Ep 50. "There's Tremendous Power in Letting Go" — Mike's Hope Story

 Mike spent months fighting with sleep.

• Melatonin? Nope.
• Sleep hygiene? Not the magic answer.
• CBT-I? Let’s just say it had him sitting in the dark, petting his cat, calculating his “sleep score” like a mathematician.

The more he tried, the worse things got. Until he realized something HUGE — the best way to control sleep is to not try and control it.

This episode is packed with powerful insights you don’t want to miss:

• “I found tremendous power in letting go.”
• “I don’t need that much to recover from insomnia.”
• “At one point, I was literally sitting on the floor petting my cat thinking, is this really what it takes to sleep?”

This interview was such a delight. Mike’s story is real. His perspective is sharp. And his humor is the icing on the cake.

If you’ve ever felt trapped in the overthinking, overanalyzing, sleep-obsessing loop, this episode is for you.

Connect with Beth Kendall:

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Work with Beth Kendall:

👉   Start the Free Insomnia Course

👉   Learn About the Mentorship

Full Transcript Below:

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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

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TRANSCRIPT:

"I forgot to worry about my sleep..."

Beth:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I am most pleased and honored to be joined by another MINDBODY Sleep Mentorship student today. His name is Mike. Welcome Mike.

Mike:

Thank you, Beth, for having me. This is an honor to be on your podcast.

Beth:

Well, thanks so much for joining us. I know that from working with you that one of your north stars throughout the program has been to pay it forward. I know that this is something that's really important to you, and I also know that you are a very busy person, so thanks for taking the time to join us today.

Mike:

No, we were just talking about how it's very busy and I'm certainly glad to be sleeping better because February is the busiest month for my job. Now I'll give you some background if you could how I got here.

I've never had a problem with sleep in 2020. It was the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. So I work in the healthcare field and starting in about March every morning we had to log into Zoom. There were no more in-person meetings. We had to look at what are the symptoms of covid, what are the screening questions you ask people? What is the personal protective equipment that you wear and do you screen yourself? Do you have a fever? Do you have a stomach ache? I mean, there was any kind of pain at that point was linked to covid. So if it is very duplicitous, there was some toxic messaging. It was very unclear and I think everybody was stressed out across the world, especially in people who had loved ones who have had it or in the hospital. But

It was a lot of uncertainty. You have taught the people in your program that insomnia is a threat detection system. Well, I was perceiving a lot of threats. I didn't know, to be honest. I was concerned that I could get Covid and pass it to one of the patients I work with and they could get very sick or die. I mean, I dunno. I just felt like that apprehension. So subsequently, I would say for two months from about March, let's just say March two, three months, March to June, I woke up every night from 3:00 AM to 4:00 AM I'm just approximating

And I just think I was ruminating about what was going on in the world and life. But the thing is, even though I was up for an hour, the kids were then both doing school from home, high school and elementary school. The two girls we have, and then my wife who works in the schools was also from home. So we could really sleep in past eight. There wasn't a rush to get out. So even though I didn't sleep as well, I got my sleep. So that lasted two months. We all sort of settled down with the pandemic and the problem went away entirely.

I never had any issues until about the fall of 2023, so maybe close to a year and a half ago. So my lovely wife had been having these focal headaches above her right eyebrow, and she took Tylenol. Pain would go away, but then she might take Advil. The pain would come back while she was managing the pain. The pain was not dissipating. That was a source of consternation for us for certain. So because I do have some, I know some people pretigious at this prestigious teaching hospital in Washington dc. So Sarah, my wife went down there for an MRI with this well-known neurologist. The neurologist said after the MRI that she was 70% sure my wife was going to get multiple sclerosis. Whoa. So this is earth shattering to hear this.

Work with people in my job that have ms. So no one wants a progressive neurological disease, not one.

