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A GradBlogger’s online business is closely related to their academic life. And both are often closely intertwined with their personal life, too. Now that most graduate students are working from home, the three have never been more closely connected.

As personal goals are tied to business goals and revenue, personal challenges obstruct the same.

Martin Reid, of insomniacoach.com and the Insomnia Coach podcast, helps those challenged with the inability to sleep. He educates clients by using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia, or CBTI. He has observed the efficacy of these techniques, and shares them because they’re grounded in evidence and they address the root cause of chronic insomnia.

CBTI is a set of skills to help address the thoughts and actions that perpetuate insomnia. Sleep disruption is a normal part of life. Stressful events, such as exams, job interviews, or deadlines can be the culprit behind temporary sleep disruption. As Martin says, “Our sleep will normally recover all by itself as soon as we’ve met the deadline, or as soon as we’ve adjusted to whatever change has happened in our life.” 

Long term sleep loss is often an implication of a change in how we think about sleep or our behaviours towards sleep. 

These can perpetuate insomnia in three main ways:

• By disrupting our sleep drive, 
• By disrupting our body clock, or
• By increasing arousal. 

Martin’s expertise in sleep issues comes, in part, from his own experience. He went from someone who loved sleep to someone who couldn’t get enough. “I would spend time thinking and worrying about sleep and researching sleep,” all of which fueled his insomnia more than helping his recovery. 

Once Martin started applying CBTI techniques, he began to realize full and satisfactory nights of sleep. 

His success made him a fan. “Ultimately, that got me on the path of trying to build out a forum, build out a community, build out information products, online courses that use these techniques to see if they would help others – and they did.”

Martin began to pursue his master’s degree in health and wellness education, received credentials as a health education specialist, and became certified in clinical sleep health as well as a certified health coach.

Part of Martin’s education was learning the difference between sleep hygiene and insomnia. The first is more to do with prevention and creating optimal environmental conditions for sleep. Sleep hygiene is really more to do with environmental things that might disturb sleep, like the light coming through the window or environmental noise. 

Insomnia is the result of a longer period of sleep issues, in which good sleep hygiene isn’t enough.

Martin says, “If you can recognize that you’re thinking a lot about sleep, you’re worrying a lot about sleep, you’re implementing behaviors solely with the goal of improving sleep or trying to get more sleep, then you can recognize that this has now become an issue” beyond the right curtains.

Sleep is a natural biological process. Understanding this is part of the first tool in the CBTI toolkit: education. Martin helps his clients to understand what sleep actually is and how much sleep we might need. He points out we all have an individual sleep requirement. “Someone out there might do absolutely fantastic on five hours of sleep every night, not even need any more sleep than that, or someone else might actually need eight hours of sleep, and they really struggle when they don’t get it. Then you’ve got all the people in between.”

Another tool is the sleep window, or the amount of time you spend in bed. A reflexive action to sleep disruption is to spend more time trying to sleep. However, it often just means more time awake. 

“More time awake, thinking about sleep, worrying about sleep, trying to sleep, feeling frustrated that you’re not that you’re not asleep, feeling anxious and that just feeds into the struggle. Because as soon as we have a higher level of arousal or worry or anxiety, it’s harder to sleep.”

One of the first behavioural aspects Martin suggests to implement is a more appropriate amount of time for sleep based on your average nightly sleep duration.

For example, if you’re currently averaging five hours of sleep each night, then the sleeper might allot five and a half hours for sleep. Martin points out, “We’re not cutting into the amount of sleep you’re getting, but we’re going to be significantly reducing the amount of time you spend awake during the night, that in itself can just feel so good.”

This also helps build what Martin calls “sleep drive”. Sleep drive is the biological process that correlates the length of time awake to time asleep. Being awake longer indicates an increased likelihood of sleep. This is especially beneficial to those who suffer chronic insomnia and may have lost the sensation of sleepiness.

“A lot of people with insomnia might go to bed when they’re feeling worn out and exhausted, but not necessarily sleepy,” Martin says. Rediscovering a strong sense of sleepiness can be quite reassuring as well as helping you fall asleep faster in a more consistent consolidated sleep.

Another tool is to get out of the bed at the same time each day. This practice provides your body clock with a strong consistent morning anchor. Your body becomes better able to predict when it should be sending sleep signals through the body, and better at allowing sleepiness cues to take over. 

Success with the CBTI toolbox positively influences mindset. 

Martin has noticed that his clients begin to look forward to going to bed, whereas many people with chronic insomnia may have a fear of going to bed. That fear can feed experiences of conditioned arousal, in which our bodies become used to being excited or anxious. “If we repeatedly experience difficulty sleeping, we can associate the bed with negativity, with anxiety and frustration.”

Another tool Martin employs is to shift all of that unpleasant wakefulness out of the bed. “Then when you start to feel calm and relaxed again, you can return to the bed and give yourself that opportunity to sleep.”

In the short term, the process can have you getting in and out of bed but, over the long term, Martin’s clients find they are able to reassociate the bed with sleep and pleasant wakefulness. It can often even just act as this mental reset switch, because when we’re lying in bed, in the dark alone with our thoughts, we can stew on those thoughts and it’s really hard to distract the mind.

#Sleepgoals: pursuing enjoyable, enriching activities without letting sleep influence our waking hours. 

Sleep disruption can lead to withdrawal from activities for fear of how that will affect their sleep. Some clients, Martin says, try to conserve energy through the day by not striving, exercising or even calling in sick to work. Unfortunately, all of these things can lead to more arousal, because the less active we are, the more time available to dwell on sleep issues. 

Reassuring and reminding yourself can help remove any pressure you’re putting on yourself and lower the intensity of your opinion on the importance of sleep. Staying intently focused on your career, studying, hobbies or enjoyable, enriching activities can help make the process easier, too.

To learn more about cognitive and behavioural therapy for insomnia and Martin’s CBTI toolbox, visit his website insomniacoach.com or find Martin @insomniacoach on Twitter. Martin offers one-on-one sleep coaching programs as well as a free two-week sleep training course and community forum.

You can also share your questions in the comments below or reach out to us at gradblogger.com/ask.