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

Vicky Chiu:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m really grateful to be here. Thank you.

Martin Reed:

I’m really looking forward to everything that we are hoping to cover today, so let’s just dive right in. Let’s start, if you could just tell us when your sleep problems first began and what you think caused those initial issues with sleep.

Vicky Chiu:

I’ll start right from the very beginning where it all started in my teens and I think it’s about when I was 17. I got my very first early morning job, and of course, that got my nerves going before when I go to bed, and actually I didn’t sleep well. But then going on forward with that job, I had hung on to that problem and stress, but not being able to sleep. I also have a background where my father has insomnia too, so being around a house of not good sleep was normal. And I went to him because he had the same kind of problems so obviously he was probably a good person to go to at that time. And so he’s commonly on Zopiclone, the blue pill is what people commonly know it as. But yeah, he gave me one of those and it worked fine and from then I just started taking a little bit of it, maybe a quarter, not even the full thing, but that just began the habit of relying on sleeping pills whenever I had an early morning.

So then fast forward into my twenties, it would be every day before I go to bed for work, very manageable. And then on the weekends I would be totally off of it. So really it was psychological if you think about it. And then fast forward again until my late thirties now, I have three kids and the first two were fine with sleep and everything. The third one, I’m not sure what changed, but I think it was because of my third. It was all these little pieces of puzzles that came into place then it fit really well to create this big monster of insomnia, anxiety and stress. It was my third one and it was going to be our last one, so I was very cherishing that moment. And then when the infant stage moved on, I was grieving that stage and she just grew up so fast and I think I was sad that way.

And then at the same time I just cut off nursing, right off, and that was hard too. And I think because of that there was also a lot of hormones related to not breastfeeding anymore, and so I had a very hard time letting go of that. Plus then going to sleep, I was thinking about that and there was one night that just triggered everything where I couldn’t sleep so I was like, oh, I’m just going to take this sleeping pill. I took half, didn’t work, I took another half and it didn’t work. And I was like, okay, I don’t want to overdose on this so I’m like, the sleeping pills not working, so this is a problem. And then that ignited a lot of stuff like anxiety and then panic attacks in the middle of the night. I would wake up in the middle of the night and have a panic attack and then not be able to fall asleep. So it really spiraled downwards in 2021 of September.

Martin Reed:

Yeah. I hear that quite a lot. I’m thinking just to myself that I think a lot of people are going to identify with that process where you have the sleeping pill or the supplement or whatever that external thing is that we rely on as a crutch to get us through difficult nights. And those things tend to be fine for as long as they have an effect. But then the downside is that when that experience happens where we use that crutch and it doesn’t seem to have an effect, then we can just become so much more worried than perhaps we would’ve done if that crutch wasn’t even available to us. Because now we’re taking that thing that we’ve always believed will generate sleep for us and even that’s not working now and that can really be quite scary. Was that the case for you when you found that wasn’t helping anymore?

Vicky Chiu:

Yes. So once the sleeping pill didn’t work, it was very scary because it’s worked for me for the last 20 years, and I’m taking one and a half of the amount that I used to take at least. And so I’m like, yeah, there’s something wrong with me. The feelings of, there’s something wrong and I’m the only one because sleeping pills should be working for everyone, especially the prescription ones. So yeah, it caused a lot of anxiety and stress. Yeah.

Martin Reed:

Yeah, it’s really interesting. This whole relationship we can have with just sleeping pills, it really doesn’t matter, it’s just whatever that external thing is that we rely on or we see is a safety net. I think what happens is, it’s a comfort. So we take that pill, we’ve known from experience that now sleep is going to happen. So all that worry, that pressure we might be putting on ourselves to sleep, that effort we might be putting into sleep, we just drop all that struggle.

And I think that might be one of the real mechanisms behind how they actually work. It’s less to do with whatever’s in what we are taking and more to do with just, I’ve taken that thing, now I can relax, I don’t have to worry, I don’t have to fight with my mind, I don’t have to try anymore. And it’s that abandonment of the trying that tends to generate that good sleep. And so then going back to your experience, okay I’ve taken this pill, but if there’s still that big underlying anxiety or worry or stress going on, the mind is still going to be churning over that. So then we find, oh, now this pill isn’t working. And I hate using the air quotes, but it’s not working, it’s not getting the desired result. And just like you said, then you just start to get really worried because now it’s like, well this isn’t even working now. What’s going on?

I must be unique, but it’s not. It’s just down to the fact that at the end of the day we haven’t got to the root cause, that root problem of what’s creating this long term sleep disruption. And I’m sure we’ll get to talk some more about that. But really it just comes down to our relationship with all those thoughts and feelings that are going on in our mind and often a change in our behaviors as we try to protect our sleep, try and make more sleep happen and just fix the problem that we’re dealing with, right?

Vicky Chiu:

And actually that’s how I found out about your podcast actually was, I felt alone, but I was like, realistically I can’