Jeannette thought of herself as a great sleeper until 13 years ago when she moved and her work schedule become less consistent. She started to stay up later and sleep in later and this led to some sleep disruption. When Jeannette tried to fix this, she ended up going down the insomnia rabbit hole and started researching how to get rid of her insomnia. The more research she did, the more she tried to fix her sleep, the more rules and rituals she engaged in, and the more she found herself struggling.

After working with me, Jeannette’s sleep improved — but one night she woke up and found that she couldn’t fall back to sleep and all her old fears returned. She felt that something must be wrong with her as she found herself waking and finding it impossible to fall back to sleep night after night.

This pulled Jeannette back into her old safety behaviors that she knew from experience weren’t helpful because she just didn’t know what else to do.

In this episode, Jeannette describes how she moved away from the insomnia struggle; how she became more comfortable with nighttime wakefulness, how she stopped chasing after sleep, how she started to allow her mind to generate whatever thoughts it chose to generate — even the difficult ones, and how she started to be kinder to herself when things were difficult.

Perhaps most importantly of all, Jeannette’s story shows that ups and downs are normal and to be expected. Just as we will have difficult days from time to time, we will have difficult nights from time to time. What truly matters is how we respond.

Click here for a full transcript of this episode.Click here to hide the transcript.

Martin Reed:

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 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:

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

Jeannette Stojcevski:

You’re welcome. Glad to be here.

Martin Reed:

I’m really looking forward to our conversation, so let’s just get started. I’d like to start right at the beginning. So can you tell us a little bit more about when your sleep problems first began and what you think may have caused those initial issues with sleep?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yeah, so my sleep problems, I never had problems sleeping in my teens, my 20s. I was a great sleeper, a really great sleeper. I brag about it. I needed to get my eight, nine hours. So I was always a little obsessive about it, but I was a great sleeper. And then right about 13 years ago, I was living in LA and I’m a personal trainer, so my job was pretty consistent as far as the schedule. But around 30, I moved to Hollywood. I wanted a change, I moved to a little city outside of Hollywood that I liked. And I commuted to work three days a week. And on the other two days, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I worked from home, like an online job that kept me pretty busy, but I could start it at whatever time I wanted. So my insomnia started right around this time because looking back, I had a schedule when I was personal training before I had moved.

And then when I had gotten this online job, on those days, I would sleep in and I would generally go out maybe the night before and not know why I was having trouble waking up at, because I had early clients. So on the other days, I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning and I could no longer fall asleep on the nights before. And it was just because I believe my schedule was completely erratic. So some days I was waking up at 4:00 AM, other days 10:00 AM, 8:00. So then my sleep just started to struggle from that point on, and I didn’t know why. I just thought, “Oh my gosh, what was going on with me? Why can’t I fall asleep anymore?” And that’s when the search started. That’s when I just started down the rabbit hole and it never stopped.

Martin Reed:

So why don’t you tell us a little bit more about that? Because whenever we are faced with a problem as human beings, we want to fix that problem, right?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yes.

Martin Reed:

But sleep is one of these outliers that tends not to respond well to effort, which we all know once we’ve gone through that journey and come out the other side. But when we are really trapped in that struggle, boy, we’ll do anything to get out of it. And that usually involves lots of experiments, lots of rituals, lots of efforts. So yeah, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your experience there.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Sure. So just like so many other people, I immediately started researching, started going to the internet looking for things I could try. So it started with just the sleep hygiene. Keeping my room cold or blackout curtains, eye mask. I developed a lot of rituals. Then I started to do acupuncture. I’m living in LA, so there’s a plethora of holistic doctors. So I just started seeing just random healers, people that told me that something in my past life was contributing to the problem. I wrote all of them down. I did hypnosis, I spent a lot of money on hypnosis. I bought a machine, it’s called… I just tried so many crazy things. This thing that you put around your head, it’s called tDCS, some sort of stimulation for your brain, which I think can be actually dangerous. I tried sweat lodges, everything I could think of, crystals.

And then I started taking sleeping pills. That’s when I went down the path of, “Okay, I don’t know what else to do.” I started smoking marijuana and I started taking sleeping pills. But I had no idea what I was actually taking. I got them from a family member who was able to get them from Europe, and I did not know, and he didn’t know what I was taking either. So I eventually ran out because it wasn’t a prescription. So I eventually ran out, and now I’m dealing with, which I didn’t realize at the time how dangerous it was, I’m dealing with rebound insomnia. So it was even worse at that point where I didn’t sleep for days. I actually slept in my car one night. So I can’t even be in my apartment anymore, I’ve got to leave. So I went to my car and actually fell asleep that night, which was interesting.

And so after about five days of that, I stayed at a friend’s house and then I was able to sleep after that. I was able to get a good chunk of five, six hours. So I knew that I could sleep again, I knew my body was able to do this, but I still didn’t know why it was happening, so I sought out the help of a holistic doctor out there. And it was a wonderful experience, I started to sleep better, but I thought at that time it was because of the supplements. I thought, “Wow, I’m on this program, he balanced out whatever was going on with me, I’m good.” But in reality, looking back, I think my sleep got better at that time because I just started to, because I didn’t go out anymore, I wasn’t going out at night, so I wasn’t sleeping in as much. So I think everything regulated and I started sleeping better for a while.

