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Martin Reed:

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 Reed:

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 Reed:

So, Eric, thank you so much for taking the time out for your day to come onto the podcast.

Eric Myers:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Martin Reed:

It’s great to have you on. I’m really looking forward to everything that we are going to end up talking about today. So let’s just start right at the beginning. Can you tell us a little bit more about when your sleep problems first began and what you think may have initially triggered that sleep disruption?

Eric Myers:

It was the spring of 2020, so this is when the beginning of the COVID hysteria and stuff. And I think I had some health anxiety. I tried not to get caught up in all that stuff, but I think, I don’t know, I have a tendency to be a little bit of a hypochondriac anyway, so I probably didn’t help. I remember it was starting to interfere with my sleep. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I remember talking to my doctor about it, and at some point I started focusing more on the sleep, I guess, because I just was like, “Ah, I got to get some sleep. This is ridiculous.” And once I started worrying about that all the time, then it just got worse. And the harder I tried, the worse I got. It seems like once it started going down that path, just like it’s a snowball effect or something, it just gets worse the harder you try.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. So do you feel it was all that kind of stress, worry, anxiety related to the pandemic that triggered that initial sleep disruption?

Eric Myers:

Yeah. I mean, something like that. I mean, I remember someone that I knew had recently passed away suddenly and I think I had that on my mind too. But I think that was more or less how it got started.

Martin Reed:

And so, what was that sleep disruption for you? Was it just at a basic level? Was it difficulty falling asleep or was it kind of staying asleep once you first fell asleep? Or maybe it was a bit of both of those things?

Eric Myers:

I think I was okay with falling asleep, but I would always wake up in the middle of the night and then that’s when it would start to get weird. I think later on, maybe it was a little of both, but initially it was more an issue with sleep maintenance.

Martin Reed:

So when you fell asleep and you woke up and then you found it hard to fall back to sleep, why do you think that that was the case, was there loads of stuff just racing through your mind or did it just seem to be like no obvious course what was going on?

Eric Myers:

Yeah, I remember just a lot of stuff in my mind and just remember feeling weird because, like I said, it was kind of a hypochondriac. And so anything, if I just felt sick at all, I would just start imagining things and I’m like, I don’t know, what’s wrong with me? And then I remember getting the chills for some reason and then just having this weird breathing issue or something, just weird stuff like that. But I think I was just having anxiety like anxiety attack, and then that’s when I would just be up for sometimes hours just trying to relax.

Martin Reed:

And so, what about your days, were you finding that there was any kind of knock on effect on your days related to all this struggle with sleep and all that wakefulness during the night?

Eric Myers:

Yeah, once it became an ongoing issue, I mean, in some ways, it seems like the days were worse than the nights because I’d just be thinking about it all the time, I became obsessed with it, which I think it happens to people with chronic, and some, you become kind of OCD about all this stuff. This is something that you talk about a lot is the way you react to insomnia really has a big effect on whether or not it becomes a chronic problem, and I definitely didn’t respond well to it.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. So I’m guessing that every other human being on the planet, you’ve experienced some difficult nights from time to time before this longer term struggle with sleep. When you were going through this, when you first experienced that sleep disruption, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but my guess is at first you’re just like, “Well, this probably the reason why I’m struggling is because everything is going on right now, normal, this has happened before.” But when did you get to that point where you started to think, why is this sticking around? This is different this time around, there’s something unique or there’s something this feels different. Why is this sleep issue sticking around?” When did that happen and why do you think that was?

Eric Myers:

Yeah. For some reason I just became really focused on it and it seemed like the more attention that I gave to it then the worse it got. If I would’ve just blown it off and didn’t worry about it, I probably would’ve been fine. I really became determined to overcome this, and then the harder I tried, the worst it got.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. Was it just after those first couple of nights that you started to really get more concerned and look for solutions? I’m just curious how long this sleep disruption was going on for before you figured out, “Well, there’s something a little bit different going on this time around,” and that’s when all that extra attention, all that extra focus happened.

Eric Myers:

Maybe a couple weeks, something like that. I don’t know. Because at that time, I really didn’t know much about sleep, so I remember thinking like what happens, can this just keep going on until I just collapse or something, and I didn’t know what to expect. So I don’t know, I just worried about it a lot, which just made it worse, of course.

Martin Reed:

I’m curious to hear what kind of things you’d tried in response. So you know the sleep issue stuck around for a couple of weeks and that’s when we start to think, “Okay, we got to fix this problem now.” So we are completely understandably going to put more attention on our sleep. Those of us who have made this journey and have put the insomnia behind us can recognize that it is a lot of that attention that we gives insomnia is often what feeds it, what gives it that oxygen that it needs to survive. But when we’re caught up in a struggle, when we’re struggling with something, it’s understandable, we want to fix it. And then part of that fixing process is usually attention and effort, but unfortunately sleep just doesn’t tend to respond well to those things. So I’m just curious to hear what kind of things you tried initially after those couple of weeks. What kind of techniques or things di