In 2019 Danny was going through a stressful period in his life while also being on a big health and fitness kick. When his sleep started to become a problem, Danny became very concerned and his doctor offered medication.
When Danny started to make some lifestyle changes to reduce stress, reduce the intensity of his training, and ensure he was eating sufficiently, his sleep started to improve. Danny felt relief, believing that he’d found the cure — that sleep needed a certain amount of exercise or a certain type of diet to happen.
As time went on, Danny found himself increasingly focused on protecting his sleep through diet and exercise. This, in turn, created a lot of sleep-related anxiety — and when really difficult nights returned in 2022, Danny realized that diet and exercise weren’t the guardians of his sleep after all. Looking for answers, Danny spent his days troubleshooting and trying to figure out a way forward.
Danny discovered that the key to getting his sleep back on track was to reduce the power and influence sleep had over his life. For sleep to be effortless, he needed to move away from putting effort into making a certain amount or type of sleep happen.
In this episode, Danny describes the approach he took. It involved committing to actions that mattered to him each day (no matter how small), independently of sleep. It involved identifying and eliminating sleep-related rules and rituals. It involved ensuring his actions served him rather than insomnia. It involved acknowledging all the difficult thoughts and feelings that came with insomnia and being kinder to himself when things were difficult rather than trying to fight or avoid them and being harder on himself.
This process wasn’t easy. It took commitment, resilience, and effort. It requires ongoing practice. Today, Danny’s sleep is back on track. And, when the occasional difficult night shows up, it no longer has any power or influence over him or the life he wants to live.
Click here for a full transcript of this episode.
Transcript
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, Danny, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast.
Danny: Of course. Thanks for having me.
Martin: Great to have you on. Let’s start right at the beginning as always. Can you tell us when your sleep problems first began and what you think might have caused those initial issues with sleep?
Danny: Sure. So, my first experience with insomnia was in 2019. And up until that point, I had never had any struggles with sleep whatsoever. In fact, I slept too much, frequently. And in 2019, I sort of got into a health and fitness kick. And it got a little too far. And there were other stressful things going on in my life at the time.
Danny: I had just bought a new condo, things were getting kind of stressful at work. I was commuting to and from I live in Maryland, so I was commuting to and from Baltimore and Annapolis. And it was just a stressful time. And on top of that, I was doing a crazy amount of exercise really. And I was also doing a a pretty restrictive diet with consideration to the amount of work I was doing.
Danny: I should have been eating a lot more. And I started to notice, you know, some physical symptoms from that. But the most distressing for me was when it started affecting my sleep. And I didn’t immediately put two and two together, and I didn’t realize that, you know, it was the diet and the overexercise that initially caused that sleep disruption.
Danny: I just knew, for whatever reason I couldn’t sleep like I used to. And, you know, I was waking up frequently in the night with temperature fluctuations I was struggling to get to sleep, I was also having disrupted sleep, and I remember the first time that it happened I had a huge emotional response to it because nothing like that had ever happened to me before.
Danny: I just never struggled with sleep in my life, and I remember I just had this big grandiose negative reaction to it. Immediately went to the doctor, and they couldn’t really tell me what was wrong. And their first inclination was to put me on some type of medication for it. And I didn’t want to do anything like Ambien, because I’d heard bad things about that.
Danny: Or specifically sleeping pills. But they put me on an antidepressant. I felt like that made things worse. They basically attributed all my sleep troubles to anxiety. And they weren’t entirely wrong, but I’ll, I’ll get into that. And they just kind of gave me this medication, and yeah, it didn’t improve.
Danny: So, it wasn’t until a couple weeks down the road that I started making some lifestyle changes and realizing, like, you know, stress might have been disrupting my sleep. I started to see some improvements, but I still think because I had that huge emotional reaction initially. Some of my sleep problems continued just because I’d become so hyper fixated on it and obsessive about it.
Danny: But in my head at the time, cause this was years ago once I started making those lifestyle changes, I basically. I started doing my own research just about, you know, overtraining syndrome and how much you should be eating when you’re working out. And I basically became super obsessive about that side of things.
Danny: And I basically associated all of my sleep problems with sleep. exercise and under eating. And when I saw improvements after making those lifestyle changes, I was like, Oh, I’ve discovered the answer. This is the cure. And over time, like the sleep did sort of resolve. I think there were other elements to that aside from just like relaxing a little bit and cutting back on the gym and eating more food.
Danny: For instance, I stumbled across some of your content during that time, and there were some techniques that I put into play. Like if I, if I didn’t sleep one night, I would carry about my day the next day as if nothing had really happened. But mostly I was blaming all of my sleep issues on that over exercise and under eating.
Danny: And because of that, I think after that initial bout of insomnia. I didn’t really free myself from it, if that makes sense. I sort of, like, it resolved itself to an extent, but there were certain things that I was still doing habitually that were, I guess, subconsciously trying to prevent this from ever happening again.
Danny: And it was, it was kind of like all diet related and all exercise related. And I feel like if I ever had a bad night of sleep after that first episode, I’d always immediately blame it on like, oh, well, it’s because you went for a run today and you did it at this time. And then you didn’t have enough food when you got home.
Danny: So it was because of that. And I was constantly just blaming, I basically demonized exercise and dieting for years. And then, I think, I want to say in like 2022, I started following this exercise dietician, and she was pretty intense, and I, I became like really overly enthralled by her content, and I just, They just contributed to my sort of obsessive habits.
Danny: So, for instance, I started, she said that milk contains, well, I, I obviously knew milk contains calcium, but she said calcium is one of the key nutrients you need for sleep. So, started drinking milk every night, like I was 10 years old again. And I was making sure that I was having a snack like every two and a half hours throughout the day.
Danny: Because if I ever had disrupted sleep, I was like, Oh, you might be having blood sugar dips. And she also talked a lot about gut health and how certain gut flora can contribute to sleep problems or whatever. Or gut fungus or whatever. So basically I just became hyper obsessive about diet and my gut flora.