And then it never really left me. I was always worried about it, I always thought about it, I obsessed about the way I looked like, “Is this affecting my appearance, is this affecting my workouts?” I just continue to worry about it, so that fear never left me. And then in December of 2020… Now I’m living in Michigan. I moved back to Michigan and I got COVID in December of 2020. And I got it pretty… I lost my smell, and so it was a pretty difficult time. I got a little depressed around that time. And my sleep suffered naturally, but of course… And I was having problems every so often before that. But it really, really suffered after I got COVID and I thought, “Oh no, this is different. This is the worst it’s ever been.”

And that’s when I started working with you and I got better. But then I think it was September of 2021 that I just started to get worse. I don’t know what the trigger was, it was just a night where I couldn’t fall back to sleep. That’s what it was. I woke up around three in the morning and then I couldn’t fall back to sleep after that. And then I was like, “Oh no, it is back.” But that’s never happened to me, usually I can get back to sleep. So I’m thinking it was worse than it has ever been, something must be wrong with me. And then I started going down another crazy rabbit hole.

I considered going to a rehab at that time like, “Do I need to go somewhere where somebody just has to take care of me for a while?” I considered going to the ER psych ward. I was just out of my mind thinking something was really wrong with me because of course, the following night it happened. And then I’m waking up and unable to go back to sleep every night of the week. So instead of going back to what I knew I should do, which is just stay calm, it usually passes, I just went down another rabbit hole where I started smoking marijuana again, I started looking for the supplements, and I started just doing the things that I knew weren’t going to work, but for some reason I just didn’t know what else to do at that moment because I just felt so bad.

And I think the reason why it was hard for me to go back on the program was because at that time I just felt so physically bad. But then that’s when I think I reached out to you or you reached out to me and I just decided, “Okay, I’m going to do this again. I’m really just going to give this a real shot again.” And I did. And of course my sleep started improving, I started to be able to fall back asleep again. And there was an interview you did that really inspired me.

I’m a big watcher of your podcast with other people because that’s really what fueled me during those dark moments. Just knowing that, I think there was a lady who had it pretty much her whole life, and she said something and it stuck with me, “There’s things going on behind the scenes.” It feels like it may not be working at first but I remember I just kept saying that to myself, “Behind the scenes, Jeannette. It’s going to work. This takes time, this takes a minute. You’ve had this and you’ve had some deep psychological changes around your thoughts around sleep, so this is not going to be an overnight thing.”

And I always thought, “Oh, by the third day, I should be sleeping better.” And that’s not the case. For me at least, it wasn’t. So I just started to stick to the program better too, because before the problem I think I had was I just couldn’t stick to it. I just had a really hard time getting out of bed. Yeah, but when I finally just committed and I just dived into the podcast and videos and it helped me so much on this last round of my last relapse.

Martin Reed:

Yeah, there’s so much great stuff there to just unpack because I think a lot of people will recognize that journey that you just described. Insomnia from person to person, it is pretty much identical. We have a trigger for sleep disruption. Sometimes it’s really memorable and obvious, but sometimes not. So we experience that sleep disruption. Normally, a lot of the time we don’t think much of it, but if it sticks around for longer than it might have done in the past, then that triggers the worry, the stress, the anxiety, or the research. Again, completely normal reaction. We have a problem, we want to fix it.

So we then really what it comes down to, we engage in effort. We try harder to sleep than we ever have before, we put all this effort into sleep, we might engage in rituals, experiments. Again, all completely understandable why we do that. But it actually ends up giving insomnia the oxygen it needs to survive, that attention, that effort, that strong desire to avoid being awake at night. That’s what keeps insomnia going. And just as you experienced, some of this stuff can give a short-term relief. It can generate some improvements in the short term, but what can happen is when we then try and move away from those things, we are back to where we started because we never really got to that root issue, which is addressing that really strong desire to avoid being awake.

I think what it comes down to is if we are willing, if we can get to a place where we are more willing for insomnia to exist, it tends not to exist, but when we are really desperate for it not to exist, it’s really likely to exist. So all of that, and it’s like, it’s also important to recognize too, that the worry and the anxiety, and the stress, and all those difficult thoughts and feelings, they’re not necessarily a cause of insomnia. Just because we’re stressed or anxious or worried, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to have a really difficult night. But when we start to struggle with that, when we try and push or fight or avoid all that difficult stuff, all those thoughts and emotions, I think that’s what then definitely can generate some difficult nights.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yeah, absolutely.

Martin Reed:

And again, it’s our human nature. We don’t like feeling anxious or worried or stressed, so we want to try and push that stuff away. But just like sleep, we can’t control what goes on inside our minds. And the more we try, the more we get tangled up in this endless struggle. And I don’t need to tell you, and I don’t need to tell anyone listening, that struggle is so exhausting, and we tend not to make that much progress.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yeah, it is exhausting. And I think that was my struggle, just the struggle of not wanting to be awake. It’s still a little bit difficult. I’ve definitely improved so much, but in the beginning, I just was really uncomfortable with getting out of bed. I didn’t like the idea that I was awake during the night, I was always trying to catch up on sleep, catch sleep, laying there with my eyes closed, just hoping it’ll come. So I was very, very uncomfortable with the fact that I had insomnia and that this was my life for right now, or I just wasn’t comfortable with that. So that part was very hard for me to do, get out of bed and just accept the fact that I’m up and stay calm about it. I would, just like so many other people have experienced, go into sweats, and just be hot, and anxious, and just be tossing and turning and every which way.

