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From a very young age, Celia would often try to control her sleep and often used medication to get her through her frequent bouts of insomnia. After the birth of her son and the emergence of the COVID pandemic, Celia became even more fixated on sleep. All of her old sleep crutches seemed to stop working and she didn't know what to do.

Celia began to spend her days researching sleep and looking for options. She had heard about evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques that can help tackle the thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate sleep disruption, but she found the techniques difficult to implement and whenever she experienced some difficult nights she felt she was back to square one.

Fortunately, Celia did not give up. She decided it was time to stop allowing insomnia to be part of her identity and began to implement new habits that would create better conditions for sleep. Instead of trying to eliminate anxiety and spending her days obsessing about sleep, she learned to acknowledge and accept anxious thoughts and lived the life she wanted to live, independently of sleep.

Celia recognized that it was her desire to control sleep and her sleep-related thoughts that was a big part of the problem. When she was able to accept that she couldn't directly control sleep or her thoughts and committed to implementing behaviors that would create better conditions for sleep and help her live life according to her values, she was able to starve her insomnia of the oxygen it craved and enjoy the life (and sleep) that she wanted.

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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, Celia, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast.

Celia Garforth:
No problem. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me.

Martin Reed:
It's great to see you too. I'm just so excited to have you on, because I remember when we first started working together, you actually shared that one of your goals was to be a success story and to come on as a guest at some point in the future, and here you are now.

Celia Garforth:
Yeah. It definitely was. As I said to you in our emails to start with, I discovered you and your work through the podcast and it was listening to the stories of other people that you'd worked with that actually made me... Because I'd heard about CBT-I and I'd always been resistant to trying it because it seemed quite horrible. So listening to the podcast was really, really motivating for me to reach out and actually get things started and do it for myself. So that was a bit of a north star for me as I was going through it, just knowing that at some point in the future that I could come on and talk to everybody else about my experience and hopefully help some people in the wa...