End Insomnia E-Book

Ivo H.K.

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 264

Beschreibung

If you’re consistently having trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep, or waking up in the middle of the night and you just feel horrible every morning…

The End Insomnia book will show you how to end sleep anxiety, get to sleep naturally, and wake up fully rested, even if you've tried "everything," but nothing seems to work.

Does any of this sound familiar?

- Your nights are filled with desperate, futile attempts to make yourself sleep.

​- Your days are plagued by the consequences of awful sleep: exhaustion, brain fog, and anxiety about the night to come.

​- You stress over how you can have a good life in the future when you are consistently sleeping poorly.

​- Sleep and insomnia weigh heavily on your mind, and you worry about the long-term health effects of living like this.

- ​Your sleep problems leave you feeling enormously frustrated, alone, and overwhelmed, and you feel like you’re “never going to sleep again.”

​- You keep trying to force sleep to happen which creates an incredible amount of pressure and makes the situation even worse.

- ​You think your insomnia is “unique” and something “must be wrong” with you.

​- Insomnia has made it hard to be the person you want to be.

​- You obsessively google for “the solution” only to find unhelpful articles and feel like a “failure.”

​- You feel trapped in insomnia and unsure if there is hope for you to ever move past it because EVERYTHING you’ve tried has failed.

The central idea of the book:

As long as you have entrenched anxiety about insomnia, you will struggle to improve your sleep in a lasting way.

To end insomnia, you need to calm the anxiety that drives it.

Rather than trying to make sleep happen, your focus must be on reducing your anxiety about insomnia and its consequences.

As we’ll explore in the book, when you’re stuck in a loop of anxiety about your sleep, your nervous system makes it very hard to sleep.

As you lessen your anxiety over time, your nervous system will settle down, and sleep will begin to happen for you without effort.

Although there are many ups and downs in the journey of overcoming insomnia, as you reduce your anxiety layer by layer, you will transform your mind and attain great sleep for life.

This system combines many powerful, evidence-based tools to help you sleep. It’s helped hundreds of people end their insomnia for good. 

What people are saying:

"I have struggled with insomnia off and on since January 2020. At this point, I can better notice thought patterns that may lead to a bad night, and I have a deeper understanding of my fear and its origin. I highly recommend the book and the End Insomnia System."

"I had intermittent insomnia for about three years. Thanks to the End Insomnia book, my sleep has returned to normal, and I sleep well nearly all of the time. This approach gets to the root of the issue, and I could see the benefits unfolding within a few weeks of starting it. I would highly recommend it to anyone suffering from the pain of insomnia.

"It’s impossible to encapsulate in a 3-4 sentence testimonial just how my 20+ year sleep problem was so “effortlessly” resolved, but I can sum it up in just 3 words: the End Insomnia System. It changed my life—I think it saved my life—and that’s not an overstatement, I sincerely believe that. I am retired from my grueling hours of night duty."

Leseprobe

©Copyright @ End Insomnia LLC. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.

Design and cover art by Armen Khudgaryan.

Disclaimer:

End InsomniaLLC is not a healthcare entity and does not practice medicine or offer mental health services. Its programs, suggestions, and other offerings are informational and educational in nature and do not diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any medical condition or replace competent licensed medical advice. All references to assisting in the alleviation of insomnia or its symptoms hold common English-language meanings, such as “restore,” “resolve,” “heal,” “alleviate,” “help,” “assist,” “end,” etc. None of these terms are used or may be interpreted to signify any medical or mental health activity for which a license is required.

End Insomnia LLC does not guarantee that its approaches or programs solve 100% of every person’s insomnia. Some insomnia is caused by factors such as: hormone imbalance, severe emotional trauma, physical pain, and medications that can only be resolved through medical or other treatment. And while the program offered by End Insomnia has helped many people return to normal and healthy sleep patterns, it does not guarantee particular results. However, your success will be greatly determined by your diligence and compliance with the program.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

— Khalil Gibran

Contents

Introduction

Part 1

Targeting the Root Cause of Insomnia: Why What You’ve Tried Doesn’t Work —And What DOES