But I was at the point where I was like, bartering now with goddess. God, if you're going to give anyone MS in this household, give it to me because I don't want my wife to have it and I understand it. I don't want it. But I was very concerned. So I would say that's when understandably, I was having this threat detection. We talk about insomnia. I was not sleeping. I'll give an example of what it was like. So I'd go to bed almost always at the same time just with family and kids and everything. About 10 30, I would wake up at 1130. I said, I'm not looking for a power nap. I'm looking to go to sleep. So all the things with insomnia, this sucked. Excuse my language. So this was happening night after night after night. I'm not sleeping well, and then I would wake up at 1130. I would fall back asleep about one o'clock. Then something would happen again. At some point I would even have heart palpitations. That's because I was just so nervous. It wasn't a cardiac thing. Then I was obviously concerned about my wife, who honestly was handling it much, much better than I was. So I started researching things. You talk about you pay all this attention to insomnia. It's feeding the monster.

So I'm researching things. I'm going on Facebook and joining insomnia groups. Be very careful to your listeners what you look for when you join something on Facebook. I would say most people were just there to complain how horrible everything was. There wasn't a lot of constructive strategies about to get better. Oh, I haven't slept in four years. I had two hours last night. That's the most I've had all week. I'm on Lorazepam, I'm on Ativan. So this was actually discouraging me more actually. While it did make me feel better, I was not as bad of an insomnia disease people. I was deflated that this could go on permanently without a solution.

So I started looking and I went to the pharmacy. Melatonin is prescribed. It is not a prescription drug. It's prescription drug in Europe, but in the United States you can get it at a pharmacy. They have different kinds of dosages. From three to 10, I had gotten a sleep study. The neurologist that does the sleep study basically said, you don't have sleep apnea. This is anxiety. You can take 10 milligrams of melatonin. He didn't even tell me. He had his people tell me. He never responded to any of my calls or anything. It was kind of a disappointment. So I started looking for something that would work. Melatonin is if you're a shift worker, it's good if you're crossing time zones. It is not really supposed to be so that you can fall asleep. It might be to help you fall asleep, but it's not good for staying asleep.

So I found something that did work. I found Excedrin pm that is Tylenol with aspirin and Benadryl, and it's the Benadryl that knocked me out, Beth. So I got five hours of sleep consistently four nights in a row, and then I would say I slept a total of six, whatever it was, I was elated. I was ecstatic. I was so happy because I finally, I had what I was calling this brain fog where I was having physical, emotional, spiritual exhaustion all at once. A lot of it was anxiety based, but I was very tired. This went away after those nights. Nice four nights of sleep. But what was interesting is I talked to my cousin who was a physician and he said, Mike, long-term Benadryl use is highly correlated with dementia. So

I said, I'm in my fifties. I don't want to fast track dementia. All of us might get it when we're aging, but I don't want this so interesting. At the same time, I realized Benadryl was not good to be an option. My wife got another MRI at this hospital in DC and it clearly showed that she does not have ms. That basically she had a very bad scan from not a good MRI machine or something. So that was certainly a relief. I didn't want her having any, it was just a relief. But

This was the thing where literally I said, oh, well, I can't take this. Melatonin doesn't really work for me. I can't take Benadryl. Sarah's, okay, so I actually don't need to worry about my sleep. And then I slept fine for six months. And you've talked about this?

I wasn't paying any attention. I remember I would just close my eyes and I'd say, okay, well yeah, well that sleep thing was, I don't know what that was, but I'm okay now.

Beth:

Okay, so let me pause right here just to do a quick recap for the listeners because this is such a common trajectory that we see with insomnia. It actually makes a lot of sense how this happened and you explained it so well, how everyone's threat detection system I think was put to the test during the pandemic. We had never been through anything like that. Everybody's nervous system was affected in some way, shape or form no matter where you were on the planet. And then you went through that really difficult situation with your wife in 2023 and it was sort of expressing that stress was expressing in your sleep. And it sounds like maybe you've never had anything like that before. Is that right? Maybe you never thought about much about sleep before. And then of course that led you to the Facebook groups or the online, which can be a scary place sometimes when you're going through something like that. And then of course that led you to the Tylenol PM or the Benadryl, and that's when we jump on the hamster wheel of external solutions. So it's all just so understandable how this happened. Okay, so tell us what happened then. Now you realize that this isn't, isn't a long-term fix for you. So then what happened?

