Insomnia Coach® Podcast
Welcome to the Insomnia Coach® Podcast! My name is Martin Reed. I believe that nobody needs to live with chronic insomnia and that evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques can help you enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life. In this podcast, I share insomnia success stories and expert interviews that I hope will motivate and inspire you to implement changes that can improve your sleep and transform your life.
Episodes
In 2019, Jovana experienced a night of no sleep whatsoever but she was confident that she would get some sleep the following night. However, the next night was just the same — Jovana didn't get one minute of sleep.
At this point, she started to panic, and her anxiety was further compounded by the fact she was a new mom. Jovana started to dread going to bed. She felt frustrated. She felt lonely. Fortunately, she found the Insom...
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Cindy developed postpartum depression shortly after her daughter was born and was prescribed medication to help her sleep. The medication seemed to work at first but Cindy soon found that it wasn't helping and this led to more anxiety and more sleep difficulties.
Ultimately, Cindy stopped putting pressure on herself to sleep. She stopped striving for sleep, she stopped putting effort into sleep, she stopped trying to fight or ...
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Jake's sleep was severely disrupted when the COVID pandemic forced him to work from home. He soon found himself working at all hours and during weekends. When he took a vacation he found it really hard to get any sleep at all and this led to a lot of sleep-related research, a lot of anxiety, and a lot of worry.
As Jake learned more about sleep and insomnia he started to implement evidence-based techniques to help build sleep ...
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From a very young age, Celia would often try to control her sleep and often used medication to get her through her frequent bouts of insomnia. After the birth of her son and the emergence of the COVID pandemic, Celia became even more fixated on sleep. All of her old sleep crutches seemed to stop working and she didn't know what to do.
Celia recognized that it was her desire to control sleep and her sleep-related thoughts that ...
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Chad experienced some sleepless nights during a stressful period at work but his sleep started to get back on track — until one completely sleepless night created an avalanche of anxiety and insomnia. Fortunately, Chad discovered that it was his obsession with sleep and the changes he had made in response to difficult nights that were giving insomnia the oxygen it needed to survive.
So, he started to undo all those changes. By aba...
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Pat decided to approach each day pretending that she'd had a good night of sleep. She went about her days as normal and pursued enjoyable and enriching daytime activities, independently of how she slept. She also stopped talking about insomnia.
Pat shifted her attention away from sleep and refused to allow sleep to control her life. She also stopped all attempts to control anxious thoughts and instead, chose to acknowledge and...
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Like many of us, Hannah began experiencing sleep disruption during the COVID pandemic. When it became clear that lockdowns were likely to be extended, Hannah started to find it harder to fall asleep. Before long, she also found it hard to stay asleep, too.
In this episode, Hannah talks about the new sleep habits she developed and how she changed her relationship with sleep-related thoughts, and tested the sleep-related beliefs th...
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Susie never had a great relationship with sleep — but dealing with her insomnia wasn't something that was high on her list of priorities. That all changed, however, when Susie went overseas and her sleeping pills seemed to suddenly stop working. Quite understandably, Susie's anxiety skyrocketed and she ended up cutting her vacation short and returning home.
In this episode, Susie talks about the changes she made to create ...
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Michelle spent 15 years researching sleep and trying lots of different things to get rid of her insomnia. She did all she could to control her sleep but all that happened was sleep (or a lack of it) ended up controlling her as it slowly became an obsession and took a hugely influential role in her life.
In this episode, Michelle shares the techniques she found most helpful, talks about the short-term difficulties she experienced w...
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Jennifer's insomnia was deeply entrenched. After working with me for four weeks, she felt as though it was becoming more difficult to get through the day, her sleep had not improved, and she was understandably feeling discouraged. However, Jennifer kept going and four weeks later she was happier with her progress. She was experiencing less daytime fatigue and getting more sleep but she was still finding it hard to fall back to ...
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When Jessica moved back to her hometown with her husband and two children she began to struggle with sleep. When nothing she tried seemed to work, she started to believe that she'd lost the ability to sleep and was losing hope — until she learned more about how insomnia develops and realized that her insomnia wasn't unique or unusual.
When Jessica recognized many of the common thoughts and behaviors that perpetuate sleep d...
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Anafer believed that she was born with insomnia. Sleep was a problem for her for as long as she could remember. After years of doing her own research, speaking with health professionals, and taking various supplements and prescription pills, Anafer's insomnia was becoming unbearable.
After graduating from college, Anafer decided she needed to address her sleep issues before starting her career in dietetics. Two years ago, she...
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July 16, 2020 • 59 min
Dr. Mendelson is a psychiatrist, sleep doctor, and author who works primarily in the field of sleep research and sleep medicine. He is perhaps best known for his research related to the properties of sleeping pills and the effect of medication on sleep.
In this episode, Dr. Mendelson describes the evolution of sleeping pills, explains how they work, and shares information on their potential side-effects. We also talk about over-th...
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Sally had been living with insomnia for 60 years and had been taking sleeping pills for 10 years. She believed that she would never be able to sleep properly — but this all changed when she started to change the way she thought about sleep and began to implement new sleep-related behaviors that made it easier for her body to generate and sustain sleep.
Sally used to average around three hours of sleep each night. She now averages ...
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Rick's insomnia started in 2017 shortly after retirement. He started to wake during the night and would find it hard to fall back to sleep. Before long, he started to feel very anxious every time he woke and began to worry about what the day would be like after each difficult night of sleep.
Fortunately, Rick discovered evidence-based cognitive and behavioral techniques that changed the way he thought about sleep and helped h...
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For five years, Anna experienced short episodes of insomnia that would last for a week or two before disappearing. However, when her mother fell ill and required surgery, Anna found it very difficult to fall asleep and this time, even though her mother recovered, Anna's sleep did not. Anna got to the point where she just didn't feel sleepy when she went to bed and this made her think that her sleep system was broken.
Today...
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Gretchen is a pediatrician and the mother of three children. Her sleep was regularly disrupted as she worked shifts during college and was on call during her pediatric residency. After having children and then entering early menopause, Gretchen started to spend hours awake during the night. This led to sleep-related worry and anxiety that combined with work stress to make sleep more frustrating and more difficult.
In this episode,...
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Dave often experienced difficulties falling asleep and staying asleep and this became more of a problem once he became a father. After an overseas trip, Dave's sleep really took a turn for the worse — not only did he find it hard to fall asleep, he would also wake around 3:00 AM and find it very difficult (if not impossible) to fall back to sleep.
Fortunately, Dave found out about sleep restriction — a core component of cognit...
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In August 2018, Bill was admitted to hospital with a suspected heart attack and this triggered an intense period of insomnia that led to progressively worse sleep. Bill soon found himself following a long list of pre-sleep rituals that did not improve his sleep but did lead to more sleep-related worry. Fortunately, Bill was told about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and was able to get his sleep back on track. In ...
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Dr. Jade Wu is a clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist at Duke University School of Medicine. In this episode, Jade and I discuss a number of concerns that are common among people with chronic insomnia — we talk about how much sleep we need, whether we can lose our ability to sleep, whether insomnia is caused by a chemical imbalance in the body, whether chronic insomnia causes any serious health problems, a...
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