, stop trying to escape being awake, embrace it and make it as comfortable as can be. Read a book, watch the tv, listen to some music, do anything to pass the time you’re awake at night then go back to bed/put your head back down when/if you feel ready to. Live your life as though you don’t have insomnia, go on that long-awaited trip, go on that date, go for that late night meal, don’t back out of that plan with friends because you didn’t sleep well. Over time this will tell both the conscious and sub-conscious parts of your mind that not sleeping is not a threat. This can be summed up as “experiential learning”, you experience the fear to let your mind learn that there is nothing to fear.
Now the idea of “befriending” wakefulness may imply you need to “like” being awake at night. You do not. You can hate it with all your heart. All you need to do is just have the courage to face the fear. Liking it or disliking it does not change the outcome, if anything having the courage to face what you both fear AND hate may make you an even stronger person. Fearing AND hating what you’re willing to face just says you have immense courage, and when you get to the other side of this, you will have the courage to do a lot more in your life. You will be more willing to do what you hate, you will be more willing to face any other fears you have in life. You will become a much stronger version of yourself mentally.
It must be real not artificial
Something I heard a few times in my insomnia coaching calls was that people would keep themselves awake at night to befriend wakefulness, they would make themselves face being awake at night. The issue here is that you are not facing the fear, only the wakefulness. Yes, the root cause is a fear of wakefulness, but befriending wakefulness is about facing the fear, not just the wakefulness itself. It can be little tricky to understand at first, but the TLDR is, be open to facing wakefulness at night when the fear is keeping you awake, not your own choice of staying awake.
Speedbumps
“Speedbumps” is a term we like to use to explain the time(s) your sleep reduces in quantity or even quality, you may find that you’re sleeping fine for some time after you have implemented the behavioural changes and understood the teachings on this site, then all of a sudden you’re sleeping badly again. Usually this isn’t due to you doing anything “wrong”, it’s usually just caused by the hyperarousal peaking it’s head up again, your brain is just detecting a perceived threat of wakefulness and is now trying to keep you safe but this will pass as long as you allow yourself to face the “threat” of wakefulness.
The great thing about speedbumps is that they’re an indication that you are getting out of the loop of insomnia, bad sleep is no longer your norm, bad sleep is now an “event” that stands out and what you can call speedbumps. They are in no way a sign on regression but are a sign of progression. They’re also a prime opportunity to further show your brain that you are safe when awake, follow the advice of befriending wakefulness to show your brain you are truly safe and over time the speedbumps will become less intense and even shorter, the more you accept these events the easier the journey gets. Also allow the speedbumps to take as long as they need, put no pressure on yourself to get through a speedbump quickly, this especially applies if you’re a long way into the journey of recovery, you may think “I’ve been in recovery for x long, so this speedbump won’t last long”, just allow it to take its course, it will end eventually.
Speedbumps are also a prime time for further learning about yourself, during or after a speedbump you can analyse if you’re still participating in any unhelpful safety behaviours, if the fear is still dictating how you live your life, if you’re still not fully open to being awake at night etc.
Example of a speedbump journey:
Emotional Fatigue
During the journey of my own insomnia, I realised that most of the fatigue I was feeling was emotional, I realised this as some days I would get less sleep and feel pretty good and other days I would get more sleep but still feel drained. I actually experienced this 2 days in a row, on one night I only got 2 hours of sleep and I felt pretty good (for 2 hours of sleep that is) then the next night I had a solid 6 hours and I felt terrible, this did catch me by surprise but it’s experiences like this that helped me become as recovered as I am today. This is why I would recommend you to work on your mindset, removing your focus from the bad and onto the good, instead of focusing on the fact you have insomnia maybe focus of the fact you can recover, focus on the fact that you will get to the other side a much stronger person mentally, focus more on the good in your life overall, practice gratitude any time you’re feeling down, a gratitude journal could be a good tool, writing things down drills this positive information into your mind even more than just thinking about it as you are both thinking about it, writing it and reading it.