Mike:

I was fine. I got back to, I mean, I didn't really pay as much mind to it. So last year, and I would say April of 2024, I'm at a Nats game with my friend and we're just hanging out talking and he goes, Hey, whatever happened to that insomnia that you were dealing with?

For whatever reason, I started hyper focusing on it. And

We talk about as insomnia as this hyper arousal. So I started thinking to myself, well, why did I ever have it? What did I do to deal with it? Is it going to come back? I don't know why. I feel like I just was a seed planted back in my brain. So that night, this was, I think it was, was it Thursday afternoon game? So Thursday night I didn't sleep much at all. I had that go to sleep and wake up thing, which I'd loath. Then that Friday, similar thing where I got was on again off again, very restless sleep that Saturday I had to drive up to Pittsburgh. My oldest daughter goes to college there and I had to go pick up a couple things from her dorm. It was getting towards the end of the semester. So I remember leaving here in Maryland, it's almost a four hour drive and I would, I felt like an anxious zombie where I was obviously sleep deprived, but I was very apprehensive about, is this problem coming back again?

I thought this was taken care of. I don't have time for this in my life. I need to move on from this. So I drove up. I had to stop off at Dunkin and get coffee. It was somewhere on the Pennsylvania turnpike. So I got up there and I remember I had packed melatonin with me and I even took melatonin that night. I stayed in a hotel with myself the night and I took 10 milligrams or something of melatonin just to make sure that I would be okay to drive back, but it was very deflating. So when I got back into the DC area, I started looking for solutions to this issue. I found CBTI, Cognitive

Behavioral therapy for insomnia. The only person that I could find that had availability was actually in Santa Barbara, California, but was licensed in Maryland. He ran a sleep disorders clinic in this area, very knowledgeable, knew more about sleep than I'll really care to know. I met with him every two weeks or so. We talked about the science of sleep, we talked about deep sleep and REM sleep, and then we got to the sleep hygiene. So the sleep hygiene includes don't look at your phone before you go to bed. Don't watch TV before you go to bed. Make sure you go to bed and get out of bed at the same time. Nothing that you can find these all on a Google search, I assure you. But then he developed his own little sleep tracker. It was a spreadsheet and I had to come up with my sleep efficiency score. Beth, I really thought I was back in grad school doing a one-on-one with one of my professors. So if your sleep efficiency score for those who don't know is the number of hours that you are asleep divided by the number of hours that you are in bed. So if you sleep for six hours but are in bed eight hours, that is a 75% score and that is not passing here. They wanted 90%.

So what they wanted me to do, this is funny, I couldn't look at any, and I know that you're very anti clock and anti watch and I understand why, but I wasn't allowed to look at anything. Don't look at your phone. If you get up, don't look at your tablet and if you're in bed more than 15 minutes and you can't fall asleep, get out of bed. And I wanted to say, okay, how am I supposed to know how long I'm in bed if I'm supposed to look up the clock?

I was getting kind of fed up and I know this is the CBTI crowd. So I remember one night just guesstimating how long I was asleep, hop out of bed. I'm like, well, I'm not allowed to watch tv, can't look at my phone, can't go on my iPad. So I was sitting in the middle of my floor petting my cat door and my wife gets up to go to the bathroom, comes out, she goes, what are you doing in the middle of the floor? I felt like I was on a Netflix episode called Why Mike Can't Sleep. I was like episode two. That's where I was at the six episodes of my CBT. I do appreciate anyone who gives me information on how to improve my life. I mean I look at that

Beth:

For sure.

