Let's talk about doubt
Dealing with doubt is sticky.
I am naturally a doubtful person, since I can remember myself. During insomnia that doubt pattern was peaking, it was driving me crazy. Every step I did was accompanied with “Am I doing it right?“, “What if I’m focusing on the wrong things?“, “What if this doesn’t work?“, “What is my case is special?“, etc.
In general, having some amount of scepticism is healthy for our growth.
However, during insomnia struggle doubt can reach the levels when it not only stops serving us, but actually starts to hold us back.
Where does doubt come from on this journey?
The way I think about this is that doubt is a by-product of the ongoing quest for a finding a “working“ solution. The more things we try and the more we get disappointed by them, a new set of beliefs is getting formed. These beliefs can sound like: “I will never see the light“ or “I’m broken beyond repair“ or “Everything eventually lets me down“.
Ultimately, these are only thoughts but they feel real and convincing because of our frustrating past experience. They begin to influence our future decisions, creating some sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy. In a way, it is a form of a learned helplessness.
What can we do about it?
Since doubt is a by-product of our past experiences, it arises automatically. We don’t really consciously choose to feel doubtful, nor can we force ourselves to stop having doubts. Both identifying with and resisting doubt will bit bite us at some point.
There are two major strategies we adopt to deal with doubt but each of them has disadvantages.
Believing doubt. Sometimes doubt can be helpful in discarding the paths that clearly don’t resonate with us. For example, for me the CBTi idea of not using my bed for anything but sleep seemed unnatural, it just felt forced. In the past I could have done so many things in my bed - I could read, watch series, reply to emails, etc. None of it caused any insomnia for me, so why should I change that now? My scepticism turned out to be right for me in that case.
But if we instantly believe every doubtful thought we have, it’s going to rule our life. It can keep us stuck in the same patterns which will only reinforce the beliefs that run it. Not only that, but we will easily get discouraged when some minor obstacles arise (which happens on every journey).
Looking for reassurance. Sometimes, we might fight with doubt by trying to disprove every single doubtful thought. We begin to look for reassurance, which might not always be granted.
In some cases, debunking doubtful thoughts can really help. For example, when I was afraid that I permanently lost my sleep ability and would never fall asleep again, learning about how sleep works and seeing in my experience that sleep still comes eventually despite the fear helped me see that the doubtful thought was untrue.
But we need to be mindful here: if we try to find reassurance to every doubtful thought, the brain will keep coming up with more thoughts like that.
The safety-seeking brain will not be satisfied with reassurance and it is more likely to keep coming back with more and more doubts. To break that infinite loop, the brain needs to see the reassurance pattern as futile, it needs to see doubt for what it is. We need to go meta here.
Understand doubt and don’t demonize it
This might be too simple insight for some people, but for me it was a true discovery.
At some point I was so fed up with doubt that I turned my attention inward and asked the feeling of doubt itself – “Okay, what the hell do you want?? Nothing seems to be good or enough for you!”
After a while an understanding opened up: “I want to protect you. You’ve been stung so many times. I just want to make sure you don’t feel that pain and disappointment again. So I would rather create this discomfort right now, so that in the future you would not get hurt even more.”
That moment for me was like “holy sh*t!“. All this time I’ve been paying attention to the doubt’s content but never have questioned its actual purpose.
I started remembering all the times when my doubt was actually helping me. When it talked me out of some decisions that later on would have turned into bad ventures.
Then I started remembering times when I didn’t listen to doubt and it was the best decision ever. Like the times when I didn’t want to go to some events because I was convinced that it would be a waste of time but then I was so glad that I went.
I started separating the content of doubt from the purpose of doubt and saw that doubt is just a tool utilized by my brain to guard me. And as any tool, it has its benefits and limitations. Without being aware of both sides of that coin, we might fall for its tricks or start fighting ourselves.
Interestingly, I started being more friendly and open to myself. I no longer viewed doubt as my enemy, I just saw it for what it really was.
Many would think that this would instantly remove the doubt, but that’s not what happened: I could still feel the doubt’s presence, but I was no longer under its influence. I learned that the doubt and my journey can co-exist: I was cool with having doubt and just kept doing my thing while having doubt by my side. For me, it was just another sensation in the body that I just observed dispassionately with understanding and compassion.
The drop of resistance gradually led to dissipation of the internal conflict, and that’s when things slowly started to change.
Take care <3
Ali