The main components of the emotional fatigue
I would say the main component of emotional fatigue could be depression, people with insomnia have a much higher chance of developing depression as insomnia is affecting you negatively 24/7, so don’t even think about blaming yourself for being depressed, you are dealing with a horrendous condition and I would be surprised if you weren’t depressed in some way. Now I may have scared you a little here, you may now be thinking you have 2 “battles” to deal with, insomnia and depression, but when insomnia is the root cause of your depression, then it is only the insomnia you need to overcome.
Major anxiety can also be a component of the emotional fatigue, being in a constant state of anxiety will exhaust anyone. And just like depression, people with insomnia have a very high chance of developing it. Think about what the main driver of insomnia is, a fear of not sleeping/being awake, so when you are in a constant state of fear of this you are in a constant anxious state. Now again, the good news here is that when insomnia is the root cause of this anxiety, it is just the insomnia you need to overcome.
Being sedentary
Another component to emotional fatigue that I am still working on is being sedentary, when you are physically fatigued, anxious or depressed from the lack of sleep, it can make you sedentary, this can be mistaken for laziness and bring you down even more. The brain basically hates you being sedentary, it wants you moving or thinking, this is why it would be good to think of the phrase “Exercise the mind and Exercise the body” when you’re feeling down. Get moving whether that be a 10-minute walk or a full workout, get your brain working by simply reading something new or work on a whole new project. Whatever it is, be sure you’re doing something to exercise your mind or your body, you may find that this becomes a habit and the new norm for you, you may even get addicted to this is it can improve your life in every way.
Fear
As previously explained, the root cause of insomnia is a perceived threat of not sleeping/being awake, this is the main fear that creates the loop of insomnia, but other fears can be developed once the root cause of insomnia is in place. You can start to fear; the chance of losing your job because you’re “too tired” to work well, going out late at night as it may stimulate you before bed, sleeping in a foreign place such as a hotel or even letting go of any sleep efforts such as supplements/medications for sleep etc. It is very usual for you to develop such fears as the lack of sleep, the anxiety, and the depression can truly make you feel limited in life. But once again, the good thing here is that once you start to recover from the fear of not sleeping, all these other fears can start to melt away.
Fear can be experienced in many ways, but all experiences of fear can be broken down as being a form of anxiety, and anxiety is usually experienced via thoughts and/or feelings. Examples of the feelings you can experience are heart palpitations, a lump in your throat aka globus sensation, a weight on your chest, sickness in your stomach, shaking aggressively etc. Examples of thoughts can be worrying about not sleeping tonight, worrying you will never recover, thinking you will never be able to work at your full potential etc. These are prime examples but there are many types of thoughts and feelings you can experience. The best thing here is to understand there is nothing to worry about, yes you may feel like there is something medically wrong. I for example had a lump feeling in my throat for over a week straight, not a single minute went by were this lump went away, no matter how much i swallowed, did throat stretches or TRIED to ignore this feeling, it just wouldn’t go away. By me trying to escape this feeling of anxiety I was telling my brain it was something to fear, this was creating a “fear of fear” which is explained further in the next area.
Fear of Fear
A fear of fear is as it sounds, you start to fear the experience of a fear. As we know, fear can be experienced from anxiety and anxiety can cause many uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. By trying to escape the experiences of fear, we start to condition the brain into thinking that the experiences are a threat, remember when you continually try to escape anything, you are telling the brain that it is a threat therefore something to fear. Simply recognising that the thoughts/feelings of fear are not threatening to us, we can start to condition the brain into recognising that they are not a threat. Overcoming the fear of fear is the same as befriending wakefulness, allow the fear to sit there and paradoxically it will eventually melt away.