Chapter 1

Why I Believe This System Can Help You—When Nothing You’ve Tried Has Worked

Chapter 2

Addressing Common Doubts and Objections

Chapter 3

What’s Really Going On With Your Sleep

Chapter 4

The Sleep-Starting Force and the Sleep-Stopping Force

Chapter 5

Sleep Efforts

Chapter 6

The Problems with CBT-i

Part 2

The End Insomnia System

Chapter 7

The Way to End Insomnia

Chapter 8

A Simple Way to Kickstart Your Journey to Better Sleep

Chapter 9

Mindful Acceptance

Chapter 10

Managing Anxious Thoughts

Chapter 11

What to Do at Night When You Can’t Get to Sleep

Chapter 12

Finding Daytime Resilience When Fatigued

Chapter 13

Self-Compassion

Chapter 14

Meditation

Chapter 15

Mindsets to Accelerate Your Progress

Chapter 16

Finding Appropriate Support

Part 3

Let’s Sleep

Chapter 17

Pulling It All Together

Chapter 18

The Path to Sleep

Chapter 19

Managing Setbacks

Conclusion

A Note for Shift Workers and Others With Atypical Schedules

To keep things simple for the greatest number of people, I wrote this book assuming “typical” sleep/awake schedules—therefore, terms such as “night” and “day” are used accordingly.

If you are a shift worker—or your schedule otherwise fluctuates—you may not be able to apply these guidelines exactly as directed. Do your best with the schedule constraints you have.

Introduction

You have insomnia—persistent difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep through the night. Insomnia often results in significant distress during the day and night and makes it hard to function or feel like yourself. While many people experience short-term insomnia, for some, it sticks around and can come to dominate their lives. Insomnia is often considered a long-term issue if it lasts longer than three months.

Insomnia is an awful experience that can come to dominate your life. Many struggling with sleep try everything to fix it and remain stuck. The lack of sustainable solutions to permanently overcome insomnia can leave those suffering from it exhausted, confused, and enormously frustrated.

This book will offer you a new solution, the End Insomnia System. This system offers a permanent path out of insomnia.

Derived from extensive research and experimentation, the End Insomnia System pulls together the best tools and resources from multiple evidence-based approaches to insomnia and psychological change in general (most notably Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).

This new system is designed to targetandovercometherootcauseofinsomnia. It aims to equip you with the knowledge and tools to take back your sleep and maintain better sleep for life.

If your experience of insomnia is anything like that of people who have benefitted from this approach, you might relate to the following:

Your nights are filled with desperate, futile attempts to make yourself sleep.The consequences of awful sleep plague your days: exhaustion, brain fog, and anxiety about the night to come.You stress over how you can possibly have a good life in the future when you are consistently sleeping poorly.Sleep and insomnia weigh heavily on your mind, and you worry about the long-term health effects of living like thisYour sleep problems leave you feeling enormously frustrated, alone, and overwhelmed, and you feel like you’re “never going to sleep again”.You keep trying to force sleep to happen which puts an incredible amount of pressure and makes the situation even worse.You think your insomnia is “unique” and something “must be wrong” with youInsomnia has made it hard to be the person you want to be.You obsessively google for ‘the solution’ only to find unhelpful articles and feel like a “failure.”You feel trapped in insomnia and are unsure if there is hope for you to ever move past it because EVERYTHING you’ve tried has failed.

That sense of “I’ve tried everything, but nothing works” is very common. Many people have found that the mainstream approaches to insomnia do not work for them.

These protocols are often based on faulty assumptions about the problem, so their advice on how to fix it can be ineffective.

If you’ve felt like you’ve tried everything under the sun to fix your insomnia and nothing has worked, this book will explain why—and teach you what to do instead.

Once you have a new understanding of why you can’t sleep, this book will present a comprehensive system to help you permanently end your insomnia. This solution is radically different from everything you may have tried before, including:

PillsTeasRelaxation exercisesBlackout curtainBedtime rituals

and…well, countless other quick fixes—and even the supposed “gold standard” of insomnia treatment, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia (CBT-i).

These approaches often focus on doing things to try to make sleep happen. I’ll show you why that doesn’t work long term.

Rather than trying to makesleep happen, the End Insomnia System is a long-term approach that focuses on resolving the factors that stop you from sleeping.

