How Rebecca went from doing everything right and still struggling with sleep to letting go and achieving insomnia freedom (#70)

Insomnia Coach® Podcast

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Rebecca never struggled with sleep — until she began working 24-hour shifts as a hospital-based midwife.

She cared deeply about her patients, and she made a quiet promise to herself: nothing would go wrong on her watch. That meant staying awake through every shift. Over time, that vigilance seeped into her nights at home. Sleep became something she chased — and then something she feared.

Rebecca tried everything: medication, strict CBT-I programs, endless data tracking, a long list of rules. And still, sleep didn’t come. She followed every instruction, but nothing seemed to work — and somewhere along the way, she started to believe that something was wrong with her. That she wasn’t doing something right.

What changed wasn’t a new pill or a stricter plan. It was her relationship with sleep — and with herself.

She began practicing a different approach. She gave herself permission to rest without sleep. To play golf. To laugh with friends. To live with uncertainty and discomfort instead of fighting them. She made room for the thoughts and feelings that once overwhelmed her — and realized they didn’t have to control her life.

Sleep didn’t return overnight. But as her days became fuller and her nights gentler, it began to come back — naturally, and with far less struggle.

Today, Rebecca still has shorter nights from time to time, as all human beings do. And they no longer define her or limit her. Because she knows: she can still live fully and move forward — no matter what the night brings.

Click here for a full transcript of this episode.

Transcript

Martin: Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that by changing how we respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it, we can move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life we want to live.

Martin: The content of this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. The statements and opinions expressed by guests are their own and are not necessarily endorsed by Insomnia Coach LLC. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

Martin: Okay. Rebecca, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast.

Rebecca: Oh, I’m happy to be here.

Martin: It’s great to have you on. Let’s start, as always, right at the very beginning. Can you tell us when your sleep problems first began and what you think may have caused those initial issues with sleep?

Rebecca: Yes I can tell you. I know for sure. My sleep problem started when I was in my middle late forties. I had just accepted and started a new position. I was working in the hospital, as a nurse midwife. What that meant was that when I was on call, I was in the hospital for 24 hours. And I was in charge of, managing any woman who came in with, a normal labor, so to speak, and managing her, delivering her, whatever. I was quite anxious about it all. I really, I made a decision early on. I never wanted anything to happen on my watch. And so what that, happened with that is that when I was on a 24 hour shift, I made sure I stayed awake for 24 hours because I was afraid that even though we had a call room and I could lay down and. Whatnot. I was afraid that if I got into a deep sleep and someone called me with somewhat an emergent situation, that I wouldn’t be able to think fast enough or think on my feet, so to speak. I forced to stay up and what I realized quickly was I, I would have difficulty getting to sleep, on the nights that I was not in the hospital. It first started out, I just had difficulty getting to sleep. It took several hours. and then that created a lot of anxiety about, I’m not gonna be alert enough to do this job and that sort of thing. And then it just turned into, couldn’t get to sleep, couldn’t stay asleep. So that’s how it started. And, it was a decision I made and, it did affect me considerably, but. I am.

Martin: Yeah, so we were you just dealing with that as a side effect of your chosen career? You just recognized that because you are remaining awake for that whole shift, there’s gonna be some sleep disruption that comes with that and you just accepted that. Or was it a case that it was really causing you a struggle and you were really invested in trying to get this resolved?

Rebecca: It really caused a lot of struggle to the point that, I went to see my primary care doctor and I told her, I said, I can’t do this job with no sleep, I’m having a really difficult time sleeping when I’m not on call, and it’s affecting every part of my day and night and my life. So she gave me a prescription for Ambien. said, why don’t you try this see if it helps. So I said, okay. I can’t remember completely, but I think she probably gave me a disclaimer of, it’s not good to take it every night, but maybe you could take it a couple of nights a week. And I started out doing that. But what I found was, Ambien worked so well for me that as soon as I took it, I was asleep and I didn’t wake up for six to seven hours later. It was just like a miracle pill. I accepted that was, what was working for me and was allowing me to do my job. And I felt more comfortable about, having to stay up for 24 hours ’cause I knew that the next night all I had to do was take an Ambien and I go to sleep.

Rebecca: I never felt bad about it until decades later when, I was told that, okay, you can’t take this medication anymore because you’re too old and, it’s not good for your brain and whatnot. and then when I, started to find a solution to, okay, how can I sleep without the medication? A lot of times the information on the, internet and whatnot was saying, oh, you shouldn’t have taken that medication. It’s very dependent, you become dependent on it and not so much addicted, you have a strong dependency. You should have never done that.