Conscious vs Sub-conscious fear
Conscious fear is a surface level fear you experience when feelings such as uncomfortable thoughts show, let’s say the sun has gone down and you have the thought of “will I sleep tonight?”, this is a surface level fear that has popped up in your conscious and is just a safety signal from the brain. This safety signal is sent from the brain so you will go into problem solving mode and try to figure out how to fix the “problem” you are about to experience, this “problem” being if you don’t sleep well or at all. As we know, thoughts are just thoughts, these signals don’t always reflect reality and you can just allow that thought to sit in your mind, then as your mind learns that safety signal is no longer needed as it learns you are safe, these types of thoughts will become less prevalent as time and experience with what is being feared happens more and more.
Sub-conscious fear is an ingrained fear, the more “real” fear. This fear is where the root cause of your insomnia is stored. This type of fear is what can cause every type of fear response you experience, this can include the thoughts, the feelings, the fight or flight, the adrenaline rush etc. It is harder to tap into the sub conscious as this area of your mind is where your entire bodies functioning system is controlled, this can include breathing, digestion and of course the ingrained fears, it is why it takes so long and can be difficult to “tap into”. Luckily for us, the sub conscious can also learn that what it fears isn’t really a fear and this is where we can refer back to the conscious fear, as you experience the conscious fear relating to sleep or anything at all, the more your conscious learns what you fear isn’t actually dangerous, this information slowly trickles down into your sub conscious.
Overcoming fear
Just like practicing befriending wakefulness, the best way to overcome a fear is to experience it, allow it to be there. When you’re getting these anxious feelings or anxious thoughts, allow them to be there, allow them to sit wherever you are experiencing them. Have a weight on your chest and find it hard to breathe? Have a lump in your throat and feel like you’re going to choke? Have a ton of thoughts that are making your mind feel fuzzy? Tell yourself it’s just anxiety, this may not remove the feeling but it will remind you that the feeling is not dangerous, you are not in danger, your brain is just sending these safety signals to tell you it’s in a state of fear but the thoughts/feelings will not harm you, the brain is not against you it just trying to keep you safe.
The Sleep Cycle
Sleep runs in roughly 90-minute cycles and includes 4 stages: Deep sleep, REM sleep, Light Sleep and wakefulness.
Most of our deep sleep happens near the beginning of the time we have gone to sleep, this is because our sleep drive is strongest at this point.
Most of our REM sleep happens in the second half of the time we have gone to sleep, this type of sleep is lighter than deep but not quite wakefulness, this is why we can remember our dreams on regular occasions.
Wakefulness is a part of the sleep cycle, and this is by design as this allows our brain to “check in” to see if we’re safe in the middle of the night. This wakefulness stage explains perfectly as to why maintenance and early awakening insomnia is possible.
I have chosen to only briefly explain the sleep cycle here as it isn’t particularly important for insomnia recovery, but I did want to highlight the wakefulness stage as this gives a perfect explanation as to how maintenance and to an extend early awakenings are possible.
If you are really curious about the sleep cycles I would refer to https://www.sleepfoundation.org/stages-of-sleep/nrem-sleep, but again this information is of little importance for insomnia recovery.
Self-kindness
Self-kindness is an incredibly important concept to have in place, it’s what can make the journey of recovery so much easier. The best way to practice self-kindness is to speak to yourself like you would to a family member if they were dealing with insomnia. You wouldn’t give them a hard time if they didn’t understand all the concepts, if they were having a hard time at dropping unhelpful behaviours, if they were struggling with daily life. You would comfort them and let them know they have immense courage for going face to face with the recovery process, you would let them know that the concepts will click in their mind over time with the experience, you would tell them to take it easy in the hardest of times and there’s no need to push themselves all the time. Do not be hard on yourself as all you’re doing is making the process more difficult, understand you are going through something that cannot be directly controlled and the recovery will take as long as it needs to and your understanding will also expand as slow or as fast as it needs to.