So, even if you believe you’ve exhausted all your options, there is hope. By the end of this book, my goal is for you to be far along on your journey to great sleep.

In Part 1 of this book, I’ll share the story of how and why I created the End Insomnia System. You will also take several self-assessments to examine the current state of your insomnia and get a sense of the changes you will likely experience if you apply the knowledge and skills in this book. I will address common doubts and objections that you might have.

I will ensure you have accurate information about what’s really going on with your sleep—and with your insomnia.

We’ll do a deep dive into why nothing you’ve tried to fix your insomnia has worked—and I’ll give you evidence to support the central point of this book:

To overcome insomnia, you need to calm the sleep-related anxiety and associated nervous system hyperarousal that fuels your sleep issues.

A variety of causes can bring on insomnia, but long-term insomnia is generally maintained by sleep anxiety and chronic nervous system activation at night.

While overcoming these factors might seem like a near-insurmountable task, Part 2 of this book will show you exactly how to achieve that.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: There are only two forces that control sleep. You’ll find out what they are in Chapter 4—and throughout Part 2, you’ll learn how to get them to work for you so you can move toward better sleep.

In Part2of the book, you’ll learn the entire framework that I call the End Insomnia System.

The End Insomnia System combines:

An eye-opening set of knowledge to bring relief, understanding, and hope to your situation.Gentle and sustainable guidelines for increasing your body’s natural tendency to fall and stay asleep.A complete set of psychological tools for managing your distress and lowering your anxiety over time, including mindfulness, acceptance, self-compassion, and powerful ways to work with distressing thoughts.Specific guidance for what to do at night when you can’t sleep in order to move toward a long-term insomnia solution.A framework for approaching days when you feel fatigued so that you suffer less, live more fully and lower your “performance anxiety” around sleep.Ways to be kinder to yourself—especially as you work through overcoming your insomnia. Insomnia is hard!A daily practice to recondition your mind and nervous system to be calmer in situations that have typically sparked anxiety.A set of empowering mindsets and attitudes that you can lean on when you are suffering that will propel you forward toward good sleep.Guidance on how to find a support system that will genuinely help you (and won’t inadvertently undermine your hard work).

In Part 3, we’ll make sure you are clear on how to navigate the journey to better sleep—and what to expect along the way.

By the end of this book, you’ll see how all of these pieces fit together to empower you to overcome your ingrained sleep anxiety and permanently end your insomnia.

Just remember: It’s not enough to simply have an intellectual understanding of this system. You must apply the exercises and guidelines in this book to experience real change.

Many have turned their sleep around with this system. I believe you can, too.

Thecentralideaofthisbook:

As long as you have entrenched anxiety about insomnia, you will struggle to improve your sleep in a lasting way. To end insomnia, you need to calm the anxiety that drives it.

Rather than trying to make sleep happen, your focus must be on reducing your anxiety about insomnia and its consequences. As we’ll explore in this book, when you’re stuck in a loop of anxiety about your sleep, your nervous system makes it very hard for you to sleep.

As you lessen your anxiety over time, your nervous system will settle down, and sleep will begin to happen for you without effort.

Although there are many ups and downs in the journey of overcoming insomnia, as you reduce your anxiety layer by layer, you will transform your mind and attain great sleep for life.

The End Insomnia System will show you how.

Before we jump in, let’s cover a few scenarios where this system may not be the right fit for you.

This Book MayNotBe for You If:

Your sleep issues are primarily driven by a current stressor unrelated to sleep.

If you are under chronic stress about something—such as work, family, relationships, or past trauma—and you’re aware that your stress about that issue is specifically the thing that keeps you awake at night, then it may be more effective for you to focus on addressing the current problem. Working with a therapist can be a great option to help with that.

Alternatively, if your sleep issues are caused directly by pain or other symptoms of illness (such as cancer) or hormonal changes (as with menopause), then the best course of action is to work to address or alleviate the underlying issue, if possible. Insomnia can also sometimes be a side effect of certain medications, which this system is not designed to address directly.

