3 Insights That Freed Me From Insomnia | Ep 62

Beth spent 42 years chasing sleep.

Until one day, she realized the very effort to “fix” insomnia was the exact thing keeping her stuck.

What followed wasn’t another hack, routine, or bedtime ritual. It was a complete shift in how she related to sleep itself.

In this episode, Beth shares three transformational mindsets that quietly ended her lifelong battle with insomnia.

You’ll hear how ownership (without blame) restores power, why the fixing loop is a trap in disguise, and how living as if you’re already free creates the conditions for natural sleep to return.

If you’ve been doing all the “right” things and still feel trapped in the same old cycle, this one will turn everything you thought you knew about insomnia upside down.

Enjoy! 🧡

Mentioned Resources:

Ep #3. Dancing With Insomnia: My Story (Pt. 1)
Ep #4. Dancing With Insomnia: My Story (Pt. 2)

Connect with Beth:

 👉  Instagram 

Work with Beth:

👉   Learn About the Mind. Body. Sleep. Mentorship
👉   Start the Free Insomnia Course Here

Show Notes HERE.


About Beth Kendall MA, FNTP: 

For decades, Beth struggled with the relentless grip of insomnia. After finally understanding insomnia from a mind-body perspective, she changed her relationship with sleep, and completely recovered. Liberated from the constant worry of not sleeping, she’s on a mission to help others recover as well. Her transformative program Mind. Body. Sleep.® has been a beacon of light for hundreds of others seeking solace from sleepless nights.

© 2023 - 2025 Beth Kendall

DISCLAIMER: The podcasts available on this website have been produced for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. The contents of this podcast do not constitute medical or professional advice. No person listening to and/or viewing any podcast from this website should act or refrain from acting on the basis of the content of a podcast without first seeking appropriate professional advice and/or counseling, nor shall the information be used as a substitute for professional advice and/or counseling. The Mind. Body. Sleep. Podcast expressly disclaims any and all liability relating to any actions taken or not taken based on any or all contents of this site as there are no assurances as to any particular outcome.

Mind. Body. Sleep.® with Beth Kendall is your trusted source for holistic insomnia recovery, blending neuroplasticity, nervous system health, and mind-body coaching to help you finally sleep again.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Mind Body Sleep, the podcast for
anyone out there who wants tounderstand and recover from
insomnia using a holisticperspective.
I'm Beth Kendall, your host.
Let's get started.
Hello everyone.
I'm back with another episode ofthe Mind Body Sleep Podcast.

(00:27):
If you're new to my world,welcome.
I'm so glad you're here.
My name is Beth.
I'm a sleep coach for peoplewith insomnia.
And I take people from anxious,unpredictable sleep and the
constant worry that you'll neversleep normally again to trusting
that your body does actuallyknow how to do this and it

(00:50):
doesn't even need much help fromus at all.
And I mention thistransformation because it's the
exact one that I had.
And today I'm going to walk youthrough the top three things
that completely changedeverything for me.

(01:10):
Now, before I get going with thefirst thing, I want to lay a
little groundwork because thefirst shift that I talk about
might land a little strangely ifyou don't understand how I
approach insomnia.
So, insomnia, the way I defineit, is a learned fear of not

(01:35):
sleeping.
Sometimes I call it conditionhyperarousal, sometimes I say
sleep anxiety, but basically Idon't see insomnia as a broken
sleep system.
Although that's certainly theway it expresses.
I see it as a collection ofthoughts, beliefs, and behaviors

(02:00):
that has led to an unwantedstress response that likes to
show up right about the time youwant to get some sleep.
And this conditioned responsereally can take over your life.
If you're listening to thispodcast, then you might know

(02:20):
exactly what I'm talking about.
It is no joke.
I did a two-part podcast seriesearly on called Dancing with
Insomnia that details my 42-yearjourney with all of it.
So if you want to go back andlisten to that, it's episodes
three and four, and I'll linkthose up in the show notes for

(02:43):
you.
But insomnia really did dominatemost of my existence.
And I think on some level I wentthrough it partly to create my
mentorship.
I definitely do see the wholeexperience as a major
contributor to what is currentlymy purpose in the world.