But for some reason, I just couldn’t muster up the strength to get myself out of bed. Or if I did, I would, it would just be to go to the bathroom and then right back into the bed, or just a temporary quick break out of my bed. I would sit up and then get back into it because I was just like, “I don’t want to be off. It’s night.” But now I know looking back, that just fueled my issue. It just fueled it. There’s no reason to have a reaction like that unless you just… It’s a habit, it just became a habit for me that I was unable to break.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. And I think then when we are engaged in that struggle, it’s so easy to fall back into all those old safety behaviors. Again, just like you mentioned, when we found short-term relief from something, whatever it is, when we are struggling again, it’s so easy to reach back for those things again, to try. What are we doing? We’re just engaging in that effort again, which again is understandable because we don’t like what we’re going through. It’s all that effort, although all that trying to avoid the wakefulness, all that trying to make sleep happen, really is what causes all the struggle. And really, if we just take a step back and just think, “What is insomnia?” It basically comes down to we don’t want to be awake at night, so we put all this effort into trying to make sleep happen. The brain detects us engaged in all these efforts.

So what does the brain think? “Oh, you’re trying so hard to avoid being awake at night. Being awake at night, it must be a danger, it must be this threat. It’s like a very real physical threat and a danger to you, so I’m going to be alert to protect you from this danger of wakefulness.” And obviously that alertness makes sleep more difficult. So all those efforts that we engage in, they can give us some short-term relief sometimes, but what are we doing? We’re kind of reinforcing that belief in our brain that this wakefulness is a real danger, that it has to be alert to protect us from, because the brain isn’t doing all this stuff to make us feel bad. It’s doing all this stuff to look out for us, but it’s just trying so hard that it often ends up getting in the way.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

I know. I didn’t understand that until recently, that whole concept, like how the brain is trying to protect you from this. I just didn’t understand that, but it definitely made sense the more I started to think about it, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s definitely what’s going on.” I can definitely understand that.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. And so because the brain is trying to look out for us and it’s sending us all these warnings which tend not to feel good, like worry, and anxiety, and fear, and stress, and all that stuff. Because they don’t feel good, we normally want to kind of ignore it or push it away or pretend it’s not happening, or try and distract ourselves. But then the brain thinks, “Okay, there’s this danger. Now I’m trying to tell you about it, and now you’re ignoring me?” So the brain then freaks out even more and it’s like, it has to yell even louder, right?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yes.

Martin Reed:

It’s like if we see someone about to cross the street and there’s a truck coming towards, and when we yell at them, “There’s a truck coming, don’t cross the street,” and they just kind of wave at us and carry on going, what are we going to do? We’re going to yell even louder, right?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yes.

Martin Reed:

And louder, and louder, and louder. So I think what can be so helpful is just acknowledging all that difficult stuff that the brain is generating rather than as we’re all hardwired to do, trying to push it away or fight or avoid it, just acknowledging it. Just even something as simple as just being like, “I recognize that I’m feeling anxious right now. I’m feeling worried, I’m feeling scared.” And just acknowledging that you’re feeling that can just be one of those things that lifts a little bit of that weight off your shoulders because now you are not trying to deny it, you’re not trying to push it away. Unlike a beach ball, the more you push it away, the more it pushes back. You’re just acknowledging it. And then if you continue practicing this, you might be able to get to a point where you allow that stuff to exist, even though it doesn’t feel good, you just let it kind of sit there and make a little bit of space for it.

Maybe it will just hang out for a while, maybe then it will go away, maybe then it will come back. But we’re just not engaged in that struggle anymore, we’re not trying to push it. We’re not trying to push it away, we’re not trying to distract ourselves, which is so exhausting. We just let the mind do what the mind wants to do and focus on what we have control over, which are always our behaviors. No matter how bad things are, no matter how difficult they are, we can still move our body. We can do things that can make unpleasant wakefulness a bit more pleasant, and we can do things during the day, these don’t have to be huge things, but we can always do some things during the day that are aligned with our values and that just help us keep moving toward the kind of life we want to live, even when all this stuff is going on in our heads, even after we’ve had a difficult night.

And if we do that, not only does it help give us the opportunity to make the days and the nights a little bit better, but it also helps train the brain that maybe this wakefulness isn’t quite as much of a threat. Certainly not a physical threat, like a bear waiting for you under the covers because you’re making that wakefulness a little bit more pleasant by just doing something else instead of struggling. And then during the day, you’re still able to do some things that help you live the kind of life you want to live. And I think that’s all part of the journey that we have to go through in order to enjoy this long-term improvement where we just see that insomnia more in the rear-view mirror than something that’s controlling our lives.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yes, I agree. What also helped me in regards to just allowing the thoughts to come in it. I think I mentioned in the email I was trying a little bit of, during my relapse, I read about Acceptance Commitment Therapy, ACT. And I thought, “Okay, I’m just…” It really made sense to me, like letting the thoughts come in and come out and being mindful. But I also think that it led to a little bit more of a struggle for me because I thought, “You know what? I’m just going to lay here in bed instead of get up, because that’s what normal sleepers do.”

And it didn’t work for me. I liked the concept of being mindful and letting the thoughts come and just letting them come in, but I needed the structure of the sleep window, a real sleep window. I liked the discipline of that. For me, that was very important. So both together, I think combined helped me. And I think just letting go of the sleep window was probably a really bad thing for me that I was starting to let go of it, because I would spend long periods of time in bed too, I forgot to mention that. And I was that person nine, 10 hours, just sleep in till whenever. And I wasn’t even sleeping, just to catch up, but that didn’t help. So the structure really helps me. Structure.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit more about the kind of changes that you made when we were working together or after, because it was a while ago that we were actually working together, so there’s been a lot that’s happened in the intervening period. And one of the first changes that we talked about was what are your thoughts on spending a little bit less time in bed? Because the temptation always tends to be, “I really want sleep to happen, so if I spend more time in bed I’m giving myself the opportunity for sleep to happen.” But often this can kind of backfire on us and just lead to more time awake at night, which is one of the things that we recognize as being an unpleasant part of having insomnia.