Sleeping Arrangements
Couch
You may find that you fall asleep easily on the couch, this is because the pressure to sleep on the couch is lower than the pressure to sleep in your bed, the pressure may even be non-existent as this may not be your usual area to sleep. With this lowered pressure, there is less grasp to control, less fear that you won’t sleep since you don’t expect to sleep. This can funnily enough eventually make sleeping on the couch a sleep effort if someone then believes the only way they can sleep is by sleeping on the couch, but now this person has added the same pressure to sleep on the couch as they do to sleep in their bed, this is when sleeping on the couch “no longer works”. The best course of action here is to not make the couch your main area to sleep because “it works”, simply just understand that the lack of sleep pressure is the reason why you’re able to fall asleep easily on the couch, stick with your usual sleeping arrangement of sleeping in your bed instead of trying to look for the “fix”.
Guest Bedroom
You may find that sleeping in the guest bedroom is easier than sleeping in your usual bedroom, this one can be a little tricky since reasons for moving to the guest bedroom can be individual, however one reason I have seen quite a lot is to remove the chance of sleep disturbances, a partner may snore or move about in their sleep and you are worried about this disturbing your sleep. This can be valid at times, maybe your partner really does disturb your sleep and a conversation may be in order, but think about if your partner disturbed your sleep before insomnia, were you worried they would wake you or keep you awake at night? if the potential disturbances were not an issue before insomnia, it may just be the fear of being awake at night that is driving you to the guest bedroom. The best course of action here is to slowly return to your bed, slowly face the chance of a sleep disturbance, allow your brain to know that the chance of sleep disturbances is not to be feared, face the fear of the chance that you will be awake at night.
Hotel
Hotels can be an Insomniacs biggest enemy, you’re expected to sleep in a foreign bed, in a foreign building, in a foreign location. It’s only natural that your fear of not sleeping rises, you have basically no control over your environment in a hotel. Your brain will also be on high alert as it has no idea if this foreign environment is safe, so your hyper arousal can be heightened. The best course of action here is to go ahead with sleeping in a hotel and accept that you may not get the best quality sleep or even sleep at all, face the fear of being in a foreign environment at night and let the brain learn you are once again safe at night.
3 - Metrics of being recovered
Sleep
Sleep is of course a metric for measuring recovery from insomnia, but it is not the only or even main metric to use. Measuring insomnia recovery based on how you sleep doesn’t paint the whole picture of a recovered person. Let’s say someone has been educating themselves and allowing the experience of insomnia recovery to happen and they are now sleeping a solid 7 hours a night and have been for 6 months, can we say this person is now recovered? Maybe. Truthfully, we would want to dig a little deeper; is this person limiting their life so they “will continue to sleep well”, are they still filled with fear when they go to bed or see the sun going down, does a bad night of sleep feel like the end of the world?
With this said, when you start to sleep well, the other metrics that I highlight can also improve. Sleeping a solid X number of hours a night now? Maybe the fear of not recovering has now gone down. Maybe the fear of being awake at night and/or having a choppy night has gone down. Maybe you no longer see yourself limiting your life to appease your insomnia.
Acceptance
Acceptance is the end goal and the biggest metric of recovery. At this stage you have accepted that you have no control over your sleep. You have accepted being awake at night. You have accepted the days you are exhausted. You have accepted that sleep is a truly passive process. You have accepted the speedbumps that can happen at any time and can last if they need to. You have accepted the thoughts and feelings that come with the fear. You have dropped every instance of obsession and control over your sleep, you accept that the night can go in any direction.
Acceptance cannot be manufactured, you can’t just one day say you accept everything that comes with Insomnia, acceptance happens through education and experience.
Think of acceptance like a new job, let’s say you start a new job where you have no experience, you won’t hit the ground running and have the immediate ability to do all the jobs requirements like a pro, you need the knowledge and experience to do a job well, this is why so many job posts require knowledge and experience. When the knowledge and experience is solidified into your mind, when you’re able to do the job as easily as breathing, this is when you are a pro at that job. Acceptance is kind of the same, you become a “pro” at acceptance when the knowledge and experience has been baked into your mind, you don’t have to force acceptance, you just naturally accept.
Fear
Do you find yourself facing the fear without much resistance? An example can be how resistant are you to being awake at night? Do you stay in bed fighting for sleep or are you happy to stay in bed or to get out of bed and do something else to pass the time?
