How to Overcome Sleep Anxiety

So first and foremost, when your life is more peaceful, your sleep is more peaceful. Really important to understand. Your day impacts your night and your night impacts your day. So trying to separate your day from your night and your night from your day, is really impossible and it always is interesting to me how people don’t put this together. So when you have an ability to better manage anxiety throughout the day, better understand where that anxiety is coming from, you’re going to be able to get better sleep. You get better sleep, then you have the energy to deal with that anxious mind.

So we’re going to be talking about some very specific tools, again, step-by-step, on how to deal with the anxiety that you have in your life that’s keeping you up at night. So what most of us do is we try to change what is, into what should or shouldn’t be. I’m going to say it again. We try to change what is, into what should or shouldn’t be. Now this is another way of saying that we resist our experience. So oftentimes, anxiety is fear of the future. Anxiety is worrying about something in the future that may or may not occur, and most people have anxiety because they’re constantly thinking about what could go wrong.

So when we start to, number one, not resist the uncomfortability of the thoughts, the sensations that arise when we think about the future, and we just accept the present moment as it is, our life as it is right now, whatever it is. Even if it’s not what you like, it’s through that process of accepting what is, that you’re able to get to a place to understand how to let go of all the thoughts that are creating the anchors in your body to stay stuck in that fight or flight state, which then keeps you up at night.

So the path to truly understanding and overcoming insomnia and the anxiety that gets attached to the sleeplessness is to accept it. And it sounds so paradoxical, I know. The paradox is truly accepting what is, is the best way to change what is. And what is, is what you’re experiencing in the moment because in the moment, that’s all we have. This might sound a little bit theoretical, it might sound paradoxical. It definitely is because we’re not trained to be present. We’re trained to think about the past or definitely worry about the future, what could be or may be, but when we bring ourselves back into the present, we put ourselves in a state of resourcefulness. And from that state of resourcefulness, our body has innate wisdom and innate intelligence which knows what to do. It gives you the greatest opportunity to connect to reality, which is all we have right now in the moment.

I know it takes practice because it doesn’t come natural. We’re naturally trained to do quite the opposite, to should and shouldn’t all over ourselves, which leads to unnecessary suffering, frustration, anger, which leads to then, more anxiety, which leads to then, more sleepless nights, which leads to then, that paradox, that cycle, that vicious cycle.

So choose to no longer make insomnia your enemy. Instead, make it your teacher. This one simple shift is extremely powerful. When you can use what you don’t want, but what is as a teacher, and view it as something, your body’s trying to tell you that something’s out of balance in either how you’re thinking or what you’re doing habitually. If you can view it as a teacher versus as an enemy, you’re putting yourself in a better position to truly solve the anxiety, to truly understand the anxiety, and truly enter the present moment, to truly enter what is right now for you and “is” just means everything.

So again, I’m not trying to be theoretical. I’m not trying to be spiritual in this video, but I’ve helped thousands of people overcome chronic insomnia, overcome decades of issues with their sleep. And when they get this, what I’m sharing with you in this video, and this is just a taste of what we do with our clients at Sleep Science Academy at a much deeper level, things start to shift. Things start to open up for them.

So hopefully, you’re getting that. So practice working with it, not against it, and when I say it, practice working with what is instead of what you think it should be. And again, this takes practice. It does not come natural. It is not natural to accept what is. It’s actually quite the contrary. We’re trained, when I say natural, I mean trained. We’re trained to resist what is, to constantly looking for what’s not right. It’s a survival mechanism and, unfortunately, this survival mechanism is what keeps us in an anxious state, which then leads to worse sleep, which then leads to more anxiety.

Hopefully, this is making sense. So take what you’ve learned in this video and practice it this week, practice truly accepting what is, and notice when you’re not. Just having the awareness of when you slip into the future of worrying about what is going to happen if you don’t get sleep tonight, or what would happen if this continues to be a problem for you. Just having the awareness of your having those thoughts, and then choosing to accept that you’re having those thoughts, number one, and accept that your current experience is maybe having issues with anxiety around sleep. That is your first massive step into truly solving it.

If you like this video, like it, share it with somebody who needs to hear it, and I’ll see you in the next one. Take care.