So how about you tell us a little bit more about your experience there. You already mentioned that you were spending a lot of time in bed. How did you reduce that? Why did you reduce it? And how did you find that experience?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

That was a very difficult part of the program for me, just reducing the time in bed. So normally I wasn’t affected by the going to sleep time. I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, I had to stay up until one.” That was not a problem for me because I like the night, I’m a little bit of a night owl. So my sleep window wasn’t incredibly late, started at about midnight, 12:30. But because I was spending so much time in bed, I don’t work mornings and I have structured my life that way, that’s one way insomnia has affected my life, it’s like no more morning activities. Instead of nighttime activities, for me, it’s morning. So I was going from a 12:00 to 9:00, 10:00 AM window to a shorter window. And even seven hours seemed pretty scary to me. I know some people start out with even less. So mine was like seven hours, 7:15. And it was very scary and I was unable to follow it for a while.

So I would some days, and then if I had a bad night the next day I would sleep through my sleep window maybe over an hour. And then I would just beat myself up. In the beginning when I was working with you, I would beat myself up and just be so critical of myself like, “Yeah, you can’t do this. You’re a trainer and you’re telling other people to do things.” But it also gave me compassion for myself and for my clients because I know what they’re going through in a way. Even though I don’t have weight issues, I have this issue that’s so hard, it was so, so hard for me to stick to the program. So I have so much more compassion now for my clients, which has been great. But the sleep window was definitely very challenging. And you recommended something that was very helpful. And when I would hear like, “Oh, you have to get up and get out of bed 7:00 AM.” That was daunting. I feel like a zombie. Sometimes I actually feel sick from lack of sleep.

But then you said, “You don’t have to make it this event. You don’t have to get up and do a five-mile run. You can get up and sit on the cozy couch with your blanket, with your cup of coffee or whatever, and start your morning out that way.” So that’s what I started to do. I remembered that. So just started to pull myself out of bed, not beat myself up if I slept in a little bit, 30 minutes, that’s okay. I would just get myself up. And I did what you mentioned, just start my day really slow. And slowly but surely I started to feel better in the morning, because I had a lot of nausea in the morning, whether it was from actual lack of sleep or I think it was more of my reaction to it. Of course, we all feel a little not so well after a poor night of sleep, but the way I felt was just I wasn’t able to eat sometimes, but that started to get a little bit better.

And then I actually just started just jotting. I wanted to let go of the charting. I didn’t like that because I don’t think that was helpful for me because I’m already a little bit of an obsessive person, but I would journal about just how I felt that day and the little improvements I was making. Like, “Oh, today I didn’t feel like… I was able to eat within an hour of waking up. That’s an improvement.” So I just started thinking about, instead of looking at all these negative things that were going on, I just started tracking my improvements. What has improved today and what have I continued to do during even some of the bad times? And nothing in my life really fell apart, so I think that was really helpful, just slow start to the morning, have just journaling my successes, because somebody else, I think this was another person, because I had spoke to many, many people over the years, that was just a snippet.

Like over the 13 years I had it, I saw quite a few sleep doctors and somebody recommended, “Oh, maybe you should schedule an exercise class in the morning, some things like maybe yoga or something.” I’m like, “That sounds horrible for me to get out the door. I mean, even if it’s yoga, that sounds horrible. So no.” And of course, I never took the yoga class in the morning because that just wasn’t going to work for me. And so this suggestion really helped and I still do it that way, not get up. And I never really was, even as an athlete in college, we had 6:00 AM practices. I was never, “Oh, I can’t wait to get off.” I was just slow as molasses in the morning, but my roommate loved mornings. So we’re all wired differently. It’s so interesting. But yeah, I’m still slow in the morning and that’s okay for me.

Martin Reed:

Well, I think I’m the founding member of that club. I’m the slowest person in the morning. I’m terrible. So it’s just how we’re wired. Some of us are wired like that. And I think that’s another one of those traps that we can easily fall into as well when we’re struggling with sleep is when we wake up and we are feeling kind of lethargic and groggy, we can assume that that’s a complete reflection of how we slept. If I feel pretty groggy and pretty out of it, then that must be because I had a really difficult night. And it definitely could be, but I know from my own experience, and it sounds from your own experience that a lot of us, we just feel crappy in the morning no matter what. And what can just be so helpful is just getting up, just getting the day started, even if we started really slowly, just getting it started, just getting life going that day.

And often we start to feel differently as the day progresses in response to the time, what we’re doing, where we are, and stuff like that. I mean, I like to think that when I first wake in the morning, that’s the low point of the day, that’s the crappies I’m going to feel all day long most of the time, so I’ve got a big improvement to look forward to as the day progresses. And I think that’s where just getting out of bed around the same time every day can be helpful because often just lingering in the bed doesn’t usually help shake off all those difficult, that fatigue, that grogginess, but kind of moving, getting the day started no matter how slowly, often can be more helpful. And it’s another one of those things too, where we are not chasing off to sleep because we are getting out of bed around the same time.

