Talking insomnia #81: How Grace left the darkest moments of her life behind.
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- Опубликовано: 1 дек 2021
- Grace had always been the classical type A person. A high achiever, and athlete and perfectionist. After two sleepless nights in April 2021, she found herself desperately trying to understand what was happening. Soon after she experienced the darkest moments of her life, a period of obsession and frustration and hopelessness. Everything changed after a phone call with Jim. Now she guests the channel to share her story.
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Set it & Forget it by Daniel Erichsen
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This is Natto by Daniel Erichsen
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Not sure where to start? Check out these playlists!
This is natto - the perfect place to start learning!
• This is Natto - Start ...
Success stories - if you need hope and inspiration, this is for you.
• Success stories
Insomnia insight - a list of every single episode.
• Playlist
Talking insomnia - guests with trouble sleeping or experts share their stories / tips.
• Talking insomnia
Hypnic jerks, hypnic awareness and other common issues.
• Hypnic jerks and more.
Fatal insomnia - for those concerned about ffi and sfi.
• Familial and sporadic ...
Speed bumps - when you think you had a setback or “relapse.”
• Talking insomnia #55: ...
The self coaching model
• The model
Best!
This content does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or other qualified healthcare providers. 
Развлечения
“There’s a healing process.”
Best quote in the interview.
Hi Daniel,
I've struggled with insomnia at a few points in my adult life (Set it and Forget it helped immensely) but for the past few years have had no problem falling asleep (I love my bedtime) but still struggle with early awakening. Often I get close to sleeping my full 6.5 hours sleep window and probably average around 6 hours month to month. However, I still know I could use more sleep because it's tough to stay awake during a lecture, while reading a book during the day, and I sometimes become drowsy when driving in the afternoon. I do work a busy occupation that can be quite stressful *some* days but I rarely have trouble falling asleep at night even on those stressful days (if I do have trouble those days it seems I awaken after briefly falling asleep...but eventually I fall asleep again).
So my questions: Do my early awakenings after give or take 6 hours of sleep sound like hyperarousal...or sleep disruption from general stress? Is it even possible to differentiate?
Hi zs!
Thanks for asking and for the support!
This is a very common situation: the struggle to fall asleep isn’t there but you still wake up earlier than you’d like.
When you experience this, here are some helpful things to think about!
Firstly, this is what we call a final hurdle. And that’s big! You have abandoned the struggle and the one thing remaining is that you’re still trying to figure out how to sleep a little longer. You’ve let go of almost all effort and you’re close to where you want to be! So the first thing to do is to congratulate yourself 😊
Secondly, it can seem like you’ve achieved falling asleep by doing something, and now you just have to figure out what to do with this last hurdle. In reality, it’s not at all like this. You have become more ok with uncertainty, less responsive, and this has naturally led to sleep happening easier on its own (which it does when we abandon trying to control it). And it’s the same that will help you now.
When you see that you’ve gotten here not because you overcame hurdles or got them out of your way, but because you stopped trying to jump over them or move them, that’s when you see that what brought you here will lead you where you want to be!
This is a final invitation to let go 😊
And you know, hyperarousal can come from the perceived threat or from some stress, but it really doesn’t matter, it’s really always when we let it be, when we don’t count how much we sleep or try to achieve more, that’s when things get really peaceful!
Hi Daniel,
A question for you.
I had severe insomnia for 8 months after a covid infection, a bereavement and a whole lot of associated trauma. It's been so intense that I had weeks with literally zero sleep, I started hallucinating and became severely depersonalised.
Now a few months later, and taking some meds, and reading your book I at least sleep between 3-5 h a night but it's still fragmented.
Even now that I am slowly starting to sleep better I am still drowsy all day long. Is that normal, does it take weeks/months to recover from stuff like this? Actually now that i am sleeping a tiny bit more, I think i feel even more tired...I could really use some encouragement and next steps. Wish you would do 1:1 sessions 😭
Also I feel so sleepy and exhausted all day but I can't even nap. Its all very bizarre.
Hi Vanessa,
Thanks for being here. I can tell this was a very intense struggle and I’m happy things I’ve gotten a little easier. And you know before I forget, there is an episode on depersonalization, episode 392 that could help. I’m this episode I talk with Coach Michelle, and she does 1:1 zoom sessions in case you’d like to talk to her.