Danny: Which was really fun for my family and friends because they got to hear a lot about my gut microbiome even though they didn’t care. So then, recently, well not recently this was About two years ago, I would say I had already been on a very low dose of an antidepressant. And I think sort of just as a result of becoming super obsessive about all this health related stuff I was experiencing some heightened anxiety.
Danny: So I decided to up the dose of that antidepressant. And I’m very wary about medication because I’m super sensitive to it. So I didn’t go into it with like a great attitude but one of the side effects of those medications is they can disrupt your sleep initially when you’re adjusting to them. So I bumped the dose and within a few weeks I noticed some symptoms and side effects and sleep disruption was a part of that.
Danny: And I wouldn’t say, initially, I had the same big negative reaction that I had in 2019 when I first experienced that horrible night of sleep. Because in my head I was like, okay, you’ve done this before, I was like, just breathe, like, you’ll get through it. And I was still doing my obsessive habits on the side, I was like, chugging milk right before bed.
Danny: And then Basically, it just didn’t stop. Like, I want to say I had five subsequent days of horrible sleep. If not no sleep at all. So, after that, that’s when I had yet another big emotional reaction. Which was probably exacerbated to some degree by the medication that I was taking because it made me more anxious.
Danny: And that’s when insomnia kind of came back full force for a second time. And this time I didn’t really have the same things to blame that I had last time. Because I was eating well I was getting plenty of rest. I wasn’t exercising like I used to. My stress levels, aside from my obsessive tendencies, my stress levels were relatively low.
Danny: So, I couldn’t be like, you’re not getting enough food your gut flora’s off, like, none of it was And there were, there seemed to be no logical explanation for it. So basically from that point on, I spiraled and I researched as people on previous episodes of your podcast have talked about lots of research.
Danny: First about, you know, even though I, I knew I couldn’t blame like exercise or diet anymore. I was researching gut microbiome stuff and nutritional supplements and things like that. And then it turned into extensive research about antidepressants and all their side effects and wondering if I should come off it and the side effects of coming off it.
Danny: And pretty soon it just turned into, you know, 90 percent of my day was spent researching these very distressing things. That weren’t exactly reliable sources either because it was all just coming from Google, Dr. Google. So, yeah, that’s those were the two episodes of insomnia that I experienced.
Danny: First in 2019, and then again in 2022.
Martin: This was quite a journey you were on there and maybe it’d be summarized what just in the sense the way you were on this journey of optimizing your diet, optimizing your exercise, optimizing your overall health, really, and it makes sense that you’re going to include sleep within that equation, right?
Martin: so you’re going to look at how I can optimize sleep as well. especially with all the messaging out there that tells us how essential and important sleep is, which of course it is. often what can happen is the more we try to make a certain amount or a certain type of sleep happen, the more we can end up struggling with sleep because it’s one of those things that, Really wants to take care of itself.
Martin: And it’s when we often understandably get involved in that process that we can get a bit tripped up. It can create the confusion, the distress, just like you’ve shared.
Martin: And then of course we see it as a problem and we want to fix it. So then we double down, right? And then we’re doing more research and we’re. Just looking for the solution.
Martin: And usually in life, the solution involves adding more, like doing more. This is where sleep can trip us up because the key to sleep is to do less, to move away from the trying and move away from the effort.
Martin: But it is so easy just as you’ve done a really good job, just reflecting on. To get caught in that cycle that trap of the struggle.
Danny: Right. Yeah. And sleep just wants us to chill out, which I totally was not doing.
Martin: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true But again, that’s another potential trap, right? Because then we try to chill out we try to relax We try to empty our mind we try to get rid of anxiety worry and stress and that in itself becomes an effort And a potential source of struggle as well
Danny: Exactly. Yeah. And there is one thing I left out from my Initial experience with insomnia. There was kind of a turning point aside from my lifestyle changes because I do think that that helped to some degree. You know, I reduced stress levels, I wasn’t, you know, doing a trillion burpees every day.
Danny: That’s all good stuff. But the one turning point was It was my 27th birthday, and I had sort of, I’d done a fairly good job of not calling out of work despite this and trying to live my life as normally as I possibly could, but my friend who lives out in LA really wanted me to come see him for my birthday and celebrate with me.
Danny: And I just remember, like, I had never felt worse in my life. I, I hadn’t slept at all, I was depressed, I was feeling highly anxious. And I remember my whole family told me they were like, just go. They were like, it’s your friend. And I was candid with him about how I was feeling. And he said, honestly, you know, if all you want to do is just sit on my couch and you don’t sleep, we can do that.
Danny: I don’t mind. And so, you know, it took a lot of not to toot my own horn, but it took, it took a lot of courage to get on the plane and go out there because I really just wasn’t feeling it. And I ended up having a really good time, and, wildly enough, it was After I landed there we went out for my birthday into West Hollywood, which is a very gay part of LA if you haven’t heard of it. We went out there, had a really good night, came back, and I passed out. I fell asleep for like eight hours straight to the point that nobody else slept because I was snoring so much that it like shook the apartment probably because I was so sleep deprived. But that was my big turning point because I was like, okay.
Danny: You let yourself go, like you weren’t taking any preventative measures here to stop insomnia from happening. You said whatever it might happen, you’re gonna fly out anyway, you’re gonna try to have the best time that you can, and you’re gonna live your life despite this happening. And then I slept, and I feel like even if I hadn’t slept, I still would have taken a good lesson from what I chose to do there.
Danny: So, so that was a really big turning point for me, and I didn’t, you know, as I’ve said, I still continued to have some hyperfixations and obsession with certain habits that didn’t totally free me from like the insomnia loop in the long run. But I still learned something from that.
Martin: I love how you emphasize that you learned from it because even if you went and say sleep was still really difficult when you were away. You still would have learned something from it. But the fact that you just, you had that kind of growth mindset, I like to call it, where you’re just willing to learn.
Martin: It’s less about, Oh, this is a success or a failure. It’s more about, this is a learning process. What am I going to learn from this? What can I, how can I use this experience? And the fact that you. went on that trip, you gave yourself that opportunity to experience, have a good experience, or at least some okay moments during that trip.
Martin: But more than that, you gave yourself that opportunity to learn from it. To see what you can take away from that. And it sounds like, in this example, you took a lot away from that proved to be really helpful.