And we don’t have to be super strict. Like you said, maybe one day we fancy like an hour lying or a half an hour lying. That’s fine, we’re human beings. But just getting out of bed around the same time, we are not chasing off to sleep, we are not saying to the brain, “Look, I got to get sleep, I’ve got to get sleep because being awake is a real danger. You need to protect me from this danger, be really alert at night to protect me from being awake, we’ve got to get sleep.” And when we’re out of bed, we tend to be moving around, engage. We are more likely to be engaged and doing the kind of stuff that’s important to us. And that’s really what life comes down to. Life comes with pain, and struggle, and difficulty. Life is what we do when we’re awake. It’s all the actions that we are engaged in.

So as long as we can just continue to do things that are aligned with our values, that are important and meaningful to us, even with all that difficult stuff going on, that’s really all that matters. In a hundred years, we are not going to look back on all the great nights of sleep we had. We’re going to be looking back on all the things we did when we were awake, even when we felt crappy doing them.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yes, absolutely.

Martin Reed:

Just the fact that we were doing them, I think that’s really important.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yes, it is. And I think it’s so easy to forget when you’re going through a long bout of insomnia or a short bout of insomnia, we forget that, and I think a lot of insomniacs tend to be perfectionists and they want everything perfect all the time. And for me, I know that I got into this mindset that I had to feel perfect all the time. And I forgot how I used to, like when I was a teenager, of course there was nights when I didn’t sleep, but then I was always waking up at the same time every day to go to school. And I think that’s why I just kept that good sleep pattern. And even in college, I think back, I was living in Chicago, I was tired all the time just being from being an athlete. We weren’t practicing twice a day, school, I worked. I remember just falling asleep sometimes on the train on the L, and I would end up at a different stop completely outside of my dorm because I was just so tired.

But I didn’t think about it, I didn’t sweat it, I wasn’t freaking out about it. It’s just life comes with lots of ups and downs. So yeah, I think when you’re in the crux of it, you just think, “This is not how I should feel.” And in reality, yeah, there’s going to be some days that won’t be so great, but really what are you doing during the day? Are you having joyful moments? And really, most of the time, like you just said, the mornings are the worst times of my day. But even on those nights I only slept a couple hours, by the evening time I’m tired, but I’m actually feeling okay. And I would always remember that, I reminded myself of that on those bad mornings like, “Jeannette, by seven o’clock tonight, you’re going to be feeling fine. Just let’s get through this day, stay calm, stay relaxed. Yeah, it’ll be okay.” So it’s just so crazy how we just can forget and want to just have this perfect little sleep in life and it doesn’t exist.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. And I think it’s really important to recognize like you just said, just to look back on all the important stuff we’ve done in our life. Probably none of those things happened without any kind of pain or struggle or difficulty because that’s what life is. Life comes with all that difficult stuff along with the good stuff. And it’s hard to achieve the good stuff without also experiencing the difficult stuff. So for example, if we’re studying, if we go to college, or maybe we’re still at high school and we are doing all that study and we’re feeling exhausted by it, that struggle.

If we are training to be an athlete, you’re putting your body through all of that training, you’re feeling fatigued, but you recognize that in order to reach the level you want to reach to live the kind of life you want to live to reach your goals, there’s going to be that fatigue. It’s not all going to be plain saying. There’s going to be difficulty, there’s going to be struggle. And if you’re training for a marathon, I’m sure you’re going to be getting blisters, maybe some pulled muscles. There’s going to be pain.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yeah.

Martin Reed:

Right? There’s going to be pain in order to reach what you want to reach. For us to live a life that’s aligned with our values, pain comes with it, but that pain is necessary to serve our values, to help us live that life that we want to live. And I think it can be helpful to just recognize that because it’s so easy to fall into that trap and just wanting to feel good all of the time, to want to have the best night of sleep every single night, but that just doesn’t happen. And I think opening ourselves up to be more willing to accept or to just experience the difficult nights, to experience difficult feelings, to experience difficult emotions and thoughts, just opening ourselves up to allowing that to happen and realizing that that stuff can all happen at the same time as we are doing what matters. We are doing stuff that helps us live the kind of life we want to live. I think that can be really important to just reflect on and to recognize.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

I agree. Absolutely.

Martin Reed:

So we talked about the sleep window, we’ve talked quite a lot about everything that goes on in the mind when we’re going through this. You also touched upon how to respond when you’re struggling during the night. And for you, it sounds like you found it helpful to practice getting out of bed during the night if it just wasn’t pleasant to be in bed and sleep wasn’t happening. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Sure.

Martin Reed:

Before you made any changes, were you one of those people that would you stay in bed tossing and turning, trying to make sleep happen? And how did you get to a point where you thought, “Oh, maybe I could change this and do something different instead”?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yeah, I was one of those people who struggled with getting out of bed. I tossed and turned pretty much all night, except for my frequent trips to the bathroom. For some reason that was just, I think, anxiety-driven. I really didn’t have to go, but I would just go to the bathroom, get back in bed, toss and turn more. And then sometimes I would fall asleep, but I never was able to fully commit to just getting out of bed. Then it’s funny because I have a friend who doesn’t sleep well, and it’s sad because he is very stuck in this, I’ve tried everything and he said something, he’s like, “Oh my gosh, my bed, it looks like a mess in the morning. The sheets are off, the bedliners, everything is messed up.” And in my head I was like, “Oh my gosh, I was doing exactly what you’re doing and I know the reason why he’s not getting better.”

