Like everyone else, Pat experienced some difficult nights every now and then — but her sleep would always get back on track. However last summer, her neighbors starting throwing loud parties and this made sleep increasingly difficult.

Before long, Pat found herself starting to fear falling asleep because she knew she would end up being woken by her neighbors. She soon started to pay a lot of attention to sleep and thought that something was terribly wrong with her. She was canceling plans and would rearrange her life around sleep.

Since none of these things led to better sleep, Pat adopted a radically different strategy — she decided to approach each day pretending that she'd had a good night of sleep. She went about her days as normal and pursued enjoyable and enriching daytime activities, independently of how she slept. She also stopped talking about insomnia.

Pat shifted her attention away from sleep and refused to allow sleep to control her life. She also stopped all attempts to control anxious thoughts and instead, chose to acknowledge and accept them. The final piece of the puzzle came when Pat was able to abandon all attempts to control her progress and was able to accept that sleep is something that cannot be controlled.

As Pat discovered, if we can place less importance on sleep and refuse to allow sleep to control our lives, sleep often becomes a whole lot easier!

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Martin Reed:
Welcome to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that nobody needs to live with chronic insomnia and that evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques can help you enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life.

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

Martin Reed:
Hi, Pat, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today.

Pat Boldys:
Very pleased to be here!

Martin Reed:
It's great to have you on. I'm really excited to talk about your sleep issues, what you did to try and tackle them, and just to talk about where you're at today. So before we get to start to going through that journey, let's start at the beginning. Can you tell us when your sleep problems first began and if you have any idea what caused that initial sleep disruption?

Pat Boldys:
Yeah, so it started this past summer, in August. And I had had a few nights prior to that where I had a difficult night sleep but it wasn't every single night. And what had been happening, I'd say since about May, is that we had some rowdy neighbors, and they were having parties at night, and we were being woken up, us and some other neighbors, calling the police at 2:00 AM and things like that. And this became kind of not every night, but it was very disruptive.

Pat Boldys:
Anyway, so starting in around August is when my sleep problems became chronic. And I didn't realize at first that it was because of that. It took me a while and actually after watching a lot of your videos that kind of a light bulb went on. Because I remembered saying to my husband one night when I got into bed, "I'm actually afraid to go to sleep tonight because I k...