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Not sleeping well is becoming the malaise of our generation. Ask someone: ‘How are you?’ and you half-expect them to reply: ‘So tired.’ It certainly doesn’t come as a surprise if someone complains that, for one reason or another, they didn’t sleep well the previous night.

For some, it might be work stress that triggers sleep problems. Or it could be an inability to switch off from emails or social media, a new baby, or the strain of caring for frail parents that keeps them awake at night.

Stressed-out couples argue over who had the least shut-eye; dog-tired mothers compete with fatigued fathers about who has the greatest sleep debt; teenagers stare at screens into the small hours because they can’t switch off — then spend their days desperate to get back in bed.

I’ve met thousands of insomniacs at The Sleep School which I co-founded in 2006 in London with entrepreneur Adrian Baxter

I’ve met thousands of insomniacs at The Sleep School which I co-founded in 2006 in London with entrepreneur Adrian Baxter

No wonder an entire industry now exists, in the form of pills, potions, pillow mists and bedtime drinks, all claiming to be the quick fix that will help us to nod off and wake up feeling refreshed.

Of course, there’s a huge difference between sporadic bad nights that leaves you tired the next day and full-blown chronic insomnia.

The tipping point is when you have been experiencing poor sleep three or more nights a week for more than three months, and this is affecting your ability to function properly the next day.

But there are also many who sleep badly on a regular basis, leaving them worn-out and frazzled.

I’ve met thousands of them at The Sleep School which I co-founded in 2006 in London with entrepreneur Adrian Baxter.

We started offering private clinics to chronic insomniacs, but demand grew so fast that we soon began offering workshops to help others struggling to sleep well.

When people describe how it feels to wrestle with sleeplessness, night after wretched night, when they recount their despair as morning approaches, knowing that they face yet another day with a fog-filled brain and legs heavy with exhaustion, I do more than sympathise — I truly feel their pain.

The tipping point is when you have been experiencing poor sleep three or more nights a week for more than three months, and this is affecting your ability to function properly the next day

The tipping point is when you have been experiencing poor sleep three or more nights a week for more than three months, and this is affecting your ability to function properly the next day

For I am the sleep expert who couldn’t sleep. I know the misery, the frustration, even the shame wrought by insomnia, because those difficult emotional responses to it have all been mine, too.

I’ve felt crushed by its great psychological power as it made me question my ability — indeed, my right — to treat other people for a condition with which I had become plagued myself.

And I have endured the unique loneliness that can come from lying awake next to the sleeping form of someone you love, yet also can’t help but resent, because they somehow effortlessly achieve a state of bliss seemingly beyond your own grasp.

Shame might seem an odd thing to associate with sleeplessness. Yet you feel it because doing something so simple, that we’re biologically programmed to do, is beyond you. I felt that embarrassment, too.

But in the end, my uncomfortable encounter with sleepless nights achieved far more than helping me to empathise deeply with those visiting my Sleep School clinic.

It was the epiphany that led me to develop a revolutionary new sleep programme — one that has since successfully taught more than 25,000 people with chronic insomnia how to sleep well again — and it can help you.

My encounters with insomnia arose in the early 2000s.

Despite always being a good sleeper, the act of working and researching sleep for many years, ironically, disturbed the natural rhythm of my own, as it does for many shift workers.

I remember one night in bed when into my head popped the thought: ‘What if I become an insomniac, too?’

For the first time in my life, I was sleepless, unable to switch off. I tried to laugh it off, in the hope that it would pass. But, instead, other unhelpful thoughts arose, such as: ‘I’m the guy who helps other people to sleep and now I can’t!’ and ‘If I don’t sleep tonight, I’ll be a mess tomorrow.’

With each new thought, my muscles tightened, my breathing sped up, my body became restless and any sleepiness that I’d felt slipped away. So, not only was I wide awake, I was also anxious, which made things worse.

I tried to remain calm and applied all of the relaxation tools I’d taught to other people. I breathed deeply and tried to relax and clear my mind. But nothing worked.

Finally, in the early hours, I fell asleep. But there waiting for me when I awoke was a spectre that began to follow me around all day: the fear of not sleeping.

I tried desperately to ignore it, keeping myself busy in the hope that it would just disappear. But it stayed with me and became magnified when I put my head on the pillow the next night.

