Ep 55. “You Don’t Have to Heal Everything to Sleep Again” — Liz's Story

I had such a lovely time sitting down with Liz — a psychotherapist and alum of the Mind. Body. Sleep. mentorship.

Not only did Liz get beyond insomnia herself, she stayed on in the mentorship to support others still on their way

Like many of us, she tried everything:

✔️ Impeccable sleep hygiene
✔️ CBT-I
✔️ Sleep meds

But the more she tried, the more fear crept in.

Not just a fear of not sleeping, but a fear of fear itself.

Which is such a common part of this journey.

This episode is filled with heart and insight. A few standout moments: 

     — “Not only was I afraid of not sleeping, I was afraid of fear.”

     — “You don’t have to heal everything to sleep again.”

     — “Even a little bit of self-compassion is powerful.”

If you feel like your nervous system is stuck in overdrive, and you’ve lost trust in your own body, Liz will help you feel a lot less alone.

Enjoy! 🧡

Mentioned Resources:

Liz is licensed in both South Carolina and Illinois. If you’ve gone through insomnia recovery and are looking for excellent aftercare, I can’t recommend her enough.

Liz’ website: https://www.willowtreecounselingpllc.com/

Connect with Beth:

👉 Instagram

Work with Beth:

👉 Start the Free Insomnia Course
👉 Learn About the Mentorship

Full Transcript Below.

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 assurance as to any particular outcome.

 FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hyperarousal, Healing, and the Power of Self-Compassion

