Ep 43. How Kim Turned Nighttime Dread into Peaceful Sleep

Kim’s journey from being a naturally great sleeper to battling insomnia is raw, real, and deeply inspiring story.

Always a champion sleeper, Kim faced her first bout of insomnia after becoming a new mom and experiencing the “perfect storm” of stress, hormonal changes, and personal challenges.

A fear of not sleeping took over, leading her into the insomnia trap where sleep became something filled with dread and effort, versus the natural biological process it had always been.

Highlights from Kim’s Story:

• How letting go of rules turned out to be the best rule
• How reframing separate bedrooms brought her peace
• The magic of no longer postponing joy
• The mindset shift that transformed her recovery
• Her heartfelt advice for anyone still navigating insomnia

Kim’s story is a powerful reminder to embrace the moment, release perfection, and rediscover joy.

Because true healing comes from living, not waiting.

Enjoy!

Connect with Beth Kendall:

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Work with Beth Kendall:

👉   Start the Free Insomnia Course

👉   Learn About the Mentorship


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. 

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.

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Kim's Journey Out of Insomnia

Beth (00:11):

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I am most honored to be joined by another MINDBODY Sleep Mentorship alum. Welcome, Kim!

Kim (00:24):

Hi, Beth. It's good to be here for you today. Feels very surreal.

(00:30):

Yeah, I'm so glad you're here, and you emailed me a few weeks back and you gave me the most wonderful update. And just to give the listeners a bit of context, you joined the mentorship back in May of 2023. I went back and checked. I know it's been a while, and I'm always going to be so grateful to people like you. I think of you guys as my OGs because you came into the mentorship when it was still relatively young and there was no podcast or hope stories or anything like that, and it was just you taking a leap of faith and trusting the process. But I was so happy to get your email and hear how things have been going. So why don't we begin with you telling us a little about how insomnia started for you and what that was like.

(01:27):

Gosh, it's A long story. How long have you got?

Beth (01:30):

There's no such thing as a short insomnia story, so wherever you want to start is just fine.

Kim (01:40):

Well, I think one of the things that really struck me was that my story is quite different from yours. I think Beth, in that historically, I've never had any sleep problems at all. So I remember my mom saying when I was a baby, I was a dream. And she'd put me down for, I mean, I'm not sure if it's true, but she'd put me down for 12 hours and I'd sleep straight through. And it was a bit of a running joke with my family that I could nap on demand and sleep standing up or wherever I wanted to. And my husband would always say, oh, but you are such a good sleeper. And so sleep growing up for me was never an issue. It was never really something I'd thought about. It was never something I really paid attention to. It was just something that happened very naturally for me. And June, 2021, it must have been,

(02:39):

I found out I was pregnant and obviously overjoyed very happy. And I ended this sort of strange, well, I started to go into this strange world where people would ask me questions about, oh, were you getting enough rest now because you'll need when the baby comes? And all these sort of weird comments that I just really wasn't used to. And I was thinking, oh no. Is this going to be really difficult for me? Is everything going to change? And then I had my little boy in, when was it? May, 2022, he was born. I had quite a difficult birth with him, but we were getting on just fine except for the fact that, again, I just entered this world where sleep was the only thing that people seem to talk about. So I would go into a supermarket and I would say, people would ask me, how are you getting on? How's he sleeping? And I'd go to these mom groups with other moms and people would say, oh, are you sleeping? Are you getting any sleep? How's the baby sleeping? And it was utterly bizarre for me. I mean, in ordinary day life, if you went into a supermarket, you wouldn't just start speaking to a stranger about how they had been sleeping before and it was just a whole new world. And I started, I think I started to panic and I was thinking, do I look tired? Do I look like I'm struggling? Have I got knackered mum written all over my head?

(04:26):

I think at that point, sleep started to become a bit of a sensitive topic for me. I think when it never really had previously. Now I was again managing just about okay, as you can as a new mom and starting to find my feet and starting to get into a bit of a groove. I had been exclusively breastfeeding as well. So I think that all the night shifts fell on me and sleep, dedication did start to take its toll. But again, I was getting on just fine.