In all of these instances, the End Insomnia System may still be helpful for three reasons:

First, even if a life situation may have triggered the sleep issues when poor sleep drags on for a while, it’s easy to start developing some anxiety about sleep that reinforces your insomnia. This book can help you better manage and overcome the extra sleep anxiety that may be compounding the issues you are facing and making it harder to sleep.

Second, this book will give you strategies to increase your chances of getting better sleep, even if you’re dealing with other stressors that make it harder to sleep.

Third, the strategies in this book for managing difficult thoughts and feelings and for finding more peace in situations that you don’t have full control over can be generalized to anything. These strategies can help you find more calm and deal more effectively with whatever stressor you may be facing.

Also, if you find your sleep troubles continue after the original issue that brought them on is resolved—or if you start to find your anxieties more centered on sleep itself—then the knowledge and tools in this book will help.

This Book Is Notfor You If:

You need sleep apnea treatment.

Sleep apnea is a physiological condition in which a person’s breathing repeatedly stops and starts during the night. If you have sleep apnea, you may wake up gasping for air during the night. Loud snoring is another common symptom.

People with sleep apnea often report that they don’t have trouble sleeping, but they feel fatigued and unrefreshed during the day, even when they think they’ve slept a normal amount. Sleep apnea is a condition that should be treated by a medical professional. A physician can order a sleep study if you suspect you might have sleep apnea.

HOWEVER: If you are getting treatment for sleep apnea but also have insomnia, then it’s likely this book will help.

You are looking for a quick fix—and expect an instant, magical solution for your insomnia.

Alas: Overcoming insomnia takes work—and time. I’d offer you a quick fix if I could, but there are no quick fixes for insomnia that actually work. You’ll learn more about this in the chapters to come.

The End Insomnia System takes time to learn and requires perseverance. You need to apply the system to get results. And you need to understand that ups and downs are an inevitable part of the process.

If you can take a long-term view and remain committed to the practices and perspectives offered by this system, then this system IS for you—and you CAN leave your insomnia behind.

Moving Forward To A Life of Better Sleep

The system you learn here—the End Insomnia System—will not just give you a way to resolve your insomnia and enjoy great sleep.

It will radically change your relationship with your thoughts and emotions, and it will teach you empowering ways to find greater ease and resilience in all areas of your life.

I wrote this book to show you how you can resolve your insomnia on your own—but you don’t have to.

If you read this book and decide you’d like help reversing insomnia as fast and easily as possible, we have designed the End Insomnia Program to give you guidance and support through implementing everything you’re about to learn.

The End Insomnia Program offers:

Over 6 hours of premium video footage with detailed presentations.Accountability and expert guidance by trained sleep coaches.A supportive community for fresh insights and inspiration.Additional tools, workbooks, and resources to take your learning deeper.

Visit the link below to learn more:

https://endinsomnia.com/program

To better sleep and a well-rested life,

Ivo

Part 1

Targeting the Root Cause of Insomnia: Why What You’ve Tried Doesn’t Work —And What DOES

Chapter 1

Why I Believe This System Can Help You—When Nothing You’ve Tried Has Worked

Whether you’ve turned to doctors, therapists, or internet sources to get help with your sleep, it’s common to be left feeling like the people you’re turning to for help don’t truly get what you’re going through.

I’m not one of those people.

The approach you’ll learn about in this book emerged directly from my own multi-year struggle with insomnia. While the system was refined through helping others overcome insomnia, I created it because I desperately needed to do something to help myself after I had exhausted all other options.

I now want to share the story of my descent into insomnia—and how I resolved it. My intention in sharing this is to help you believe that I

Know what the experience of insomnia is truly like, and Know how to truly resolve this.

My insomnia started after a particularly stressful period in my life. The stress came and went… but my sleepless nights stayed.

So I slogged through days feeling tense and dog-tired all the time like my body was made of cement. My mind was dominated by brain fog, stress, and worry that this would go on forever.

There was no escape from feeling anxious about what my sleep would be like the next night… and how it would make me feel the next day.

At first, I desperately hoped my insomnia would work itself out, but…

Asthemonthswenton,myinsomniaonlygotworse.

I’d lay awake for hours. Just as I’d fall asleep, my brain would jerk awake in the middle of the night. I would constantly toss and turn in bed… and it seemed impossible to relax my body and mind.