Beth:
Hello. And welcome everyone to another very special episode of the podcast today because I am so pleased and honored to be sitting down with another MINDBODY Sleep Mentorship alum, and her name is Liz. Welcome, Liz. Hi, Beth.
Liz:
Thank you so much for having me.
Beth:
Well, thank you so much for being here. I know that you joined the program a while back, and I'm looking so forward to this discussion because I know just from personal experience how your perspective and relationship with insomnia can change over time. And once you're a little bit further out from the experience, you start to see iterations of your own journey. You have a unique perspective because you came through a while back and then you were a Goodwill ambassador in the community for quite some time, so you would pop in and out and offer support and guidance. And I had the benefit as a coach of being able to watch that evolution in you. And I know that in your work in the world, you use many of the concepts that we explore in the mentorship. So if you wouldn't mind giving the listeners some context and just sharing a bit about you, how insomnia started and what that was like for you.
Liz:
For sure. Yeah. So I'm a psychotherapist, interestingly enough, and I think that perspective really in different ways impacted my own experiences. I was experiencing insomnia and then going through the program. And of course it really was transformative for me, not only personally, but professionally too, because I think the emotional experiences we have when we're experiencing and recovering from insomnia actually apply to a lot of different things. So it really just was so powerful in the long run. So I'll share a little bit about my own experience with insomnia and kind of how it started, how it developed. Sure. So for me, the story had sort of a slow burn and a windy road that was over decades before it really kind of hit a crisis point, or what I felt was a crisis at the time. I had sort of what I would call insomnia, light for decades before it really hit a scary place for me, and at least it just felt scary at the time, even when I was a kid, I had nighttime anxiety. I'd be worried about people breaking into my house. I had sleep efforts even really young. I had a cassette tape I listened to because I was in the olden days, and I would've just listened to it over and over again. That was probably my first sleep effort in retrospect. So then I've had periods of difficulty with sleep sort of on and off throughout my life, but it always sort of came back online. And once it was over, it was sort of in the past it was gone. It moved through me.
But in my early thirties, I was in kind of getting deeper into my career and I was just under a lot of pressure, and I love being a psychotherapist, but it's definitely a job that requires a lot of presence and focus. And the deeper I got into the career, the more pressure I actually felt to sleep well because I believed I really needed to be really, really well rested to do my job well. And as I kind of encountered more challenges like family health crises and work stress and my partner's job loss, the pressure sort of mounted for me to be perfectly rested to do my jobs well. And the more that got in my head, the more I started spinning out about it. And so when I would have insomnia, I really felt like it was something that had to be conquered. And then definitely with the background of being a therapist in the psychology world, CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for Insomnia is the Gold Star. Everybody talks about it.
And I was trained in that technique for years and years. So I was sort of using that. And the more I used that, the worse it sort of got for me. A few years ago, I actually had a health crisis, and this was my first kind of really significant health crisis as an adult. And I went for treatment and I got diagnosed, but I got sort of a bad treatment recommendation. And this seems unrelated to insomnia, but the way it sort of affected it was I had a long time of being sort of not misdiagnosed. I was diagnosed, but the plan wasn't good. And it ended up meaning that something was really wrong with me for a pretty significant period of time, and it was really impacting my life, but I was sort of told, it's no big deal. Let's just wait to intervene. And that really had a pretty significant impact on my relationship with trust of my body and also of my trust with helping professionals, even because I was in such a bad physical shape and seeking help and being told to just wait it out even though I was struggling pretty badly. So all of that was just sort of brewing in the back of my psyche.
And then about a year after I got treated properly for that health issue and I was doing better. One night I was in bed reading and I felt my heart start to race, and I wasn't thinking about anything. I would not have labeled it as anxiety. I was pretty at ease and calm. But for some reason, my heart started racing. And I thought like, oh, that's weird. And then either that night or a few nights later as I was lying down, I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. So much so that the sound of it prevented me from falling asleep because it was so loud. And then it happened another night and again, and eventually the sensations sort of evolved to the point where they'd prevent me from sleeping at all. And I'd have these physical symptoms, which now of course I know was hyper arousal, but they would last all night. And then I went one full night without sleeping at all, and then two and then three, and then I would sleep, but then I would be scared about it the next week and the cycle would repeat. So for probably about a year, I was having one to three nights a week where I felt like I wasn't sleeping at all.
And so then I started becoming afraid of not sleeping. And I also started to be afraid of fear. I was worried that something was wrong with me physically, and it was being missed kind of because I had had that health experience before. And this was sort of really my crisis point was when I was going one to three days with what felt like I wasn't sleeping at all, and it was really, really tough.
Beth:
Yeah. Okay, let's pause here. So much to talk about already.
Liz:
Yeah, sorry.
Beth:
No, no, it's so good. I mean, I can relate to so much to your experience right away. When you said I always had insomnia, light, I've never, that's a good way. It's not a Miller Light. We're talking Miller Light. Right, exactly. It's not the full blown, but that's kind of how my experience felt as well. And then where maybe you had these sensitivities or you had these subtle sleep efforts kicking in, or maybe there was just a lot of prone to worry in the, and maybe wondering, why do I seem to be a more sensitive sleeper than everyone else or whatever was going on there. And then you got into your thirties and then the pressure, the pressures kind of mounted, and that's probably when that idea of, or little belief or decision was made in your mind that I have to be really well rested to be present, to be present and be good at my job. And that's kind of probably where that imprint was kind of took hold, so to speak. And then you said that a couple years after that, then that health struggle came on the scene, and boy do I relate to how you describe getting knocked out of your trust, that trust with your body, just trust in your biological just systems. And I think that that's so relevant, especially in the mentorship. I talk a lot about trust and reconnecting with that trust and remembering that trust. So I thought that was really, really huge too. And so at what point did you do the CBTI? Was that before or after the Health Challenge?
Liz:
That was after. So the acute peak of insomnia that I'm describing happened about a year after I had been treated and recovered from the Health Challenge actually. Okay. Yeah. So then I did CBTI probably about six months into this sort of acute insomnia crisis.
Beth:
Yep. Okay. Okay. So you were describing the heartbeat, the physical, the somatic expressions of this fear that you were having. So tell us more how things went from there.
Liz:
For sure. So I started with my primary care doctor, of course, and I went to her, and actually, I think I went to her probably first when I was having more insomnia light. And so insomnia light for me is like I'm having difficulty falling asleep. It takes me a couple hours to fall asleep, but I'm not having intense hyper arousal about it. I just am not falling asleep when I'm intending to fall asleep. So that was very common for me. So at some point in that, I went to my primary care for help with medication and she gave me something, and it would help at first, but then in retrospect, I didn't know it at the time, but my hyper arousal would just override the meds. And I know you've had that experience too, and I know a lot of people in the mentorship have, but it would help for a little bit, and then the hyper arousal would just override it. And so it scared me, especially in the peak of my crisis, that I could take some really intense sleep meds and not sleep at all. It just sort of fed this fear, this belief that something was wrong with my brain. And my doctor, who I love was also totally freaked out by what was happening to me. And her being freaked out, freaked me out even more.
And then that impacted my ability to trust my body even more when you're seeking help and your provider is like, I don't know what this is, dude. And either they're like, you're making it up, they gaslight you, or they're just freaked out for you because they don't understand what's happening. It's just very alarming when you're turning for medical help and it goes beyond without the way they understand it. Yeah, they're understanding. So then we had to rule out all of the medical stuff. And I know a lot of people in the mentorship have this progression. I got sent to sleep medicine. We did a halter monitor to make sure my heart was okay since I was describing heart palpitations. I did a sleep study. And the sleep study clinician, interestingly, just really did not know how to respond compassionately to someone who was in such a desperate place with insomnia. And again, so at this point, I've been to my primary care, now I'm in sleep medicine. And she was mean to me, I dunno how to say it. It was like the mystery of what this was made her angry, and she just offered me more medication, and that was not necessarily what I was looking for at that point.
So it was frustrating. And then of course, she suggested I do CBTI, which I hated because I'd trained as a therapist extensively in CBT. So I knew so much about CBT. And at that point too, I had actually moved away from CBT as a modality in my own practice because it wasn't aligned with my values anymore. So it was a tough pill to swallow. It'd be like, girl, you got to go to CPT. But I was so desperate. I was like, whatever, I'll just do it. And then that poor therapist, it was not a super fun time. I think I was not her typical client, but we CBTI for a bit, and a lot of people in the mentorship, the focus on behavior tracking, control changing thoughts just really made everything worse for me. And the sleep related behaviors that I had were always excellent. I had great sleep hygiene. I knew all about sleep hygiene. I was a sleep hygiene wiz. And so that process just ultimately made me more focused on tracking and sleep efforts. And it just fed into the fear that this is the gold standard treatment and I hate it and it's not working. And I was just super freaked out. And
Beth:
Then, isn't that a hard place to be in because of the reputation that CBTI has? And you, you're doing it and you have the unique experience of knowing so much about CBT in general, and then you feel like, what am I going to do if this doesn't work? And doesn't it just kind of blow your mind in general, how unaware that the mainstream is on just this word, hyper arousal.
I never even heard the word hyper arousal. Never, never in my entire 40 plus year experience. And if somebody had just said, here's what's going on, and this is what's overriding the meds, and there's nothing wrong with your brain, you've just developed this, it would've changed the trajectory of the whole experience. So I feel you, girl, I feel about that hole when you were talking about the doctors and just feeling a little bit or made to feel like you're the one who's crazy because they don't understand how insomnia works and the whole thing. I totally get it. Okay. So you were saying you're in the middle of CBTI and you're knowing this is not for you. And okay, keep going.
Liz:
And it was so tough. So absolutely. I was really panicked at this point because I'm so desperate to screw this out, feel better. And I went to a really reputable practice to get this, all the things, everything should have set up for it to be successful. I had a lot of privilege in that situation because I had knowledge about the field I could access, I could access a good provider, all of that stuff. And so when it was not working, I was very frightened and I didn't have a single colleague. I just didn't see my experience reflected back really anywhere. So I felt just insanely alone. And then I found MINDBODY sleep. I want to say I found it on Instagram. I don't even remember. I don't remember. But I just remember connecting with your energy so much. And then I read all your blog posts and I thought I'd try a consult. And when we talked, you reflected back to me that even though my sleep was sort of slowly coming back online, it was actually by the time we talked, the sleep was coming back online, but the fear was not going away. And that was a struggle.
But you said to me, okay, you said, I think you've become afraid of fear. And that was a big awakening for me. It was like, okay, Liz, your sleep is coming back online, but you're afraid of the fear sensations. And I was like, that is exactly right. Not only am I afraid of not sleeping, I'm now also afraid of fear.
Beth:
Yeah. You know what, Liz, I'm just remembering. I remember when we were talking and what I was hearing you say was that you missed your old nervous system.
Liz:
I did say that.
Beth:
Yeah. And I remember something like, I missed my old nervous system. I remember that. And that now there was just some fear of fear. Yeah. Yep. I remember that.
Liz:
Yeah. It makes me feel emotional hearing you say that back. I remember that. But I remember that feeling of I really longing for a version of my nervous system before insomnia.
Beth:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so understandable. And what many of us go through in the the after effects of, not that there's always effects, but it's like processing a processing of the experience.
Liz:
And it took, my sleep came back online, but the process of unlearning the fear took a lot longer. But I think that's also really important for people to know is you can still have a lot of hyper arousal and fear and sleep.
Beth:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a big one. I think that oftentimes people do think, oh, hyper arousal has to be gone, or you have to be really calm all the time or something like that in order to sleep, and that's not actually true.
Liz:
Right.
Beth:
Yeah, that's such a good point. Yeah. Okay, so you're in the program, you're sort of understanding how you're sleeping better and you've developed a fear of the fear a little bit, and you're working through that and you're unlearning it. And what was process like for you, or what were some of the insights or realizations that you maybe had along the way that helped you through that?
Liz:
Yeah. Well, the first and most powerful lesson is probably one that's true for a lot of people, which is just the simple word, hyper arousal. And beginning to understand what that means. And especially being in the psychology field, I still can't understand how I didn't, we talk in the mental health world about hypervigilance when we're talking about PTSD, but the word hyper arousal is not used as much, and if it was, it would be a trauma word. And so associating that with sleep was just not at all on the docket. So learning about that word and what that word means was just really, really powerful. And I don't want to make it seem like I learned what that word means. And everything was fine. Definitely not true, but just really understanding there's nothing wrong. Your body has gone into overprotective mode and was just really super, super important for me as was learning about, I like to use language tolerating wakefulness. I never really learned to befriended, but showing the nervous system safety, even when you're awake and you don't want to be, and doing that to tolerate or be okay, being awake even when you don't want to be. How can you show yourself kindness when you're experiencing something that feels painful or difficult or hard was another really important one.
Beth:
Yeah, those are all so good. So good. And I know in our conversation recently just through email, you had the interesting observation of realizing that you don't necessarily have to work through past circumstance or past events or how did you put that? But I was going to bring that up today because I thought that was so key.
Liz:
Yeah, so I think in my own experience, the experience with insomnia actually for me was, it's not a trauma, but for me it was a manifestation of other traumas that I'd been through. So I'd had this health crisis and I'd had other sort of developmental trauma and had always sort of gotten through it, moved through it, my brain knew it was over and I would move on. And then this experience sort of tipped me into this loop of fear that I couldn't get out of. And then in treating my own clients, I see this with them too, people who maybe have OCD or post-traumatic stress disorder or depression or anxiety, and they may have some co-occurring insomnia too. But what I learned through my own experience and through working with my own clients is that those issues do not need to be resolved or healed to recover from insomnia. The principals and the mentorship I think are so fundamental, and I think that's so important, especially because a lot of us in this mentorship have perfectionist energy, and so we think, oh, I've got to be healed to sleep. And it's like, actually, we can use these things
To get ourselves to a safer place. And in my own case, there was more healing to do that was sort of not unrelated to the insomnia, but adjacent. And I continued to do that work, but I didn't need to do that before I started to sleep again. And I think that just is so important, was so important for me to understand and hopefully is helpful for people to know.
Beth:
