Insomnia – w/ Sleep Expert Martin Reed

Emma – Studio Mic: Everyone, today I have a very special guest. It’s Martin Reed. He’s a psychotherapist and an insomnia coach. So I took his free email sequence last year and it really helped my insomnia. It’s like this free email sequence that kind of changed how I think about sleep and insomnia, and I’ve learned that I’ve been wrong about some of the things I’ve been thinking about how to improve your sleep.

So I’m really excited to have Martin Reed here today to talk with us. about how to escape the trap of insomnia. Let’s jump in. Let’s go. Awesome. Thank you so much, Martin, for being here. I’m super excited to talk with you about all things insomnia.

Martin: Thanks for having me on. I’m very excited to be here too.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah. Awesome. Great. Okay. Let’s just jump right in. What causes the cycle of insomnia?

Martin: Wow. All right. So we are diving right in. I’m just going to go there. Yeah, let’s do it. I think first and foremost, it can be helpful to recognize the difficult nights of sleep from time to time are natural and normal.

It’s just part of being a human being, just as we all experience difficult days from time to time. So we have that kind of more transient short term insomnia that kind of affects everyone. But then probably more what you’re getting at is when it becomes this longer term issue where this just is sticking around.

I just can’t seem to shake it off. It’s night after night of real difficulty, real struggle. And as for that, it all starts in the same place where there’s just that initial night of sleep disruption. And then what can happen is the way we respond to it, the way we try to understandably fix it, get rid of that insomnia, make the, get us back to where we were before all those efforts can trip us up and make things more difficult.

I like to think of it, some of us, I think are just more predisposed to developing insomnia. It’s like the kindling on a fire, so the sticks are in place, the lugs are there, they’re all ready to go. For whatever reason, some of us might just be more reactive to stress or anxiety, we might have really high pressure jobs, maybe genetics, all different reasons.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah, I did a 23andMe Test, DNA test, and it said, yeah, you’re more likely to be a morning person and you’re more likely to be a light sleeper, it said, based on my DNA. Now, I don’t know how accurate that was, but that’s what it told me.

Martin: There you go. So maybe you’ve got a few sticks in the fire all ready to go there.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah, maybe. Some of the predisposing factors.

Martin: Yeah, exactly. And there’s not really much we can do about that. That’s just the hand we were dealt. It doesn’t mean we’re doomed to a life of insomnia. It just means that maybe we’re more likely to experience some sleep disruption from time to time. It doesn’t mean it has to go on to this long term issue, but it just means that the kindling is in place, right?

And then what can happen is the spark. So something happens. So we might get some bad news, we might get some good news. We might be about to go on vacation, we might be on vacation. Anything, any kind of change or event happens. So the brain is a little bit more active. And so then that spark goes into the kindling.

And we have some sleep disruption. Most of the time, for many people, once that event has passed or it’s no longer relevant, the kindling’s all gone away and our sleep just gets back on track by itself. But sometimes it can stick around and like I touched upon earlier, that’s often down to how we respond to it.

So we see this insomnia is a problem now, so naturally we want to solve that problem. So we’re going to start doing things like trying to fix it, put effort into it. We’re going to change our approach and this is like the fuel now. We’re adding more fuel on. So instead of that kindling, just burning out by itself, now we’re throwing logs on inadvertently through no fault of our own, but just through our own understandable efforts to fix the problem, we’re fanning the flames, adding fuel, and we, that’s how we end up feeling trapped and get tangled up in this insomnia cycle.

Emma – Studio Mic: Oh, interesting. So you’re saying there’s three parts to this. There’s the kindling, which are our predisposing factors, whether that’s stress or biology or whatever. Then the spark would be some trigger something that makes us have a rough night or a couple nights sleep and then our response is the fuel, what we do with that rough night sleep or lack of sleep, that’s what really feeds the cycle of insomnia

Martin: Yeah, exactly right and I think a lot of people who are struggling if they’re able to think back on a time before they were struggling with insomnia, they might be able to recognize that their approach is a little bit different.

So you might just think how did I, how am I approaching sleep today compared to how I was approaching sleep in the past when it wasn’t an issue or a concern? Is there a difference there? And then maybe that can help uncover all these kind of sources of fuel that are inadvertently keeping that insomnia alive.