Rebecca: Prior to me being told I couldn’t take the Ambien anymore, I developed, I guess I had sleep apnea for quite a long time. Didn’t know it. And the Ambien was masking that. So when I was in my early sixties, I know, I remember my husband, would say a few times, he’d say, I’m really worried about you. And I said, why? And he says, because you’re sitting straight up in bed at night gasping for air. And, I, thought, maybe I have anxiety and that’s what’s causing it, right? Make a long story short, I went to my doctor and I told them what was going on and they go, we need to do a sleep study. They did the sleep study and I never thought it was going to be positive. I just didn’t fit the profile. And sure enough, I have moderate sleep apnea, so now they’re saying that I have to, at that point now, I was in my early sixties. Now you have to wear a CPAP at night. And you can’t take Ambien. So I thought, oh great, this is a great thing. Initially when they, I got my CPAP machine, and this was like 15 years ago. machines were very noisy. It sounded like a jet plane taking, leaving the station. And so there was no way I could go to sleep with that kind of noise. So I struggled for probably about another month doing that and not getting any sleep. And I went back to the doctor and I said, I can’t do this. I can’t wear this CPAP machine having been dependent on medication just naturally go to sleep, it’s just not gonna happen. Said, we have a surgery we could do, it was a laser surgery and that tighten up the tissue in the back of the throat and then perhaps that would, alleviate you having to wear the machine. Okay? So I did all that. it worked for about five years and, I was, I didn’t have to wear CPAP for about five years, but lo and behold, after they resolved that issue, they put me back on Ambien. I found one problem and supposedly solved it, but now I’m still on Ambien. So that went on, till about another 10 years. Now I’m in my early seventies at that point, and I went to get my prescription for Ambien and the doctor says, I can’t give this to you anymore. That’s how I got into searching for, a solution and I did a couple of programs before I found you.

Martin: That’s quite a experience you’ve had there. Challenge after challenge. What stood out for me was, it’s great that you’ve got such a supportive husband there, to express that concern about the waking up with the gasping so that could be explored and diagnosed. I’m sure, obviously on reflection you had that struggle with the CPAP machine, then you had the surgery, but it was something that you then were able to get addressed, which is great.

Martin: Unfortunately you had that experience of then the sleep issues were still sticking around, when the Ambien wasn’t present, and you returned to it. And then your doctor was, then your doctor effectively cuts you off.

Martin: I’m curious to hear what happened next. ’cause I know that you took a couple of different courses. How did they help you? If they did help you? What was your experience like with those?

Rebecca: The first program I got, I found online it was through an app. And basically what they did was, you filled out all this information every morning about, what time did you get in bed, and how long did it take you to go to sleep, and how long were you asleep and did you wake up and if you were awake, how long were you awake?

Rebecca: And, all these questions. So I was very busy, in the morning, compiling all this data. And they did, assign me a coach. The coach was, I’m in California, coach was in Michigan. And most of our, information was via email. I did get to talk to her face-to-face once, and after six weeks of doing this and not really, getting much sleep. I was still having difficulty getting to sleep, then I was having difficulty staying asleep, so I would get maybe an hour a night. And after six weeks I, emailed her and I said, this isn’t working. And she emailed me back and she goes, yes, most of my clients are, are sleeping much better by this time. So then I felt that there was something wrong with me. I’m not doing it right if I did it better and I don’t know what better was. Then I found, you, I think, you had some YouTube videos and so I started listening to your YouTube videos and I thought, this sounds like a little bit different approach than what I had been doing. But I thought, and I just kept thinking about it. I just kept coming back to you and listening to your videos and feeling that I really, was connected to your process, but yet I didn’t push the button to sign up for your program. But then the next thing that came along was I found the psychologist that was doing CBT-I, and it was a very expensive program, but, I figured, okay, he’s a psychologist, he must know more about sleep than anybody else.

Rebecca: So I signed up and I did that for about, oh God, almost a year I did it. And that program also was even more restrictive and more data collecting than the first one. And so by the end of the year, I still wasn’t getting more than an hour’s sleep, and so I just thought, this isn’t working either. And I was very discouraged obviously very tired. and then I decided, you know what? I’m gonna try Martin’s program, see if there’s anything different. And I did, and I’m so grateful that I did.

Martin: just listening to you describe your, commitment to engaging in those two courses. The first one for six or so weeks and not really noticing any improvement, but then the second time about a year, I think that just reveals so many of your strengths, to be honest. You’ve got that determination, that commitment, that resilience, that never give up kind of attitude.

Martin: No doubt it was difficult and disheartening, but your strengths kept you committed to the process and you kept on going and giving it your best shot. And I think you also highlighted one of the challenges that can come from the pure CBT-I approach in the sleep tracking aspect of it, which is usually a core part of it.

Martin: There’s quite a lot of data collection, right? Just as you were describing, what time did you go to bed, when did you wake up, how many times did you wake up? And during the night, how long were you awake? And as you encapsulated, I was so busy every morning just logging all of this information and what does that do? It just puts more of our focus and our attention on sleep, which our experience usually tells us is out of our control anyway, but we’re giving it more of our focus and attention and all that time spent logging and reflecting on what happened the previous night is time that is now no longer available for us to do other things that might be really meaningful to us.