And then after that conversation with him and then a couple more podcasts or interviews with people, I realized, “Okay, I really need to give this a shot. I think it’s not helping me because I’m ending up with sore, achy muscles anyway.” I really started to get real serious with myself and say, “If you don’t try something, if you don’t do something, this is going to be your life for the rest of your life.” Because I think I was, and I am still, disciplined. This is one area of my life where I feel like I lost discipline. I couldn’t just do this, so I just had some real good talks with myself just like I would before a race or something like, “You know what? This is something you have to do. You can do this, strong.”

And it was just a lot of positive self-talk like, “Come on Jeannette, let’s go. Get up, let’s do this.” So for me, it was just realizing that I really had no other choice If I wanted to get better, that laying in bed was not serving me. It was making me more anxious, more irritable, more sore, sweating. I felt like I was having hot flashes. I’m like, “I’m going through perimenopause.” That wasn’t it. It was just anxiety. So just with being able to reason, again, my journaling, I was able to start making those changes in the middle of the night, but I didn’t get up and read a book. That was never something that felt good or I never was one to get up and watch TV. I didn’t want to do anything that was just too much effort for me.

So for me, it was just stretching, laying on the ground, getting up. I actually got up, but I would come to my couch and then just sit on my couch or sometimes just listen to a YouTube station that has an image with rain or just something very relaxing, but not in an effort to fall back to sleep, just to stay calm. So I started doing that, just started removing myself from the bed, either stretch or just sit somewhere else, but I wasn’t necessarily doing anything. And that felt good to me, that did feel good to me. And eventually I did have a big fear of my bed for a long time, actually. I slept on this good old couch for a long time. So at that point I was going back to the bed though, and it all started just slowly but surely, but it took time.

Again, this is not something that worked for me in five days, it took weeks and weeks, and I feel like haven’t lost the fear completely of getting up in the middle of the night, like I’m still sometimes like, “Okay, I’m up.” But I know I’ll get there, to the point where I no longer even think about it. It’s just a blip and then I go back to sleep. So it is a process.

Martin Reed:

Yeah, it is. And I think that’s one reason why it’s so easy to fall back into all these old safety behaviors that we know from experience aren’t helpful over the long term, but they tend to give us that short-term relief, whether it’s medication, marijuana, alcohol, or anything, any kind of external thing, because those things promise quick fixes. And maybe in the short term they might help that way, but we just end up kicking the can down the road, we know it’s just going to come back sooner or later. Whereas this stuff, changing our behaviors, the stuff that we can control, it takes practice and it takes time, it takes a lot more effort, a lot more discipline, a lot more commitment. There’s going to be blips along the way, there’s going to be struggle, but I think it is one of the best things we can do if our goal is to do better over the long term, because really like we touched upon earlier, insomnia is just… It exists because of all the effort, all the things we are doing to try and make sleep happen, to try and avoid that wakefulness.

If instead we can do the opposite. So for example, with the sleep window allotting less time for sleep, what are we doing? Ultimately, we’re just preventing ourselves from chasing after sleep. So that’s a big sleep effort dropped right there just by giving ourselves an earliest possible bedtime and a consistent out of bedtime in the morning. Now we’re not chasing sleep and the process of getting out of bed during the night, I often get asked, “Isn’t that in itself a sleep effort?” I think it’s the opposite of a sleep effort because if we’re getting out of bed, we’re not going to fall asleep at that moment as the physical act of getting out of bed. Again, what are we doing really? We’re just not chasing sleep, we are not putting effort into sleep. So if we’re in bed and being in bed doesn’t feel good, we are just going to do something that’s going to make being awake more pleasant.

So we are not putting all that effort into sleep, we’re not struggling to get entangled up with our thoughts, and our feelings, and our emotions. We’re just going to do something to make being awake more pleasant. And again, not only are we not chasing after sleep, if we are able to do something more pleasant, the brain’s like, “Wait a minute, I thought wakefulness was this physical threat or this danger. How can that be if now this wakefulness is starting to feel a little bit more pleasant than it used to?” And so we chip away at it. And like you said, it’s not something that works within 48 hours or in three days, or necessarily within a week or two. Often it takes a lot of commitment to just avoid falling into that trap of trying to make sleep happen, trying not to think something, trying not to feel something, and just focusing on what we can control. But what we can control won’t necessarily give us immediate relief, but it’s usually more helpful over the long term.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

I agree, I absolutely agree. I’m a testament to it. Yeah, it takes time. It does.

Martin Reed:

So before I move on, I did just want to ask you about dealing with those ups and downs, because they always happen, everyone has difficult nights as we live life, but were there any other changes that you made either when we were working together or since then that you found to be helpful that maybe we haven’t discussed or mentioned yet?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Another change I made, it wasn’t necessarily a change, but I dived into, and this may not help other people, but it was really important for me to hear other people’s stories and to know that what I was doing was going to help me because for some reason I just had a hard time believing that this was going to work for me, or that after a week if it didn’t work, I would start to lose hope. So I just started adding more information. Again, my brain, I needed to hear it from other people that went through years of insomnia that this helped them. So I started just listening to more of the interviews and I just started to relax even during the day and do more during the day, I dived into workouts again. So before when I didn’t feel that great, I would skip my workout.