Emma – Studio Mic: Oh, interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I like that question. And I definitely have struggled with insomnia at times. I do great at falling asleep, but staying asleep is another thing. And there’s been times where I’ve gotten caught in a cycle where I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and then I’ll just try to essentially force myself to calm down.

I’ll try to force myself into breathing exercise, or I used to do this a lot. I don’t do it as much anymore, which is good. And I’m sleeping better in general. But I would try to like, breathe and use these relaxation techniques and use progressive muscle relaxation and use a meditation and try to calm my mind. And like all of these things and in the end it usually just left me like laying there thinking why can’t I sleep?

Why can’t I sleep? What’s the matter with me? This is so terrible. This is awful. And then that would just make me more stressed out which made sleep worse

Martin: Yeah, and anyone that’s listening to this that has gone through that, really identify with what you just described there because it’s a hallmark set of symptoms or set of responses when someone’s dealing with chronic insomnia.

It’s all about trying to control sleep, get rid of the wakefulness, make sleep happen and to control what’s going on up here, trying to get rid of certain thoughts and feelings or to make other thoughts and feelings appear and stick around. Not only, as you touched upon, can that prove not to be too effective over the short, medium, and longer term, but it requires a lot of effort to do that.

So much effort and attention and engagement. And if we think about it the more intensely focused and engaged in energy we’re expending, probably at the same time, the less good conditions are going to be for sleep as well.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah, so that’s an interesting thing about sleep. Would you say it’s fair to say we’re naturally good at sleep and then what we do to try and make ourselves sleep Backfires, is that right?

Martin: Yeah, I would say so sleep is really this autonomous process It’s like breathing because we can have some degree of control over our breathing, right? We can hold our breath for a limited amount of time. We can speed it up slow it down or again just for limited amount of times But we can’t really control it long term, like directly and permanently, [00:07:00] the brain wants to figure that out for itself.

And it’s the same with sleep. So we can force ourselves to stay awake for a certain amount of time, but we can’t, through effort, make sleep happen. And it’s all that trying that tends to make things more difficult. If we try and make a certain number of breaths happen every hour, or during the day, are you going to be intently focused on that and it’s going to make this whole natural process of breathing feel so much more difficult and more complicated than it really needs to be.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah, so could you give me like a laundry list of what are some of these things that people do that contributes to this kind of sleep effort that backfires.

Martin: Yes, I think they can be divided up into kind of two categories. There’s our actions our behaviors like our physical response and then there’s what goes on up inside our minds our kind of cognitive or our mental response. So starting with the kind of action or habits based side of things because then maybe that’s a little bit like the more low hanging fruit that a lot of people can identify with.

First and foremost, a lot of the time we will, we want sleep to happen, and we see that sleep is an issue. So we might start doing things like going to bed earlier than we did in the past, in an effort to make more sleep happen. Or on the other side, we might stay in bed later in the mornings, in an effort to make sleep happen, catch up on sleep, chase after sleep.

And the logic makes sense, right? It’s the more time I spend in bed, the more opportunity there is for sleep to happen, so maybe the more likely sleep is to happen. But unfortunately, that can backfire on us, because let’s say you might be averaging four or five hours of sleep at night, and now you’re suddenly spending like 10 hours in bed, for example.

Then we’re setting ourselves up for about five hours of wakefulness at night. So we’re creating conditions for more insomnia rather than creating conditions for more sleep. And that’s probably like one of the biggest things that I see in people with insomnia as one of those actions that we’re really likely to engage in when we’re struggling to sleep is just spending more time in bed, going to bed before we’re actually sleepy enough for sleep, but because we’re really chasing after sleep, wanting it to happen.

Emma – Studio Mic: And correct me if I’m wrong here, the way sleep works, it’s not something we can manually like just force, but at the same time, if we lay in bed and we lay there just wishing we were sleeping and struggling against sleep and trying to sleep, that kind of conditions our brain to be less sleep, like sleepy in bed.

Yeah. Is it conditioning? That’s what I’m asking. Is this conditioning?

Martin: Yeah, I think in a way it is conditioning, but I don’t think it’s conditioning in the sense that we often see it talked about in relation to insomnia. So the way we often see it talked about is the more time you spend awake in bed, the more your brain associates the bed with wakefulness.

