When Esther tried moving away from a medication she was taking for generalized anxiety disorder, she found herself struggling with sleep. She would often wake with a jolt and experience panic and anxiety. Even when new medications helped with other issues, sleep continued to be a challenge and created a lot of ongoing anxiety.

Esther did a lot to try to get her sleep back on track. She tried going to bed earlier. She tried CBD oil. She tried supplements. She tried to tire herself out through exercise. None of those things got her closer to where she wanted to be. Esther was determined to get to the root of the problem, which seemed to be all the difficult thoughts and feelings associated with insomnia.

On her way to work one day, Esther came across the Insomnia Coach podcast and listening to the stories of people who had overcome their struggle with insomnia motivated her to start working with me.

In this episode, Esther reflects on the changes she made that proved to be most helpful for her. They included going to bed later at night, doing something more pleasant whenever she found herself struggling during the night, continuing to do things that mattered to her even after difficult nights, and acknowledging her thoughts and feelings and refocusing on the present moment (rather than focusing on trying to fight or avoid difficult thoughts and feelings).

Esther also shares some of the key educational insights that helped her reduce the amount of pressure she was putting on herself to make sleep happen. Her superpowers of self-awareness and self-reflection also revealed that the difficult thoughts and feelings she had been trying so hard to fight or avoid often came with the same physical sensations associated with more pleasant thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

As she committed to a new approach, Esther realized she had new options available to her when it came to responding to insomnia. Options that wouldn’t create more struggle, consume more energy, put more focus on sleep, and keep her trapped in the vicious cycle of more trying and more difficulty.

Esther became less fearful about the possibility of insomnia showing up. She became more comfortable in its presence.

Insomnia lost the power and influence it once had over her.

Click here for a full transcript of this episode.

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

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

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

Esther: Sure, thank you so much for having me.

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

Esther: Okay, so the main trigger for my insomnia is anxiety, as is often the case. I have a generalized anxiety disorder, and that’s something where I’m not anxious about anything in particular, it’s just, more like an overreaction to The things that bother me and the things that would trigger anxiety.

Esther: So for example, if I’m worried about my performance at a job, I would obsess about it endlessly. I would constantly be thinking about it and I would have the physical symptoms as well. So like the upset stomach and the trouble sleeping and all kinds of unpleasant symptoms. I would have tremors sometimes.

Esther: So what happened was I’ve been on SSRIs for a long time, for pretty much half my life, in order to manage those symptoms. And there have been a few times in my life when I’ve tried to give them up. I’ve tried to see if I can cut back and if I can, function without them. And what ended up happening was I would be fine for a while, and then I would have the worst physical symptoms. Physical and mental because I like the medication it also helps control obsessive thoughts so I would have the obsessive thoughts in addition to the really unpleasant physical symptoms of anxiety and the worst one of all was the insomnia because I wasn’t able to take a break from the way, I was feeling like I was I would fall asleep because I was exhausted and then I would wake up and Shortly after and I would wake up in a panic not the way you normally wake up in the morning But be like this sudden jolt of awakening and then it would be this panic like oh my god What do I do now?

Esther: I’m awake. Like I feel terrible like all the worries keep flooding back. Then I had to get back on the medication and the latest time I’ve had, like my last attempt to get off the medication I’ve had, it’s been coming back. I’d be fine for a couple of weeks and then I would relapse again and the sleep problems would show up again and they would cause me a lot of distress.

Esther: And so I, and I was able to go on another medication, an additional medication to help with that. So it stabilized over time, but I would still experience this acute insomnia from time to time. And that would give me a lot of anxiety. So I would stop worrying about what I was currently worried about.

Esther: And the insomnia became the primary focus.

Martin: Sleep wasn’t too much of an issue for you up until this moment when you decided there’s this medication that I want to move away from. And then as you started to try and move away from the medication, then sleep started to become more of an issue.

Esther: Yes, that’s right.

Martin: Was there such a thing as an average kind of night that you could describe to us?

Esther: There wasn’t really an average kind of night it was it depended on the night So there were some times when I was really tired And I would go to sleep or like I wasn’t even really sleepy But I would think like I haven’t been sleeping so let me go to bed at 10 And let me see if I can catch up on some sleep And then like sometimes I would have trouble falling asleep and it would take me a while and then I would panic And then sometimes I fall asleep fine, and then I wake up Three hours or four hours later, and I would feel really anxious.

Esther: And usually what ended up happening was I would I would take like one of my as needed medications because being awake at that time just felt so terrible that I couldn’t bear it. I was like, I wanted to just take something that’ll knock me out. And so that’ll be able to sleep until the morning.

Martin: You had this goal in mind, which was to move away from medication. But every time you tried to do that, it was like sleep or sleep was working against you. You’d experience really difficult nights and then that will pull you back onto the medication.