Now what I thought as I was reading this was, there is something that so often explains this ongoing drowsiness and feeling not refreshed.
Let’s learn about this.
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There are in principle two forms of fatigue. One is the straightforward feeling of fatigue that you have when you have run a half marathon. It behaves in a very predictable way.
You rest, you sit down, you don’t do much, and you feel rested!
Then we have the type of fatigue that behaves more like an emotion. You can think of it as emotional fatigue. It’s a heavy feeling that comes from deep within. And this is very common when you have trouble sleeping. This is feeling drained and exhausted as if you have no energy. It’s often coupled with frustration and sadness and exhaustion.
Now here’s the thing - emotional fatigue comes from the struggle, it comes from having tried and tried and tried to do something and feeling like you’ve failed repeatedly. Like there’s no way out, that things are hopeless. This struggle is the source of the exhaustion.
Now three things here are important. Firstly, seeing that the thing you couldn’t achieve, sleep, is impossible for all humans to achieve! Nobody has control over this. So there’s really no reason to criticize oneself.
Secondly, it can be confusing because it seems like the reason for the fatigue is that you slept little. And surely this plays some role, but think of a time when you stayed up all night because you had fun. There’s no or little fatigue the next day, because there was no struggle! This is so helpful to see because we can get into this loop where we think we need to sleep more to feel less tired. Which creates pressure to sleep.
Finally, as the name implies this fatigue acts like an emotion!
If we think of another emotion like feeling anxious, then the more you want to feel calm and the more you try to make yourself less anxious, the more anxiety you end up having!
And this is how the emotion fatigue behaves as well. The more you try to figure out why you are so tired, the more you think you are disproportionately tired or “too” tired and that something is wrong with you, the more you want it to go away the more sticky it becomes!
On the other hand, when you recognize that you are tired but you don’t think that you shouldn’t be, because you know where the fatigue comes from, and you also allow yourself to be tired then things will change.
Because just like when you were no longer trying to make yourself calm you experience less anxiety, when you’re no longer pushing yourself or doing things to be less tired, when you sit with it without judgement, you experience that emotion less and less.
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Hope this helped Vanessa, let us know how things go
@@thesleepcoachschool8192
Daniel, thank you for that very comprehensive reply I truly appreciate it.
I listened to the episode and a lot of it resonated with me. Same as Michelle, I have started incorporating things into life again but I feel like it's overshadowed by the severe exhaustion. Do all these things you said apply for adrenal fatigue because I am sure this is what this is.
I would love to learn not to fight anymore. I feel like once I start to let go of one issue, I obsess and fight over the next one. Letting the tiredness be all sounds good, but I feel like I have to fight it so I can stay alert for my job 🥺 its this vicious cycle I find it hard to get out of.
Plus I am on medication and I never know how much this influences all of the other variables.
I’m so glad it resonated 🙂 thanks for taking the time to tune in. And you know, I think what we teach here about self kindness and acceptance, it applies to so many things in life. If we look at adrenal fatigue for example, we can say that there’s an emotional component that often is really what matters most. Meaning, if we take away the problem solving, the attempt to find why we are feeling a certain way, the experiments to feel differently, the monitoring to see if the experiments work, the hopeless and self criticism when we feel we can’t get anywhere - if we remove this, then what would be left? Maybe without this we would feel really well?
Also, what you say about the brain finding a new focus, this is very common.
Here’s some teaching around this:
It is actually pretty common that as you start doing better when it comes to sleep, the brain starts focusing on something else. Sometimes it is tinnitus, sometimes it is restless legs, sometimes it is some other health concerns.
And it is not difficult to see why this happens. The brain is a survival machine. It is always out there to keep you safe . It's built to problem solve and look out for threats. When you learn that for example being awake at night is no real threat, the brain often has been very active, and it looks for something else that may be a threat.
This is why as you start sleeping better, the brain can find other things to “keep you safe from”.
What puts you in a good place though is that you have already seen how when you are willing to experience something that is not comfortable without trying to escape, it bothers you less and less.
If you had been not willing at all to be awake at night or to be more willing to experience this, then you would not have been sleeping better. That is absolutely certain.
So the way to be less bothered by other things that come from the brain trying to keep you safe is to deploy the same counterintuitive approach of friendship.