Martin: Things that really reflect who we are, who we want to be, and the life we want to live. I’m curious to know, as you are going through this experience of just implementing all these techniques, and exercises that you were given and you weren’t noticing improvements, what kind of effect was that having on you, just in terms of your daytime life, because obviously things were difficult at night. You’ve already said it was hard for you to get more than about an hour of sleep, but what about during the day? What kind of effect was this having on your days at that time?

Rebecca: Basically I didn’t do much during the day because I just felt like I didn’t have any energy. I felt very discouraged and, I didn’t have the motivation to go out and do anything. I didn’t feel that if I went and socialized with my friends or, did anything that required, to be present. With someone else that I wouldn’t have the energy to do it, and that I wouldn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation because all I could think about was the fact that I’m not sleeping. What’s wrong? Why isn’t this working? I’ve been, I think I’ve been doing everything that they’ve told me to do.

Rebecca: I think I’m a smart person, and like you said, I have perseverance. And I am determined, but it just wasn’t happening. So my days were sitting on the couch. I’d sit on the couch, I’d try to concentrate on reading something not associated with sleeping. Um, and my husband would go off in the day and do his life.

Rebecca: He’d play golf. He would, and not that I wanted him to sit with me and hold my hand, but, I just felt alone. I felt very lonely.

Martin: You just get pulled away from the life you want to live, right?

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah, so there wasn’t much to my day.

Martin: Why do you feel that when you were going through these original couple of courses, they weren’t having a positive effect?

Martin: Why do you feel like you weren’t making progress with them?

Rebecca: I feel that their programs were too focused on, the data collection and not really offering support to the client, not really. Acknowledging that this can be a difficult process. You can have some very difficult nights, you can have some very difficult days. And in addition to all that, you can have some very difficult thoughts that create very sad, difficult emotions, but they weren’t acknowledging any of that. And I got the feeling from them that, I should be better in six weeks. And that wasn’t happening. I just think they were too hyper-focused on the data collection and the sleep restriction and, all that. And it caused me to believe what helped sleep better was the sleep restriction. I thought, maybe, maybe I’m just not, I need to be restricted even more than but how could I do that? I’m not sleeping anyway, yeah, it was. It was not, I was not, I was not my best self during that time.

Martin: It felt a bit robotic, command line stuff. You must do this, you should do this. Without considering maybe more the more human side, of things, the more human side of your own humanity, really, that you are a living, breathing, human being with difficult thoughts and feelings. It, you’re not just a machine or just a robot that needs to run through all these lines of code, as prescribed in the sleep restriction and the sleep diaries, et cetera.

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. That was it.

Martin: So then you ended up working through my course. What struck you when you had a lot of experience by this time of working through courses, right?

Rebecca: I could probably teach it.

Martin: Yeah, there you go. So what struck you as different in terms of your approach? What were you doing differently when you started on my course compared to when you were working through these earlier CBT-I based courses?

Rebecca: Your program had a different approach. You still suggested a sleep window, but the sleep window was, more flexible. And the other programs, midnight to five, unless you were sleeping, your sleep efficiency was improving to 85%.

Rebecca: You couldn’t change that sleep window. But you were more flexible. You gave the power back to the person and helped me believe that I can, I know myself, I can, it’s okay for me to be a little bit different than, somebody else. It’s not a cookie cutter approach. In your program you would, say, if the sleep window that you have, you don’t feel it’s working for you, then why don’t you try changing it maybe a half hour on either end and see if that works better. So it was more flexible, I think, too. So that allowed me to relax more and not be so anxious about it, because I used to dread to bed at night one, because I don’t usually go to bed at midnight. I don’t usually get in bed to go to sleep at midnight. And so that, that just created a lot of dread. And then of course, I was afraid I wasn’t gonna go to sleep. So when you gave the more flexible sleep window, that kind of relaxed me a bit because I thought, oh, I do have some control here. Maybe it might work a little bit different. You also, I remember, you also offered your clients, email support so they could email you with questions, whenever they, were struggling or had a question or needed some more support. And so I remember emailing you, I don’t know how far in we were in the program, it had to be within the first six weeks.

Rebecca: And I said, because I believe that there had to be a secret that nobody’s telling us that actually sleep. And I thought it was the sleep restriction, the sleep window, but I emailed you and I said, does help improve sleep? And your answer, I was quite surprised, but you said, being willing to go live your life during the day and with whatever makes you happy and, and this is paraphrasing, fill you with joy.