Esther: It wasn’t just the sleep, it was also the the anxiety and the other unpleasant physical symptoms during the day ultimately I accepted that this because I have this anxiety disorder, this is just something that I’m gonna have to live with. So I gave up on the idea of getting off the meds.

Esther: I said, just like people with diabetes or with asthma or other chronic conditions need medication, I need this. This is talking about the ones I take every day. But then the as needed meds, those are the ones that I wanted to, try to move away from both, both the meds and also the the fear that I had, the phobia.

Esther: I wanted to get rid of the phobia because I knew that no matter how I was feeling, no matter whether I had this anxiety disorder or I didn’t, I would still have difficult nights from time to time, like everybody else does. That’s ultimately what I wanted to deal with.

Martin: What kind of things had you tried up to this point to try and improve the situation to improve your sleep, maybe to deal with the anxiety or any other difficult thoughts and feelings that were showing up? What things did you try before we started to work together?

Esther: Besides the as needed medications, I had, I read online about different things that you can do, so I’ve tried drinking chamomile tea to help with, to help calm me down. I tried CBD oil, which, that’s very hit or miss because that’s the kind of thing that, You can buy over the counter, but it’s not regulated by the FDA, so you don’t know what dosage you need and how it interacts with other medications, so it’s guesswork. But, I tried that, I tried GABA supplements, which is another supplements for a neurotransmitter called GABA in the brain. So yeah, I’ve been reading a lot about all kinds of ways that I can help myself and then one time I was, when I was still living with my parents during one of these bouts, they told me walk for a long time, just like I, I worked like a couple of miles away from where they lived.

Esther: So they said, walk home from work so that you’ll tire yourself out physically and then you’ll sleep better. So I tried that and. It worked for one night, but I wasn’t sure if that was just if that was just a coincidence, if that was just like me starting to feel better because I was back on the meds or if I was If like that truly did help relax me.

Esther: It might have been a little bit of both. And then what else? I also I tried going to bed early, which I knew from the insomnia course, was a really bad idea. Because when I couldn’t sleep, then I would panic. And of course, that would make falling asleep more difficult. And then also I was in therapy, so I tried discussing it with therapists, but they never really gave me any concrete strategies for how to deal with it. Like I remember I once spoke to the psych nurse practitioner and I asked her like, is there a way that I can get rid of this phobia? And she said, maybe you never will. Maybe it’s just going to be something you live with, like how some people are afraid of flying, for example. So I was like, okay, great.

Esther: Now what do I do? So yeah, it was really frustrating to try all these things and not have any permanent long term solutions.

Martin: Yeah, it can be so frustrating, right? And I think another way that all those attempts to fix the problem when they prove to be ineffective, another kind of side effect that can have is we can then get really worried that there’s something kind of unique or unusual that’s wrong with us because all this, all these things we’re trying aren’t proving to be effective. Often the more effort we put into trying to push certain thoughts and feelings away, or the more effort we put into trying to generate sleep, the more we end up struggling. And that’s how it’s so easy for us to end up just getting stuck, right? We just feel like we’re completely out of ideas and that maybe we’re somehow broken or our sleep system is broken.

Martin: But the truth is we’re never broken. I’m yet to meet someone whose sleep is broken. It’s just that we can so easily get stuck. So I, it’s, that’s why I like to hear from people to describe all the things they tried, because I think it’s something that everyone can identify with.

Martin: So around about this time you found Insomnia Coach, what was it that made you think, Okay, I think this is a direction or an approach I want to try, because you’ve already tried so much stuff, right?

Esther: What happened was I was in the middle of one of these bouts of insomnia and then, like usually I would drive to work and I would listen to a podcast. So I would, I was thinking like, let’s see if I can find something on insomnia that can help me.

Esther: So that led me to your podcast. And then I started listening to the episodes of the, where everybody was describing their struggles and how, how hard it was for them to overcome it. And then in time, like once they enrolled in your course, even the most stubborn cases of insomnia, even like the people who slept for two hours a night, like there was even hope for them, people who have suffered for like years or decades and, they were still able to overcome it.

Esther: So I was thinking. Like maybe I should try it too. Maybe at least it’ll get rid of the phobia. Like the trauma that I’ve had from, trying to get off the meds and having this really bad anxiety and insomnia. I thought that was my primary focus. I wanted, I thought this current bout of insomnia, it’ll normalize itself in time.

Esther: But what I really want is to to fix the root of it. I really wanna work on on my thoughts about insomnia in general. Because I knew that at some point it was still gonna show up.

Martin: When we started to work together, what kind of changes did you make? Like how did your approach to insomnia or the anxiety that would show up when you’re awake at night, how did your approach start to change? What kind of ideas or insights did you pick up that now you’re able to look back on and think, yeah, I found them really helpful?