Be willing to experience it. Take note of it. Understand that this too comes from a place of confusion in the safety minded brain. Resist the urge to Google and research. Be kind to yourself and don’t judge yourself.
And you’ll see that this is very true: when you are willing to experience X, you become less and less bothered by X.
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Hope this helps Vanessa!
Hello. How do you sleep after a traumatic event. My daughter had an emergency event I'm her apartment building about 10 days ago. She personally evacuated all 20 apartments in her 3 story building. The building is safe again. The police said no further threats. But now she wakes up every half hour and has not had any deep sleep in the last 10 days and it is taking a toll. Do you have any advice? Thank you ever so much!!
Hi!
So glad the building is safe and and there are no threats. And you know, this is such a common story of how trouble sleeping can start. There’s a stressful event that naturally creates more wakefulness at night. But then, in this state of some fear, the brain identifies a new threat - not sleeping. Now the brain starts monitoring how much we sleep and don’t sleep and tries to find a way to sleep again, and this, the problem solving now becomes the reason for trouble sleeping.
And the more we problem solve and experiment and try to find a way to sleep, the more trouble sleeping there is.
So yes I think they key really is to understand this and then abandon attempts at sleeping, then sleep happens all by itself. And it’s so helpful that this hasn’t been happening for months or longer like for so many in this community. Because when the idea that something is wrong with us has been there for a long time has been there for a long time, it can be trickier to see this change.
I think if you direct her to these two playlists, this will help a lot!
This is natto - the perfect place to start learning!
ruclips.net/p/PL6RQ1GS7B1cik8Xr8iVdxmKB9FYieevYj
Success stories - if you need hope and inspiration, this is for you.
ruclips.net/p/PL6RQ1GS7B1cj68v9hdoXYv_fpOR65oI3U
Hi Daniel, unrelated question. :) I’m studying the gas and brake model some more. You mention that when there are things we are doing to try and sleep, they aren’t reducing hyperarousal levels and that it’s that it’s changing our thoughts about whatever we are taking (placebo effect). You used a hot bath in the example. Wouldn’t a hot bath help relax you which relaxes your mind and decreases hyperarousal levels? Thanks :)
Hi! That’s great I think it’s super useful 👍 and yes, we can call it placebo effect but I think it’s even more helpful to think of it as delegating. When we do something and the thought becomes “I’ve done this now I don’t have to do anything in order to sleep” then we have delegated the work, there’s no trying to achieve sleep and sleep happens. This applies to the bath, if the intent is to achieve sleep, then yes there can be some hyperarousal and struggle. If there’s no intent other than to just enjoy a bath - no problem!
@@thesleepcoachschool8192 Hey Daniel. I would like to get your thoughts on my problem.
I definitely recognize this struggle in myself, every night I lay in my bed with my laptop with night mode on, watching videos until I just fall asleep. Of course sometimes this fails since I AM TRYING TO sleep this way, so I get hyperaroused. Now my question is, how do I stop interpretting this as a way to sleep, so that the intent is gone. I don't want to simply just stop doing it, since I actually really like it.
Also do you have any tips/videos on how to stop catastrophizing when you can't sleep? I know that you can't control sleep, it's something that just happens, but this fact doesn't help sometimes.
Thanks in advance!
Hi DRAEM,
Thanks for being here and for these questions. First so I don’t forget it, check episode 363 for some thoughts on catastrophizing.
Now the other thing here, I think there’s nothing further to do, you already have the awareness.
Let’s take a deeper look:
Sleep efforts don’t have any direct impact on sleep. For example drinking some herbal tea at night in itself won’t make you sleep more or less. But how you think about drinking herbal tea at night, that has a big impact!
Let’s say you drink some tea at night and you’re thinking “I hope this will make me sleep”, well then that thought creates preoccupation and attention towards sleep. It creates a sort of pressure to sleep that keeps you from sleeping well. This creates frustration.
Or, you think “I hope this makes me sleep” and you actually feel reassured now that you have this herbal tea and you end up sleeping more. Well then that may seem like a good thing, but you have actually started to erode your sleep confidence. There is confusion. And with time, this will lead to more trouble and more efforts.
But you see, the herbal tea in itself is harmless! The tea doesn’t create frustration or confusion, it’s the thoughts that do!