Danny: I really did. And I do remember I texted my friend after that experience and I just said how grateful I was that he had me over and that he was understanding and yeah. Even though I ended up going through insomnia again, years later, and I still had a lot to learn, I still remember that turning point pretty fondly.
Martin: Yeah. So, you touched upon your recognition that you still had a lot of habits or rituals around sleep at this time. Can you share some of those with us?
Danny: Yeah, they were, they were pretty nuts. And I even, I laughed about them at the time. So I would say immediately after my first episode of insomnia. That’s when they were kind of the craziest. I used to boil banana peels to extract the magnesium. Instead of just buying a magnesium supplement, I had read somewhere online that this was a more potent source.
Danny: So, and at the time it was during lockdown, I was staying with my parents. So my mom would walk by as I’m boiling banana peels and she was like, what are you doing? So I would do that every single night. Light blocking curtains , it was a little more intense than that. So, I already have a valence curtain in my bedroom, but I didn’t actually have pull curtains, and I wasn’t, I didn’t go out and buy new ones.
Danny: So, what I did was, I had extra drywall in my condo for renovations. So, to block sunlight in the morning, I put drywall in my window. Blocked things out, which probably looked terrifying to neighbors walking by But that was one thing that I did. I took ashwagandha There was a lot of supplementation and a lot of like different teas that I tried and Yeah, a lot of it was really as I’ve said a lot of it was really centered around And it took me, I think I mentioned this to you, exercise is one of my favorite things.
Danny: It’s just a great stress reliever for me. It’s fun. I’ve been doing it habitually since I was a teenager running, weight training, whatever. But after 2019, It took me a very long time to get back into a place where I was comfortable with exercise, and I could do an entire workout without second guessing myself, or worrying that I’d done too much, or disrupted.
Danny: I became obsessive about hormones, so I was constantly worried about like how I was disrupting hormones, and what were my cortisol levels doing after I did this evening run, and everything like that. So a lot of my habits were just around Kind of being restrictive about exercise and Making sure I was getting enough food if I did plan to exercise So, you know being very precise about timing snacks and meals and you know following this dietician and making sure I was following her exact standards So those were most oh and I mentioned drinking milk before bed.
Danny: That was the other habit that I picked up on I don’t even like milk. So That wasn’t fun. Yeah, and I did try some other stuff. Like when insomnia revisited, this didn’t last very long. As I’ve said, I’m always wary about medication, but my doctor prescribed me. I forget what it’s called. He called it granddaddy Benadryl hydro something.
Danny: I took it one night, it didn’t do anything and I, I didn’t try it again, but I still had the bottle near me, so I could be aware that it was there if I, if needed at any point. And I do yeah, I just remembered for a while, again, this was right after the first, sorry, I keep jumping in time. This was right after the first experience with insomnia in 2019, there was like a month to two month period where I would regularly take Benadryl before bed.
Danny: I think that’s everything.
Martin: It’s completely understandable why you went to all those efforts. Why you tried them. And I think that they can be a real demonstration of strengths. You know how we were touching upon earlier, there’s always something to learn from here. I think what I’m learning from just hearing you share all these things you tried are all these strengths that are coming out in you, like self advocacy being willing to experiment, having a curious mind, being open minded, being a problem solver.
Martin: It’s just that those strengths can be used. In unproductive ways when we’re really focused on trying to fix a problem.
Martin: when we are really focused on trying to fix this problem, you really illustrated how we can just get pulled away from things that matter to us, the life we want to live. So exercise, for example, might be really important to us, but then we start to exercise less because we have concern about how it’s going to impact our sleep.
Martin: We might completely withdraw from exercise. And because sleep doesn’t really care too much about exercise, sleep tends not to change too much. So really things are just getting more difficult because we’ve still got this sleep issue and now we’re doing less of the stuff that matters. So we’re caught up in this tangle of struggle.
Martin: And confusion and mystery and we’re getting pulled further and further away from where we want to be no matter how hard we try and that’s, I think that’s in its essence why insomnia is so difficult to deal with.
Danny: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. You, you feel like you should be applying effort to this thing. But what’s funny is doing nothing, this, this sounds counterintuitive and awful, doing nothing is one of the best things you can do. At least for me, I don’t want to speak for other people. But doing nothing and just abandoning all of those efforts in the end is what ended up working for me.
Danny: There was another habit that I left out I used, I double sleep masked. I had light blocking. Well, I had one pair of, or one sleep mask that was from, it came with Ariana Grande’s perfume, so it was like clouds with little eyelashes those were kind of cute, but the others were like industrial grade, like, light blocking eye masks, and I haven’t slept with them in a year and a half, and it’s been fine, but for a while there, I could not go to bed without those two eye masks,
Martin: You really went all in.
Danny: with Ariana Grande, or the masks, so.
Danny: Yeah, yeah, definitely both. I’m a big fan.
Martin: What were the nights like for you when you were tangled up in this struggle? Was there such a thing as an average night? What was most difficult for you?
Danny: That’s probably the most difficult to remember because I feel like you repress these things to a certain extent, but there, I do remember there wasn’t an average night. I kind of had a mix of Uniquely terrible nights. So, there would be some nights where I wouldn’t sleep at all. And during that time it would be a lot of just tossing and turning, getting really I would get really hot and flushed.
Danny: And not so much in 2022, the most recent episode, but in 2019 when this was totally alien to me. If I didn’t sleep all night, I would sometimes call a relative at like five in the morning, just all upset because I didn’t know what to do. Which I feel really bad about now, but at the time I was just like, please help me as if they could.
Danny: And then there were other nights where I would fall asleep and then wake up two hours later. And then the rest of the night would just be shallow sleep, in and out of sleep. Some nights I couldn’t get to sleep until the sun started to rise, and you’d hear the birds chirping. That was the worst. I hated hearing the morning birds, like, ugh.
Danny: And then you’d have to get up and go to work, like, two hours later. Awful. And then on really bad nights, like, right around the beginning, the onset of insomnia in both. instances I would start to fall asleep and then my body would kind of jolt and not let me go fully into sleep. Like, I’d feel myself, I’d still be kind of conscious and like drooling a little bit and then my whole body would Spasm itself awake and I was like what is going on and that makes you think even more like oh There’s something wrong with my natural ability to sleep.