Esther: In like almost every article on insomnia, it says if you’re lying in bed for 15 minutes and Lying in bed. If you’re feeling frustrated get up and do something and then go back to bed If you’re sleepy, but I was always That was like the thing.

Esther: I always fought the hardest against I always felt like Okay, if I get out of bed, then i’m gonna get even less sleep. So Like I don’t want to have to Be more awake. I felt that if I lay in bed, at least there’s a chance that i’ll fall asleep again But if I get up then I have to really face the fact that i’m awake You know, and I really, I was really resistant to that part for a long time. But I was willing to give it a try. So one time I just, I tried it and I was thinking, it’s really not that bad to, I’d rather be awake downstairs watching TV than be lying in bed and tossing and turning and like thinking about how horrible this is. At least I have something to distract me from my thoughts. I tried watching TV or I tried I don’t know, going on the computer even though they say that you shouldn’t. You should avoid blue light, but I was like, whatever, let me just it’s still better than tossing and turning.

Martin: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the kind of key phrase that you mentioned there in terms of the option of getting out of bed is, If being awake just doesn’t feel good, if you find yourself getting pulled into that struggle, with sleep, you’re like tossing and turning, trying to make sleep happen, going to war with wakefulness and your mind, then there’s always the option to get out of bed or to do anything else.

Martin: Even if you’d rather not get out of bed, maybe just do something else in bed, because the goal isn’t to make sleep happen at this point. It’s just to respond to wakefulness with a little bit less of a struggle, right? So we don’t have to jump out of bed or respond in any way just because we’re awake, but if we start to get pulled into a struggle, if it starts to feel really difficult, we’ve always got the option of doing something else.

Martin: So it sounds as though maybe that was introduced maybe a little bit of flexibility or felt a little bit kinder compared to what you might have read before that was like, Oh, if you’ve been awake for 15 minutes or 20 minutes, you must get out of bed for 15 or 20 minutes and you cannot watch TV. You can only do these things and then you must return to bed. A lot more rigid.

Esther: Yeah, definitely. And to this day, I still use that approach. I still, every time I can’t sleep, I use that as a barometer. I ask myself does lying in bed feel good right now? Am I relaxed? And if even if I’m not too sleepy, but I’m relaxed, then I’m like, okay, this feels good. Let me.

Esther: Let me lie down here. And I don’t even always get out of bed. Sometimes I stay in bed and I usually listen to a podcast or an audio book or something. And that kind of helps distract me because I’m not really monitoring for sleep at that time. I’m just focusing on whatever I’m listening to. And then in time I sometimes feel myself getting sleepy and I’m like, okay, it’s time to turn this off and go to sleep.

Martin: And so how was that different to your approach before we worked together?

Esther: But before that I would start to freak out. And I would think, oh my god, here we go again this is terrible tomorrow’s gonna feel, I’m gonna feel like crap all day, and I’m gonna be really sleepy, and I’m not gonna enjoy anything I was setting myself up that tomorrow’s gonna be really difficult, in addition to, to the night being difficult.

Esther: I had this vision of the next day. Me feeling really horrible and not being engaged with anything not wanting to do anything So and I would and then when I start to panic I would start to engage in what you call mental gymnastics With okay, should I take this medication or should I try to tough it out?

Esther: If I take the medication it might help me get to sleep, but then maybe tomorrow night I’m not gonna be as sleepy. So like I was thinking, Oh, and I have four hours left before I need to wake up. So should I get a few more hours of sleep or should I just like tough it out and lie here and see if I can relax.

Esther: But I also don’t want to take the medication because I don’t want to potentially get addicted to it . So there was like also that, that other thought in my mind. So it was constantly should I or shouldn’t I? And that was also, making me more alert.

Martin: Yeah, so when your mind was generating all these different thoughts and stories and scenarios and time traveling to the future and the past, just doing all those things that human minds like to do, how did you used to respond to that?

Esther: I would respond with more panic, and then like, when it came with physical symptoms, then that would also lead to panic. Then it would be like, oh great, now I’m really not gonna sleep if I’m shaking or if my stomach’s upset. So that would feed into it, and it would be like this endless loop of panic and anxiety.

Martin: When you had this new approach or this new option available to you, which was to just do something more appealing when this wakefulness started to feel really difficult, how do you feel that helped?

Esther: You control your behavior more than the thoughts. You acknowledge the way you feel, You say oh, my heart is pounding, or I’m feeling sweaty, or like I’m I’m trembling, like you acknowledge your symptoms, whether they’re physical or whether you’re thinking, I’m worried about how I’m going to sleep . So then you you make some sort of movement, kinda like stretches or whatever, like kinda to remind yourself that your body, like, to put yourself back into the present. And then you don’t force yourself to stop thinking about whatever it is that bothers you or about how you’re feeling, you just draw your attention back to the present. Which is something that none of the therapists or psychiatrists I’ve ever worked with, nobody ever discussed that with me.