Emma – Studio Mic: And that’s what I’m talking about. Yeah, exactly. Correct me. Yeah.

Martin: Yeah. I think there’s maybe that’s true. But what I think, my experience suggests from working with clients, that it’s not really the wakefulness itself. The brain doesn’t really care about if the brain, if the bed is associated with sleep or wakefulness.

If we think about people without insomnia, they’re on the phone in bed, they’re watching TV in bed, they’re reading on the computer, they’re talking to friends, texting, they’re doing millions of things.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah.

Martin: I don’t think the wakefulness in bed is the issue or the conditioning problem. I think the conditioning problem is struggling in bed.

So it’s when we’re awake in bed, and we’re really struggling, trying to make sleep happen. We’re tossing and turning, grabbing at the sheets. We’re trying to push away certain thoughts or feelings. We’ve donned this big medieval suit of armor. We’ve got a shield and a sword, and we’re just battling wakefulness and all the thoughts and feelings that come with it.

And then the brain can learn that the bed is a battleground. And the brain’s number one job is to look out for us and protect us. Naturally, it’s going to start firing up, getting really alert, as soon as we go to bed, or we’re about to go to bed, or even if we just think about going to bed. Because as far as the brain’s concerned

Emma – Studio Mic: You get like a little stress response.

Yeah, exactly. The brain is preparing for battle, right? It’s trying to keep you alive. It doesn’t really know the difference between a real physical threat, there’s a grizzly bear hiding under your bed, or this perceived threat of being awake at night. And the more we struggle, the more we can train the brain that this is a threat, that being awake is a threat, and it needs to be really alert to protect us from at night.

And there we go again. We’re caught in that cycle of the increasingly vigilant brain, and we’re trying to suppress it, and then it’s responding with even more vigilance.

Oh yeah. That resonates so much with me. And that’s one of the things like your email sequence helped me clarify quite a bit. So for the audience that Martin has an email sequence, a free email sequence that teaches a ton about sleep.

And I took it, I subscribed to it, read through it all. And I, it improved my sleep. Immensely, but one of the things I used to do was I focused on sleep hygiene. I didn’t have my phone near my bed. I like made sure to go to bed at the same time. And if I woke up in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t look at my phone and I just lay there and I try and breathe and calm my body down and do all these things.

And it did, it made my insomnia worse. Absolutely. And it made me like more stressed out about that time I was awake in the middle of the night and this for people who have subscribed to the like sleep hygiene thing, and to be honest, like I made a video on sleep hygiene, probably four or five years ago and it’s like one of my best performing videos of all time out of the 400 videos I’ve made because so many people are probably told by their doctors or someone you need to look up sleep hygiene. You need to watch sleep hygiene.

You need to find out what a sleep hygiene is. So I was trying to do sleep hygiene the best I could and I was always awake from three to five. And then if one of my kids woke up between five and six and I was awake for the rest of the day. So I would just every day up from three every day and then I’d be really cranky the night that night and then I would like yell at my kids and then I’d feel bad and then I’d get more stressed and then I’d not sleep good and it just got worse and worse.

So what one of the things that really changed for me is I’d wake up in the night and instead of being like, I have to get back to sleep, I’d be like, or I have to get out of bed because I’m not allowed to be in bed awake. Instead, I would lay there and listen to the boringest version of something interesting I could find, usually archaeology.

And I would just lay there and probably seven out of ten times I’d fall asleep. And three out of ten times, I would get to listen to something mildly interesting. And I just stopped struggling. I was just like, it’s cool. I can lay in bed and listen to something I like. And so now, yeah, like probably three out of ten nights, I’m awake and I don’t fall back asleep But at least I got to listen to something interesting and I’ve dropped the struggle with I have to sleep or else this is gonna be awful

Martin: Yeah, and I think that’s really key. I really don’t think it matters too much what we do during the night when we’re awake, as long as we’re practicing experiencing that wakefulness with a little bit less struggle and not trying to control something that our own experience might tell us we can’t directly or permanently control anyway, like sleep, like what we’re thinking, like what we’re feeling. So if we do find ourselves getting pulled into that struggle, we’ve always got that opportunity to do something else instead. So it could be listening to something, like you said, watching something. We don’t have to get out of bed as far as I’m concerned, unless you want to, that’s fine.