And when you simply are aware of your thoughts, when you do something like avoid watching TV and you realize “aha, I was about to do a sleep effort!” you won’t have those thoughts that get you into trouble.
And now, you can actually just have some herbal tea if you feel like it!
I think of a sleep effort as a secret intent. The moment you know of a secret, it exists no more. And it’s the secrecy that’s the problem.
So when you see a sleep effort, then there’s no secret and it will be less and less likely (with more and more awareness) that you’ll have any struggle from it. Because once you know something, it can’t become a secret again!
To contextualize this, I think if you watch some videos until you fall asleep because you like this, and once you see this idea “what if it doesn’t work” then you can just acknowledge this. “Aha, there was some effort forming there, I saw it.” And that’s all.
@@thesleepcoachschool8192 Thank you very much!
And what if the intent is to keep you calm when you go to sleep, is it still something to avoid then?
For example drinking the herbal tea to calm down or sleeping with a cuddly toy etc...
Hi Daniel. I had an idea that might help. I came up with using the principle of "I'm recovering anyway." When you're in that position of agonising over the "best" thing to do in a situation - whether to drink this tea or not, what to do if you wake in the middle of the night, what to do when you're on holiday, etc., using "I'm recovering anyway" can help you unhook the decision making from sleep-related issues and over time will make you less sensitized (as Claire Weekes would call it) to sleep.
Andrew
Hi Daniel,
I’m studying the perceived threat model and have a question.
When the brain identifies wakefulness as a threat. Is it….
a) Identifying wakefulness as the actual threat or
b) Identifying that there is some kind of threat out there because if you aren’t sleeping much and have hyperarousal, that must mean there is a grizzly bear nearby or wolves or whatever, so you are having superficial sleep?
Thanks :)
Hi!
I see it as a), however b) is like a perfect description of someone who hasn’t seen what’s the grizzly bear is (being awake!)
@@thesleepcoachschool8192 awesome thanks. :) Now I'm curious how "b" happens in your scenario?
Anytime! And you know I think b is like so very natural.
Let’s say someone has an exam and sleep little the night before. Then they take note of this and say, wait a minute, I shouldn’t have slept that little… maybe something is wrong…
Then there it is, that’s the idea that there’s some threat out there…and when this idea is present, it leads to some hyperarousal and less sleep, the idea becomes more manifest.. this is how I see b!
What was the app mentioned???
Hi! It’s BedTyme
@@thesleepcoachschool8192 thank you Daniel!!!!:)
@@thesleepcoachschool8192 i dont see it in my app store. Is it not compatible with androids ? Thanks again Daniel!
Very Good Video with Grace!!
Hi Daniel my name is Sal and for the past almost 2 Months have been struggling with Insomnia I guess you can say.
So my story goes, About over 2 years ago I went through 6 months of Bad Insomnia. I did not know all the info I know now but the funny thing is that I got over it on my Own. Lots of things were going on in my life then with changes. Moved out of my Ex Girls house and just staying at My own place etc that I just started sleeping better and better and soon kept on. For the next almost 3 years although I thought about it at night when I would get up to the restroom I would brush it if quick and sleep with no Prob
Well now out of one Bad night and the next night thinking about what I had went through before, it all started again. I have always had a problem with getting up to the restroom several times a night and just by me thinking about it that I won’t go to sleep anymore it happens. Usually now I’m waking up the last time to the bathroom like at 4:30-5:00AM and mostly can’t sleep no more. I have never had a problem with falling asleep just waking up at the same time. I have always loved Sleep and fairly been a good sleeper and even though now that I understood how this Insomnia works I just can’t shake it. The days that I do sleep well instead of feeling good the next day cause I slept it’s like I’m Doubting if I will the coming night again. One Problem I do have is that I stay in Bed till about 8 even though I’ve been up for hours. I Doubt my Future now and have so many responsibilities that I need to be 100% can’t keep feeling like this with no energy or desire for anything. I know you say to accept it and continue on but it’s Hard when you feel the way you do from not sleeping.
Hi Sal,
I’m glad you found the channel, I think you’ll find much here that can really help. This is a bit tricky to reply to in the comments, but you can send this message to Open class or write shorter questions here in the comments 👍
www.thesleepcoachschool.com/have-questions
Hang in there and let us know how things go!