Esther: Nobody ever taught me this concrete approach to managing anxiety. They would talk about progressive muscle relaxation. They would say oh, try meditating. And meditating, that’s one of those things that never really worked for me because I just, when I’m told to clear my mind and imagine this or imagine that, then, I couldn’t really do that.

Esther: It felt like I was forcing myself to think about something, and thoughts are something that’s very difficult to control.

Martin: It’s about shifting away from trying to control what’s going on under our skin, so anything that’s generated inside of us, like sleep, thoughts, feelings, moving away from trying to control them and instead moving the focus of our control onto our actions, which is something that we always have control over.

Martin: Even when really difficult thoughts and feelings are present, we can still move our arm or blink our eyes or move our mouths, for example. And where I think that acknowledgement is so helpful is the mind immediately knows that we’re listening to it. As soon as we acknowledge Whatever it’s doing, whether it’s time traveling into the future and coming up with stories, telling us we’ve only got a certain amount of time left to fall asleep, whatever it’s telling us, By acknowledging it, it knows that we’re listening.

Martin: And straight away, the mind can figure out, can, knows that maybe it doesn’t have to keep yelling this at us over and over again because we are listening. Whereas when our natural impulse, which I think most of us, if not all of us, are hardwired to respond to this difficult stuff by trying to push it away, or ignore it, Then the mind just wants to yell at us louder and it will say it over and over again because it doesn’t think we’re listening.

Martin: So when our first step as a response is to acknowledge, It can just be so helpful, just as you described.

Esther: Yeah, definitely. Because when you’re fighting against it, then it just makes it worse, and like you said, it perpetuates this endless cycle.

Martin: Yeah. Exactly. And it can sound really ironic, but insomnia comes from the mind doing its job of trying to look out for us, trying to protect us.

Esther: Yeah.

Martin: But it can end up trying so hard to look out for us and protect us that it gets in the way a little bit. When it comes to insomnia, the brain can learn that being awake, that wakefulness itself is a threat.

Martin: Just like the kitchen is on fire. The brain doesn’t really recognize the difference. And like you talked about, unfortunately there’s no magic way we can make the brain stop doing that. But we can change the way we respond to it when this wakefulness shows up or when the anxiety shows up. And I think the more we can practice experiencing it all with less of a struggle, not only does that consume less of our energy and our attention, but also it can help train the brain that, oh, maybe this wakefulness, maybe insomnia, isn’t such a threat.

Martin: Because now there’s less resistance, there’s less struggle related to it. So if there’s less struggle related to it, maybe I don’t have to be quite so alert. to try and protect you from the wakefulness, from the insomnia.

Esther: Yeah, exactly. That’s the way you break the cycle. You if you’re not scared, then your level of arousal goes down, and then, like you said, the body says Okay, so there’s no need to generate all these all these physical symptoms, all these symptoms of arousal, so let’s just let her go to sleep, and then the sleep drive kicks in.

Martin: Yeah, and the sleep drive always kicks in at some point. It might not be that exact night, but the longer we go without sleep, the more likely sleep is to happen. So the brain can temporarily suspend sleep if it thinks like we’re in danger or if there’s a risk, whether that’s real or imagined. But sooner or later, sleep is always going to happen in the end.

Martin: And this is why sometimes we can go through these kind of cycles, where we have a series of nights of very little or no sleep, and then all of a sudden it feels like we get this great night of catch up sleep, everything felt great, we feel like maybe the insomnia is now behind us, and then it all starts over again.

Martin: So we have this stretch of really difficult nights, the sleep drive gets really high, We sleep because we cannot stay awake indefinitely. And then when that sleep drive is back down, then that arousal system can take over again, and it starts to suspend sleep because the brain is trying to look out for us and trying to protect us.

Martin: And I think it’s helpful to just describe that because so many people, again, feel That those cycles are unusual or unique, but really it’s just all part of the insomnia struggle. And a lot of people deal with that too.

Esther: Yeah, and also, the fact that you’re worried about what impact the insomnia is gonna have on your mental health. So you’re also like you’re thinking for somebody who already has mental health problems, who has anxiety, you’re thinking like, how is if I don’t sleep, then my anxiety is going to get worse.

Esther: And I’ve had these thoughts about how what’s gonna happen, how I’m gonna I’m not gonna be concentrating well, I’m gonna be do worse at my job, I’m gonna get fired I’m gonna get depressed and end up in a mental institution.

Esther: Because I’m nuts, all because I can’t sleep. And then so one thing I wanted to mention is what was really helpful to me was the episode with Dr. Jade Wu, where she talked about insomnia, misconceptions, and myths. And the main thing she said was that there’s no there’s no danger from insomnia. So other than you feeling crappy the next day, there’s nothing that’s that’s basically the worst that can happen that you don’t feel good, like your head is cloudy and you don’t feel like you’re at your best the next day.