Mike:

This was not the solution. I heard the word rumination once and hyper arousal once. Your entire platform, Beth, is based on insomnia is a misperception, but that why we're awake is hyper arousal. I don't think I ever learned that. This is why I was awake. And in all of those Facebook groups, I mentioned your group to them once, and I think a couple of people had mentioned it and I said, I mentioned hyper arousal. People were no one was really focusing on. That's what it is. And it's really, I think we talked about this, Beth, in your program, which by the way, I found on Instagram, I know you're on other platforms, but I found you on Instagram and I really liked your stories, the other podcasts and the fact that you went through this. It is great. I mean, in full disclosure here, I've been sober for 13 years. When I first stopped drinking, I was like, you mean to tell me that people that messed up their own lives even worse than I did are going to tell me how to stop drinking? Well, yes, actually, those are the ones that, only ones that can do it and do do it.

And so when I started realizing, I'm like, I'm talking to people that don't know anything about insomnia, about living with it. They're talking about how to fix it. It's a mathematical equation. No, it's not. My life is not a mathematical equation. So I realized when you talk to people who've lived through it like yourself, much worse than I did. Then I started saying, there's opportunity here. So I did your free course. I listened to the podcast, one of your videos on Instagram. It really was a sentinel moment for me, and I showed it to the doctor, I'll get to that. So your video says suffering is not required to recover from insomnia. And I said, oh, thank goodness. And there's someone out there who can help me. So I really started to pay attention to what you were saying, and I really think everyone who joins your program and hopefully the others that will continue to join will say that you're very empathetic to what they've gone through.

That is for sure you understand that. And I never had that from anyone before that summer, I did sleep a little bit better. I think it was partly there was less pressure for the kids to in school and all of that getting up. I did because I could not take, I didn't want to take anything addictive like Ambien, lorazepam, Ativan. I did get a prescription for what's called Trazodone. We had talked about this. Trazodone is non habit forming and I still have it and I still do take it intermittently. And that did cause the same effect like Benadryl did. It causes a lot of dry mouth. So ironically, I woke up one night with a really dry mouth and drank all this water and then I had to wake up again because you got to pee. So when you're in your fifties, this was what happens. So I said, this is a nice stopgap measure, but I really don't want to be hooked up with this Trazodone stuff. I really don't want to have to do anything that my body is capable of. And I think what your program is showing me, yeah, you've given me the tools to recover from insomnia, but moreover you've illustrated that I don't need that much.

Beth:

Yeah.

Mike:

Recover from insomnia. So I started, my youngest daughter started middle school in September and the bus gets her at like seven 30. So we had to get up at six 30 just like other family does. No different than anyone else that just sort of exponentially exacerbated the insomnia to the point where I started having this overnight brain fog again and I said, I'm done. So that's when I started about, I signed up for your program, something around that time and it was great. The different videos that you have on embracing wakefulness, and I'm thinking, why would I want to celebrate the fact that I'm awake?

Beth:

It's a process.

Mike:

Well, it's a process. And you never say this is an overnight solution. No, and your videos I have for life and I still go onto the slack groups and I did. You have the zoom meetings on with the people in their program. And I think it's very important for me to keep up with that because I found that I have found that there's tremendous power in letting go.

That I let go of my need to control and measure my sleep. I am slowly getting off of, I have a sleep tracker that I use when I wake up, it's free. But I'm thinking, why don't I just look at how I feel and not look at my quality of sleep, not my, so I know that you and Dr. Richard, your comp compatriot with the program talk about this and I'm really understanding it. Last night, for example, I'm really, really busy with my job right now and I just wore my sleep mask and I am not looking at any devices. I'm not measuring or doing anything because I just need to know how I feel. And part of me is tired now because of work, but not because I'm ruminating about insomnia. I never knew how effective it would be. Just say, you know what? My brain knows what to do to sleep and meditations. I've done meditations. I tried counting backwards. I would start at 365 and I would count back by seven. So that's 358. Then by 6 3 52, 3 47, 3 43, 3 43 38, 3 37. Hey, I just did all that. My mathematical skills went up exponentially as my sleep anxiety also went up. I was trying in these things and I said,