And that was also a huge thing for me, catastrophize like, “Oh, am I going to lose my job because I’m going to become overweight?” Whatever, it was just horrible thoughts. But then I just started to really just live my life normally, which means doing my workout that I had scheduled, even if it didn’t… Some days it wouldn’t feel as good or I couldn’t lift as heavy or whatnot, but I still committed to that. And I just started living more, going out with people. Even when I felt dead tired, normally I would’ve canceled. I would even cancel a phone call because I just didn’t have the energy like, “Oh, I’m just too tired for it.” And I stopped doing all that stuff. I started living my life more true to how I wanted to live it.

And little by little I started journaling that too like, “Well, I did all my workouts this week.” And then I would really reflect on all the new things I started to add to my life, which is just going out to dinners with friends. For me, going out at night, I wasn’t afraid of it because I need to get back home because my bedtime was already pretty late. It was just more, “Do I have the energy to do this? I just feel so crappy or whatever.” And in reality, when I went out with that person, I always felt better, I was able to shake off the fatigue and have a good time. So I think little by little, just living life started to add up for me. And also being mindful of the days. That was something that I picked up too, is just being mindful on those days I wasn’t feeling my best. And also being kinder to myself, I started being kinder. That’s something I did.

Whereas I was really abusive before. I would just constantly in my head, “I’m a failure, I can’t do this, why can’t I do this? Other people have done this.” And I just decided to stop it, just be kind on those days. “Okay, so you didn’t wake up on time. All right. So you didn’t have a great night. How do you feel?” I just checked in with myself a little bit more and that was really helpful, that was really helpful for me. Just checking in during the day. I’m just doing more living.

Martin Reed:

Yeah, I think all of that is so, so important, and especially the thing that we often miss is just to be kind to ourselves, because what we are going through is difficult, and I think we can be really supportive to other people when they’re going through struggle, but when it comes to ourselves, often that all flies out the window and we are really mean to ourselves.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Oh yeah.

Martin Reed:

“I shouldn’t be feeling this way, or I should have done better at that.” But the truth is, we are human beings. We have good times, we have difficult times, and I think it’s helpful to recognize that and to be kind to ourselves. It’s very easy to forget that and I think it does play a really important role in the healing process because if we are just going to be angry at ourselves or disparaging to ourselves because we’re struggling with something, it puts more pressure on us to do better. And often, that thing we’re trying to do better at is something we can’t even control. And yet we’re so hard on ourselves when what happens isn’t aligned with what we want to happen. So yeah, I’m really glad that you mentioned that as something that you found to be helpful, just being kinder to yourself.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yes, it’s so important, it’s monumental, especially for those who are critical. Yeah.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. So as I said, I just wanted to quickly touch upon the ups and downs that happen because I think it is important to recognize that there’s always going to be difficult nights from time to time. There’s no such thing as a life without difficult nights, just as there’s no such thing as a life without pain and struggle. What I usually find, just in my experience working with people with chronic insomnia is when that first bout of sleep disruption comes back, it’s the most difficult because all those old thoughts, feelings, worries, come back. And often we are tempted to engage in all those old safety behaviors and rituals that aren’t usually that helpful over the long term. Then perhaps we get through it, then perhaps the sleep disruption comes back later on. And it’s still disruptive, still something we don’t want to happen, but maybe it has a bit of less of an effect on us then we do well than something else happens.

So I’m curious to just hear your thoughts. Did you find that you followed a pattern that worked a bit like that?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yeah, so when I would relapse, it was always fairly scary to me, but this last relapse I think was the scariest for some reason. And even though I had gone through this so many times before and insomnia wasn’t new to me, and I knew most people’s insomnia are the same and there’s not really many special cases out there, but for some reason it really freaked me out. And worse than before, like all my other relapses, I was able to get out of them, but because I was only getting a couple hours of sleep, I really felt more desperate than ever to find out what was going on with me. But as soon as I realized, I think how I came to the realization that it was pretty much the same as any other relapse that I’ve had was again, through the education.

It was really important for me just to become, I went back because I have a lot of books on insomnia, and I just kind of reeducated myself on things I already knew, things I had already read. And I think sometimes when you’re struggling with something that’s so just kind of embedded in your brain, it’s very hard to get out of it. But for me, just continuing to work on just the thoughts around the fact that, “I am not different, I am the same as all these other people, this is not a different type of relapse, you’re going to get better.” That was helpful to me. And it wasn’t like I did anything too different. It was more just educating myself again. I didn’t try any new techniques or anything, it was just more of the education like, “Okay. All right, this person recovered. Oh, this is why this is happening. I’m hyper aroused.” That word, I just kept remembering that word.

“This is hyper arousal. This is nothing more than that. You’re aware that you’re awake and now because of this awareness, your brain’s trying to protect you.” So just understanding logically what was going on was helpful for this last relapse. I think before, I didn’t quite get into the education as much as I did this last time, and it did help. It really did. All of the interviews are so helpful. I want to shake every person’s hand who’s done an interview because each one has something like a snippet, and at some point you have to let them go too. You can’t just listen to videos all day long for the rest of your life, but I think as long as it’s helping, and I didn’t see anything wrong with that, so for me that was education.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. And the education can be such a huge component because it just strips away any mystery, all those question marks, because insomnia can feel really mysterious and we really caught up in a struggle like, “Why is this happening to me? Why were the nights once like this and now they’re like this?” For example, something I often hear is, “My trouble always used to be falling asleep, but now I can fall asleep okay, but I’m waking during the night. I’m finding it hard to fall back to sleep, whereas that was never the case.” It’s all the same thing, it’s all insomnia, it’s all down to that hyper arousal, just like you touched upon. It’s down to the brain looking out for us, it’s just trying to protect us from being awake at night.