Danny: Like there’s something hormonal going on here chemical or something like that Makes you apply more effort But yeah, there was no there was no typical night all of them were pretty bad. And it wasn’t until I sort of had tools to kind of work with them that , after that they sort of fell into a new kind of rhythm where I would sort of have like two bad nights and then one good night and then two bad nights and then one good night and then it was like one bad night and two good nights and slowly progressed from there.
Martin: The thing they all had in common was you were awake, when you wanted to be asleep, it created a struggle. And when you were struggling, you didn’t really know what to do in response to that struggle other than double down and try even harder, which perhaps led to even more struggle.
Martin: And we’re going to obviously talk about as you carried on moving forward and the tools or the changes you made. But really that’s the way out, isn’t it? It’s looking at an alternative way of responding that’s different to struggling. That’s different to putting effort into sleep, trying to fight or avoid all the thoughts and the feelings that are showing up.
Martin: Because when we’re tangled up in that struggle and it feels like a vicious cycle, it’s, it is because we just, Completely understandably, we’re just doing the same things over and over, but we’re just trying harder and harder because we don’t know what else to do.
Danny: right. Yeah, and that’s exactly how I felt because I’d just be lying there and I’m like I didn’t have any tools at the time.
Danny: The other layer to this is I live alone, which I’ve always loved living alone. I’m, I’m an extroverted person, but I like to, I need a lot of recharge time. So I like to return to my own little quiet hobbit hole. But during that time, it was really a challenge. Because when you’re going through something like that and you don’t even feel comfortable in your own body, you want somebody there to kind of just express this frustration.
Danny: And I didn’t have that.
Danny: I realized very quickly, I was like, oh my God, none of the stuff that I’ve been doing is working. I, I’m at a loss. So I was watching all the videos you’ve done with other people. And that was, I mean, granted that was very helpful and that’s partially why I’m here today.
Danny: Like it was very comforting to hear from people and learn that like a lot of their experiences aren’t unique, which is great. It’s great to hear when you’re going through this but I was watching too many of them, you know So my day would consist of watching those videos and then like reading about gut flora and it wasn’t great.
Danny: And then I finally reached out to a therapist who specializes in CBT-I in my area and at the time, again, I acted pretty quickly. I think this was like three weeks to a month into the insomnia. At the time, she said she couldn’t officially diagnose me with insomnia because I hadn’t been going through it long enough.
Danny: She was like, so we’re just gonna put you in for like generalized anxiety, but I’ll give you the treat, the CBT-I treatment. I was like, okay. I was like, please just help me. I don’t care. So, she took me on board and I started doing the traditional CBT I thing. Like, I’d fill out the log with my guesstimated hours, cause I was never really sure how often I was sleeping.
Danny: And I’m sure there were some, what’s it called, paradoxical insomnia or whatever, where you’re actually sleeping more than you think you are. I think that was going on to an extent. But, filled out that log for her and the first thing I started doing was Getting out of bed every time I couldn’t sleep. And I became extremely militant about that.
Danny: I said the first time in 2019 I was terrible at it. I still was, but I would force myself to do it every time. And I’m not sure how much it helped because I think the goal is to make that time spent awake feel more enjoyable. Whereas I was like cussing and like charging out of my bedroom and like sitting in the other room and nodding off and for whatever reason my book of choice to read while I was awake at night was Gerald’s Game by Stephen King.
Danny: I, I don’t know why that’s the one that I picked but it’s, it’s kind of a distressing read. So I’m angrily reading this horror novel at like three in the morning, nodding off. And that was the first tool that I used. Sleep didn’t really improve, so we moved on to sleep restriction. And that I was, I was okay at with the, the night time aspect of it.
Danny: We, we basically, I sleep pretty late because my job has a flexible schedule. So, we pushed my bedtime to like 3 in the morning. And that wasn’t really a problem for me. I, I didn’t mind that aspect of it. What I was really, really bad at was consistently getting out of bed. I think my designated wake up was supposed to be 9 a. m. And I 9 a. m. would roll around. And if it was a night where I hadn’t fallen asleep till like 6 or 7 in the morning, I was not getting out of that bed and I would ignore the alarm. On a good day, I would angrily get out of the bed and go to the other room and just kind of lay on another surface, which I don’t know how effective that was, but I, I just was really not consistent about those techniques.
Danny: And what was helpful though, and the reason I called this woman was because I just needed somebody to talk to while I was using these tools. I feel like, you know, it takes a village with most things, and I just needed to feel supported while I was doing it. And I liked her approach because she teaches CBT-I and ACT.
Danny: So it’s sort of, it’s not a militant approach. She’s not like you need to do X, Y, and Z, or you’re never going to sleep again. It was like, okay, well just like do your best. And that, that kind of messaging worked better for me. But yeah, I I’d say. Sleep restriction, once I started practicing it, it did work to an extent I just wasn’t very good at it, but I would get up before, I would have kind of like a second cut off time, like I was supposed to be getting out of bed at like nine.
Danny: But I was like, we can push it till 9. 30 a little bit. And so every day I was getting up around 9. 30, even though my cutoff was supposed to be 9, and then going to bed at 3 in the morning. So that sleep drive was still building, even though I wasn’t super good about getting up at my designated time.
Martin: Sometimes this can become feel quite militant, right? It’s like you’ve got this sergeant major screaming at you that you can’t go to bed before a certain time. You must be out of bed to the second at the same time every day. And then if you’re awake for, I don’t know, 20 minutes, you’ve got to immediately get out of bed.
Martin: And it can almost feel like a punishment on top of the presence of the insomnia. So it can make things even more difficult. And so I think there is, firstly, I think there’s some validation there that, if that feels difficult it makes sense that it feels difficult because it is difficult.
Martin: And second there is that opportunity for a kinder, less regimented approach. If your plan is to get out of bed at nine o’clock in the morning, 9. 30, 9 o’clock, it’s 30 minutes isn’t really going to make much difference in the grand scheme of things, right?