If you want to get out of bed, do it, but there’s no need to. Because again, the goal isn’t to control the uncontrollable. The goal is simply to practice experiencing that wakefulness with a little bit less struggle.

Emma – Studio Mic: So the things we can’t control are our sleep, our initial thoughts, like in general thoughts pop in and out that we cannot control.

We can influence which thoughts we elaborate on, for lack of a better term.

Martin: Yeah.

Emma – Studio Mic: But we can’t control our emotions. And so what you’re describing is like dropping that struggle and focusing instead on building a skill of getting good at experiencing them. Is that right?

Martin: Yeah, exactly right. Because really insomnia comes down to an understandable unwillingness to experience insomnia.

So the less willing we are to experience it, the more likely we are to experience it, just because when we’re unwilling to experience something, we often put a lot of effort into avoiding or fighting that very thing. And that’s what makes it more difficult.

Emma – Studio Mic: Ooh, I like that. Can you give some examples of what it sounds like when people are unwilling to experience insomnia?

Like the first thing I can think of is I have to sleep or else it’s going to be terrible tomorrow. I have to sleep. It’s so important. My day tomorrow is so important. That’s an example, but I can’t allow myself to not sleep right now.

Martin: Yeah, I think it’s really, what you just shared is a great example.

Another one might be, I have to get a certain amount of sleep or I have to get a certain type of sleep. It really just comes down to, I cannot be awake during the night for a certain amount of time. We’ve got this kind of, this goal or preconceived notion in our mind that we need to get either a certain amount of sleep or a certain type of sleep.

And if that doesn’t happen, it’s a problem or it’s a failure, and then we end up trying to fix that problem or we see it as a failure, then we’re really hard on ourselves, which in turn makes things more difficult, we put more pressure on ourselves to succeed, and we often end up doubling down on the same efforts that our experience tells us aren’t effective.

And we end up, we run out of options. And so we end up doing them again, but we just do them even harder and we try even harder. We just, and that’s why it’s so easy to just get to this place where insomnia feels really unique or unusual. And we might even feel broken that there’s something seriously wrong with us.

But really what’s happened is we’re just stuck. Everything we’re trying isn’t working, isn’t helping. We’re out of ideas. Our mind is out of ideas. So our only kind of option is to keep doubling down and doing the same things that haven’t been helpful. But just to try harder.

Emma – Studio Mic: Oh, but it’s so hard to let go of that. It feels so good to be doing something. I’ve just got to do something about this. I’ve got to make this better. I’ve got to fix it. And it’s hard to drop that rope, right? Just let it go and be like it, sleep is what it is. I’m going to lay here and it’s going to be okay.

Martin: And just trying a new approach, like just even considering a new approach, often the mind will start generating different thoughts and stories related to that.

What if this doesn’t work? What if it works for everyone else but not me? Let’s just stick with the stuff we’re more familiar with. Even though our experience might be telling us it’s not really helping, it’s familiar, right? And when we’re in a hard place, familiarity is a comfort. So it’s understandable why that would be our approach.

But really, if we’re honest with ourselves and kind to ourselves as we reflect, and we’re able to identify that what we’re doing isn’t proving to be helpful, then maybe considering a different approach. Even though that new approach might be difficult as well, maybe that, maybe a new approach is worth exploring and experimenting with.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah. I love that. Okay. So how do we do it? What’s the new approach? What would you advise on a practical level that people start thinking or trying?

Martin: Yeah, so again, it splits down between actions and habits and how we respond to what goes on inside our minds. So going back to that, the first thing that we can do in terms of when we go to bed or when we get out of bed is to go to bed at night when we actually feel sleepy enough for sleep, not because we really want sleep to happen. We want a certain amount or a certain type of sleep to happen. We just go to bed when we feel sleepy enough for sleep, and there’s a difference between sleepiness and tiredness. We can often end up going to bed because we feel really tired.

But that’s not the same as sleepiness. So tiredness is exhaustion. The fuel tank is on empty. We just feel completely worn out. And we can feel exhausted and worn out after an hour of sleep or after eight hours of sleep, after a really long busy day or after a kind of day where we haven’t really done much.