None

Beth:

Of this, there's got to be a different way. And just going back to before you'd come into the program, and I'm so glad you saw that video on Instagram and when you were describing the sleep getting up and I was laughing with you because I went through that twice myself and was sort of sitting in the dark cold winter wondering, is this really what it takes for me to get over this problem? And I'm glad you found me and you've come into the program and it's just been so wonderful working with you. And I know your recovery process. It was always so fun to talk to you because you would sort of drop these truth bombs in our appointments that were so succinct and just so spot on. And a lot of them were around this letting go, this letting go that you talked about a lot. So tell us a little bit more about you're in the program, you're learning a new way, you're understanding that really not that much is needed. You're seeing your own tracking and even if you don't pull it away right away, it's okay, you're seeing it differently. But tell us a little bit more about this recovery process and this letting go.

Mike:

I think you talked about Kronos and Kairos in one of your videos. Kronos is the Greek word for measuring time and then there's enjoying the time and it's just focus on the time that you have the quality of time. And the next thing was even by measuring how long you're sleeping, you're still giving much undue, unnecessary, irrelevant attention to something that sleep that can happen naturally on its own. And reminding myself when I do wake up, I was sharing, I woke up last night, one of our cats was just being unruly a cat. And I just said, okay, well I'm up. And then sometimes I'm a guy in his fifties, I got to go to the bathroom. Sometimes I'm up and that's okay to be up if I'm up for an hour sometimes. Oh well I'm up. I'll just lie here. I'm not really a big fan of the getting out of bed.

There's a lot of people that talk about the getting out of bed. No, I just lie there. One nice thing about your program, it says, look, if you need to go on your phone, you want to watch a video, you want to watch tv, you want to start doing work, that's fine. Whatever it is that gets you, I do not hold any credence to what people would say your bed is for sleeping and sex. If I had one more medical person had told me that, I was going to say, oh, shut up. That is just so I was just like all of these people with all these advanced degrees telling me things that really clearly showed that none of 'em have had insomnia. Maybe some of the doctors when they were in their residency did. But your a embracing wakefulness was another thing. So what am I doing here? I'm using a mindfulness approach, mind you that I'm up and that is okay.

There's no shame or guilt to be involved with that. I'm just up. Yes, I'm a type A person. However, I have learned about, I could say having been sober for 13 years, I've learned a lot about accepting things and people that I can't change. And also one of the things that you learn is not having to respond. It's perfect for not responding to an inflammatory email or if a patient said something that's very biting and sarcastic, that's okay. They have the right to do that. I have the right not to respond. My body will sometimes wake up for no reason. I can just, my body has the tendency to do that. I can just acknowledge it. But it is such a paradox

And you've taught this and you teach everyone. This is when you start problem solving it, you're actually keeping yourself more awake and your brain in the back of its mind is focusing on it again. So that's what I think it's a lot of it is what I stopped doing and by the letting go, I stopped trying to analyze why this ever happened. Yeah, I understand the covid and then my wife had this. We were concerned about whatever she had in her brain or didn't have in her brain. But those are fleeting things and I'm sure those kinds of things will happen again in my life. But having to just focus on not focusing on it. Does that make sense? Focus?

Beth:

I know it's kind of hard to explain. And I remember a couple of things come to mind that you said during our calls and one of 'em is when you surrender, the other side stops shooting. And I thought, oh, that's really powerful. And also when you said the best way to control is not to control and just realizing just I remember saying several times, you need to accept that you're trying to control the uncontrollable and it's just not going to work.