Sometimes my heart would pound as I climbed into bed, getting worse as the minutes passed.

I felt like my body had betrayed me. Like there was something wrong with me… and my ability to sleep was broken. Soon, I started doubting that I could consistently get a good night’s rest ever again.

Insomniawasruiningeverypartofmylife.

Even the things that used to bring me joy felt empty. I started avoiding my friends, social gatherings and even talking to people altogether. I didn’t have the energy or mood for any of it, and it seemed like no one could understand what I was going through.

I felt like I was failing in life and that I just couldn’t be the person I wanted to be. It seemed impossible to live well.

So I tried virtually everything to ease my insomnia.

IspentahugeamountoftimeGooglingforthesolution.Andconvincing myself the latest ‘shiny object’ would have to be it.

And I spent a small fortune on so-called “solutions.” To name a few, I tried…

Sleeping pillsSleep hygieneHerbal teasBedtime ritualsBlackout curtainsA weighted blanketPre-bedtime exercise and relaxation routinesCarefully timed hot showersQuitting caffeine and alcoholAll kinds of so-called “sleep hacks”Cutting out water and liquids four hours before bedStaying away from screens and blue light before bedGetting a lot of sun in the morning (I thought, “the problem must be low Vitamin D levels!”)B12 supplements and shots (“No, wait… the real problem is B12 deficiency!”)And much more

These solutions either didn’t work at all—or they failed to provide lasting relief.

I even saw a specialist in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia (CBT-i)—the so-called “gold standard” for insomnia treatment.

I pinned all my hopes on it working, and while it helped me get rest for a few weeks, my dreadful sleep and anxiety came back after I stopped seeing the therapist.

I was back at square one… and couldn’t go on like this.

SoIdedicatedmyselftofindingapermanentsolutionforinsomniathat actually works.

I obsessively poured through all the latest studies on sleep and insomnia.

Eventually, I stumbled on research that revealed while insomnia is often triggered by stress, it’s maintained by sleep anxiety.

And the more we approach nighttime worried about sleeplessness and its daytime consequences, the more the nervous system becomes conditioned to automatically enter a hyperaroused, “fight or flight” mode. These findings were recently confirmed by Stanford University researchers.1

Suddenly it made sense why all the conventional solutions for insomnia failed to provide permanent relief for myself and so many people.

Little to none of the existing treatments work to directly end sleep anxiety, calm the nervous system, or undo the conditioned hyperarousal at the root of insomnia.

Instead, they work more like temporary “BandAid” solutions.

SoItookthisinformationandsetouttocreateanewmethod.Onethat actually resolves the root cause of stress-triggered insomnia.

First, I teamed up with a therapist who specializes in insomnia. He wanted a more effective and lasting way to help his clients escape sleeplessness, and I just wanted to sleep normally and enjoy life again.

Together, we dug through the latest research on anxiety, hyperarousal, and psychological change.

We knew we were onto something when we looked into a relatively new, clinically-proven therapy. A treatment that’s been shown to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and hyperarousal in human clinical trials. Yet strangely, this approach had hardly been used on insomnia.

It’s called AcceptanceandCommitmentTherapy(ACT), and only recently has it started to get the attention it deserves:

Psychology Today reported that “ACT is rapidly growing in influence and popularity and meta-studies have found that it is as least as effective as Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.”2

And Baylor College of Medicine, one of the top-ranked medical institutions in the United States, only further confirmed our suspicions that ACT could be a breakthrough in insomnia treatment.

They reported:

Changing one’s relationship to anxiety, from struggle to acceptance, has the paradoxical effect of reducing anxiety symptoms, to the same extent or more than traditional, cognitive behavioral approaches, as suggested by large randomized clinical trials of ACT.3

Yet as we discovered an ever-growing body of research that suggests ACT could be effective at treating insomnia, I wondered, “How does struggling against this dreadful experience—and trying to control the parts of it that I can’t control—lead to ongoing insomnia?”

What we found was that distressing thoughts, and especially how we react to such thoughts, can trigger the same survival response in the brain and body that occurs if we are in physical danger. Simply by thinking something like “What if I get terrible sleep again tonight? I can’t stand another day of this!” and then beginning to fixate on and obsess about that thought, your body floods with stress hormones and anxiety.