(05:05):

And then I remember the day I put it in the diary, it was May, 2022, and I think it was a combination of things that actually happened all at one time. So my period came back after giving birth, which my hormones were absolutely just absolutely wild. We hit some sort of sleep regression with my son. So he was waking up every 45 minutes. And then just to top things off, we were given some really difficult news about my mother-in-Law. So I think I told you Beth, but it was really difficult. She was actually given a terminal prognosis. And then, so my mom was really unwell, and I remember thinking at one point that we might realistically lose her as well. And I think the combination of everything just hit at once and it was sort of a perfect storm. And I remember going to bed one night in May, as I had done my son line next to me in his car, my husband next to me, and I just sat there wide awake, and I was like, I just can't sleep.

(06:30):

So I took myself off to the spare room and I thought, do you know what? I'll just come away and I'll catch a bit of sleep and then everything will feel better in the morning. But that night, I think sleep completely evaded me. And I woke up and I felt, to be honest with you, completely broken. I remember thinking on top of everything else that's going on in my life right now, I really need to be able to catch a break and to rest to be able to sleep. But for some reason I just couldn't. And I think because my son was waking up every 45 minutes throughout the night, the pressure to sleep just became too much. And I remember speaking to my husband and saying, I haven't slept a wink. I haven't slept all night. What am I going to do? And he was like, just don't panic. It's okay. You'll sleep well tonight because you've had such a bad night. And I remember speaking to friends and they said the same thing. And I went to bed the next night and it was again the same story. And I just remember lying there feeling so scared, I think absolutely helpless. And we'd had this news about my mother-in-Law. We'd had some concerns about my mum, and I'd just become a mum myself. And I was thinking, needs me, I need to be able to sleep. I need to be okay.

(08:14):

I think I wake up, well, I didn't wake up. I got up the next day and I remember just ringing the doctors and saying to them, look, I'm exhausted. I don't know what to do. Help me do something. Please. I'm in a desperate situation. I haven't slept for nights. I'll have a baby that's waking up all the time. I'm trying to deal with a lot in my personal life. Everything is just too much. I'm broken. And the doctor was very sympathetic and very understanding. She ultimately gave me a load of sleeping tablets. She put me on antidepressants, and I remember saying to her, I don't feel like my mood is low. I don't feel depressed. I don't think I need these. But ultimately, in a situation where I just felt like I had no choice, I felt I was desperate. So I just took everything she gave me. I mean, I had a right cocktail of different medications, sedatives, I took it all. And she said, I remember her saying to me, if you take the sleeping medication now, that will help in the short term, then what will happen is once the antidepressant kicks in and things settle down for you, sleep will follow. But it didn't.

Beth (09:48):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember talking about this with you back last year and hearing you talk about this. Well, first of all, I think so many people are going to be able to relate to this perfect storm that you described, having so many people fixated on sleep while you were going through your pregnancy, and then the stress with your mom and then having a new baby and having to get up every 45 minutes and then having that night where you didn't sleep, which I'm sure felt shocking given your background as identifying as this person that can sleep standing straight up or can sleep anywhere. That was probably really, really scary. And it sounds like it's so understandable how this was sort of primed to happen for so many reasons that are so easy to see once you're out of insomnia just in our society, how we can start setting the stage for something like this. But when you're in it and you don't know and you don't have that education, that is so scary. So it sounds like this was that night in May, the beginning of where your orientation with sleep started to change into the efforting, right, starting with the medication.

Kim (11:12):

Yeah.

Beth (11:12):

Yeah. Okay.