Do you no longer find yourself cancelling plans after not sleeping well? Are you no longer resistant to not making late night plans in fear of becoming overstimulated, going past your “bedtime”, no longer having enough sleep opportunity for a “good night” etc? If you no longer limit your life in relation to insomnia, you have stopped appeasing it and allowing it to stay. The fear will leave if you stop feeding it.
Do you fear that insomnia may return in the future? If so, this shows you still have a fear of not sleeping/a fear of wakefulness. The end goal of your recovery is to accept bad sleep no matter how long or short that period is, you don’t need to “like” it or “want” it, you want to ACCEPT it. Acceptance is what keeps us immune from looking for a “cure” to this problem, it’s what allows us to face the fear of wakefulness and allows us to go on with a fulfilling life
Concepts
Befriending Wakefulness
Allowing yourself to be awake at night and not trying to chase sleep
Facing the fear of wakefulness. Instead of “trying” to sleep (escape wakefulness), you just allow yourself to be awake at night, so you face the perceived fear of wakefulness, this is how your mind can learn there is nothing to fear at night.
Perceived Threat
Your brain has perceived wakefulness as a threat
Insomnia is fuelled by the fear of not sleeping at night, in other words the fear of being awake. Remember, there are 2 states a human can be in, awake and asleep, therefore if you fear not sleeping you fear being awake. This fear is caused by the perceived threat of being awake, this causes the well-known fight or flight response to activate in your body which increases chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol which prevents you from sleeping.
Speed bumps
Times that your sleep looks to have regressed again
You may find yourself improving or even getting to a period of sleeping like you used to, then all a sudden your sleep has gone down the drain again. This doesn’t mean you’ve “regressed”; It just means the brain is back to a hyper aroused state which can be triggered by a million different factors. This would be a time when people with insomnia would be looking for the next “fix”, but with the education on this site, you learn you don’t need to change anything, and in time this speed bump will end sooner or later.
Sleep Drive and Sleep Opportunity
The pressure to sleep and amount of time you allocate for sleep
The sleep drive is the very thing that makes you sleep, not medication, meditation, kiwi or hot baths, it is always the sleep drive. The sleep drives “fuel” is wakefulness, the more you are awake, the more fuel you are adding to the sleep drive.
Fear of Fear
Fearing the thoughts or feelings of fear
When you try to escape this feelings or thoughts of anxiety, you’re telling the brain it is something to fear which creates a fear response, this fear response is more anxiety, so the more you fear anxiety the more anxiety you will get. It’s a fear loop aka a fear of fear.
Self-kindness
Self-Kindness is simply being kind to yourself in hard times
Be kind to yourself when going through a difficult time, talk to yourself like you would to a family member if they were going through Insomnia, don’t be hard on yourself when you don’t understand something or don’t seem to be recovering, comfort yourself and tell yourself you will get through this and the process will take as long as it needs, with experience and learning you will understand everything eventually.
Emotional Fatigue
The fatigue you feel emotionally, e.g depression making you feel drained
This can be one of the most powerful concepts to understand when it comes to how you feel. When I was going through the thick of my insomnia, I had a little aha moment, I found I was making myself feel worse than I truly felt, this can be known as emotional fatigue. I was always monitoring how I felt, how much sleep I was getting and making beliefs that I “couldn’t do this” or “couldn’t do that”. Once I recognised, I was doing this, I started to feel much better when I stopped participating in these negative behaviours. Once you stop beating yourself up and stop heavily monitoring your sleep, you will feel so much better, even on little sleep. Now this obviously won’t make you feel “great”, but it will remove the heavy weight you’re putting on yourself and can make the path to recovery easier and more hopeful.
Sleep Quantity vs Sleep Quality
Sleep quality is more important than sleep quantity
As with most things, quality is more important that quantity and this applies perfectly to sleep. 4 hours of quality sleep would be better than 6 hours of fragmented sleep. If you find yourself napping throughout the day, you are participating in behaviours that will fragment your sleep therefor be causing you sleep to be of a low quality.