(03:07):
I feel like I understandinsomnia in ways I don't hear a
lot of people talking about.
So with that understanding ofinsomnia as a learned response,
this next part will hopefullymake a lot more sense.
So let's get going with thosethree things.

(03:30):
The very first thing I did thatended my battle with insomnia
was take ownership of insomnia.
What I know that might sound alittle crazy, y'all, but stay
with me.
It was actually during apractice EFT session with a

(03:52):
friend that I had a hugerealization.
I realized that insomnia wasn'tsomething that was happening to
me.
It was something I hadunintentionally created within
me.
Not purposely and notconsciously, but through a

(04:16):
series of innocentmisunderstandings and protective
patterns, my brain had built upover the years.
And again, if you're feeling alittle bit offended by that,
that's okay.
I get it, and I'm holding spacefor that because I once threw a
Kleenex box across the roomafter a doctor told me I had

(04:40):
sleep anxiety.
So, like I said, I get it.
And of course, there was nounderstanding or education or
empathy from this doctor.
So all my brain heard was,you're doing this to yourself
and it's all in your head.
So that didn't go over too well.

(05:00):
But taking ownership of insomniareally was my first step back
towards freedom.
Because taking ownership ofinsomnia meant it no longer
owned me, it gave me back thepower.

(05:23):
So let's go a little deeper intothis.
I realized during that sessionwith my friend that I had quite
successfully, I might add,created a seriously undesired
outcome.
And because I hadunintentionally created that

(05:45):
outcome, I knew I could create adifferent outcome, which is
exactly what I did.
Now, nowhere in that process ofownership did I blame myself for
having insomnia.
And I think that's where thismessage gets lost because people

(06:08):
with insomnia tend to beincredibly responsible and
self-aware people.
So this message often getsreceived through a lens of blame
or shame.
But ownership is not the same asfault.

(06:31):
Ownership installs agency, faultremoves it.
Ownership signals safety to thenervous system, fault says I've
done something wrong.
Ownership opens the door tochange while fault closes it.

(06:54):
There is so much I could sayabout these two states of being
that it really does deserve itsown podcast.
But taking ownership of insomniawas the single biggest energetic
shift I experienced that got thewhole thing rolling for me.

(07:15):
Insomnia was never my fault.
And it's not your fault either.
I believe we're always doing thebest we can from whatever realm
of awareness we're in, or atleast I certainly was.
So that was the first shift.
And with that, something amazingstarted to happen that led to my

(07:39):
second big shift.
The next shift I had was movingout of the fix it orientation.
I no longer felt the need to fixmyself or my sleep because what
I understood during that sessionwas that the constant drive to

(08:02):
fix my sleep actually had acounter intention, or what I
call a true intention.
And the true intention drivingthe need to fix my sleep was the
belief that I was somehowbroken, that I had lost my own

(08:22):
ability to sleep, that I didn'thave the same sort of brain or
sleep system as everyone else.
But taking ownership of insomniaor realizing that I had
unintentionally programmedmyself in this way pretty much
scratched the record on thatbroken belief system.

(08:44):
So I no longer saw it that way.
In fact, the idea of trying tofix my sleep seemed a little
silly because there was neveranything wrong with me in that
department, anyway.
99% of the insomnia advice I wasimplementing was keeping me

(09:05):
stuck because it was keeping mein the loop of fixing.
Every time we're fixing sleep,we're teaching the brain there's
a problem.
That's the invisible messageback to the mind, which of
course just leads to moreanxiety, more hyper-arousal, and
more insomnia.

(09:26):
I was doing all the work, right?
All the sleep hygiene, all themeditations, all the multitude
of things I did for sleep.
And I do mean multitudes, butnothing was shifting because I
didn't understand how the mindworks.

