Former Insomniac by End Insomnia

While overcoming insomnia always has ups and downs, I wanted to share the phases that people who use the End Insomnia System, including myself, went through to better sleep so you can see what the recovery journey looks like. We call this the Path to Sleep - there may be times when you go back and forth between phases or might identify with being in multiple phases at the same time:Phase 1: Lost & SufferingPhase 2: Finding HopePhase 3: Making Key Behavior ChangesPhase 4: Experiencing Some Anxiety ReductionPhase 5: Feeling Non-AttachmentPhase 6: Consistently Sleeping BetterPhase 7: Building Further Confidence and Working Through SetbacksPhase 8: Life Beyond Insomnia—Looking to end insomnia for good in 8 weeks? Get my FREE cheat sheet: The 7 Proven Steps I Used to Beat Insomnia After 5 Years of Hell—Without Pills, CBT-i, or Useless Sleep Hacks

Understanding how sleep works can provide a lot of hope and relief because you’ll see that you don’t need to do so much to make sleep happen.You just mainly need to work to reduce the factors that stop sleep from happening.So, how does sleep work? It’s actually pretty simple. There are only two factors that create sleepiness and allow you to fall asleep and stay asleep. Both are biological systems in your body. They are the sleep drive and the circadian rhythm. Together, they make up what we call the Sleep-Starting Force.But what gets in the way of sleeping for people with insomnia? Anxiety and hyperarousal are what get in the way. Together, anxiety and hyperarousal make up what we’ve named the Sleep-Stopping Force.—Looking to end insomnia for good in 8 weeks? Get my FREE cheat sheet: The 7 Proven Steps I Used to Beat Insomnia After 5 Years of Hell—Without Pills, CBT-i, or Useless Sleep Hacks

A good definition of insomnia is “high anxiety and reactivity regarding not sleeping, which in turn inhibits or interrupts normal sleep.”Although insomnia-related distress can be felt in the body, insomnia doesn’t start in the body, it starts in the mind. Insomnia is not a condition the way heart disease or cancer is a condition. This doesn’t mean you’re to blame or that the suffering isn’t real or difficult to bear, and it also does not mean that you’re broken. It just means there is a way out because, unlike certain physical conditions, you can change your mind over time and change the factors that give rise to insomnia.You also can’t lose the ability to sleep, but you can get stuck in a loop where your natural ability to fall asleep and stay asleep is constantly interrupted by a stressed-out mind and nervous system. All this is to say that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you. —Looking to end insomnia for good in 8 weeks? Get my FREE cheat sheet: The 7 Proven Steps I Used to Beat Insomnia After 5 Years of Hell—Without Pills, CBT-i, or Useless Sleep Hacks

How does insomnia occur?First, you have certain risk factors. Next, there is an event that triggers an initial episode of insomnia.After a stressor passes or a person adjusts to the change, short-term sleep issues usually go away on their own. However, for some, insomnia becomes long-lasting. Why?It ultimately comes down to anxiety and the associated nervous system activation. Hyperarousal is a state of nervous system activation that occurs when you are stressed or are under threat. Conditioned hyperarousal can lead you to wake up in a state of fear during the night, making it hard to re-enter sleep. Perceptions that drive insomnia? Perceptions are the thoughts and beliefs you have about your insomnia and sleep. Reactions that drive insomnia? These include having high reactivity to not sleeping and daytime experiences of fatigue, struggling against difficult emotions or the presence of uncertainty and more. Behaviors that drive insomnia? These are actions that many people with insomnia take that end up undermining their body’s natural ability to feel tired and fall asleep or that end up increasing their fear of not sleeping. —Looking to end insomnia for good in 8 weeks? Get my FREE cheat sheet: The 7 Proven Steps I Used to Beat Insomnia After 5 Years of Hell—Without Pills, CBT-i, or Useless Sleep Hacks

You might hear that you are harming yourself and sabotaging your full human potential unless you sleep eight hours.My worry of not getting 8 hours of sleep would lead to more sleep-related anxiety and sleep difficulty.The problem is that we are bombarded with the same information everywhere:"You must get 8 hours of sleep or else..."37 Million Individuals Were Studied, and No Increased Odds of Mortality Were Found---Looking to end insomnia for good in 8 weeks? Get my FREE cheat sheet: The 7 Proven Steps I Used to Beat Insomnia After 5 Years of Hell—Without Pills, CBT-i, or Useless Sleep Hacks

To get control over the process of getting to sleep and staying asleep, we try all sorts of strategies like supplements, bedtime teas, relaxation rituals, sleep hygiene, pills, and more.We call these Sleep Efforts, and our aim to control our sleep on a night-to-night basis with Sleep Efforts ends up backfiring and making our situation even more frustrating.-Looking to end insomnia for good in 8 weeks? Get my FREE cheat sheet: The 7 Proven Steps I Used to Beat Insomnia After 5 Years of Hell—Without Pills, CBT-i, or Useless Sleep Hacks

The six steps I followed after I suffered for 5 brutal years thinking I was "broken" and something was wrong with me and my body.--Looking to end insomnia for good in 8 weeks? Get my FREE cheat sheet: The 7 Proven Steps I Used to Beat Insomnia After 5 Years of Hell—Without Pills, CBT-i, or Useless Sleep Hacks