Kim (11:14):

You're right though, Beth, the background, I think that perpetuated things for me because it just reinforced me that there was something now wrong with me because if I was historically, my husband would say one of the best sleepers he'd ever known, and I couldn't sleep now. And I think he sort of tre up this memory that for me, sleep had always been perfect. And I think that's obviously not true. There has been times in my life historically where I've not slept, but the difference was I didn't have any around it. It didn't scare me, so I didn't make a mental note of it. I didn't remember. I put it down to a bad night. I got up, I moved on sleep, followed. This was different. And I think I was just convinced at this stage that there was something wrong with me.

(12:14):

And the sleeping meds, I mean, they solved the initial problem in that they helped me fall asleep. But within a couple of hours, I was wide awake again and I couldn't drift off. And I was thinking, I can't even sleep with sleeping pills. There is something very seriously wrong with me now. And I remember my friend saying to me, oh, go and stay somewhere else. Have a break from being up all night. Take your sleeping meds, have a night catch up. You'll feel fine tomorrow. And it just didn't happen. Despite all the medication I've been put on, I just still couldn't sleep. And the antidepressants didn't help with sleep. They didn't do anything for me apart from make me feel, I mean slightly for me, they just made me feel slightly like a zombie. And yeah, I think I remember speaking to you about it. It was just,

Beth (13:18):

Yeah, I know. And it's like looking back, first of all, how normal it is to have that kind of sleep, to have sleep disruption when you have a new baby and you've got stressful life factors going on, and insomnia or not, people struggle with sleep and starting the medication, I'm sure, thinking, oh, this medication's going to take care of it. And then having that hyper arousal sort of still showing up even with the medication, that's when the belief probably came on board, oh, there really is something wrong with my brain and girl. So I lived in that. I had that myself, so I know what that belief feels like. So you went the medication route and then it was a year until about a year until you came into MINDBODY sleep. So what happened between then and MINDBODY sleep?

Kim (14:16):

Gosh. Well, so I think I'm a lawyer, so I did the only thing that I know how to do and that problem solve of course, and we're taught growing up, that effort equals rewards. So I

Speaker 3 (14:33):

Thought, you

Kim (14:34):

Know what? I'm going to use all my problem solving skills that I've been taught at university and in my job, and I'm going to fix this problem. But little did I know that I obviously know it now, but I got caught in the insomnia trap, and the more I tried to fix it, the worse I made the problem. But, oh, Beth, I think I spoke to you. I tried everything. There was probably a point in time where if you said to me, I need to do 50 laps around the garden, stand on my head and do a headstand and a spin anti-clockwise whilst holding a glass of water every night before bed doing a chart, I probably would've tried it. I think I tried various forms of different medication. I ultimately decided to come off all my meds completely cold Turkey, which in hindsight may have been about, I don't know. But that's what I decided to do.

(15:39):

At some point, I think I was convinced that having read the side effects of the antidepressant, that that might have been causing or perpetuating the insomnia. I went to the doctors and I had decided that perhaps it was hormones, because that might've been the only thing that had changed since I'd had my son. So I paid for blood tests to be done. I mean, they all came back as completely normal. And I remember just saying to the doctor, incomplete, almost, what are you going to do? I can't just carry on this. And they were just very blase about it. Well, not much we can do. I think I tried every single supplement that I could get my hands on online, anything that said sleep or that would help with sleep. I tried. I read books about sleep, and I think one book in particular was, I don't know if you know about it, but it's about how to optimize sleep for athletes. And I mean, it really was the wrong book to read at the wrong time because it was all about how to optimize sleep. And obviously I wasn't even sleeping at the time.

(16:56):

So for the moment I woke up, I needed to have so many minutes of sunlight on my face. I needed to eat a certain diet. I needed to avoid unnatural light in the evening. So if my husband put the bathroom light on just before bed, I would absolutely freak out. And I was just living in this world where as soon as the afternoon hit, the fear, the dread of bedtime, it was awful. And I was at a point where my son was actually starting to sleep through the night, and I was thinking, I don't even have that pressure now of waking up all the time and he's sleeping, but I'm still not sleeping.

