You can shape your path however you wish

I want to start right with the main idea of this letter: we are free to build our sleep recovery journey however the hell we want it to be. There is no one and nothing that has the right to tell us: “this is the right way and you are doing it the wrong way”. That’s absolute nonsense.

When we are dealing with a paradox such as insomnia, when our actions and decisions as such don’t matter but the big WHY behind them does, I can’t possibly see ONE way of doing things.

Sometimes people ask me whether CBTi or ACT are the best approaches to insomnia, others want to know what I think about EMDR or somatic trauma work, or some spiritual and philosophical directions. And I cannot name one absolute winner or discard something as useless just because one thing was helpful for me and another wasn’t.

One thing I know for sure is that when I truly let go of trying to control my sleep and allowed sleep to chase me rather than I would chase it, sleep began to come smoother and smoother.

Now, there is a huge number of paths that can lead to that place, not just one.

I talk to different people who recovered and I can see how our paths may differ but the destination point is always the same – the utter acceptance of any outcome.

Which leads me to my main thought: you can experiment and explore different directions on your path and pick the ones that ring true to you. In fact, there is a high chance that the recovery journey would be a patchwork of different bits of teachings that personally resonated with you.

You journey can be a crazy mix that works only for you. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I borrowed a lot of things from different areas to show myself the way out of my struggle.

Some people might disapprove of that because I didn’t show the needed discipline or regularity in my practices but for me structure and rigid rules were the obstacles.

And as much as I tried to stay loyal to one particular school of thought I kept getting frustrated with it if I let it fully dictate my journey.

I remember in the beginning I was so inspired by the idea of CBTi, but eventually came to see that at some point this teaching would hit its limits and “stop working“ or even created more tension. Then I would move on to something else, and again stumbling upon certain limitations.

After a while, I came to realize that if I try to follow one teaching from the beginning to an end, I would keep myself stuck. So I liberated myself from the burden of consistency! I allowed myself to cherry-pick the best parts from the tools and ideas I came across and put together my own mix, unique and helpful particularly to me. That’s how I learned my way out.

Even things that I teach might not resonate 100% with everybody. Or something would resonate and something - wouldn’t. And that’s okay. Pick anything you like from me and keep exploring the missing pieces of a puzzle.

Remember, you are in the driver seat when it comes to choosing your path. Don’t let yourself get locked up in something that has stopped serving you.

With love,

Ali