Sometimes the tank just feels like it’s really low. And it’s easy to end up mistaking that for sleepiness, that we’re ready to go to sleep and so then we head off to bed and then sleep doesn’t happen and then we get tangled up in that struggle. So sleepiness is more to do with I’m finding it hard to stay awake.

So we might be watching the TV or reading a book and the head starts to drop or we find it really hard to keep our eyes open or reading the same line of that book over and over again. That can be a better time of going to bed. Regardless of what the clock might be telling you. Because the clock doesn’t know when you’re sleepy enough for sleep.

You’re sleepy enough for sleep when it becomes difficult to stay awake. So using your own sleepiness cues as a prompt for when to go to bed instead of what the clock might be telling you can be helpful. And maintaining a consistent hour of bedtime in the morning can also be helpful because it helps just set the internal body clock.

If we’ve got this consistent out of bed time in the morning, the body kind of gets familiar with, okay, this is time to be awake and active now. But maybe one of the biggest ways that can help is if we’re all always out of bed around about the same time each day, it doesn’t have to be to the minute, just roughly around the same time, then we’re out of bed.

We’re engaged in the world around us, more likely to do things that matter to us. and live the kind of life you want to live, even if we had a difficult night, even if we’re really struggling with fatigue and anxiety and stress and worry, compared to if we just stay in bed, trying to catch up on sleep, we’re going to be less engaged, less active.

And our whole kind of life and world revolves around sleep, which can make things more difficult.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah. Okay. So have a consistent out of bed time, but when it comes to going to bed, wait until you’re sleepy. Allow that sleepy cue to trigger when you go to bed.

Martin: Yeah, and some people listening to this might be like, what if I don’t get sleepy until or what if I don’t get sleepy at all?

Or what if I don’t get sleepy until my alarm goes off in the morning or five minutes before? Yeah. And sometimes that can happen. But the thing about sleepiness or this sleep drives , it’s like hunger. It builds and gets stronger and stronger. So the longer we go without sleep, the stronger that sleep drive will get.

The longer we go without food, the stronger that hunger gets. Yeah. So yeah, for maybe a night or two. You might not get sleepy till really late. But sooner or later that sleepiness will show up as the brain is trying to protect us from this kind of threat of wakefulness. It can overpower the, that, that kind of sense of sleepiness.

. So if we imagine we’re back in the stone age or whatever we are living or the caveman era, and there’s this saber-tooth tiger stalking around outside our cave, we might feel really sleepy, but the brain’s gonna fire up because we don’t wanna fall asleep If we might. be about to get attacked by a saber-toothed tiger, right?

And so the body can suppress sleepiness, but it can only suppress it for a certain amount of time. Sooner or later that sleepiness will happen. So if you are going to experiment with this idea of not going to go to bed until I feel sleepy enough for sleep, it can be helpful knowing going into it that, yeah, maybe you won’t get sleepy until a lot later.

Or maybe you’ll spend the whole night awake, who knows at first, but sooner or later that sleepiness will show up.

Emma – Studio Mic: So part of the process of healing insomnia or dropping the struggle with insomnia is allowing yourself to not get as much sleep, maybe initially. Because you’re, like, reach or allowing your body to build up its more natural ability to sleep by allowing that sleep drive to build when you get less sleep and allowing yourself to relearn to listen to your body and its sleepiness cues.

Is that right?

Martin: Yeah. That, that can happen. Another approach that we can take, which may, maybe more leaning in towards the cognitive side of things is, let’s say that someone’s listening to this and you’re just thinking no, I’m not gonna just stay awake until I’m sleepy. That’s ridiculous. I’m not gonna get any sleep whatsoever. What we can do is give ourselves like an earliest possible bedtime. So if we feel that, yeah, I have been going to bed a lot earlier than normal in an effort to make a certain amount of sleep happen.

What we might do is go back to what our old bedtime used to be before sleep was an issue or a concern if it was later. So now we’ve got an earliest possible bedtime. And then from that time, we’re not checking the clock anymore. We don’t check the time and we just allow ourselves to go to bed when we feel ready to go to bed.

So the sleepiness might not be present, but we just feel, yeah, I’m ready to go to bed now. And then, If things start to get difficult when we get into bed, then we use that as an opportunity to practice responding to it with less struggle. So with less effort, we’re not trying to make sleep happen, trying to get rid of wakefulness, donning that suit of armor, going to war with our minds.