Esther: But all those effects about sleep deprivation that you read about, those are from like some external factor. Either when you force yourself to stay up or when there’s something in your life that impedes your ability to sleep. And she, she said also that that you don’t need to catch up on the amount of hours of sleep. And that’s something that I’ve also, that I also used to think in the past. Like I would think, oh, I only got five hours of sleep last night and I need eight. The next night I’m gonna need 8 plus those 3 hours, so I’m gonna need 11 hours in order to catch up. And she said, no, it doesn’t work that way.

Esther: The way your body works is that after a bad night of sleep, the next night you, your body puts you in the deep stages sooner. So you’re still, it generates the most restorative sleep, it prioritizes that, and that’s what that’s what helps you feel better even if you don’t sleep the 11 hours or even the 8 hours the following night.

Martin: I love that episode. I’ll make sure that I put a link to it in the show notes. Otherwise anyone can just go to. the Insomnia Coach website or your podcast provider and just search through the list of titles for Jade Wu’s name. It’s a great episode because I think that there is, there’s a lot of confusion around sleep and insomnia, right?

Martin: And I think knowledge can just be so empowering and so helpful. Because when we have these ideas that if I don’t get a certain amount of sleep, insert scary health condition here is going to happen. That’s really concerning and it’s something that can draw us into the struggle, right? Because none of us want to end up with one of those scary health conditions, so we’re going to end up trying to try and even harder to make sleep happen or to get rid of wakefulness when it shows up.

Martin: And that just ends up pulling us deeper into the struggle. And this idea that we don’t need to catch up on sleep. Sleep is something the body wants to take care of all by itself. It’s when we completely understandably get involved in the process that things can become more difficult. So if something like you were talking about, we start running all these calculations how much sleep I have to try and catch up on This is all stuff that just we end up putting more pressure on ourselves to try and make sleep happen, which in itself makes things more difficult.

Martin: The brain ends up getting confused because it wants to take care of sleep by itself, but then we’re putting all this effort into trying to figure it out, trying to make it happen, which also can train the brain that insomnia must really be a threat. It’s like a grizzly bear hiding under the bed, or it’s like the kitchen being on fire, so it’s going to fire up even more.

Martin: Something you touched upon right near the start of our discussion was when you were, trying to fix the issue of sleep was you started to go to bed earlier in an attempt to make more sleep happen. Did you change that approach in the end? Did you start going to bed later in the evening as you were trying to change your approach to insomnia?

Esther: Yes. So that was something that has definitely been helpful because like that kind of takes off the pressure so that you don’t think it’s going to be 10 o’clock soon. I should be in bed because I didn’t sleep well last night. So what I did was I had the sleep window from 11 to six. And usually by 11 I would feel pretty sleepy. But if I didn’t, then I would say to myself, Okay, I’m gonna stay up later until I’m actually sleepy. And that’s what I do to this day. I don’t go to sleep until I, unless I really feel sleepy. And sometimes I end up looking at the clock. Sometimes I think, Oh, it’s 11. 30, I should go to bed. And then I if I’m, if I go to bed, it turns out I’m not sleepy enough yet I go back downstairs and I watch TV or something where I stay in bed and listen to a podcast. So like that, when you’re not, when you’re not forcing yourself to go to sleep early. To make up for those hours.

Esther: You’re just taking away some of the pressure.

Martin: You’re no longer like a slave to the clock. You don’t see, okay, it’s 10 o’clock, this is the time I have to be in bed, or this is the time I have to be asleep. So just maybe using your own level of sleepiness, like when you get to that point where it’s starting to feel hard to remain awake, that might be a better cue that can take some pressure off.

Esther: It brought me relief because I I felt if I The later I go to sleep The fewer hours I would have to potentially be awake during the night That’s less time for me to lie in bed and obsess over being able to sleep

Martin: if people are listening to this and they’re identifying that concern, the later I leave it, then that’s the less time available for sleep, is maybe we can just fall back and reflect on your own experience here.

Martin: What does your experience tell you in terms of if you are going to bed earlier in the night, does your experience tell you that tends to create better sleep? Do you fall asleep pretty quickly, spend very little time awake during the night, tend to get a good night of sleep? If yes, then sure, go to bed at that time, go to bed earlier.

Martin: But if your experience is telling you that no, in my experience, when I go to bed earlier, it just creates more wakefulness. I find it harder to fall asleep. I find it harder to fall back to sleep when I wake during the night. Then maybe it’s worth experimenting with going to bed later, even if it might come with some new set of thoughts and feelings related to, oh, it’s getting later, I’m going to have to be up sooner, I’ve only got this small window, now I’ve got a smaller opportunity to sleep.