Rebecca: Whatever activities you enjoy, go do those. And I thought, wow. And so I thought, okay. I, regardless how difficult the night was, regardless how difficult I feel, whatever, I’m gonna get up and do it. so I love to play golf and my belief was that I would not be able to play an 18 hole, set of golf with no sleep. I, tried it out. I went out and played golf with my girlfriends and I had a wonderful time. And so I thought, oh, I didn’t think about not sleeping for five hours, so this is great. And, just the comradery with friends and whatnot. So gradually didn’t happen overnight, but gradually I was much more relaxed by the time I went to bed and much less anxious about what my night was gonna be. I also accepted more If I can’t fall asleep easily, read or I’ll get up and read or i’ll, and you also gave some, tools that you could use in the night if you were awake and you just didn’t wanna get out of bed. That helped, as well, because I also, in the other programs, we, was told that if you’re not asleep in 30 minutes, you need to get outta bed and you need to go to another room and you need to do something else. And I thought, it’s cold. I don’t wanna get outta bed, I don’t wanna go to another room.

Rebecca: I wanna be sleeping like my husband, so I really resisted it. And that was a one thing in your program too, is there was enough flexibility relaxed that resistance. And when you’re not pushing up against something and you relax, then it opens up a space for things to change.

Martin: What I like to emphasize about the sleep window or sleep restriction is what the intent is because I think it becomes really easy for us to implement a sleep window with the earliest possible bedtime and a consistent out of bedtime in the morning with the goal of getting rid of wakefulness or making a certain amount or certain type of sleep happen.

Martin: And that, I think, is where we can get caught up in the quicksand a little bit, because we’re still trying to control sleep, understandably because we wanna fix it. But it’s that control trying to control. Being attached to making a certain amount or a certain type of sleep happen that can create a struggle that makes it so much more difficult.

Martin: And so you are definitely not the first person to reach out to me and ask me what the secret is. And also to think that something like sleep restriction is the secret. And that’s not to say it’s not helpful, but it comes down to what the intent is. I think where it’s most helpful is when we have a sleep schedule or a sleep window with the intent of this is something that’s gonna help me move away from chasing after sleep, from doing things like going to bed really early in an attempt to make sleep happen, or staying in bed really late in the morning in an attempt to make sleep happen. Giving ourselves an appropriate sleep windows, one of those things that can move us away from the chasing from the effort.

Martin: So the action is really the same, but if that, depending on our intent, that really can influence whether this is something that’s even ever gonna help or not. It’s that mindset shift. And like I said to you, really the secret to sleep is not trying to sleep. It’s to refocus your attention on living the kind of life you want to live, which no doubt is more difficult when sleep is a challenge.

Martin: But maybe we can dial things down. We can still do things, but maybe not as intensely. Things that don’t require quite so much energy, the more we take care of doing things that help us live the life we wanna live, the better able sleep is to just take care of itself, which is what it wants to do.

Martin: And when we do the stuff that matters to us, like you shared, you went for that 18 hole round of golf, we just see our life opening up again. Especially if we’ve, for so long we’ve been withdrawing. Our life opens up again for us. We notice what we’ve been missing out on. Things start to get better even before sleep changes.

Martin: And we learn so much from that as well. The, our mindset can shift from it’s impossible for me to do anything or I shouldn’t do anything because I didn’t get enough sleep to, oh, maybe it wasn’t a fantastic experience, but maybe there were some good moments. Maybe there were just some okay moments.

Martin: Hey, if nothing else, we got out of the house, we breathed some fresh air. There’s always that learning opportunity there. And the other thing I just wanted to emphasize that I love that you were talking about is flexibility. Not having those hard and fast rules, these really rigid rules that must be followed no matter what, because sleep doesn’t really need rules.

Martin: Sleep doesn’t care about any rules we might implement. And when we implement a rule, what are we doing? Again, we’re trying to control what our experience probably tells us can’t be controlled. So sometimes I have clients and they’re like, just give me this specific answer. Should I be getting out of bed at this point?

Martin: Should I be doing this? Should I be doing that? And the real answer is, it really doesn’t matter too much. Sleep doesn’t really care. It’s gonna happen. It wants to happen. We just need to remove ourselves from the process. It really is just about. The intent behind our actions. Even if we’re at the point where we’re not sure, why we’re doing what we’re doing, we could still check in and just ask ourselves, okay, why am I doing this X?

Martin: Why am I getting out of bed at three o’clock in the morning? What’s my goal here? How will I know if this is working? And if you hear the answer being, oh, I’ll fall back to sleep. I’ll feel sleepy. I won’t feel anxious. If it’s to do with any of this stuff that happens inside us, then may that’s a signal or a little insight about the workability of that action.

Martin: Is this an action that is actually gonna be prove effective if the goal behind it is to control something that our experience tells us can’t be controlled.

Rebecca: And I loved being outside anyway. I used to be a runner and then I was a major hiker and I love nature, but even the things that, I. Found enjoyment from when I was really struggling before I found your course. I wasn’t allowing myself to do any of that because I think in the back of my mind I felt that if I wasn’t succeeding at this, then I didn’t deserve to be out there to do that.

Martin: We can just be so hard on ourselves when things are difficult.

Rebecca: Yeah, for sure.