Martin: And Similarly, do we really have to get out of bed just because we’re awake at night or just needs to be if I find myself struggling when I’m awake during the night Then just do something else that doesn’t involve struggle.
Martin: And that can be done in bed or out of bed. The brain probably doesn’t care if we’re awake or asleep in bed, but it probably does care if we’re in the middle of a war zone when we’re in bed.
Martin: So what we want to do is
Martin: What we want to do is train the brain that wakefulness, although we’d rather be asleep, wakefulness isn’t like a physical threat or a danger.
Martin: And we. Train it by practicing experiencing it with a little bit less struggle each time it shows up, which of course is easier said than done. I’m curious to hear how you moved on from this more regimented approach that’s often associated with CBT-I and moved more to this acceptance approach.
Martin: How did you make that transition and what specific tools were you using during that transition?
Danny: Right. Well, first I was just, I would complain about CBT-I to my therapist all the time. I was probably so in a way, but I was like, I hate getting out of bed in the middle of the night. And I, I asked her, and I think this was based off something you said. I asked her, I was like, What if I only get out of bed when I’m feeling really uncomfortable in bed?
Danny: And she was like, you can try that. So, the first transition to a more acceptance focused therapy, I guess, was, you know, I’d wake up in the middle of the night, but if I wasn’t feeling any anxiety, and I wasn’t, like, tossing, and I wasn’t super uncomfortable, I’d just stay there. And sort of just daydream, or, you know, just vibe.
Danny: And oftentimes, like, you know, after several weeks of insomnia, and this just became old hat, I wasn’t super anxious waking up in the middle of the night. I think it was just something my brain was kind of wired to do. So I was like, well, if I’m not uncomfortable, I’m just gonna lay here. And make myself as comfortable as I can be.
Danny: The way that I looked at insomnia and this problem changed and it became more, it became less what can I do to prevent this from happening? And it became more, this is happening.
Danny: There’s nothing you can do about it. While it’s happening, but what what you can control is what you do during the day and You can still do the things that you love to do even if you feel horrible And that was a kind of acceptance. It didn’t feel great, but you know it was sort of Productive without being productive if that makes sense So, it was like, I’d have a terrible night, and I’d wake up, and I was like, Okay, I feel horrible, but that’s over.
Danny: Tomorrow night’s a new opportunity. And you might not sleep again. Like, my therapist, she kept telling me this one mantra that I think was supposed to help me, and it was, if not tonight, then tomorrow. And I was like, well, I don’t agree with that, because sometimes it’s like, if not tonight, still not tomorrow, or the next day.
Danny: So I sort of just changed it to like it might not be any night. And that’s okay. And you’re just gonna keep doing the things that you care about. And that’s all you can really do. Because the alternative to that is just moping, basically, or fighting. And I don’t want to do either of those things. So, yeah, I think it was more of An organic shift into acceptance, and it was a very slow reframe of just how I was looking at insomnia and this problem that I was dealing with.
Danny: And eventually, I want to say it took three or four months and I think that’s partially because I jumped on it so quickly. I was sleeping again, and there were still there were a couple rough nights here and there, like a scattering of rough nights after that. But after three or four months of just sort of accepting that this is what was happening and just relinquishing all control, sleep sort of just righted itself.
Martin: The shift was, your focus become less about kind of prevention, less about avoidance, less about resistance. Because upon reflection, you’re able to realize that takes a lot of effort, consumes a lot of energy, requires a lot of attention, and it wasn’t really getting you anywhere.
Martin: You replaced it with focusing more on your response, what you can control your actions. Because that’s the one thing we have control over, even when things are really difficult. The physical actions that we choose to engage in or commit to.
Martin: And so that really sounds like what your experience was. It was less about stuff that you knew created more struggle, like the prevention, the effort, the avoidance, the resistance, and it become more about the response, what can I control, how can I act in a workable way here in response to all this difficult stuff.
Danny: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you summed it up beautifully. And I remember some of the things that I did. And this, this might sound like kind of an aggressive approach it just, it worked for me. I’m not saying it worked for others, but I kind of prioritized, even if I felt really uncomfortable about doing something the next day, especially something like really social that just demanded a lot of energy and kind of being on, I would sort of force myself to do it.
Danny: Just because I wanted to show myself. Well, usually I would leave whatever event it was having had a good time. I’d go into it with dread and then I’d leave like, you had fun and I’m really glad that you saw those people. And then, despite having no sleep, you had somewhat of a good day, because you did this thing, you know?
Danny: But the other thing is, I wanted to show myself everything I was capable of doing without sleep. I, because I had sort of convinced myself for a while, like, when I was in the thick of it, I’m like, You can’t do X, Y, and Z if you haven’t slept. And then after, you know, several months of it when it, like I said before, it sort of became old hat.
Danny: I was like, you can do everything that you were doing before. It’s, it’s tougher, but you still did it. And then you have a good reference point after another bad night because you wake up and you’re like, Today is going to be hard. And then you think back and you’re like, yeah, but you also did X, Y, and Z on no sleep before, so you can handle today.
Danny: So that was one thing I always made it a point to do. Again, I know that sounds a little aggressive where I kind of like forced myself to be social. But it was extremely, extremely helpful for me. And I was also candid with friends about, you know, what I was going through. So I’d say, you know, if I’m a little bit off tonight, I’m just going through some stuff.
Danny: But another thing that I really tried to do, or not do, I guess, because I think this is part of acceptance, is I wanted to stop talking about sleep as much as possible because I was noticing that even during those years bridging my two episodes of insomnia, if I had a bad night, I would always Just talk to somebody about the bad night and try to justify why it had happened.
Danny: And just like, engage in at length, really boring conversations of all the potential reasons that I didn’t sleep the night before, and I’m like, you need to just stop. You know? If you didn’t get any sleep, nobody cares to hear about it. And I’m tired of talking about it. So I made an active effort, you know, your brain wanted to talk about it because, you know, it was conditioned to hyperfixing on this thing, but I’d make an active effort to talk about other things and things that I cared about.
Danny: Yeah. So those were some of the other acceptance related tactics I employed, I guess.