Martin: Sometimes it’s worth allowing those thoughts and feelings to come in order to experiment with a different approach.

Esther: A couple of things that i’ve picked up ever since I started the course Was that when I was struggling to sleep so one of the first nights I had a night when I barely slept and then the next day I went to work and I was surprised by how good I felt. I was surprised that I was I was able to function. I drove just fine.

Esther: I, then I came home, I ate dinner, I read a book, I watched TV. So I did like my. normal routine and I was thinking, Oh, hey, this isn’t so bad. Like I had a bad night, this day wasn’t this horrible nightmare that I thought it might be. So like that really, that helped to alleviate my anxiety. And then the other thing was that when I reached this turning point when there was one night and I had this realization that, Oh my God, I’m not scared to go to bed tonight. Like I’m not nervous about what’s gonna happen. I just thought about it like oh if I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep I’ll get up and watch TV.

Esther: I’ll get up and do something It’s bonus time for me to get something done that I need to get done. So I was thinking oh my god This is the first time that I’m actually Not scared to go to bed. I’m just and then I when I couldn’t sleep I just felt frustrated and I was like, so this is I’m just frustrated, like a normal person.

Esther: I’m not I’m not in a panic, I’m not feeling like this is the end of the world, I’m not feeling like I’d rather die than be awake now, which is what I would think in the past. I would have these catastrophic thoughts. And this time I just thought of it as a, as this pesky little nuisance. And, the way Insomnia is that one of the episodes, I remember somebody described it as a schoolyard bully. That if you ignore it, and if you don’t give it the attention that it wants, then it just goes away, and, just leaves you alone. Then you don’t feel that kind of you don’t feel that panic over it anymore, so it loses its power.

Martin: Yeah, it would be great if we could just experience those transformations at the click of our fingers, right? To not have that fear anymore of going to bed or of being awake during the night. But often it does take practice responding to the wakefulness, the thoughts and the feelings that can come with it with less of a struggle.

Martin: And the more we can do that The more the brain can learn that, oh, this isn’t a threat. I don’t have to go to battle stations, light the red flashing lights, ring the alarm bells just because it’s time to go to bed. And it sounds like that’s what you experienced. Or that was one of your kind of breakthrough moments when it was time to go to bed and it was like, I don’t feel the intensity of that fear anymore. Maybe there was still some thoughts and stories, what ifs, but you felt that you could respond more flexibly to them, like you had options, you had alternative ways of responding compared to maybe in the past where it was I can, all I can do is fight and put effort, whereas now I’ve got a few different things that I can do in response.

Martin: Does that sound accurate?

Esther: Yeah, it was just like, I’ve been there, and I’ve survived, and it sucked, but it wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t like anything unbearable that I couldn’t get through. So once you see that it’s not as scary as it seems, like that really helps to that helps to alleviate your anxiety over it.

Esther: And then you’re not obsessing about it as much and, consequently you sleep better.

Martin: And something else you touched upon was you had that difficult night. And so, the mind probably was racing away telling you how awful the next day was going to be. And sometimes the days can truly be awful when we have difficult nights. It’s important to acknowledge that. And at the same time, sometimes there can be some okay moments during the day.

Martin: Sometimes there can be good moments during the day, and sometimes we can even have good days after really difficult nights. And so it sounds like that was perhaps another one of your breakthrough moments or big insight that you picked up was that it is possible to have some good days or some good moments even after difficult nights.

Martin: Was that the case? And if so, how do you feel that insight was helpful for you?

Esther: Yeah. There’s a, there’s one example when no sleep has led to the most amazing day of my life. Yeah. And that was when I was in labor with each of my kids. with my daughter, I was, I went into labor overnight. So I wasn’t able to sleep. And at about 3 AM, I said to my husband, like the contractions are coming regularly, it’s time.

Esther: So that night I didn’t sleep the whole night. So we went to the hospital and he was sleepier than I was. Because I guess he wasn’t the one in labor, so like his body didn’t have to keep him awake. So he was sleepy, but I was wide awake. And I was, I didn’t feel, like I didn’t feel any of those feelings that I’ve had with, when I would have these bouts of insomnia.

Esther: I’d be like, oh, this is normal. Like I’m, it’s normal for me to be awake right now. I’m not freaking out. And then the next day was one of the best days of my life. And, it was surprising. Like I, I didn’t sleep at all and yet I felt so good. And that the same thing happened when I was on labor with my son after that too.

Esther: Like I time I, we got to the hospital about at about midnight. And again, like I, my husband was dozing, but I wasn’t sleeping. And I’m like I’m not supposed to sleep. I’m about to give birth. So I like that was another day when I didn’t sleep a wink. And the next day I was like wide awake and I was excited.

Esther: And it was like this rush of adrenaline that your body generates. So yeah that’s an example of how, even if you have a night of no sleep. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the next day is going to be miserable.