That’s why ACT can calm sleep anxiety and reverse conditioned hyperarousal. It helps you change the way you respond to the dreadful thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations you get from not sleeping. When you respond with less struggle, more acceptance, and adopt new, empowering perspectives, your nervous system can begin to calm down.

However, I remained stuck when we tried to put the existing ACT treatment guidelines into practice. We found the existing treatment guidelines unclear, confusing, and very hard to follow.

Fortunately, we had the expertise in mental health to clarify and expand on existing ACT techniques. We then added additional tools and perspectives from other schools of psychology to address the other factors contributing to sleep anxiety.

I tested our findings on myself to see what actually helped. And after months of experimentation, research and analysis, we completed the first version of the End Insomnia System… and what happened next felt like a miracle.

When I applied these new methods, my sleep anxiety started getting weaker. Within a few weeks, I felt calmer during the day. I was at ease at night—even if I didn’t sleep. Within the first three months, I felt a dramatic difference. And a few months after that, I was sleeping well consistently!

Next,wetestedtheapproachwithadiverserangeofclientsandrefinedit.

When we saw how well it worked for other insomniacs—many who had been struggling for years, or even decades—I knew we had to share this approach with others who shared the same pain as I did.

Therestofthisbookisdedicatedtoshowingyoutheexactmethodthat has now helped hundreds of people end insomnia for good.

This journey started because I needed a solution so badly myself.

I’m happy to report that today, I’m totally free from the shackles of insomnia. I never worry about sleep—it just happens effortlessly. I wake up rested, refreshed, and energetic.

And on the (very rare) nights I don’t sleep as well, I feel calm and accepting. My work productivity is through the roof, and I finally have the energy to be present with my friends and family. I’m truly back to living a full life.

I am free, and hundreds of others have used these principles to achieve similar results. And now you can, too.

Self-Assessment: TheCurrentStateofYourInsomnia

There are a lot of ways insomnia can manifest, so let’s check in with YOUR experience. Here’s a brief self-assessment to evaluate the current state of your insomnia.

Below, rate yourself on a scale from 0–4 on how accurate the statements are, 0 means “not true for me at all,” and 4 means “very true for me.”

Once you’ve filled in a rating for each statement, total up your numbers and use the scoring key below the self-assessment to get more insight into your specific situation.

Insomnia Check-In Statement

Self Rating

1. I have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, despite doing everything I can to try to help myself sleep better.

2. I feel deeply frustrated when, once again, I find myself unable to sleep—when sleep is what I want more than anything.

3. My body seems to betray me at night. I experience things like an increased heart rate, sudden “jerks” just as I’m falling asleep, racing thoughts, or a sense of panic. I generally feel like my ability to fall asleep or stay asleep is broken.

4. I often get up in the morning feeling totally depleted and dreading the day to come.

5. My worries about sleep often weigh on my mind during the day.

6. I feel fatigue and physical discomfort during the day that is hard to bear.

7. As night approaches, I feel on edge, knowing I may be in for yet another hard night.

8. I feel powerless over my insomnia and trapped in a cycle of misery that doesn’t seem to have an end.

9. I have tried all kinds of things (pills, relaxation, techniques, distraction, CBT-i, bedtime rituals, sleep hygiene, etc.) to try to improve my sleep, but nothing works long term.

10. At times, my anxious thoughts feel like my worst enemy.

11. I am afraid that I will have insomnia for the rest of my life and that it will significantly affect my health.

12. Insomnia holds me back from being the person I want to be.

13. I fear that my sleep issues may cause me to fail or be inadequate in my responsibilities (for example, as a parent, spouse, professional, student, or friend).

14. I feel alone in my experience of insomnia and misunderstood by others who don’t struggle with sleep.

15. I feel grief about the presence of insomnia in my life and all that it has taken from me.

16. I have withdrawn from activities or hold myself back from my aspirations because I don’t feel in a state to live the life I want to live.