(17:43):

I had a device that was meant to help me sleep. I paid a lot of money for it, and obviously it didn't do anything. And then I got to a place where I think it was the end of 2022, I decided to do CBT. I did a course of that. And I mean, it was slightly strange in that it helped because I was starting to sleep, but the fear and the conditions that I had placed on myself to be able to sleep were almost ridiculous. So I had a very strict sleep routine between certain hours. I wasn't allowed to nap at all, even if I hadn't slept. I wasn't sleeping in the same bed as my husband because just fear that he might disturb me at some point if I woke in the night at all, which I was obviously doing quite frequently. Or if I couldn't sleep, which was most nights, to be honest, I had to get up and leave the bedroom. I wasn't allowed to spend any time in the day during in bed or in my bedroom. And I followed this scheduling. My sleep did actually start to improve, but I still live with this fear.

(19:22):

I wasn't going out in the evenings because I thought that anything that could possibly interfere with my sleep or disrupt it. So I wasn't really living any sort of life. I was just sort of living in fear and in this weird sort of limbo state. And then I remember seeing a post on Instagram, and it was one of your posts, and I think you said something about how you can still be sleeping, but having insomnia. And that really, I mean, that's where I was at, and that really resonated with me. And I think that's when I then took the step and got in contact with you.

Beth (20:07):

Yep, yep, yep. I think that makes so much sense. And I say so often that sleep isn't the solution to insomnia, which I doesn't make sense because of course, that's what we're seeking is sleep. But then if there's still that background fear that's still kind of running your life, you are not living life the way you really want to live it, which I think this is really where the moving back into trust piece comes into play, and that's what can take some time. And that's really where I focused my attention with MINDBODY sleep is just creating a series of perspective shifts that will move you back towards that trust in a way that the brain will sort of allow it or accept it and let go of some of these survival patterns around sleep and back towards trust. So I'm so glad that you found my post on Instagram.

Kim (21:11):

Me too.

Beth (21:12):

Yeah, it's liberating. Okay, so you came in, you were one of my OGs. And how was that? How did that go? I remember talking, and I think you were not too sure, you were open-minded, and you were like, this sounds right. But how was the experience for you? How was your recovery process?

Kim (21:42):

Well, I think initially when I started the course, I found it just completely liberating. I think you were the only person that told me that I wasn't broken, that there was nothing actually that I needed to do to fix my sleep, that I didn't have a problem that I needed to solve.

(22:07):

And that was completely different to anything I'd been told by anyone else or anything else I'd read. And that was sort of a first moment of, ah, okay, this is different and this makes sense. And going through the course and understanding why being Sonia started, I mean, looking back now and talking about the perfect storm, it makes a lot of sense, and I can see it from an outsider's perspective, but when I was in it at the time, I just couldn't see it. And so it was that first step, I think. And going through the course and understanding why it happened to me, it just changed my perspective on everything really. And it just felt completely, it was such a light bulb moment, it really, really hit. And I was like, okay, this makes a lot of sense, so I have to trust what you are telling me. And the process, I think the journey from that point onwards hasn't been necessarily straightforward. And there's been difficult nights, speed bumps, all sorts of things along the way, but it's not been it. I know the content of the course, and then it wasn't overnight that it just kicked in and I started to sleep again. It didn't work like that.

(23:54):

And I think at points, I remember feeling frustrated and thinking, well, I know all this stuff, so why isn't sleep following what's going on here? Or I'd start to have a period where I start to sleep again, and then a nice little bump would come along to, or a little curve ball to keep me on my toes and throw me out of the recovery. And I'd email you and I'd say, Beth, what do I need to do? And you'd put me back on track. But there were times when I'd end up back in the Google track of, do I need to fix it? But I think under your guidance, I mean, one of the first things we actually worked on, and one of the hardest things for me was actually undoing all the things I learned in the CBTI because they were a lot of the things that were causing me a lot of fear around sleep. So you saying to me, nap if you want to, I mean, historically, if I wanted to have a nap on a afternoon, I would've not felt twice about it. I loved that on a winters the evening, if I wanted to get comfy on the stove, put the fire on, have blankets, watch a movie, if I dozed off, I wouldn't have again. I wouldn't have thought anything about it. But after doing the CBTR, I mean, I was in a place where after that it was 10 o'clock, 11, but I couldn't go to bed. And I remember sitting on the cold hard floor trying to keep myself awake. So it was sort of unlearning all of those,

