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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:

Okay, Maria, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come onto the podcast.

Maria Koziol:

Absolutely, no problem. My pleasure.

Martin Reed:

I’m really excited to have you on. Let’s just start right at the beginning. When did your sleep problems begin and what do you think caused those initial issues with sleep?

Maria Koziol:

If we’re talking about the trigger, I think it was a very complex case. There was not a singular cause or trigger that I could point out. I think I haven’t even been able to recognize it yet, like 100%, what was that? I just think it all started at the point when I actually started to have different mental health problems. That was at the beginning of 2021 when all of a sudden, I started to have panic attacks and anxiety attacks, when I had never ever experienced such things before. I was trying to figure out why at that time, why the beginning of 2021? I hadn’t had any major tragic events at that time, so this is still kind of a mystery to me. But I talked about it with my psychotherapist and we’ve come to the conclusion that it must have been for the reason that I’ve had a lot of personal issues that were like, I didn’t really have a chance to talk about them so they accumulated over time.

And then on top of that, we had COVID, the outbreak of COVID. I had to experience loneliness and detachment from environment at that time. Also, problems with work as well because I wasn’t sure if I’m going to be able to keep my position at work, because of COVID. So I think there was a lot of different things that started all of my problems, and insomnia came along with it. Insomnia came around beginning of 2021. That’s how I would describe the beginnings, how I would describe the trigger. I know it doesn’t really point out any specific trigger, but it’s kind of hard for me to say, to be honest.

Martin Reed:

I think everyone’s experience is a little bit different there. Some people have this really clear and obvious pinpoint and they know exactly when it began, what caused it. For other people, it can be a bit mysterious. The trigger itself is usually less of an issue. It’s more to do with how we’re responding to that sleep disruption when it turns up. So when all this difficulty arrived, what was sleep like for you? What was a typical night like if there was such a thing?

Maria Koziol:

I would have long streaks of not sleeping, and the longest I had was I think more than 72 hours when I didn’t sleep for the whole three or four days. At this point, I was absolutely anxious and freaked out. I hadn’t really slept. That was the longest streak of not sleeping for me in my whole life, so at that very point, I thought that something must be wrong with me. And I’ve heard a lot of people on your podcast saying the same, so I also could identify with them because when insomnia comes to your life, you feel as though something must be wrong with you. How can you not sleep? All of the other people are sleeping. How can you just lose your ability to sleep?

I just felt as though something in my brain, like chemistry of my brain, has changed permanently, and I was super anxious about that. So, how would my sleep look like? I had the long streaks of not sleeping and then following that, I would have maybe a microdose of sleep the next night, like two hours, and then another streak of not sleeping like two days, and then maybe again two hours of sleep. Sometimes I had five, six hours of sleep during this period, but then it would usually be followed by, again, not sleeping or sleeping in micro doses. So that was a nightmare, I remember that so well.

I could lay for hours in bed and just focus so much on trying to get asleep that it never happened. The more I focus on trying to fall asleep, it never ever happened. I would usually spend hours and hours tossing around, tossing over in bed.

Martin Reed:

What about your days? Were you finding this difficulty, the struggle with sleep was affecting your days as well?

Maria Koziol:

Yeah, of course. At the beginning when this was all new to me, the insomnia thing happened so suddenly and I was so disorientated, I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was so confused about all of this especially since before, I had never struggled with sleep, ever. I would fall asleep very easily anywhere, so that was all the more strange. About my days, I would be all shook up and I could cry over simple things, like a glass would break and I would burst out in tears. I was even shouting at my family members for no reason. I was crying. I was super emotional. Physically-wise, I was able to function normally. I could even go work out, to be honest, but the only thing stopping me from that was that my mind wouldn’t stop running around the thought if I will be able to sleep that night or not, or how I didn’t sleep the last night.

My whole day was dominated by the sleep thing because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Regardlessly of what was going on in my life, even if maybe I won lottery, I couldn’t probably be even enjoying that because I would be still thinking about how I am not able to sleep that night. That was manipulating my whole way of thinking. I felt like I couldn’t be really enjoying the activities I used to enjoy as well anymore. And to be honest, I think the worst part of it was the loneliness that came along with it. The feeling of being alone and the feeling of your family members and friends not having a smallest clue about what you’re going through because they have never experienced insomnia.

I know they have been trying to help me and comfort me, but they had no idea about what I was going through. My mom would usually tell me, “Okay, don’t worry. If you didn’t go sleep that night, you would probably go sleep the next night.” And I’m like, “But you don’t get it. I wasn’t sleeping for three days, what if I die?” No one could actually understand me. No one could relate to it, because none of my friends ever experienced insomnia, none of my family members ever experienced insomnia, so the feeling of loneliness that no one actually understands you, that was also a very big part of how I felt during the day, if that makes sense?

Martin Reed:

Yeah, it makes complete sense, and I’m sure it’s going to make complete sense everyone listening to this as well. You mentioned that physically, you felt like I could probably still work out or still do activities that I had planned or that are important to me, but at the same time, your mind is like,