Martin: I think that’s a great example that you shared there because the wakefulness was still the wakefulness if we remove labor from the equation, you were awake then just like you were awake multiple times when you were struggling with insomnia. The difference is the context of that wakefulness or maybe the way we were responding to that wakefulness when maybe when we’re struggling with it less or when we’re less tangled up in it.

Martin: The less influential it can be the less problematic, the less power and influence, it goes back to that bullying analogy, right? The less we’re responding to it maybe the less power and influence it has, the less interest it has in controlling our lives or our actions. And that how our nights go, isn’t a guarantee of how our day is going to go.

Martin: No, there is a separation. Like what happens at night? We have a nighttime experience and we have a daytime experience. And there’s definitely an influence. They can influence one another but they don’t have to at least not a hundred percent of the time.

Martin: And I think this is also where it’s helpful to make sure that each day we’re doing things that are important to us, or doing things that matter to us, just so we give ourselves that opportunity to recognize that even when things are difficult, even if we have a difficult night, we can still do things that matter, even if they’re really small. We can still do things that are important.

Martin: We can still move toward the life we want to live, even when things are difficult. And if nothing else, we can pick up opportunities to recognize that we can have some okay or some good or some great moments during the day, even after really difficult nights too.

Esther: Yeah, and another thing that I realized was that you know physiologically the symptoms of excitement and the symptoms of anxiety are pretty much the same like you have the increased arousal you have the rapid heartbeat and like the kind of restless feeling where you can’t sit still, but the difference is in the interpretation.

Esther: So like when you’re, when you have the pleasant kind of arousal, like when you’re, when you just had a baby, or like when you’re in love and you’re constantly thinking about that person, or when you’re excited about some event that’s going to happen, then like you can also experience a loss of appetite, loss of sleep, and But you don’t care as much.

Esther: It doesn’t give you distress. Like it adds to the euphoria. So I thought that was interesting too.

Martin: Yeah, I think that’s a great point and it’s something I’ve actually thought about quite a lot. If you, let’s, for example, if you really intently imagine winning the lottery, so if you imagine you’re sitting on the couch in the evening, whenever the lottery draw is about to take place, you’ve got that ticket in your hand and that first number rolls out and you matched it.

Martin: And then the second number rolls out and you matched it. Like what are you feeling? Like you, maybe you start to breathe a little bit shallower or a little bit deeper, maybe your heart rate picks up and then another number comes out and you feel you’re getting more tense now, more excited, more adrenaline searching through you.

Martin: And then let’s say all the numbers come out and you’ve won the jackpot. And now. If we think to a time when we’ve been really anxious, maybe it’s the middle of the night, maybe it’s the middle of the day, maybe we’re at a job interview anything like that, what are those symptoms like? It’s like the heart rate picks

Esther: Yeah. The same

Martin: maybe we feel tense exactly, but most of us will probably enjoy that experience of winning the lottery, compared to the experience of anxiety at night or a day, but it’s just like you described, it’s how we interpret it. And I think a lot of it comes down to our resistance to it. We’re going to be less resistant to experiencing all that stuff as our lottery numbers are coming out and we’re about to be a billionaire, but we can have a lot more resistance to it in the middle of the night, for example, when we see it as an obstacle to sleep.

Martin: And so maybe it’s that resistance that really is the key to how much power and influence it has over us.

Martin: When there’s less resistance, maybe the stuff can flow a little bit better. It’s if we imagine a river and that river is all the anxieties that we’re going to experience in our lives, the river flows. If we don’t want to experience it, now we’re going to build a dam.

Martin: What happens? It all backs up and backs up and becomes more, right? It just grows. So without that resistance, we don’t put that dam in place. And maybe it just flows by and it has, doesn’t have that opportunity to accumulate or become quite so powerful.

Esther: Like basically just to stop fighting the physical symptoms and stop fighting the uncomfortable thoughts that you sometimes have.

Esther: So the gist of it is just to to acknowledge what’s happening and then move on. Carry on with your life and, do the things that, whatever it is that you enjoy doing. Another thing is when when you, when I would have these nights of anxiety, sometimes I would have something, The next day so I would be tempted to I would think like maybe I should call out sick maybe I should cancel that, Karaoke night with friends because i’m not gonna enjoy it when I feel this bad But then like you think of the alternative and it’s what am I gonna do?

Esther: I’m, just gonna sit at home and worry about the anxiety and the insomnia. I’m not gonna be able to sleep so It’s gonna be like the it’s the worst thing you could do pretty much as tempting as it may sound it’s And, I heard on one of the episodes also that somebody was saying that when you are, when you’re not well, it’s your body’s natural impulse to get you to rest, to get you to stay home and rest and take it easy, and that works with any other illness, but not with insomnia.