Beth (25:34):

Taking the rules out of it, I guess. Yeah,

Kim (25:36):

Exactly. Yeah,

Beth (25:38):

Taking the rules. I know, ripping them up. Yeah, exactly. Just throw 'em right out the window.

Kim (25:43):

Yeah,

Beth (25:44):

I know that really throws people when they come in, and a lot of people come from CBTI and I went through that twice myself, and it's got merits, it helps people. So I don't ever want to dismiss it, but it is much more rigidity, more rules. And then people come into MINDBODY sleep, and I say, the only rule is there are no rules. We don't need rules for sleep. We just decide. We decide what we want to do. Exactly. And I love what you said about naps because that's such a common one. I've been wanting to do an episode on naps because that's another area. You've got something like a delicious nap, which is such a wonderful thing to enjoy that millions of people all over the world do on the daily. And there can be this sense that we're going to be punished or we're going to have to pay a price or we're going to ruin our sleep. And I think just taking a common sense approach and doing basically what you would've done before you had insomnia is always such a good guideline. Yeah.

Kim (27:00):

Yeah. I think it was about maybe three, four months into the program, and my sleep actually torn up the rule book and my sleep has started to improve. But there was a couple of things that was still probably holding me back, and that was that I wasn't sleeping in the same bed as my husband. And for me that was something I was wanting to do,

(27:30):

And I was still a little bit reserved about doing anything in the evening, which might disturb my sleep. And I remember speaking to you about both of them, and you said to me with my husband, rather than seeing it as a sleep effort, maybe we could reframe the way we think about it. And actually, for a lot of new parents and couples sleeping in separate beds at a time when I have a young child who's waking up is actually a perfectly sensible and normal thing to do. I decided to give myself some grace, and I decided to go with it. And I was like, do you know what? If it has to be this way for now, it will be, it won't be forever, but I'll go with it. And then I think at that point as well, I had this realization that I was just isolating myself from a lot of people and I wasn't going out and doing things, and I just thought, you know what? If I wait until my sleep is where I want it to be, then I don't know how long I could be waiting.

(28:51):

And that was sort of another, those two things happened around the same time. And that was a sort of another light bulb moment for me. And I realized that, I mean, I didn't go wild, but an occasional dinner date with my husband, a night down the pub with my friends going to the cinema, all things I used to enjoy occasionally, I just decided that, do you know what? I'm going to start doing them again. And my sleep didn't get better straight away. And I remember coming back and lying there and thinking, I can't sleep. I can't sleep. And then I don't really know what happened apart from the only way I can explain it is for a period of time, I just stopped, I think because I was so busy, I just stopped thinking about it. And then I had a moment where I was like, oh, hang on, I'm not thinking about it. And actually I'm sleeping or I'm going out and it's not taking me hours to fall asleep. And it was sort of these few moments, and then again, a few months later, I thought, oh, I went out last night and I got into bed and I fell straight asleep. And gradually over a period of, I think about a year, I just realized that I was going out, I was starting to sleep again.

(30:27):

And it slowly just these realizations or my husband would say to me, oh, you are not obsessed. You haven't asked me what time it is, or You've not been checking the clocks, or You're not obsessed with how many hours sleep you've got, or We haven't been talking about sleep and just these little realizations that actually things were a bit easier.

Beth (30:54):

Yeah, it's interesting how it is because I think it really sneaks up on you.

Kim (31:01):

Exactly.