Yeah, I think it will be very, very helpful for people to know that, because I get asked all the time, people that may be considering coming in that have coexisting conditions, maybe they have chronic pain, maybe they have a past trauma, and they might think, oh, well, I've got to get this chronic pain resolved, or I've got to work through this trauma before I can work on my sleep. And something like chronic pain or a difficult circumstance can be the thing that maybe triggers a fear-based relationship with sleep, but it doesn't have to be the thing that maintains it. And I'm always trying to pull these two apart because you really don't have to resolve those things, just like you said, in order to start sleeping well again. Yeah,
Liz:
Right. No, absolutely. And I can completely see that with chronic pain. I know in the program too, there was maybe someone with tinnitus, which is that chronic ringing in the ears, and I think that's a similar, how do I get my symptom of tinnitus under control so I can sleep again? And I think it's so helpful to be like, we can accept and tolerate this sensation and lower the fear and create safety and know it will not take away the ringing in your ears, but it can create some space for sleep to come.
Beth:
Yeah, well said. Well said. A lot of times people ask me if they're coming at it from a more traditional, and I'm curious if you'll relate to this, a traditional therapy approach or thinking of it in terms like that. And I will use the analogy of the architect versus the archeologist, and I'll just say, I don't work from the archeologist standpoint, which is going from the now and going backwards in time and looking into the past, I work more from the architect standpoint of working from the now forward. And so you really don't need to go back and resolve all those past things for sure.
Liz:
No, no, you don't. And you may want to or desire that at some point, but you still don't need that to have come to fruition to recover from insomnia.
Beth:
And I think a lot of times insomnia becomes the door, the thing that opens the door for those other things. Do you know what I mean? It's like it's such an incessantly loud issue to deal with because we deal with it, we sleep every night, and it becomes the opening to working through those deeper issues. Like you said, there was still healing to do, but you can still be sleeping and then move forward or move into that healing. But insomnia oftentimes is the invitation.
Liz:
That was 1000% my experience, I think had this kind of insomnia not happened to me, I would not probably have done what I'm doing on my own healing journey. I might've done it eventually for a different reason because I think there was so much I was holding in my body and I didn't realize it, but it really ended up being an invitation for something more. And I think it's a hard thing to hold onto when you're in the thick of it, but really has been ultimately pretty transformative for me.
Beth:
Yeah. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that.
Liz:
Yeah.
Beth:
And I'll just ask my signature question here. Were there any silver linings that came? You kind of just described one with that invitation, but any other silver linings that came from the experience that you can think of right now?
Liz:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think a big pillar of the mentorship is self-compassion. And I think that that was probably one of the, I struggled with the most, which feels a little ironic given what I do for a living. I never would've thought that I was short on that because I just extend compassion or I try to people all the time, but I really just felt like the well was empty with self-compassion as I was going through the mentorship and doing this learning. And it kind of turned out I didn't have very much self-compassion, but I think it made me realize there's a lot of reasons that one should work on creating it for yourself, insomnia side. There's so many things that can come up for us in life, and if we can resource even a little bit of self-compassion,
Beth:
Passion,
Liz:
We're going to be a lot better off. So I think, I'm not sure I would've discovered that in the way that I did without this experience, and it really has paved the way for me to do some deeper work on that and makes, dealing with challenges that come up in life is they inevitably will a lot, I don't want to say easier, that's not really true, but a lot softer. There's some softness and I think that's
Beth:
Better. Oh, I love that. I love that word. I love that you brought up this pillar of self-compassion because it's such a big one, and I've found that oftentimes it's one of the last things that people will really visit. You almost have to be reminded or exposed to that idea many, many times before it really sinks in. And it's interesting, you would think that's something we should just inherently almost know for ourselves, but it helps to get the reminders for sure,
Liz:
Right? It does. And I think the other piece of self-compassion is really finding safety in your psyche, in your body again. So I think that was another huge thing for me was how do I create safety inside again and again, a lot of reasons that that is important. Insomnia inside, and I'm not going to lie to you, Beth, it's still a work in progress, but it's just so important and it means that, I don't know, there's just more emotional and psychological flexibility within when you can have some degree of self-compassion. It doesn't even need to be like oozing, but
Liz:
Even
Liz:
A little bit is powerful and as is having an internal safety.
Beth:
I agree, agree so much with everything. Everything you said, and we're all a work in progress all the time. There's no finish line, it's just evolution. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Well, where could people find you, Liz?
Liz:
Yeah. I have a therapy practice outside of Chicago. It's called Willow Tree Counseling, and the website is www.willowtreecounselingplc.com.
Beth:
Wonderful, wonderful. There's people out there. Liz is amazing. I've seen her work in the mentorship and certainly if the door has been opened, an invitation to work a little bit deeper, I can tell you she would be absolutely wonderful to work with. I can't thank you enough for being here today.
Liz:
Yes, it was wonderful. I'm so grateful to you and so glad to chat with you a little bit about the experience and reconnect.
Beth:
Absolutely. And with that, everyone, thanks for joining us. This is the MINDBODY Sleep Podcast, and we'll see you next time. Have a wonderful summer, Liz.
You as well, Beth.