Nothing is irreversible on the path

I’ve recently came up with an analogy that that can make things a bit easier on the recovery path (at least I hope so). I’m going to share it with you and will appreciate your feedback on whether it made sense or not 🙂.

As we get on the journey of learning and facing the fear around insomnia we get somewhat obsessed with the correctness of our actions. We start believing that in order to get sleep back we need to stick to something uncompromisingly, that errors shouldn’t happen, we shouldn’t slip into to panicky state and google insomnia cures or that we can’t make wrong choices from now on. But yet we do make choices that might not be ideal, we do slip into old behaviours every now and then. If it is something that literally everyone falls for (from what I observe), can we normalize errors? Can we rethink them? Can we make them serve us?

So I was thinking about the navigation apps. You know, when we set a destination, the app creates for us a route it thinks it is the best for us. As we begin to drive, we might sometimes miss the turn. But does missing the turn crashes the navigation? No! It then re-evaluates your current location and recalculates the new path! Like nothing happened. The destination stays the same and the new path still leads there!

The navigation reroutes us whenever we miss the turn, but it never judges us, it simply acknowledges the fact that the different choice has been made and works with what it’s got. No pondering, no regretting, just working with the reality.

But what do we do with ourselves when we miss the turn? When we decide to use a sleep aid even though we promised ourselves we’d never do that again? When we decided to take a nap regardless the rules that we’ve set for ourselves? When we followed the urge to ask Google when we felt desperate? We judge ourselves, we regret and think that we are beyond saving.

What if our actions are not “unfixable” and after every choice that got us a bit derailed, we can pause and without judgement make another one? And if that choice happens to be not the ideal one, we can do better with the next choice after that. And after that. There are no undoable decisions, it is a path of self-exploration.

With love <3

Ali

P.S. Oh, and I’m more than halfway done with my first course on getting out of the insomnia paradox. It is the first comprehensive guide based on my teachings. Stay tuned for announcements! In a meantime, if you need personal support, check out some of the options.

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