(09:47):
The problem with all of this wasthat there was a
counterintention in my focus.
By fixing my sleep, I wasfeeding the belief that I was
broken.
And that sends a really mixedmessage to the unconscious mind.
It's always going to read yourtrue intention first.

(10:12):
So stepping out of the fix itorientation was the second thing
I did.
And that naturally led to thethird shift, which was basically
living my life like I didn'thave insomnia.
So what do I mean by that?

(10:32):
Well, on some level, I reallydidn't interpret insomnia as
something I had anymore.
I no longer identified with itthe same, even though I didn't
start sleeping better forseveral months.
But from a broader perspective,I also view the human experience

(10:55):
as a conscious creation, right?
We're all creators.
I don't believe we're just thepassive recipients of our
circumstances.
I think we all have the abilityto actively shape our reality.
Now, for most of my life, I wasjust living off my own default

(11:16):
programming.
I had this really intense beliefsystem that there was something
seriously wrong with me, andthere was no one out there that
knew how to help me or fix me.
And in some respects, I wasright because I don't think I
would have found anyone outthere to fix me.

(11:39):
First, because I wasn't broken,and second, because I was the
fix.
I just couldn't see it at thetime.
So for all those decades, I wasliving out insomnia's vision for
me instead of what I wanted forme.

(11:59):
Everything I did or did not dowas filtered through the lens of
how it was going to affect mysleep.
I was 100% living on insomnia'sturf.
But once I realized I wasessentially living out a
self-perpetuating loop in mybrain, I put a new destination

(12:23):
in the GPS.
I started living out the visionI wanted for myself instead of
the one that insomnia had goingon.
And very slowly started creatingthe life of someone who didn't
have insomnia.
And I think that the differencebetween living in the fixing

(12:47):
orientation versus the creatororientation is huge and
something that gets missed a lotbecause they are very, very
different approaches.
The creative orientation isgenerative, right?
It's focused on what you do wantbecause that's the address in

(13:10):
the GPS.
The fixing orientation isfocused on the problem, getting
rid of, eliminating.
You position yourself againstwhat you don't want.
So that's where your energy isgoing.
I believe it was Carl Jung whosaid something like most

(13:31):
problems in life aren't solved.
You just create a new you whodoesn't have that problem.
And that was definitely the casefor me.
Because my focus wasn't goingtowards the problem anymore.
I was much more in service ofthe creation of my life rather

(13:52):
than in service of fixing mylife.
So let's recap the three shiftsthat ended my battle with
insomnia.
The first shift was takingownership and realizing that
insomnia wasn't something thatwas happening to me.
It was something my mind hadlearned and could just as easily

(14:16):
unlearn.
The second shift was steppingout of the fixing orientation
and letting go of the idea thatthere was something physically
wrong with me.
From that point forward,whatever I did became a way to
support my sleep versus a way tofix it.

(14:38):
And lastly, the third shift wasliving life like I didn't have
insomnia and creating the life Itruly wanted for myself versus
the one I had been living forinsomnia.
Now, I want to be clear thatthese shifts did not happen

(14:59):
overnight.
Oftentimes they were so subtle,I didn't even realize they were
happening until I looked back intime.
And I think that's how realchange tends to happen.
It comes when you're not lookingfor it.
And it's usually at a veryunconscious level.

(15:23):
But what I really want you totake away from this episode is
that if it's possible for me, itis absolutely possible for you.
Thanks for joining me.
This is the Mind Body SleepPodcast.
I'll see you all next time.

(15:44):
Thanks for being here today.
If you love what you heard ontoday's episode, don't forget to
hit the like button andsubscribe to the podcast.
And if you need more supportwith your sleep, join me in the
Mind Body Sleep Mentorship.
This three month one on oneprogram will transform your
relationship with sleep so youcan get back to living the life
that you love free from the fearof not sleeping.

(16:05):
Head on over to bethkendle.comfor more details.
I'll see you next time.