Martin: So when the anxiety shows up, maybe you’re less inclined to grab the suit of armor, grab a sword, grab a shield and a helmet and start going to war with the anxiety.

Martin: Now maybe you’re more likely to acknowledge the presence of the anxiety and continue to do things that matter, even when it’s present, even when it shows up, even when things are feeling difficult.

Esther: Yeah, exactly, because, there’s no there’s no way that I’m gonna be able to get rid of anxiety for good. And to say to myself that I’m never gonna feel those symptoms again, there’s no guarantee of that but you know if you stop fighting it, then you just Put your attention to more pleasant things and you know even when it’s hard even when your mind is still like playing on this loop and making you Worry about all kinds of things whether it’s insomnia or whether it’s something that’s currently going on in your life that you’re stressed about You know even If you don’t feel like engaging in something else, if you don’t feel like I don’t know, doing whatever it is that you plan to do the next day, any enriching and fun activities. But you still do them. And then once you do them, you you get, you get into it. You like, you get more out of your head and you get into into those activities. You get distracted spending time with other people and talking about your lives and things like that. And, that gives the anxiety less power.

Martin: So you just touched upon a really important thing to emphasize, and that is that anxiety still shows up from time to time because it’s a natural human emotion. Anxiety is always going to show up for as long as we’re living and breathing human beings. But it’s your relationship with it has just changed.

Martin: Like it’s losing its power and its influence. And so it’s causing less of a struggle when it shows up. You’re better able to live the life you want to live do things that matter independently of whether anxiety is present or whether it’s not. And that’s the key difference that tends to happen when we move away from that ongoing struggle course by trying to fight it or permanently get rid of it. And how about sleep? How did sleep change for you? It was, I think it was about a year ago that we finished working together. What’s sleep like for you these days? Is there such a thing as an average night?

Esther: The average night is I go to sleep when I feel sleepy. And that’s pretty much it and then sometimes if I have trouble falling asleep I like either I either turn on a podcast or an audiobook and I lie in bed and relax Or I get up and watch tv or Do something more pleasant like I always have these words in my mind that the goal is not sleep The goal is relaxation and i’m thinking like even though I would like to sleep right now Like it’s a good opportunity for sleep If I’m not sleeping, then that’s something I can’t control.

Esther: But what I can control is the way I react. I can control the goal is just to make the wakefulness more pleasant, like you said. Sometimes I do experience I do experience insomnia from time to time sometimes if I’m, wake up during the night, can’t fall back asleep. Then I I just go with the flow and then I think, okay, this isn’t forever, this is just, this one night, it doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be like this all the time. Doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be permanent.

Esther: And like I even made a list on my phone of things that are more pleasant than lying in bed awake. If I feel like I, like I’m frustrated and I can’t sleep, then I can look at my phone and I’m like, Oh, this is how I can put this time to good use.

Martin: Yeah. And every now and then, yeah, you experience anxiety because that’s natural and normal. Every now and then you have a night that has some more wakefulness than normal. You have a difficult night because this is all just part of the human experience.

Martin: We’re always going to have some difficult nights from time to time. We’re going to have difficult thoughts and feelings from time to time. What matters is how we respond because A, our response is something that we can always control. and B is our response that really determines how much power and influence all of that is going to have over our lives.

Martin: So Esther, I’m really grateful for the time you’ve taken out of your day to come onto the podcast. I’ve got one last question for you, which is a question that I ask everyone, so I don’t want you to feel left out. And it’s this, if someone is listening to this with chronic insomnia, and they feel as though they’ve tried everything, that they’re beyond help, they’ll never be able to stop struggling with insomnia, what would you say to them?

Esther: what I would say is get this course. If you’re really struggling with insomnia, then it’s definitely worth it, a hundred percent. And what the kind of thing that makes it worth it is the fact that this kind of knowledge, it sticks with you. So it’s not like the kind of course where you take in, I don’t know, for example, computer science or something where if you don’t practice it for a long time, then you can forget some of it.

Esther: This is the kind of thing where it stays with you. So like those. Insights that you get, you face those fears head on and the insights that you get from it they’re in you like they become part of your thinking your whole attitude toward sleep really changes and You know, you have this new way of reframing your difficult feelings or when you have a bad night of sleep like your attitude completely does a 180 So that’s why I think it’s really worth it for anyone who’s who’s on the fence that’s what you should consider.

Martin: Great I appreciate that, and again, I appreciate the time you’ve taken out of your day to come on. Thank you again.

Esther: Yeah. Thank you so much

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:

Busting sleep and insomnia myths with clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist Dr. Jade Wu (#13)

How Pat got rid of her insomnia by embracing a philosophy of “fake it until you make it” and accepting anxious thoughts (#27)

I want you to be the next insomnia success story I share! If you're ready to move away from the insomnia struggle so you can start living the life you want to live, click here to get my online insomnia coaching course.

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