Beth (31:02):

It does. You just realize, I am not thinking about that anymore, or I'm not making a decision through the filter of, well, how is this going to affect my sleep? And it's not this eureka moment as much as like, oh, you just notice you're living your life differently. And I loved this part of your email you wrote, it's strange looking back, because I had to do things a bit back to front instead of waiting for sleep to improve before I started living, I had to start living first. That just really, I mean, that says it all right there. And that's a big part of the mentorship in terms of helping people shift that focus first because it's so normal to think, oh, well, once I get over this, then I'm going to do X, Y, Z. And it's really just doing whatever part of, even if it's just X, just doing a part of X, that's what eventually it is the opposite. And I love that. I loved reading that.

Kim (32:15):

It feels very counterproductive.

Beth (32:17):

Yes, it

Kim (32:18):

Does. If you break your leg, if you're playing football, they wouldn't play to you. You need to go and start playing football and then your leg will heal. But yeah, and it's just those moments where you realize, oh, oh, I'm not thinking about it. And oh, I'm living my life and oh, this feels quite nice. And yeah, I think then the final step for me was going back in the same bed as my husband. And this for me felt like a challenge that I just didn't know if I could overcome. And I don't know why, because for 15 years I've slept in the same bed as him, and he's never disturbed me. He's not a small, I've never had any problems with it. And actually I was thinking, oh, maybe I need to address this. And then out of the blue, I got an email, one of your emails, and it was a podcast about bed sharing,

(33:25):

And I think it was about 15 minutes. And I remember thinking, I'm going to listen to this. And I did, and I sent it onto my husband and I said, can you listen to this? Because it explains so well exactly how I feel and why this is an issue for me. It's nothing to do with you or it is just because my body is kicking up some fuss about it. It doesn't like it. And we spoke about it and we said he was very understanding. He has been throughout this whole process, but he was like, when you want to, we can think about it. And I remember thinking, okay, well, we'll try it, but it is got to be on a day where we've got no plans the following day or the day after that. And at a time when my son is, I know when he is going through a good spell of sleep and he is not unwell, and there's got to be a sort of perfect time, and then I'll try and address it. And then I thought to myself, do you know what? Let's just give it a go. If it doesn't go well, I can try again.

Beth (34:32):

Yes.

Kim (34:34):

So it was a random Monday night, and I just said, stay in bed. Don't go, neither of us are going to the spare room, stay in bed. And I remember lying there and thinking, okay, I can't sleep. But you talked about being the observer and observing what your brain was doing. And I was like, okay, here we go. I understand what's happening. I know why you're keeping up a fuss. And then the next thing I know, I wake up and it was six o'clock and I slept, and then I haven't gone back into the spare room. And if I tried at any point previously to sleep in the same bed as him, and then I'd had a night where I couldn't sleep, I'd instantly gone back to, okay, well, we need to sleep in separate rooms again. But I haven't done that.

Beth (35:29):

Yeah, yeah. That's so amazing to hear. And I think what really helps that along and what you've, you've done in this process of rejoining your husband is you kind of let it be okay, wherever you were and whatever happened. I always say, we don't need to do it perfectly. And it's in that allowing of whatever happens that it's easier to, it's a retraining process. It's like when we are okay with it, we're sort of teaching our brain that, hey, whatever happens is okay, we're not shooting for perfection. And that's what lessens the hyper arousal. So I'm glad that podcast episode helped and that you're sleeping with your husband again. And that's such a big one. Rejoining a bed partner is usually one of the things, one of the later things to go. So very common.

Kim (36:29):

It felt like a final piece in the puzzle, really. Yeah.

Beth (36:33):

Yeah.

Kim (36:34):

And I mean, I remember talking to people about it, and they were like, well, if you can't sleep and you're just lying next to him, just enjoy being there. But I mean, at the time, the thought of sleeping next to or lying awake next to someone who was sleeping felt like after torture. I couldn't think of anything worse. But now, if I can't sleep, I just enjoy being there. But to be honest with you, Beth, I get into bed and I fall asleep. Obviously, I wake up in the night, I need the toilet, but I get back in bed and I go to sleep, or I just enjoy being there, or I'm waiting occasionally by my son, but it doesn't bother me now.