Martin: Yeah, and All of those examples that you just discussed, I think they come with the goal or the role that they have is they reduce the power and influence that this stuff has over our lives. So it might still be there. So you had a difficult night. We’re not trying to trick ourselves. And you made a great point that when you did things even after difficult nights, that didn’t mean it was easy to do that. It was really difficult to do that. But by doing that, you gave yourself the opportunity to continue moving in the direction you want to move with your life. And you just reduce the power and influence that difficult stuff has over your life.
Martin: Because the only alternative to following through with your commitments is to withdraw from your commitments. And then we get pulled away from the life we want to live. And then the insomnia has more power and influence over your actions, over your life. And choosing to talk about other stuff that might be more aligned with your values and your interests other than sleep.
Martin: Again, it’s not trying to pretend that insomnia doesn’t exist. It’s just about reducing the amount of attention you’re choosing to give it. The amount of power and influence that it’s having over your life from day to day. And that doesn’t magically get rid of it, but it just. It just opens things up.
Martin: It expands the focus of your attention and just gives you the opportunity to notice and to do more with the world you’re in and the world that’s around you.
Danny: right. And I don’t want to speak to things. I’m not super educated about because I’m an English major. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know much about the brain, but I do know about neuroplasticity and the brain’s capability to rewire and change all the time. And I do believe it. pays attention to the things that you choose to do every single day and responds accordingly, and your whole mental geography can change based on your choices.
Danny: Those changes can be slow and incremental and really hard, but you know, I think, I think when I was spending all my time researching and having emotional responses to poor sleep, My brain was learning from that very quickly and learning to perceive this thing as a threat and wiring itself to react very negatively when I had a poor night versus after that, when I would have a poor night and I’d go and I’d spend time with friends and I’d laugh, and then I’d come home and I, I write fiction, so I was working on a comedy sci-fi book at the time, so I’d write this ridiculous story about little aliens that look like jellyfish. And my brain, my brain was like, what’s going on? I thought this was something we were supposed to be afraid of and he’s having a good day. And I think it’s sort of rewired accordingly. And again, that doesn’t, that doesn’t really happen overnight. It’s a really slow progressional kind of thing.
Danny: And I also think I’ve, I’ve discussed this with my therapist as well, for whatever reason. It’s a lot easier to spiral than it is to rebuild. Because I feel like the negative change happens very quickly. And sort of reframing your perspective and growing from that. Because your brain’s wired to look out for threats and keep you alive.
Danny: So so it takes a long time to convince it that you’re okay. But it’s definitely, it’s definitely doable. And it’s It’s totally worth it just to change your habits even when it feels really, really hard and uncomfortable. There was something else I wanted to say. Oh, another, another point, another takeaway I had from all this was I sort of, there were some days where I just felt like I was kind of spinning my wheels and going through the motions and, you know, trying to laugh, trying to be positive, but just was not feeling it.
Danny: And, you know, sleep was still terrible and usually I had a good time. when I went out and saw people or did things that I cared about, but some days it just wasn’t happening. And on those days, I reminded myself, I was like, even if you didn’t feel it today, like you didn’t experience any joy and it was a rough day, there’s behind the scenes work going on.
Danny: And the choices that you made were still beneficial and something is changing. So I reminded myself of that while I was going through this.
Martin: Yeah, I think that can be so helpful. And if nothing else, just the fact that you acted how you wanted to act, the feelings that you wanted to come with that might not have been present. It might still be really difficult. You might have still felt anxiety or fatigue, brain fog, all of that difficult stuff, but you acted how you wanted to act.
Martin: And that’s really important. And just like you said in the background, yeah, the brain is oh, we can still do stuff that matters, even when things feel difficult, even when all this difficult stuff is present. So there’s still stuff going on in the background, like you said, and maybe the bigger point here, or something to emphasize, is that the brain isn’t our adversary, even though it can feel that way when we’re tangled up in this struggle.
Martin: The brain is just doing its job, which it takes very seriously of looking out for us. So it identifies being awake as a threat. So it’s going to generate all these difficult thoughts and feelings to fight. It’s going to fire up the body to protect us from being awake. And then we obviously, first of all, it doesn’t feel good.
Martin: And secondly, we recognize that as an obstacle to sleep. So then we start to get tangled up in a struggle with our brain, trying to fight or avoid the thoughts and the feelings. And then everything just becomes so difficult. But just as you said, The brain is looking out for us. It’s generating this stuff in an attempt to protect us, and it’s always going to focus on worst possible outcomes.
Martin: It’s always going to focus on the negative stuff, or the most difficult stuff, or the most challenging stuff, because When things are going great, there’s no threat there. So the brain doesn’t care about stuff that’s good, really. It’s not going to put much attention on that. It’s only going to focus on whatever it sees as an issue or problem, a challenge, an obstacle, and it’s going to really focus on that.
Martin: And that’s when we can get tripped up. We think our brain is against us, but really our brain is working for us. It’s just maybe working a little bit too hard. It’s maybe just taking its job a little bit too seriously.
Martin: But through our actions we can just repeatedly show our brains that yeah it’s horrible being awake, we’d rather be asleep. if I repeatedly practice experiencing being awake with less struggle Not fighting or avoiding the thoughts and feelings the brain is generating and acting in ways that are important to me.
Martin: Even when all this stuff is going on, the brain can learn that, oh, maybe this isn’t a threat. Maybe we don’t need to be at, action stations, 10, red alert as soon as you lie down in bed at night.
Danny: Exactly. Yeah. And another layer to that is, like, this isn’t to undermine the big emotions that come with insomnia, because I can definitely attest to that. Like, there were definitely some very emotional days, moments, mornings, nights. And it’s difficult to choose a healthy and positive response when you’re feeling that overwhelmingly negative.
Danny: So it’s not really a matter of, for me anyway, it wasn’t a matter of dismissing those emotions and like, swallowing them. I feel like that’s not healthy. It was sort of acknowledging like, I feel really awful today understandably, I’m tired, I got one minute of sleep, and I want to cry, but I’m going to go to work, I’m going to try to laugh, and it’s okay if I don’t do, I’m not firing on all cylinders, and I’m not at 100 percent today, I’m going to do my best, and and just giving yourself grace, and that’s me.