17. My insomnia makes it hard to travel, sleep away from home, or commit to plans or exciting opportunities.

18. I am trapped in a situation that often feels traumatic, and I am desperate for a way out.

19. Insomnia is one of the worst things—maybe the worst thing—that has ever happened to me.

20. I am reluctant to get my hopes up about a new approach to overcoming insomnia because I’ve been let down so many times.

Total Up Your Score:

What Your Score Means

Score: 55–80

Lost in Insomnia

You are experiencing a great deal of suffering from insomnia. Your attempts to help yourself have left you disappointed, and you likely feel trapped and overwhelmed by insomnia. Your nights are often miserable, and your days are hard to get through. Insomnia is a restricting and limiting force in your life. It may seem there is no end in sight, even though you are longing for change.

The good news is that all of these experiences can be reversed. Additionally, because you are in such great pain, it means you likely have a lot of incentive to learn a new approach to insomnia and apply it long term.

The knowledge and practices within the End Insomnia System can make a world of difference for you if you apply them in a patient and persistent way. You will also likely get a good dose of initial relief from simply learning what this book teaches you about what is going on with your sleep, why your efforts to help yourself have failed, and why you feel so trapped.

While it may be hard to imagine how you’ll get from your current state to consistent great sleep, if you approach the information in this book with an open mind and a willingness to make big changes, you can sleep well again.

Score: 30–54

Managing but Suffering

If your score is in this range, it means you’ve found ways to tolerate some of the difficulties that come with insomnia. Perhaps you’ve been able to still live your life and get by, but the burden of insomnia is still great.

You likely feel held back from being the person you want to be, and insomnia is never far from your mind. You still experience the pervasive distress of insomnia, day and night.

Using the End Insomnia System as a framework to understand and address your insomnia in a new way will be a relief for you. As you apply this system, you’ll become even more resilient to the experience of insomnia and learn a whole set of new knowledge and skills to lay the groundwork for a return to great sleep.

With consistent practice, you can remove the anxiety that fuels insomnia layer by layer and begin to regain trust in your natural ability to sleep. Full reversal of insomnia awaits if you apply this system.

Score: 0–29

Finding Resilience and Ready to Take Your Sleep to the Next Level

You’ve found ways to be resilient in the face of poor sleep, and your life is not dominated by insomnia.

This is excellent. You may have found other tools to work through your sleep-related anxiety or naturally feel confident in your ability to function on however much sleep you get.

However, you may feel you have plateaued in your journey out of insomnia and are not yet where you’d like to be with your sleep. You may have specific sticking points related to insomnia that you find persistent and hard to overcome.

The End Insomnia System will fill in gaps in your understanding and equip you with specific practices and mindsets to apply to the areas where you are stuck.

With a little help, you are not far away from addressing the root of your insomnia so that you can enjoy great sleep for the rest of your days.

Key Chapter Takeaways

If you struggle with sleep—are frustrated by being unable to sleep at night and plagued by sleep anxiety during the day—you are not alone.While insomnia is difficult to bear, equipped with a proper understanding, appropriate skills, and a commitment to the long-term journey of overcoming insomnia, you can sleep well again.

Chapter 2

Addressing Common Doubts and Objections

In the introduction, we talked about some of the reasons the system might not be for you—for example, having sleep apnea or wanting a magical quick fix. Now let’s talk about some reasons you might think the system is not for you—when in fact, it really might be.

Objection 1

You’re saying anxiety is the cause of insomnia. But I have insomnia, and I’m not anxious.

Maybe the term “anxiety” is getting in the way. Instead, think of your physical sensations.

What’s going on in your body at night when you can’t sleep? Or when you wake in the middle of the night? Do you feel wired, agitated, or frustrated? Is your heart pounding? Are your muscles tense, ready to spring into action? Are your thoughts racing?

This is a textbook description of a fight-or-flight survival response. This physiological response follows directly from perceiving a possible threat to your physical or mental well-being. Anxiety is another word for this experience.

Anxiety is a term that most people with insomnia identify with. Anxiety (and the physiological response that comes with it) arises when something we encounter evokes fear and uncertainty. Having persistent sleep issues, and having to deal with the consequences, typically involves both fear and uncertainty.

(If you don’t relate to the term “anxiety,” that’s okay: I’m really talking about the physiological experience that makes it hard to sleep.)