Over the course of several weeks, it began to take longer for me to get to sleep and I started waking ever earlier.

Soon, I was routinely awake at 4am. Rather than lie there resenting my partner’s gentle, rhythmic breathing, I got out of bed and started my day.

Finally, in the early hours, I fell asleep. But there waiting for me when I awoke was a spectre that began to follow me around all day: the fear of not sleeping

Finally, in the early hours, I fell asleep. But there waiting for me when I awoke was a spectre that began to follow me around all day: the fear of not sleeping

Meanwhile, where previously I’d enjoyed exercise for how good it made me feel, I was now working out with the sole intention of exhausting myself. I would run for miles, not for the sheer exhilaration I had once got from doing so, but rather to help get me ready for sleep. I cut out coffee and tried everything from warm baths to hot milk to help me relax and wind down at night.

But, as each of these traditional techniques failed, my thoughts became increasingly dark. A disturbing mantra continued to play inside my head: ‘I’m the sleep expert who cannot sleep.’

In a short space of time, I’d been gripped not only by insomnia itself, but also the fear of not sleeping.

I became withdrawn from my partner and felt less connected with my friends, too afraid to confide in them because that would make the problem all too real.

Instead, I convinced myself that I just needed to block out insomnia — keep myself too busy to think about it in the daytime, while working at finding better ways to help me switch off at night.

Why can't you sleep? 

Here are some of the things you might be feeling right now. They’re common, and must be overcome in order to move you past being stuck with insomnia . . .

I WILL FAIL: Fear of failure can either be because you fear not being able to cope the next day, and the potential consequences of that, or you fear simply not being able to perform the act of sleeping like everyone else. But it is only when you accept wakefulness that you will be able to sleep.

IT WILL HURT: It goes without saying that if you don’t sleep, you won’t feel particularly good the next day.

Excessive tiredness, aches and pains and mood swings are all very common.

In reality, though, while uncomfortable, most of the sensations experienced as a result of sleeplessness do not cause any actual physical hurt — despite your mind telling you otherwise.

So let go and be open to experiencing such discomfort, rather than wasting energy struggling against it.

I'M A LOST CAUSE: Doubting your ability to sleep normally again is common, especially if countless failed attempts to resolve the problem have knocked your confidence.

But there’s a big difference between resigning yourself to insomnia and accepting it — the former keeps you stuck in a rut, while acceptance allows you to move on from it.

WHY ME? In the middle of the night, it is easy to believe you are the only person in the world who can’t sleep and that you have, in some way, been singled out for ‘torture’. The reality is that you are not alone, with up to 30 per cent of the population similarly suffering.

I'M TOO TIRED: Tiredness can be a real barrier to your progress, because it can lower your motivation and your willingness to experience discomfort. However, being unwilling to experience short-term tiredness means that you will never know what it feels like to be fully refreshed in the long-term. 

Despite my best efforts, though, the work I put into getting myself to sleep simply did not pay off.

Finally, it hit me: perhaps I was trying too hard.

I rewound to when I had slept well to figure out what I was doing then. How did I do it? The answer: really, I did nothing special at all. The only thing I did to sleep was close my eyes.

There were no special wind-down routines, no getting out of bed in the middle of the night, no ‘sleepy food’ and certainly no medication.

I realised that if I was going to sleep normally again, I had to retrain myself to behave like a good sleeper — in other words, I had to get back to doing nothing.

This experience was hugely enlightening and gave me a fresh way of looking at the problem of sleeplessness, allowing me to successfully treat people who had tried everything else, but still couldn’t sleep.

It awakened me to the reasons why conventional sleep fixes weren’t fully effective for my clients or for me.

They didn’t work because they inadvertently put sleep on a pedestal, meaning the brain goes into overdrive trying to fix whatever is getting in its way. And so sleep becomes more about doing ‘stuff’, and less about actually sleeping, which only succeeds in pushing it further away.

Out of the ashes of my own sleeplessness — and its resolution — rose the drive to develop a gimmick- free, medication-free approach to overcoming insomnia that I could offer my clients.

I found myself fascinated by the similarities in what patients said whenever I asked them to describe the occasions when they did manage to fall asleep.

Time and again, they told me: ‘I was awake all night. Then, half an hour before I knew my alarm would go

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