Martin: It’s not just about sleep. It’s about all the thoughts that can come with it all the feelings that can come with it too. How did your approach change to dealing with these thoughts and feelings, like the anxiety, the way your brain just wants to focus on thinking about sleep all the time during the day, that feeling of fatigue and exhaustion?

Rebecca: I also have a history of chronic pain. I have a back issue, lumbar stenosis, I did, I’ve developed this chronic pain that I’ve had for 14 years, and I did the same, I had the same approach in the beginning when I realized I couldn’t get rid of my pain, which was to withdraw. And that was not helpful. As I was doing your program, I came across this app, it’s called Curable, and it was focused on helping people. Reduce their painful experiences, reduce, the, that chronic of it. And one of the, approaches that they highly suggested, was meditation. And I think you may have mentioned meditation as well. but, and they also, like yourself, they had a little softer approach to meditation because my, indoctrination with meditation is you need to sit in a dark, quiet room and close your eyes and don’t think of your thoughts or don’t focus on your thoughts. And I had tried meditation a gazillion times throughout my adult life and it just never worked. But they suggested that you find a guided meditation. And so I went online and, to YouTube, of course, and I found a ton of guided meditations on every subject you could possibly want. I did pick one on chronic pain as opposed to sleep, because the ones I found on sleep was you need, you were supposed to listen to those while you wanted to go to sleep, right? And, but anyway, I found this one meditation that, that I really resonated with, and it was only 20 minutes and it, it was a woman and, she had a beautiful voice and amazing music in the background. And it was just the thing that helped me. And I did it every day, every single day. I looked forward to it. It helped me relax my body, relax my mind. And in doing that. It relaxed, the thoughts, that monkey mind thing that’s constantly chattering in your head that, you better get some sleep. I, I did that and I do it faithfully. I’ve been doing it every day for a year and a half. It’s I won’t finish my day until I’ve done this.

Rebecca: And then the other thing they recommended, was journaling. And, and I’ve done, also done journaling on and off throughout my life, but never with, in a certain, I, it’s not intention, but focus or whatnot. So they gave you some specific things to journal about. And lo and behold, I found too was just a miracle because it’s almost like you have this trash can getting fuller and fuller of all these difficult thoughts and, beliefs that are not, they’re erroneous, they’re not true, and you’re able to dump this trash can out on the paper and now you have an empty vessel to which to choose maybe different thoughts. So yeah, so those two were very helpful to me, with the difficult thoughts and feelings. And over time, and again, I’m the kind of person that wants an instant result, but I’ve learned that, everything takes time, and so I have learned to accept more that. because today may have been difficult.

Rebecca: Doesn’t mean tomorrow is gonna be difficult.

Martin: New skills take time to develop, right? You don’t become a midwife overnight. It’s a skill like anything else, and there’s lots of different components to it. And we just have to focus on the practice, right? It’s just the repeated practice over and over when it feels easy and it feels like we’re making progress.

Martin: But most importantly, when it feels hard and when it feels we’re not making progress. If this is something that feels important to us, then it’s just getting the reps in, right? Just repeating it over and over, getting the practice in. That’s the only way we gain skill. And skill doesn’t work on a timeline.

Martin: It happens, it develops over time. We can’t control that. We can only control the action of the practice.

Rebecca: I feel like I’ve been finding all these golden nuggets, like when I found your course and then, when I found the curable app and I started the mind body stuff and, and there’s, there was so much to it that I learned so much about myself in terms of my personality traits. they talked about personality traits and how they, can set you up for. things like sleep disturbances and chronic pain and whatnot. and I read them over, when I first saw them and I thought, oh, that can’t be me. Then I, kept coming back to ’em and I thought, oh no, that is me. But it was a relief I felt, once again, throughout this whole process, it’s easy to feel that there’s something wrong with you. That there’s something wrong with your brain, it’s broken, there’s a piece loose, and if they just go in there and tighten that up, things would be better. but yeah. Yeah, it’s all about acceptance belief that things are gonna get better. And they did. And they do.

Martin: When you first mentioned meditation, you said something along the lines of, I’d tried this in the past and it didn’t work. I think we’re brought back round to that intent again. Because a lot of us, when we’re struggling and we hear about meditation, we might try it with the goal of getting rid of certain thoughts and feelings, feeling better.

Martin: And those things might happen, but when they’re the intent, that’s when it becomes a bit problematic, right? Because again, we’re trying to control something that probably is beyond our direct and permanent control, but if we practice with an intent that’s more aligned to the purpose. So if we practice because we want to gain some skill in opening up to the full range of thoughts and feelings that we experience, the easy ones, the good ones, the more difficult ones, the challenging ones, the distracting ones.

Martin: We just open up to all of them and we build skill in making space for them, acknowledging their presence, not trying to push them away. So we’re moving away from that completely understandable agenda of trying to fight or avoid because a lot of them don’t feel good. And we’re moving toward just opening up, acknowledging, being present, allowing them to just come and go as they choose.