Beth (37:18):

Yeah. Yeah. I could tell from your email that you are reaching that stage of where you realize you can't really ever fall prey to it the same. It doesn't mean those fears don't ever show up. They might show up for oddball reasons sometimes, but just you're more like, wow, that's so interesting that these old fears would still kind of show up every once in a while, but they don't really affect you the same. You're not so close to them.

Kim (37:52):

Not at all. No, they don't have the same Hold on me. They used to.

Beth (37:55):

Yes, exactly. They just don't have the same grip. So glad to hear this. And I was going to say, what would you say, Kim, to someone who's still on the climb, if you had any advice for them?

Kim (38:10):

Gosh. I mean, I think the first thing I'd say is I know how difficult it is. I know what it feels like to be in the depths of the desperation and how awful it felt. I mean, it sounds cliche, doesn't it? But ultimately, hang in there because I mean, mine's a prime example. It can and it will get better. I think the best thing that helped me was, well, a couple of things along the way that were quite big things. Were taking the pressure off, so going timeless at night,

Speaker 4 (38:55):

So

Kim (38:55):

Not counting how many hours of sleep I'd had and having no rules around sleep.

(39:02):

But I think the biggest change came when I just decided not to postpone my joy. I just decided that I had to carry on living because either I was going to sit at home and not sleep, or I was going to carry on and do the things that I like doing, even if I didn't sleep. And I think that mindset change and that it's like, again, loosening the grip of it over me is when that I started to see, again, not instantly, and it wasn't an overnight thing, but slowly, slowly, things just got a little bit easier. And obviously there were bumps along the way, and life's thrown up some difficult stuff for us again recently. But the sleep just hasn't, the fear just hasn't cropped up in the same way.

Beth (40:06):

Yeah. Yep. Wonderful. And were there any silver linings that came from having insomnia for you?

Kim (40:15):

I think, I mean, I always used to say to my husband, I want to go back to the Kim that could sleep and prior to the insomnia. But I think, again, it sounds cliche, but it's a journey, isn't it? And it's taught me an awful lot. It's taught me really that there aren't any preconditions to being happy and living life. I think you sometimes get caught in this trap that you need to be sleeping or this needs to be solved, or you need a bigger house or a different job before you can be happy, but actually you don't.

(40:59):

And I think having a little boy is, he doesn't wake up after a bad night sleep and say, mommy, we need to stay at home today. He's like, come on, let's go to the park. He doesn't postpone his joy. He just gets on. He lives in the moment. And I think that was really a silver lining for me out of all of this. It just made me realize that I don't need to wait around or do anything before I can just carry on living my life, really. And that's been pretty amazing, to be honest. I mean, am I grateful this happened? I don't know. Asked me a year or two ago, and I think I probably would've said no, but in some sort of weird way now. I think I've learned a lot from it. And yeah, it's been difficult and probably a lot, the journey's been a lot longer than I expected it to be. That first May. I thought, give it a week or two and I'll be back and sleeping. And there I was two years later. But yeah.

Beth (42:12):

Yeah, so well said. Kim, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share your story with us. These hope stories are my favorite episodes to do because I know that they will find the right people. So thank you A million times over.

Kim (42:32):

You're very welcome. And I mean, again, I was in such a bad place, but just looking back now, honestly, it's just incredible, really how far I've come with your help, Beth. So I thought I would update you and share the good news.

Beth (42:51):

You may be so happy. Those emails always make my day, so all the alums out there, if you ever want to send me an update, just know I just love 'em. I just eat 'em up. I'm smiling from ear to ear. So thank you everyone. Thank you everyone for tuning in today. I'm Beth Kendall, and this is the MINDBODY Sleep Podcast. Bye for now.