Mike:

I will be frank, I shared, I'm active in recovery from drinking. I would share this insomnia things with people. No one really had gone through it. I was surprised no one had any insight to it. I thought that there's a lot of overlap and this is why you go to someone who actually has lived through it. And that was essential. I mean, none, I don't think anyone was really understanding the root cause of it. And I'm going to still have Trazodone on standby if I really need to sleep or I can't. But I remember, I think it was, so I started the program in the fall. It was sometime in the fall last year. It was the beginning of the program. I had a very bad night's sleep. It was a Saturday. I woke up on a Saturday. I had to see about five different clients.

I was not in the mood. I was grouchy. The weather was crummy. I remember getting through my last patient and I said, oh my God, I feel I was awful. I felt awful today and I was seamless with my work that it is not, I don't need to catastrophize this. And that's like, oh, I just accept that it happens and move forward. For example, it's winter, it's going to be freezing cold, a good deal the time, okay, well then it's going to be nicer later. This will pass a lot of simple things that you can learn in other areas of life. But

I really needed to apply those because my quality of life, certainly in the spring last year and in September, it was poor because of how I was responding to this insomnia and the fact that I'm not responding to it as much. That's the power of letting go. It's like letting go of this need to be in charge of it. No, I'm not in charge of my heart beating, my blood pumping or my

Breathing. I can make my hold my breath, but that's not going to happen at night. My brain knows what to do.

Beth:

So well Said.

And that's what it helps. And I am going to continue staying in your program because it's given me, I think it just reminds me of the things I need to do and the things I do not need to do to continue with this because I'm different than most people. I have two kids, one's in college and I like to exercise and run and I've been able to do my running. I really stopped running for a while. Part of it is I have to spend more time. I'm older to stretch and treat my body better, but I was getting to the point where I was giving up things. I wasn't going out. I wasn't going to

Mike:

Concerts. I blew off. I felt badly. I blew off one of my friends. I said, I can't go to the game tonight. I'm really busy. I think I didn't want to go to, it was a college basketball game. I didn't want to go to the game because I was afraid that I would end up screwing up my sleep again.

Beth:

Yeah.

Mike:

And you mentioned this in one of your videos about when friends invite you to an early breakfast, and I've even snapped at my wife for getting up at five 30. Well, she's going to work. Why am I snapping? No, she's not choosing to get up at five 30 to annoy me. And that was what was happening where I was just losing my by trying to be in control. I certainly was not in any control.

Beth:

And I think when you've gone through something like this with insomnia, there's a tendency to really want to protect your sleep and really want to protect. That's just kind of the mode we get in versus just it being not something you think about much at all. So that's really understandable. How did you know that you were getting better? Because I remember talking to you once and you said you had some sleep disruption, but you forgot to worry about it. And I'm like, that's okay, then I know you really are getting better when you forget to worry about it.

Mike:

Well, I think you had insomnia for over three decades.

Beth:

Four!

Mike:

Four. And your colleague is a physician who works with you, has had it as long, and both of you, I think by following the path that you have laid out in the program, I found probably, so there's what, five, six weeks of maybe those eight weeks of different videos. By

The third one, three weeks into the program, which is a very, so cost effective. This program was I was able to realize, oh, this is actually working. And it gave me the self-confidence, the inner peace. I was really one of was the inner peace. I wanted sleep, but I wanted not to feel so agitated. And by not focusing on it and taking my sleep trackers off my wrist, my watch or whatever, that was huge. I am like, well, I need to see how it's doing, not just guess. No, I know how I'm feeling and by focusing on it. And yes, I do have have tools. I do have Trazodone. I do have, there's something at night called Yoga Nidra that I play that it's basically some lady soothing voice and it's like a mind exercise. I have done that, but that is okay, but I don't think I need to rely on external things for the part of my brain, whatever part of the brain it is to do it.

Beth:

Yeah, it's a tool versus a weapon. It's a tool, but the underlying intention is knowing that it's always your body doing the sleeping. And if these things help, then that's great. Gosh, I had this woman, this hypnotist, her name was Grace Smith, and for those first six months, maybe 12 months, I would listen to her and I just loved her voice and it was a great help to me. But I think it really goes down to the intention that shifts from before you come into the program to during and after. You view these things differently, right?