Martin: That can be really helpful. And on a similar note, journaling as well, that can be something that also helps us build practice in opening up to what we are thinking and what we are feeling without judgment. Just acknowledging what’s there is there. And I think the better we become at that, we get to a place where we do learn more about ourselves.

Martin: We realize that our brain isn’t against us. Maybe our brain is actually reminding us of what’s important to us. We see evidence that it is working for us, it’s doing its job of looking out for us. And we can notice that there’s stuff to learn. There are insights there. We can learn a lot about ourselves.

Martin: We can be reminded of the stuff that matters to us. And all of this just comes from. That practice, which is not easy, especially at first of opening up to everything that’s showing up inside of us. Gaining skill in being more present when it shows up. Gaining skill in being able to refocus our attention on where we are, what we’re doing, what we want to be doing, even when this stuff is present.

Martin: Because the alternative to that, which is probably the default response, this is how we most of us are hardwired, is to just build a big brick wall, try and fight and avoid all of that stuff. And what does that do according to our own experience? I think most of us can reflect if we’ve been following that path for a long enough period of time, that tends to risk making those thoughts and feelings even more powerful, more influential the more we try and close off from them.

Rebecca: what was interesting with the meditation tape, was that in the beginning, probably the first month, I would turn it on and I would go in my bedroom and lie on the bed. I’d close all the drapes, everything is dark and quiet. And I’d turn it on and I would hear her voice. And then the next thing I know, the tape is over and I’d fallen asleep. And then, instead of saying, oh my God, I fell asleep. That’s nice. I got a 20 minute nap. I go, no, I wanted to hear what she said. So eventually I didn’t fall asleep anymore, but I just thought it was funny that here I had struggled for so long, and then I find this tape, then I really wanna hear what she’s saying and I go to sleep.

Martin: we’re coming back to that intention, right? So the intention had changed. The intention was completely unrelated to sleep when you were listening, and then what happened? Sleep happened.

Rebecca: Yeah. And I have to say, I do have a much stronger respect for my sleep. Meaning that, last night I was having difficult time going to sleep because I was thinking about this podcast today and, I got in bed, I turned off my light, I put on my CPAP machine. I, I was ready, right?

Rebecca: And nothing was happening. so instead of feeling frustrated and angry and like, why not? And I slept last night, why can’t I sleep? I said, oh, you’re not ready. So I took off my CPAP machine. I turned back the light. I opened up my book and I read for an hour, and then it was ready. I. So I do have a much better approach if I’m starting to have difficulty with sleep.

Martin: How has that approach that you just shared differ from when you were still tangled up in the struggle? So if we were to rewind and see you in the midst of the struggle, you get into bed, you’ve got the CPAP machine on lights off, sleep isn’t happening, what would you have been doing in the past that was different?

Rebecca: Oh, I’d be swearing at the machine, I’d be swearing at everything. And this isn’t working. I was very, I, I hate to say this, but I was just very angry. I was angry at life. I was angry at my brain. I was angry that, things weren’t working and I was angry that my husband was beside me, sound asleep. So my approach is very different. I’m not angry anymore because anger doesn’t help. Uh, and I don’t wanna be angry. I do wanna understand and I do wanna have a respect for a part of my body that I have absolutely no control of. And, I do know that now.

Martin: Yeah, so in the past there was a battle going on at night if sleep wasn’t happening compared to now where you’re a little bit more accepting of wakefulness when it’s present, and you’re able to choose how to respond, maybe you respond more flexibly, because you know you’ve got options.

Martin: And I think that’s the difference, right? Is when we’re really tangled up in the struggle, it feels like we haven’t got any option other than to just try harder. Even though our experience might tell us that trying isn’t getting us closer, when we don’t know what else to do, we’re just gonna keep trying harder and harder because everything else in life responds well to more effort, right?

Martin: Sleep is one of those things that the more we try to make that happen, the more we can end up struggling with it.

Rebecca: Yeah, we have a saying on the golf course that, you go to hit a shot and you give it everything you’ve got. You’re gonna swing harder than you’ve ever swung, it doesn’t work because you tried to kill it. Had you been more relaxed with your swing, you would have gotten a lot better result. But, sometimes we forget that and we still try to kill it.

Martin: That’s a great analogy. And I like what you tacked on at the end is we can still forget, or we can still go off track every now and then, and that’s just human nature, right? I think it’s important to just be kind to ourselves or just have that awareness when we notice that happening.

Martin: And to just refocus on what we want to be doing. So if we notice we’re putting a bit too much effort in that golf swing, instead of getting angry and throwing the golf club, we just have that awareness of what we’re doing and then we can just change, and go back to doing what we want to be doing.

Martin: So when you were going through my course, I’m just keen to hear a little bit more about action. The actions that you took or the practices that you practiced, that you developed, the skills that you developed. You talked about adopting more flexibility in terms of when you’re going to bed, when you’re getting outta bed, more flexibility in how you respond to being awake at night.