So there are those two approaches and they can also be combined. It really is. Everyone’s different. It’s just about finding what works for you, what helps you move away from trying to make sleep happen and getting a little bit overly tangled up in the process of sleep.

Emma – Studio Mic: So you can be a little curious, you can experiment a little. What helps me drop the struggle with sleep and allow my body to turn on its natural ability to sleep to a degree? And even if it doesn’t, still be peaceful about it.

Martin: Yeah, and it’s so easy to say that, right? To be peaceful, to be willing. Something that I think is really important is to emphasize that willingness or acceptance isn’t about resignation or giving up.

It’s really just about responding to all this really difficult stuff in a more workable way. Accepting that there’s some difficult stuff that we can’t control, like sleep, like the thoughts that pop into our minds, like how we’re feeling, and being more willing to accept that we can’t control that stuff, and to explore a different way of responding that might pull us into less, that might be less likely to pull us into a struggle.

Emma – Studio Mic: I like that. I like that. What else? Are there any other new approaches people might try or different ways of thinking about sleep that might be helpful?

Martin: Yeah, so let’s say you’re in bed, either you’re finding it really hard to fall asleep or you’ve woken up during the night and you’re finding it really hard to fall back to sleep.

What we often end up doing then is trying to make sleep happen, right? Trying to get rid of that wakefulness. And we often, that wakefulness is often accompanied by lots of difficult thoughts and feelings as well. So I think

Emma – Studio Mic: Like difficult thoughts and feelings, like this is going to be awful. I’m going to yell at my kids tomorrow. I’m going to fail at my presentation. I have to sleep. What’s the matter with me? Why am I so broken? Why can’t everyone else sleep? Just like this. I can think of a lot of these.

Martin: Yeah, exactly. So they’re like a lot of the thoughts that go on, but then also we’ve often got all the physical sensations that can go with that.

We can have the racing heart, we might feel sweaty, we might feel cold, hot, shivery, shaky. There’s lots of difficult stuff that can show up at that time. And because none of it, usually feels good, we try and get rid of it, right? We might try and distract ourselves, push that stuff away. But often it’s a bit like if we don’t want a beach ball next to us, so we’re like floating in the ocean and so we push that beach ball down cause we don’t want it near us and it pushes back harder.

And so we push down what happens at the end, we just get exhausted and that beach ball bursts back and it’s more powerful than ever before. So I think we can, if we’re interested in looking for a different approach to this. I think it can be helpful to, to [00:28:00] use that beach ball analogy again. Acknowledge the presence of that beach ball.

All right, here’s that tomorrow is going to be a disaster story, whether it’s true or not. Yeah, maybe tomorrow will be a disaster. We’re not trying to dispute it or judge it or evaluate it. We’re just acknowledging it. So we got that thought or that beach ball and it’s right there. Now, instead of pushing it down, what if we just let it sit there?

We just let it hang out with us and we just experience the presence of it. Even though we don’t want it there, we might not want it there, we might really want to just grab a pocket knife and stab that beach ball so it explodes, but what if we just let it sit there and just hang out. So you’re having these thoughts, tomorrow’s going to be a disaster.

So you’re just acknowledging that, and you’re just allowing it to hang out. Or let’s say it’s more of a kind of feeling. So you’re feeling anxious. So again, you might just acknowledge that. Maybe not use the words, I am anxious, unless your name is anxious. But maybe, I am feeling anxious. Or, I notice I am feeling anxious.

And so you’re acknowledging that, and then maybe being more of an observer of it. There’s a few different ways you can do this. Let’s say you’re really good at imagining or visualization. You might imagine those thoughts or feelings that you’re acknowledging, like clouds in the sky. So like clouds in the sky, some are really big and ominous, some are small, some move across the sky really quickly.

Some move really slowly. What if you just took each of those thoughts and feelings that you’ve acknowledged and you place them as clouds in the sky all around you and then you just observe them? Now some of them might grow, get really big, and more scary and more ominous. Again, you’re just observing that.

Clouds can be scary, but they can’t harm us. So we’re just watching that, observing it. Some might shrink, some might just not do anything. Some might move really quick. Some might disappear and then come back. [00:30:00] So we’re not getting involved. We’re not trying to control these clouds. We’re just observing them.