Mike:

Yes. I don't view it with the same irritation and agitation. I still had times where I'm up at four and whatnot, but my time, what I do not have, thank God, is I don't have the falling asleep and waking up in an hour. Actually, I'll get the CPTI guy credit. He said you were between sleep stages when that happened. I don't think he explained the hyper arousal was what it was, but he was like 50% right, and brilliant guy. But none of these people, including my wonderful primary care doctor, were not seeing, they were just, I don't know. I think people are missing the boat here. And I truly, truly feel that a lot more people have trouble sleeping. Don't want to admit it, are afraid to admit it, want to rely on pharmaceuticals to manage it. And

Your option, I think is a healthier, happier one by, I think one of the tools is I can put the tools away, the tools of my treating it like a mathematical equation, having to graph it like it's my blood pressure or something. So that was a huge part of what you did and I, I'm very appreciative of it. I really am.

Beth:

I know. I'm so glad that you were able to shift gears a bit and see the potential in this approach. And I think sometimes, and this was certainly true for me, you almost have to exhaust all those other options. I don't know if I had heard, if I had understood it the way I do now, I'm not sure at what point it would've grabbed. This wasn't explained to me either. And sometimes I feel a little grief about that. If I had understood better what was happening, how could it have been different? But I don't spend a lot of time there. But yeah, I think some people have to, we're sort of bombarded with the sleep hygiene. You just see it everywhere. It's just almost like a brainwashing mantra. So a lot of people just have to go down those other external fixes before they'll kind of go within, and it really is within. And that's a great thing.

Mike:

I was going to say, I'm well aware and I have a 12-year-old and the pediatricians, and they're hammering every parent when they come in there, you take the phone out of your kid's room. I like to think we're really good parents. We just haven't ventured down that. But there's a lot of talk about the phones. I think the phones just because people are looking at it rather than trying to go to sleep. Sleep. I am not an ophthalmologist. I understand you're exposing yourself to light, but it was more than that. And your program at sees a bigger, Healthier,

Holistic, it says holistic in your mind and body sleep approach that does not require suffering. That actually gives you the peace, it restores the peace and harmony in your life that you have with this thing called we call sleep.

Beth:

Yeah, that is it. You just nailed it. It's not a learning program as much as it is a remembering program. Right. It's a remembrance. It's just remembering that it's been there all along. And you just said that beautifully. Last question, Mike, any silver linings that have come with this experience for you?

Mike:

So yes. I would say for people who are in the grips of insomnia, some people who are listening now, it's never as bad as you think it will be. I just verified that when I had that patient, five patients on a Saturday, and I was very crabby, very cranky and very sleep deprived. I got through it. I was okay. And no, we're not all going to get early onset brain disease because we have insomnia. Yeah, sleep, it helps with stress, it helps with quality of life. But I would say that was the silver lining with, yeah, I've learned to recover from the insomnia. Still have it, but I don't catastrophize it anymore.

And that's based on the people that your experiences, the people that I've heard on your other podcasts, that was definitely a silver lining that I was glad to hear because there was a lot of, I don't know, when I was doing CBT, I felt like I was getting my cholesterol levels checked and getting MRIs of my sleep something. It was it a lot of gloom and doom and the Facebook groups gloom and doom that might make people feel better in an instant. It's really a shot of adrenaline. What I found was this is a manage, even when I don't sleep, I can manage it. And that was the big silver lining.

Beth:

Yeah, great. I love that. I love that. You are well on your way to peace of mind with sleep, Mike. And thank you so much for being here, for sharing the hope, for being a part of my world, for being you, all the things. It has been a real pleasure.

Mike:

Thank you, Beth. I am glad we had this talk today. It was very beneficial.

Beth:

It sure was. And I shall see you in the group.

Mike:

Yes. Thanks