Martin: So you, you didn’t force yourself to get outta bed ’cause you’ve been awake for half an hour or so. What did you do instead?

Rebecca: Now what I do if I wake up at night is, I acknowledge that I’m awake. I said, oh, I’m awake, I was asleep. then I say to myself, why don’t I just give it a minute or two and see if I go back to sleep? 99% of the time I do. And I think the difference for me is that again, I’m not resisting it.

Rebecca: I’m not fighting it. I’m just accepting that is it. This is where I’m at. So that’s been really helpful. And sometimes I do, very rarely now, but sometimes if I wake up, then I’ll say, maybe I should get up and go read. So I will, I’ll get up and go in another room and I’ll read for an hour I’ll come back and I’ll go to bed. But the difference is it doesn’t matter to me how many hours sleep I have. Because I know that even on an hour I can get up and I can do my day. So I don’t focus on how many hours sleep I get each night.

Martin: I think that’s one of the big mindset shifts, isn’t it? When we are just less attached to getting a certain amount or a certain type of sleep. ’cause when we’re really engaged in the struggle, we can’t even imagine the giving ourselves permission to accept just getting, for example, one hour of sleep or two, just getting no sleep whatsoever.

Martin: Because we often equate acceptance with kind of giving up, I think. But really it’s not about that. Acceptance is just about accepting what we cannot control and understanding, having an awareness of what we can control. And so when we’re awake, when we want to be asleep, acceptance is about accepting that at that moment we are awake and it’s about accepting that we cannot make sleep happen through effort.

Martin: And so when we understand that, when we become more accepting of that, we’re able to respond in different ways, we’re able to respond more flexibility, we have more options. Things open up, right? We don’t have to try so hard, we don’t have to reach for that sword. We don’t have to go to war in the middle of the night.

Martin: We have other ways of responding. And I think that’s really what it’s about. It’s about responding in workable ways that aren’t trying to control what our own experience tells us, cannot be controlled. So if we wanna break out of that loop of more trying, more struggle, more trying, more struggle, there is that alternative way forward.

Martin: And it’s struggling less, not trying to control what we can’t control, being a bit more accepting of the difficult stuff, acknowledging that it is difficult. We’re not trying to sugarcoat it, but we’re just acknowledging that this is out of our control. So what can we do instead? And I think that’s what opens up the possibilities of moving forward and breaking out of that cycle.

Rebecca: I think the, whoever the people were that originally, just. Stated that everyone should be getting six to eight hours of sleep at night. And if you aren’t, then you could get terribly ill. And that’s when your body repairs itself and does all this magical stuff. And if you don’t get those six to eight hours of sleep, then you know, terrible things are gonna happen to you. And, we believe them because they’re from, higher ups with lots of degrees and whatnot. But I found that, I don’t need six to eight hours of sleep, and I’m perfectly okay as far as I know I’m healthy. And all that sleep hygiene stuff, my god, no caffeine afternoon, no alcohol, no blue light at least two to three hours before you go to bed. No watching TV in your bedroom. It was just endless. That didn’t work. I did it all. It’s like I’m gonna be a good soldier. And my husband and I used to love to watch TV in the bedroom at night and we didn’t watch, battles and, scary stuff. We’d watch comedy. but I told him when I went through those first two, CBT-I courses, I can’t do that anymore. If we’re gonna go in the bedroom, we have to read before we go to sleep. And we haven’t switched over yet. But yeah, a lot of, rules. And that was another thing about your course, I didn’t sense that you had hard and fast rules.

Martin: They can really restrict what we want to be doing with our lives. So if, for example, we like to watch movies in bed at night and then that’s taken away from us, our sleep issues still remain more than likely because that doesn’t really cause insomnia watching TV in bed.

Martin: Our sleep issues remain, but now things have got more difficult because we’ve now lost that enjoyable or meaningful activity of watching TV in bed. So that’s gone. So the scales are tipping further and further against us and where we want to be, while the sleep issues remain.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Martin: I remember when you finished the course after six weeks, you mentioned that, your mindset had really shifted.

Martin: Like life had really opened up for you again, which felt great, but sleep itself hadn’t really changed.

Rebecca: Not all that much. And that was interesting because like you said, that wasn’t what I was focused on anymore. And it was like, how did that happen? How did that happen? Yeah, it was surprising to me.

Martin: For those who haven’t been through my course, I like to keep in touch with clients when they finish. And I’ll get in touch a month, three months, six months, a year. So the first big change was the mindset shift and you were re-engaging in life, things were opening up more. Sleep was about the same, but your focus was on the life you wanted to live, that was when you started to see some changes in your sleep.