Danny: While you’re doing that as well, where you’re like, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna attempt to do my best, but if I need to excuse myself for whatever reason, I can do that because I’m going through a lot. And, you know, giving yourself exits here and there. But, yeah, this is all to say I don’t want to make it sound like I swallowed any of my emotions or I repressed anything.
Danny: I accepted the emotions and sort of just chose a sometimes very difficult path toward going about my day as you, as usual.
Martin: I think that’s a really important point because for as long as we’re trying to repress certain thoughts and feelings or distract ourselves from them. We’re still in that, we’re still adopting a strategy of resistance or control, and that’s what can create even more difficulty. So I think it can be so helpful to This can be really scary and difficult, but to make that move away from resistance and towards acknowledgement, because these thoughts and feelings, they, your experience probably tells you they’re going to show up anyway, no matter how hard you try and resist them.
Martin: Maybe you can suppress them for a little bit, but then they come back. Maybe we can move to a process of just acknowledging their presence.
Martin: less. Not with a goal of trying to get rid of them, but just acknowledging them. Just, I notice I’m feeling anxious or I’m feeling awful.
Martin: I’m feeling fatigued. I had a terrible night, just acknowledging that.
Martin: Being kind to ourselves in return, this feels difficult because it is difficult. So we’re not like beating ourselves up and being really hard on ourselves on top, which doesn’t make things any easier. And then focusing on our actions.
Martin: each day, acting in alignment with whatever your values are. They can be a kind of guide to how you choose to respond the next day and drawing upon your strengths. We all have countless strengths. Sometimes we might find it hard to uncover them, but we all have strengths and just taking that time to consider what our strengths are and to draw on them to use them to our advantage.
Martin: when all this difficult stuff is present can just be such a helpful way of responding to the presence of all this difficult stuff. So I’m really glad that you mentioned that and that you shared your experience with that approach.
Danny: Yeah. And I like that you mentioned learning to kind of just acknowledge feelings and thoughts because that’s another thing I’ve sort of. Learn to do and it’s a lesson. I’m going to keep learning for the rest of my life I’m sure but in all aspects of life, but you know negative thoughts are just going to crop up sometimes and again It’s your brain looking out for you.
Danny: My therapist, she came up with this analogy, which I thought was silly at first, but now I actually visualize it when it’s happening. She says, imagine, like, you’re at a party and, like, the negative thoughts are these loud, obnoxious Guys that I always picture as like greasers from the movie Grease for some reason and They’re kind of like knocking people out of the way and being obnoxious and you just kind of like acknowledge that they’re there But continue, you know getting punch or whatever.
Danny: Do people drink punch anymore? Keep partying And yeah, so that’s not always the visual I go to, but I do just try to in some way observe those thoughts as they come and acknowledge the validity of them, but not chase them. And that’s a really, I think that’s a very high level skill. It takes a lot of practice.
Danny: But, you know, it’s part of mindfulness, which is another thing I practice where you just, you work really hard to not identify with negative thinking and just recognize that it’s a function of your brain, a normal function.
Martin: Yeah and it is ongoing practice. Like you said, I don’t think we ever get to a point where we just become like these Zen masters where we’re never affected in any way by difficult thoughts and feelings. It’s just a case of ongoing practice of acknowledging their presence. To use that visualization that you shared with us, it’s about just being more of an observer of them rather than an opponent of them, because when we’re an opponent of something just by its very definition, it means we’re fighting something, right?
Martin: And fighting, if nothing else, it requires more effort, more energy, more attention. want to give more effort, energy and attention to this difficult stuff. Is that going to make it easier? Or is it going to maybe make it more difficult? And that’s not to say that this practice of acknowledgement and observing rather than being an opponent is easy.
Martin: It’s not. It’s a skill. And like any skill, Again, it requires that ongoing practice and there’s going to be ups and downs. There’s going to be times when it feels like, yeah, this is great. This is proving to be really helpful. There’s going to be times when it feels like this isn’t helping me at all.
Martin: They’re going to be times when you’re struggling again, but it’s the case of just continuing to practice, continuing to acknowledge what’s happening, being kind to yourself and responding in a way that feels most workable to you. And your experience is always there as a guide as well If you’re not sure if your response is workable, you can always draw on your experience or where has this got me in the past?
Martin: Has this response moved me closer to the life I want to live or further away from the life I want to live one thing I did want to quickly ask you was as you were going through this process of more kind of acceptance and opening up and less resistance more committed action How did you get to that point where you started to break down some of these habits, rules, and rituals?
Danny: There was one concrete moment for one of the habits I was, I finally got blinds from my bedroom and I was closing them regularly. And I remember when I was younger, I loved leaving the blinds open at night and just seeing the street lamp. Come through and I like the sound of bugs and I like moonlight and, you know, it’s just a nice vibe.
Danny: And I was like, you know, I’m sacrificing that whole aesthetic I used to really dig because I’m concerned about my sleep. So I remember that night I consciously decided, I was like, I don’t care if I don’t sleep. I want to leave the blinds open tonight. And I slept. So ever since then there has been no drywall.
Danny: There have been no closing of blinds. The sleep masks. I don’t remember when I ditched them. I’m very glad I did. They, they just weren’t for me. I know some people swear by them with or without insomnia. I just didn’t like them. They just felt very intense. So, everything else just sort of fell off slowly, I think.
Danny: And I, I think part of that was just realizing during this second bout of insomnia that, you know, none of the efforts that I had applied were really doing anything in the long run. So it was just a slow shedding of old habits. And again, it was one of those things where, while there wasn’t like one concrete shift for all of it, where one day I was just like, I don’t need these things anymore.
Danny: And I dropped them off. That didn’t happen, but it was sort of like, A couple months after the fact, I looked at my life and I was like, oh you’re not using a sleep mask anymore, and you’re not drinking milk before bed, and your blinds are open. That’s interesting.