And I think being kind to ourselves as well. Like you touched upon earlier, how we can be so hard on ourselves when things are difficult. To just talk to ourselves in a kind way. And another way that we can be kind to ourselves is to remind ourselves or to reassure ourselves that we’re not alone right in this moment as we’re there in bed tonight really struggling, there’s millions of people. sharing this struggle. This isn’t your burden. This isn’t you versus the entire planet. There’s millions of people sharing this with you. And it’s really hard. And that burden is shared among many people. You aren’t alone. And as you’re doing this isn’t some kind of magical button that’s going to delete thoughts and feelings and make sleep happen.

But it’s something that can just help you practice experiencing all this stuff with less struggle. And with less struggle, there’s less energy expended because there’s less struggle. There’s less attention expended. And that in itself means that conditions for sleep as a bonus can become better. And maybe it also means that the next day, because we’ve spent less energy in that struggle, maybe we’ve got a little bit more in the tank to do the things that matter as well.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah. I like that. And if nothing else, we aren’t making things worse.

Martin: Yeah, and it’s really likely that we’re gonna get, someone might be listening to this and thinking, Yeah, great, I really want to try this. And it’s another one of those things that’s so easy to talk about, but the practice itself can be so much more difficult.

So it’s really likely that, at least at first, as you practice this, the brain’s going to come up with all these stories like, this isn’t working, this is never going to work, no, this is ridiculous, you need to wear those blue blocking light glasses again or you’re never going to sleep tonight because you watched TV too late or you ate dinner too late or you had a glass of wine earlier today.

It’s going to come up with all this stuff that’s going to try and pull you back into the kind of old way of doing things, even though your experience tells you that’s not helpful. And that’s natural and it’s normal. It’s just a case of noticing when that’s happening and just refocusing and bringing yourself back to an approach that involves less struggle.

Because it is a skill and skills are difficult. to learn they require practice and they come with ups and downs where there’s periods where we feel we’re making tons of progress then all of a sudden we fall back to square one we can’t control the progress side of things we can only control the practice side of things so if we find that we’re getting pulled back or we feel like we need to give up or we do give up and then we feel like it’s time to try again That’s what matters.

It’s just about coming back, being kind to ourselves when things are difficult and just committing to that ongoing practice.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah. And so the main idea of practice is dropping the struggle, noticing your thoughts, noticing your feelings, being more of an observer, not trying to force things that you can’t force.

And instead, being kind. allowing that beach ball to be there.

Martin: Yeah, exactly. Even though we probably don’t want it there it is.

Emma – Studio Mic: And I like that analogy.

Martin: Yeah, exactly. Because it would be great if we could just get rid of all this stuff through effort. If we could get rid of insomnia through effort or thoughts and feelings through effort.

And I think something that can be helpful in terms of reinforcement is if we ask someone who sleeps great, and often, ironically, for people with insomnia, it’s their spouse or their partner. But let’s say you’re single, and you just find a friend who sleeps well. You just ask them, what do you do to make that sleep happen?

Why is sleep so good for you? And you probably get that kind of blank face. Because sleep is effortless, right?

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah. So if someone out there is lying there awake, right now listening to this, hoping that this podcast will magically fix their insomnia. What you’re saying instead, tell me if I’m wrong, is, eh, make space for not sleeping.

It’s uncomfortable to be lying in bed and wishing you were asleep. Can you let yourself feel that feeling and notice that thought and be okay anyway?

Martin: Yeah, I think it’s, first, if someone is listening to this, I would say that what you’re going through is difficult. There can be no doubt about it. And it can’t be solved just through words or really from talking or from listening to a single podcast episode.

But If you found that your approach up to now hasn’t proven to be helpful, like the more effort you’re putting into sleep just seems to be getting you more stuck, then maybe it’s time to explore a slightly different approach that involves practicing experiencing wakefulness with a little bit less struggle in whatever way that works for you.

So some people might think this whole idea of acknowledging everything I’m thinking and feeling just doesn’t sound like it’s going to be helpful for me. Okay, that’s fine. Maybe a way of practicing experiencing wakefulness with less struggle for you might involve reading a book instead of tossing and turning, going to war with wakefulness trying to make sleep happen.

