Insomnia Coach® Podcast
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. In this podcast, I share insomnia success stories featuring people who ended their struggle with insomnia. New episodes are released monthly.
Episodes
Laura’s insomnia began during one of the happiest times in her life. She tried everything to fix it but nothing worked. The real shift came when she stopped fighting her thoughts and started meeting them with openness and compassion.
This is her story of letting go of the struggle and moving forward — with or without sleep.
Watch/listen to this episode
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Rebecca never struggled with sleep — until 24-hour shifts as a hospital-based midwife changed everything. To protect her patients, she stayed awake through every shift. Eventually, she couldn’t sleep even when she tried.
She turned to medication, tracked every detail, followed every rule — but sleep only got harder. It wasn’t until she stopped chasing sleep, and started reconnecting with life, that things began to shift.
Today, R...
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Sleep was never a problem for Rupsa but after experiencing some professional challenges and moving to a new city, it became a struggle.
Although Rupsa found a new job and everything was going well in her life, her struggle with sleep continued. She started to fear each night. Her heart would race. It felt like her mind was working against her.
Things started to change when Rupsa realized her mind was actually trying to help her. ...
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A few bad nights during a stressful period triggered Tim's struggle with insomnia. The more he tried to fix his sleep, the more difficult it became, the more power and influence it had over his life, and the more anxiety he experienced.
Tim's transformation began when he realized that trying to control sleep was keeping him stuck and that his response to the fear of not sleeping was a bigger problem than being awake at night.
As ...
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Sophie never thought of herself as a great sleeper but when her son was born, sleep became a real struggle. This was expected in the short-term but when things became more difficult over time, Sophie became increasingly desperate. Listening to the stories of others offered reassurance and gave Sophie a new way forward that led to improvements.
Unfortunately, after a few months insomnia returned and seemed to be taking over her lif...
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When Danny experienced sleep disruption during a period of stress and an intense focus on health and fitness, he became very concerned. After reducing the stressors in his life, reducing the intensity of his exercise, and eating more appropriately he noticed that his sleep improved.
This led Danny to believe that sleep needed an absence of stress, a certain amount of exercise, and a certain type of diet to happen. When sleep diffi...
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When Esther stopped taking a medication for generalized anxiety disorder, sleep became a struggle.
New medication helped with her anxiety symptoms but a phobia of insomnia remained, no matter what she tried to do to get her sleep back on track.
When we started working together, Esther began to make some changes to deal with her insomnia phobia in a different way.
Instead of trying to control sleep, Esther refocused on controlli...
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Irina thought that something was seriously wrong when she experienced a night of no sleep and all her ongoing efforts to make sleep happen were not working.
The turning point came when Irina committed to an approach based on accepting the presence of wakefulness and all the difficult thoughts and feelings that came with it.
This didn't mean she pretended to like them. This didn't mean she gave up. It meant that she moved away f...
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Dulce found that the more she tried to control sleep, the more she struggled with sleep. And, the more she tried to resist the difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with insomnia, the more difficult and powerful those things became.
This awareness prompted a change of approach. Dulce let go of her strategy of trying to make sleep happen through effort (even though it was an approach she had been trying to make work for o...
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Whenever Neseret tried to move away from the medication she had been taking for 13 years, she found sleep impossible. Finding Insomnia Coach and the stories shared on the podcast gave her hope that she could finally leave medication behind.
Neseret started a supervised medical taper as she started to practice new skills and habits that moved her away from trying to control sleep and the difficult thoughts and feelings that come wi...
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When Bryan got sick, he had his first sleepless night. Then, he couldn't sleep the next night either. He began to believe he had lost the ability to sleep, which made him very anxious.
As sleep took over his life, Bryan stopped doing things he enjoyed and his relationships suffered. The more he tried to sleep, the harder it became, and he felt more anxious and disconnected from who he wanted to be.
One night, Bryan accidentally f...
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Emily's insomnia began four months after her baby was born. She struggled to fall asleep and this led to anxiety and exhaustion. Medication didn't help and her anxiety worsened, leading to panic at bedtime.
Emily's transformation started when she changed her approach. She spent less time in bed, engaged in pleasant activities when awake at night, and stopped calculating her nightly sleep duration. She accepted her anxiety and inso...
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Kirstin felt that she had lost her natural ability to sleep. She thought she was broken. She just couldn't sleep without sleeping pills. Every time she tried, she could not sleep.
After finding the Insomnia Coach podcast and realizing she wasn't alone, Kirstin changed her approach to sleep. She stopped trying so hard. She stopped doing more. In fact, she started to do less. She abandoned all her sleep efforts, rules, and rituals. ...
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Summer's struggle with sleep was taking over her life. No matter what she did to try to fix her sleep, nothing seemed to work. The more she tried to control sleep, the more difficult it became.
When Summer stopped trying to make sleep happen and started to allow sleep-related thoughts and feelings to be present without judgement, things started to improve. She practiced being kinder to herself and refocused her attention on doing...
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March 26, 2024 • 63 mins
When Nina fell pregnant she could no longer use the medication she relied upon to get her through occasional periods of insomnia. Her sleep got worse and insomnia seemed to take over her life. Nothing seemed to work and Nina felt stuck.
After discovering the Insomnia Coach podcast, Nina realized she wasn't alone. She felt hope. When she enrolled as a client, she started to make change happen. She changed her approach to sleep. She...
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February 29, 2024 • 67 mins
Kreuza found cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) helpful. However, when sleep problems returned as somniphobia — a fear of sleep itself — the same techniques no longer seemed to work.
Kreuza found that creating rules around sleep and trying to change her thoughts and feelings wasn't proving to be helpful. So, she tried a new approach: she let herself think thoughts and feel feelings — even the really difficult ones. ...
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Rachel's battle with insomnia began in grad school. Sleep aids and strict routines failed to improve her sleep.
Real change came when she moved away from trying to create the perfect conditions for sleep and stopped trying to get rid of certain thoughts and feelings.
Rachel's new approach involved being more flexible. She abandoned sleep-related rules and rituals. She practiced building skill in self-kindness and being more pres...
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November 29, 2023 • 62 mins
Jessica's struggle with insomnia began on a family trip, and it worsened each time she traveled until it stuck around, even at home. No matter what she tried, her nights were filled with anxiety and struggle.
Jessica found that her resistance to insomnia and the difficult thoughts and feelings that often come with it were making things even more difficult. So, she changed her approach. She practiced accepting insomnia and anxiety....
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October 31, 2023 • 66 mins
Eric's battle with insomnia started after a middle-of-the-night panic attack turned sleep into a nightly struggle. In a desperate search for solutions, he made changes that didn't improve his sleep and only ended up pulling him further away from the life he wanted to live. Eric started to isolate himself and considered difficult nights to be a personal failure.
The turning point came when Eric shifted his focus. Instead of obsessi...
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September 28, 2023 • 59 mins
Gerry's decades-long struggle with insomnia felt like a never-ending battle. The more he tried to force sleep, the worse his insomnia became.
His turning point came when he shifted his approach, embracing mindfulness and self-kindness instead of engaging in an ongoing battle. By focusing on the present moment and practicing self-compassion, Gerry found a new, more effective way to approach sleep.
The result was transformative: n...
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