All we can do is train it that it’s okay to be awake at night. And to do that, we have to be more willing to experience nighttime wakefulness. We can do that by making it a bit more pleasant when it doesn’t feel good and avoid all those sleep efforts, all those things that we might have been doing with the goal of creating sleep or creating sleepiness. They’re never usually helpful because we’re putting effort into sleep, and sleep doesn’t respond well to effort. And we are reinforcing this idea in our brain that wakefulness is a threat, that it has to be avoided, that, “Okay, brain, I’m tasking you with being alert at night to protect me from wakefulness.”

And so as soon as we’re engaged in those efforts, sleep becomes more difficult. So yeah, the education lifts that veil. And I think another big part of that education is giving ourselves the opportunity to continue doing things that are important to us, even when we’ve had difficult nights, just like you were talking about, because it reduces the kind of influence the sleep, wakefulness, or the difficult thoughts and feelings have over our lives. We’re not necessarily getting rid of them because these are things that we can’t control. The only thing we can control are our actions. So as long as we just continue to engage in actions that help us move toward the kind of life we want to live, all this difficult stuff has less of an influence over us.

I mean, it still doesn’t feel good, but there’s nothing we can do about that. We can’t make ourselves feel great, but what’s important is that we’re just doing stuff that matters, that’s important to us, even when all this difficult stuff is going on. And I think that’s really key to these long-term transformations like we are talking about here and that we have other guests talking about on the podcast.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

Yeah. It may not seem like it’s working at first, but it is. There’s things going on that are helping and we just have to remember that. I told clients, I’ve trained so many people over the years and many people with mind-body issues. And I tell them like, “I’m not a doctor, but these are the recommendations. You’re not going to feel the effects of drinking enough water for it may be months or eating better or your energy won’t improve right away, but trust me, it will happen.” And this is the stuff I tell my clients. I said, “But if you don’t start to do this, you’ll probably feel this way for the rest of your life.” And it’s the same thing with this program or insomnia. It may not seem like it’s working at first, but I had to remind myself, “It is working, just give it some time, keep doing the groundwork, laying the foundation.” And little by little your thought patterns do change, your mind does start to relax about sleep, and it just starts to improve little by little, day by day. And I feel like I’m still improving. Yeah.

Martin Reed:

Yeah, that’s great. I’m just, like you said, I think these discussions are so helpful and I’m really grateful that you came on to share your experience. So like you were saying, you just want to shake everyone else’s hand. You can shake your own hand too, because you’re on here too and your story is going to be really helpful to a lot of people, but there is still one question that I haven’t asked you yet, which I ask every guest, so I don’t want you to feel left out. And it’s this, if someone with chronic insomnia is listening, they feel that they’ve tried everything, that they’re just beyond help, there’s nothing they can do to improve their sleep, what would you tell them?

Jeannette Stojcevski:

I would tell them to hire a coach, number one if it’s something that you really feel like you’re struggling with. I did know about this stuff and just for some reason I just didn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it. So give it a real shot, really follow the protocol and give it a shot. And if it’s too hard like it was for me, hire somebody. It’s well worth every dollar spent because I have tried everything, maybe not everything, but thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands of dollars on things that didn’t work. Not one thing worked, not one pill, not one potion, nothing worked.

But this does work, and it’s worked for many people. So if it’s too difficult, if you just can’t seem to do it on your own, hire somebody, it’s the best investment you can make. And give it a real shot. Don’t just say, “Oh, that won’t work for me because I did that too.” But usually those people may not be doing it in the way like just give it a shot. That’s all I can say. It works, it really works. I’ve been through a lot with insomnia, and I feel so much better, and I’m just continuing to get better. So yeah, that’s what I have to say.

Martin Reed:

That’s great. Well, I think that’s a great note to end on, so thanks again, Jeannette-

Jeannette Stojcevski:

You’re welcome.

Martin Reed:

… for taking the time out to come on and share your story.

Jeannette Stojcevski:

My pleasure. Thank you.

Martin Reed:

Thanks for listening to the Insomnia Coach Podcast. If you’re ready to move away from struggling with insomnia and toward living the life you want to live, I would love to help. You can get started right now by enrolling in my online course or you can book my phone coaching package. My online course runs for six weeks. It will help you make changes that can create better conditions for sleep, it will help you identify and get rid of any behaviors that might be making sleep more difficult, and it will help you respond to insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it in a more workable way. You can work through the course in two ways. You can choose the self-coaching option and work through it by yourself with the support of an online forum that is available only to clients.

Martin Reed:

Or, you can choose to add one-on-one email coaching and work through the course with me by your side. With the one-on-one coaching option, you get unlimited email access to me for eight weeks, starting from the day you enroll. Any time you have a question or concern, any time you are unsure about anything, any time you want to focus on the challenges you face or any difficulties that show up, you can email me and I will be there to coach and support you. You can get the course and start right now at insomniacoach.com.

Martin Reed:

With the phone coaching package, we start with a one-hour call (voice only or video — your choice) and come up with an initial two-week plan that will help you create better conditions for sleep and practice moving away from struggling with insomnia and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that come with it. You get unlimited email access to me for two weeks after the call and a half-hour follow-up call at the end of the two weeks. You can book the phone coaching package at insomniacoach.com/phone.

Martin Reed:

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 can sleep.

Mentioned in this episode:

Podcast episode with Michelle talking about things going on “behind the scenes”

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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