Maybe it involves using your phone. Maybe it involves reading the news. Maybe it involves trampolining at three o’clock in the morning because the goal isn’t to make sleep happen, right? Because you know from experience that the more you’re trying to make sleep happen, the more difficult it’s becoming.

The goal is just to practice experiencing the wakefulness with less struggle because with less struggle, there’s less energy and attention consumed. And at the same time, the less you’re struggling, the more you’re training your brain that wakefulness isn’t this threat that it needs to be so alert to protect you from.

Emma – Studio Mic: Yeah. Oh, that’s just, I think it’s just such an important stance to, to understand and to take when it comes to struggles with sleep. And I’ve certainly seen it be helpful for me as I’ve more and tried to shift my approach from gonna make myself sleep. So it’s okay. I can rest or I can get up either way.

It’s okay.

Martin: Yeah, and I like that the way you touched upon rest there because often the idea is that if we are awake in bed that we need to make sleep happen. And some approaches that people might be familiar with involve you need to get out of bed just because you’re awake. If you’ve been awake for 20 minutes or 30 minutes you need to get out of bed for 20 or 30 minutes, then return to bed and kind of repeat this process all night long.

Which in turn makes sleep more difficult. So this idea that what if my goal when I’m in bed isn’t I have to make sleep happen? What if it’s rest? What if I give myself permission to rest? So I’m awake in bed. How about I use this as an opportunity to rest instead of as a time where I have to make sleep happen.

And that can be a really helpful approach for a lot of people I’ve found.

Emma – Studio Mic: I like that. I like that a lot. Do you have any last thoughts or any last things you want to make sure we cover before we wrap up?

Martin: I think what can be helpful is to understand that insomnia can often feel really mysterious. We might, our sleep might happen in a certain way or not in a certain way on one night or after a few nights.

There might be no pattern to it. It might seem really confusing. But really there is no mystery to insomnia. Sleep only needs two things to happen. It needs us to be awake for long enough. And it needs a complete absence of effort. That’s really what sleep requires. And so if sleep isn’t happening, then one of those two things are missing.

Either we’re not sleepy enough, we haven’t been awake for long enough. So if we’ve got 10 hours of sleep, and then we go back to bed, we’re probably not gonna get any more sleep. Or we’re putting effort into sleep, we’re trying. And that trying can be through our behaviors, [00:38:00] like we’re going to bed really early, staying in bed late.

Maybe we’re modifying our behaviors during the day too, which is something that a lot of us will do. We might cancel plans or avoid doing things that are important to us because of how we feel after a difficult night. Or because we want to protect our sleep and we see that doing a certain activity might be harmful to our sleep.

And that in itself can be one of these efforts that we engage in to fix or protect sleep. So that can be helpful, recognizing that there isn’t a mystery to insomnia. Even though it can feel mysterious, it’s not. And even though every single one of us is a unique individual, our insomnia is not. Our insomnia is virtually identical from person to person.

Emma – Studio Mic: Interesting. Interesting.

Martin: I have this, I have a podcast where I talk to people that have put the insomnia behind them and it’s amazing when you just listen to people describing their experience. You could just superimpose another guest’s face onto that person and it could be virtually the same story.

And I say that not to downplay it, but just to reassure you that what you’re going through, you’re not alone. There’s nothing unique or unusual going on and that there is a way through it, through this because other people that have experienced the same insomnia as you have got through it. So you can too.

I think that’s something that’s important to emphasize.

Emma – Studio Mic: Awesome. Yeah, that’s so valuable, so helpful. And I’m sure this is going to be really meaningful to hopefully thousands of people. So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Martin: Absolutely. Thank you.

Emma – Studio Mic: And can you tell everyone where they can find you again and what programs you offer if anyone wants to learn more?

Martin: So you can find me at my website, which is Insomniacoach.com.On there, you’ll find the free sleep training email series that you mentioned earlier. So you can just put your email address in and every day for two weeks. You get the short email that just aims to educate you a little bit more about how sleep and insomnia works.

And it gives you a kind of few ideas for approaches that you might want to experiment with.

Emma – Studio Mic: That’s great. Okay, we’ll definitely put that link in the description. Okay, thank you again so much, Martin. Really appreciate you being here.

Martin: Great, it was good to be on. Thank you so much for having me.

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