Rebecca: In the beginning it was interesting because I wouldn’t go to bed with the expectation that I was going to sleep. I went to bed because, it was time to go to bed. And that’s what you do at night usually. And then I started to get some sleep under my belt, and I was so surprised when I would wake up because I would say I don’t remember falling asleep. So but it happened without me, it was like nothing. I did, and then I started to have more nights like that, at first when, I fell into a trap and, is that when I first had my really good night’s sleep where went to sleep right away, slept most of the night, maybe woke up briefly, but went back to sleep. I thought, I’m cured, I’m done. I don’t ever have to worry about this again. And then, I was reminded, soon after that, no, we still have some, there’s, we’re still on this journey, but it was okay. It wasn’t the monumental like, oh my God thing anymore.

Martin: Just like we all have difficult days from time to time. We all have difficult nights from time to time. What matters is just how we respond to them. ’cause our response either pulls us into a struggle again, or our response helps keep us moving forward, in the direction we want to be heading.

Martin: And I just wanted to emphasize that because progress varies for everyone, but I think that your experience is quite common in that it’s the mindset shift that happens, the refocusing on really daytime actions, like doing stuff that matters to you, responding to the appearance of difficult thoughts and feelings, being awake at night in a different way.

Martin: That changes first and then sleep kinda lags behind. But then that starts to take care of itself. The more our focus is on this different way forward, on this new way forward. And if it’s okay with you, you can say no and I can just edit this out. If it’s okay with you, I’d love to read just like a sentence or so from each of the follow-up surveys that I sent you, over the past year, just to see how that changed.

Martin: Would that be okay?

Rebecca: Oh sure. Yeah, no problem.

Martin: So at the end of the six weeks, you’d finished up the course. You said that sleep hasn’t improved, but I have a new lease on life. I’m no longer worrying about how lack of sleep is gonna keep me from living the life I love.

Martin: And I’ve learned that even with an hour or so of sleep, I can still go out, play 18 holes of golf, travel on vacation, socialize with friends. I learned that I have no control over sleep, but I’ve complete control over my behavior and my actions. And then a month later, again, you checked in, you said My sleep has improved, but it’s not consistent.

Martin: I’ll have three or more nights in a row of good sleep, and then three months after the course finished you said, I’d love to have a longer duration of sleep each night, but my sleep is so much better than it was. I’ll still wake up during the night, to use the restroom or just waking up for no apparent reason, but I can go back to sleep pretty easily.

Martin: If it never gets better than this, it’s okay because I have enough energy to live my life fully, and that’s all that really matters to me. And then six months I continue to live my best life every day. One year after the course you said I sleep the majority of nights without problems and awake refreshed.

Martin: And I think that’s, a great reflection that just encapsulates the journey that you went on.

Rebecca: Yeah, is. I, I didn’t, I didn’t save that data, so I, and I think that sounds, I think that sounds wonderful because it’s true. Yeah. I think, in the beginning I was very, beginning with the other two courses. I was very focused on somebody telling me how long this was gonna take. Very focused, and nobody would answer me. And I would notice when I was, listening to your, things on YouTube with your other clients. Nobody ever really mentioned how long it took, and I thought, why isn’t anybody talking about this? And I, and and I realize now that it’s different for everybody. And you know what? Some people may just take six weeks and go on their way and life’s great. And some of us, like me, might take a year. But I’m so grateful I didn’t give into that year and not live my life this year. I’m so grateful because what I also know is time passes whether you’re engaging in life or you’re not. And as we get older, and I am at that last third of my life, I’m starting to feel like, time’s running out. I, so I don’t wanna miss a day. So I’m very grateful for that.

Martin: I think that’s an important reminder. Rebecca, I really appreciate the time you’ve taking out your day to come on. I do have one last question for you, which I ask every guest, so I’d just like to ask you as well. And it’s this one, if someone is listening to this, is really struggling with chronic insomnia and they feel like they’ve tried everything. They’re beyond help. They’ll never be able to stop struggling with sleep. What would you say to them?

Rebecca: First of all, I would say I so know how you feel. I’ve been there and, it’s, I just know the struggle. I know it, but I also know that things can change. And, I really encourage you to, take the all the time you need to redirect your energy and, and see if there’s areas that maybe you can open up to the possibility of sleep without working so hard at it. I had written something down, and one of the things that I said to myself was that I had to tell myself, no matter how hard it is, no matter how long or how hard it gets, and no matter how long it takes, I’m going to make it and I’m going to be okay. So I really encourage anyone who’s struggling to f ind your way. You’ll find your way to what works for you. But it can happen and it will happen for all of us as long as we keep going.

Martin: Thank you so much again, Rebecca, for coming onto the podcast and sharing your experience, your journey, and your transformation. Thanks.

Martin: Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to get your life back from insomnia, I would love to help. You can learn more about the sleep coaching programs I offer at Insomnia Coach — and, if you have any questions, you can email me.

Martin: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Insomnia Coach Podcast. I’m Martin Reed, and as always, I’d like to leave you with this important reminder — you are not alone and you can sleep.

Mentioned in this episode:

Curable
Guided meditation for pain (YouTube)

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