Martin: Yeah, so it sounds like just over time there was this progression where your actions were they, the focus of your actions was more about serving you, what you wanted to do, your values, your interests, what mattered to you, rather than your actions serving sleep or serving insomnia or serving you. Your pursuit of the elimination of thoughts certain thoughts and feelings or your pursuit of certain thoughts and feelings So your actions began to serve you rather than the insomnia gremlin
Danny: Did you say the gremlin?
Martin: Yeah, the little insomnia gremlin. Yeah,
Danny: Oh, I love that. It is a gremlin.
Martin: How long did it, would you say it took for you to get to a point where it felt Insomnia wasn’t, or sleep wasn’t a struggle for you anymore. It wasn’t really a focus or it didn’t really have much power and influence over your life.
Danny: I would say, well, the short answer is after three or four months, I was back to sleeping regularly, pretty much every night, there were a couple of rough nights here and there, sometimes a series of rough nights, but they weren’t nearly as distressing and I just slowly. Started noticing that distressed reaction I had to a poor knight decreasing over time.
Danny: But, the long answer is Acceptance continued to be, well, continues to this day to be something I employ all the time. Because I feel like even after I writed my sleep all of that was just highly stressful. And, you know, there was a lot of effort involved. There was a lot of obsessiveness and research.
Danny: And I, I think for a long time after that I was just exhausted. And I, I just wasn’t feeling like myself even after sleep. And I remember thinking to myself, I was like, once you get sleep back on track, you’re going to be, you’re going to be great. Everything’s going to be golden. And it wasn’t which listeners probably don’t want to hear, but that was just my personal experience.
Danny: And so I had to continue kind of practicing acceptance for negative thoughts and feelings and, you know, burnout that I was experiencing after insomnia and I had to continue pursuing things that I cared about and, you know, forcing myself to do things that felt uncomfortable, but I ultimately was happy that I did, like social outings and going to work and things like that.
Danny: And I would say within a year, so four months to get the sleep back on track. And then within a year, I was really feeling like me again. And One thing I’ve really come to notice is, I think because I’ve gone through insomnia twice. And my reactions to both episodes were so highly emotional at the start. My brain still, it’s rewired for sure.
Danny: It’s, it’s different. But it still remembers that and it’s still trying to look out for me. So, anytime I have a rocky night or poor sleep, there’s a ghost of an old. Feeling a negative feeling there. It’s not anything like it was but it’s still kind of there but what’s neat is I I see it diminishing like every year every month really and You know in the grand scheme of things.
Danny: I’m 31 years old. I started dealing with this problem when I was 26, so I’m like If it’s already diminishing and it’s barely, you know, it’s nothing compared to how it was when I first went through this. I feel like 20 years from now in my fifties, it’s It’s not going to be a thing at all. I won’t even think about it.
Danny: So yeah, that was kind of a really long answer to your question. But yeah, four months to get the sleep righted, one year to kind of get back to me. And nowadays acceptance has really just like played a huge role in my life overall outside of insomnia.
Martin: Yeah. I’m really glad that you made that point that difficult thoughts and feelings still show up. Because, it’s so easy, or it’s easy to mistake this process as with the goal being we’re not going to experience difficult thoughts and feelings anymore. That’s just not possible. And like you alluded to, even when, even if it feels like our lives would be perfect without insomnia, there’s always going to be some kind of struggle or difficulty that just comes with living a rich and meaningful life, right?
Martin: It comes with difficult stuff.
Danny: I thought that was really neat to just notice how how less potent that response gets over time. Now that I’ve sort of had two years to kind of watch myself grow. And that’s a really heartening thing. And it, it goes back to, Our discussion about neuroplasticity and the brain’s ability to change, you know, like it’s designed to change.
Danny: And you may feel like when you’re really trapped in that struggle, it’s, it’s never going to end and it’s going to be this way forever, but you have so much capacity to change everything
Martin: When you felt like you were making good progress, that you felt like you had an approach that seemed to be helpful, and a difficult night showed up, how would you respond to it using this new approach of acceptance rather than resistance?
Danny: There are two very different answers here for 2019 versus 2022. So in 2019, my response was bad because I had convinced myself, you know, all my sleep issues had to do with stress and overexercise and not eating enough.
Danny: So if I, Say slept super well for a month and then all of a sudden a patch of bad night showed up I’d be so confused and I remember my mom would get so annoyed because again, I was staying at her place at the time I’d be like I was sleeping fine for two months and I just I didn’t sleep at all last night She’s like, I don’t know you’re a person that happens and I was like, but it doesn’t make sense And I was grasping for control and I didn’t understand fast forward to 2022 I responded pretty well to random bad nights.
Danny: They would show up and I’d be like, Oh yeah, we’ve been here before, and you know what to do when this happens. And, you know, even after you get through this, whenever that may be. You’re going to have a rough night sometimes with or without chronic insomnia. So I think I handled it pretty gracefully when they cropped up in 2022 as opposed to 2019.
Martin: Danny, I really appreciate you giving up your time to share your experience. What you’ve learned and really your transformation from this whole experience. I do have one question that I want to ask you before you go though.
Martin: If someone with chronic insomnia is listening And they feel as though they’ve tried everything that they are beyond help that they’ll never be able to stop struggling with insomnia. What would you say to them?
Danny: I would probably say to them what I wanted to hear when I was going through this. Which is, this is such a curable thing. Or, maybe not curable. Maybe that’s not the word that I would use. Your sleep is fine. Your natural ability to sleep is fine. It’s just I don’t want to put responsibility on them by saying they’re in the way of it, but your brain is currently wired in a certain way to perceive it as a threat.
Danny: And you can totally rewire it, and you can totally perceive it differently, and your sleep will right itself once you do that. And it’s going to be uncomfortable reframe your perspective, and even more uncomfortable to accept that this is happening and stop fighting it. But it’s totally worth it and you will get through it if you make the conscious decision to do so.
Martin: Thank you again, Danny, for coming on and sharing your story. It’s really appreciated.
Danny: Of course, thanks for having me. This was great.
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.
I want you to be the next insomnia success story I share! If you're ready to stop struggling with sleep and get your life back from insomnia, you can start my insomnia coaching course at insomniacoach.com.
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